Analysis Of Adorno And Horkheimer : Fact, Fiction, Or A Little Of Both?

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

Born in 1903, Theodore Adorno is one of the most prominent figures in the Frankfurt school of communications, a school of social theory and philosophy which studied the effects and structure of the media. In 1945, Adorno published one of his most famous articles, “A Social Critique of Radio Music”. In his somehow controversial essay, Adorno claims that the music played on the radio reflects broader social behavior patterns, that benefits the power elite and numbs the masses. Adorno goes on and state four axioms he believed to be true regarding the existing capitalist society, including how we live in a society of commodities. The main problem he dissects in his article, is that now music is being treated as a commodity as well. Further,

In his work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno analyzes the nature of the culture industry. People everywhere are constantly being consumed by the culture industry, which is a term for the mass production of cultural goods such as films, magazines, and music. Adorno is concerned that the government uses the cultural industry as a way to deceive the masses and manipulate them into passivity. This idea remains true in today’s society. Young men and women are more interested in the release of the newest Taylor Swift or Adele song than political issues. People have become less intellectual as they are being consumed by the culture industry. It is much easier for a person to let himself be consumed by mass media and to let the media

Furthermore, Dorothy Smith argues that social theory offers little female perspective, especially seen in large concepts such as media. This application can be seen in Adorno’s argument of culture industry, in which mass media is used as a mechanism to hinder people’s ability to

In the text Adorno and Horkheimer primarily focuses on the issue of art such movies, radio program and etc becoming a commodity and the fusing of the market and art areas. The criticism of the culture industry stems from the fact that for Adorno and Horkheimer culture held the answer for liberation, however the mass produced culture that they found in America was instead enslaving people. Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument regarding mass culture produced products and its effects and commoditization of art remain important to contemporary society because these issues have continued to have a negative effect on contemporary society this can be observed by analyzing contemporary mass culture products such as television, movies and the internet.

One would argue that one of the benefits of mass media is that we can access whatever information we want with the press of a button. While we think that we have agency, we have “‘freedom to choose what is always the same’” (Ross). We are fed what is popular, limiting us from seeing what we need. Pop hegemony is able to dominate “through a structure of consent” (Culler). This consent is possible due to the exchange of deception for momentary gratification (Adorno). The creation of music, literature, art was meant to fuel our well being. Then somewhere along the way, it was turned into something enabling the corruption of the self. The industry is so successful with telling us what we should want because while doing so, they incorporate what

This essay will evaluate Adorno’s critical attack on popular music. The essay will briefly provide some context on Adorno. Adorno claims that “listeners are made not born”, thus listening is a cultural practice, in which modernity has transformed into a profit (Adorno, 2002:248). By this, the essay will begin by focusing on the broader idea of the culture industry, in terms of commodities and popular music as not being critical. Following on, particular focus will be given to three main areas which convey Adorno’s criticism of popular music. These being, the musical form under standardisation, pseudo-individualisation and regressive listening in terms of escapism. Standardisation will be evaluated in structural terms, and critiqued by Middleton (1990) and Witkin (2003). Adorno’s critique of popular music can only be understood in relation to his analysis of serious music, therefore, the essay will focus on both types of music. Adorno’s criticisms of popular music and critics of this criticism, will enable for a conclusion to be drawn on whether or not I agree with Adorno’s claims on popular music.

Adorno was a German philosopher, infused with the language of Kant and Marx – although they are professional philosophers they disliked the way that Adorno wrote so much about music and society. Kant and Marx also disliked his highly metaphorical and at times poetic style. However, Adornos images were not poetic in a traditional sense they were frequently modernist. The two philosophers Adorno and Max developed in the 1940s a thorough critique of mass society. Both Adorno and Horkheimer use the term “culture industry” which refers to the production of cultural goods, which signaled the essentially bad meeting of two incompatible worlds: that of culture, of high art, of the ideal impulse, and that of industry, described by the production of

One key theme of Theodor W. Adorno’s chapter Education After Auschwitz is that society still encourages parts of Nazi psychology. There are still people who are willing to blindly follow leaders that could create similar things to Auschwitz through barbarism and sadism. History and the present are so intertwined that to expect change for the future, one must unpack this past. The book Maus, by Art Spiegelman, highlights that theme of Adorno’s, by showing, on a microscale, how, in Vladek’s story, that Nazi psychology has not ended. By characterizing Nazis as cats and Jews as mice, Spiegelman proves Adorno’s point.

Adorno argued, in regard to both cultural production and mass culture that Capitalism has: ‘hi-jacked’ art and its requirements of the market, this notion can also be applied to the ‘relationship’ between media/power and the elite, today. Thus, reliance needs (dependency) are fashioned in the minds of consumers of said culture by fresh forms of culture curating a set of conditions of dependency by the powerful. The aim of commercial ‘art, it goes on to argue, is to be presented without any critique, thus making its produce essentially ideological; the extra dominated interpretations of reality are reproduced, reinforced and strengthened through this.

about the world around us, even just for a moment. This boldly claims a kind of autonomy for art, but one that is distinct from Theodor W. Adorno’s conception and more in-line with the affirmative notions the aesthetic impulse. As such, the kind of aesthetics that I am eluded to here is not just a state of contemplation. It is much more. As Cramerotti describes in his aforementioned essay, ‘it is rather the capacity of an art form to put our sensibility in motion, and convert what we feel about nature and the human race into a concrete (visual or bodily) experience’. It is useful to introduce Deleuze’s categories of the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’ and put them into motion. In his 1968 text ‘Difference and Repetition’, Deleuze explains that ‘the virtual is not opposed to the real; it possesses a full reality by itself. The process it undergoes is actualisation. It would be wrong to see only a verbal despite here: it is a question of existence itself’. Deleuze’s category of the ‘virtual’, the realm of affects and Paterson’s documents of darkness are united in their intangibility and their capacity to move the spectator beyond the familiar. Collectively, these forces harness the ability to transport the viewer to another time and place.

Economism, or vulgar Marxism, is a key feature in explaining the media’s role according to Marx. This is also referred to as the base/superstructure model. In economism, “the economic base of society is seen as determining everything else in the superstructure, including social, political, and intellectual consciousness.” (Marxist Media Theory 1) This maintains that the media is used as the base of society. Society is referred to as the superstructure. Clearly, media shapes society even today. Since consumers rely on the media for information and entertainment, (ex. Television and radio new, magazines, newspapers, Internet), they are shaped by whatever forms of media they chose to be an audience to. The media manipulates everything from popular fashion to the food people consume.

In 1944, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, members of the Frankfurt School who fled from the Nazi Germany to the USA, were publishing their seminal essay ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’. Political critique, their thesis about the ideological domination of capitalism on cultural production is one that persists today and is regularly renewed (Mukerji & Schudson, 1991). Yet, since the first half of the twentieth century, evolutions have occurred within the ‘Culture Industry’, and while the theory – focusing primarily on the music and cinema industries – is still applicable to some features of contemporary ‘cultural industries’ (Hesmondhalgh, 2007), these changes require a contemporary reconsideration of it.

Mass media plays an important role in the society by providing entertainment, information and acting as the government’s overseer. Several scholars have developed philosophies that help people understand how mass media fulfills its roles in the society. For example, Horkheimer and Adorno have constructed theories that explain the functions and impacts of mass media in the society across the globe (Mosco, 2008). The central theme in all mass communication models entails the meaning of media contents, which include the images and texts and their influence on the target audience. The perception of the target audience concerning the text and images in the media are what form the basis of these theories. This essay discusses two hypothetical frameworks: the political economy and cultural studies theories, including their similarities and differences, and how they help in understanding the relationship between the media and society.

Theories in mass media play an important role in society which provides a lens to observer communication in a medium. There is a multitude of media theories, but I will explore those of Elizabeth Noelle-Newman and how people use media for their need and gratification. The spiral of silence theory and the uses and gratification theory both give convincing and detailed explanations that link the media and the audience. There is a likeness in both but there are also many difference between the two. After reviewing each theory and proving examples that relate to each, I will then follow by examining the differences between the two and ways they complement one another.