Cosmetics' Advertising: Take a Contemporary Cultural Phenomenon and Discuss in Relation to Adorno and Horkheimer's Theories on Mass Culture and Entertainment.

In our over mediated world we are constantly surrounded by pop culture, it is unescapable. what we view as popular culture effects the values we place on those things and we believe we can make judgments based on what types of pop culture certain people love and identify with. Because pop culture holds so much power over our frames of reference, view of the world, and view of people it is extremely important that we understand just what pop culture is and the power it holds over us. Once we understand the power pop culture has we can begin to think about it critically and critique it. In this essay I will explain the origins of populate culture as described by Mather Arnold and FR Leavis, analyze a few definitions of popular culture as defined

The course provides an introduction to the most prominent forms of media that influence and impact social, business, political, and popular culture in contemporary America. It explores the unique aspects of each medium as well as interactions across various media that combine to create rich environments for information sharing, entertainment, business, and social interaction in the U.S. and around the world.

In the first chapter of The Rhetorical Power of Pop Culture by Deanna Sellnow, the author defines popular culture and explains the importance of studying the subject. Sellnow begins with a short explanation of ethics to convey that the influence popular culture has is not always used ethically. Secondly, Sellnow compares the different contexts of culture, elitist and diversity, to explain what popular culture is not. Popular culture is compiled of everyday things that influence people through subtle messages such as what is appropriate and inappropriate, good and bad, and so on.

According to Adorno, the culture industry presents a huge danger to the people. The culture industry ideally looks at the culture to be based on the things which are already recognized form the past (Adorno 114). Adorno looks at how the culture industry has led to the collapse of reason in the society. It reduces the ability of the society to

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is a pivotal article in history that changed the way in which many communications scholars viewed media. Both authors were members of the Frankfurt School, a school of thought which looked further into Karl Marx’s theories about capitalism and the issues of mass production. Published in 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer revealed their beliefs that the media, much like the economy, is becoming mass produced, and is therefore turning people in society into media-consuming robots. Industrialization created work lives for people in which they would work on only one part of a larger machine. As a result, they felt less involved in the completion of the project as a whole, and therefore felt less pride in their jobs and their lives in general. Instead, these people turned to media and pop culture so that they would feel more fulfillment within their lives. Adorno and Horkheimer believed that these people had a reduced capacity for original thought because media is now force feeding them the ideas of what they can think and feel. This essay will prove that although Adorno and Horkeimer’s points were justified through the eyes of authors George Lipsitz, Lev Manovich, and Susan J. Douglas, there are still exceptions to their theories that they do not account for.

Pop Culture and High Culture In the modern world we live in, there are identifying factors that shape our lives. This includes what is known as popular culture and high culture. In the article High Culture Versus Pop Culture: Which is Best for Engaging Students? written by Andrew Jones, he is able to clearly describe both high and popular culture. Jones states that "A high culture is the self-consciousness of a society.

Adorno and Horkheimer use the concept of culture industry to analyse several strategies used by the news media to indoctrinate its consumers into acceptance of the existing societal patterns. "Entertainment," they claim, accustoms the audiences to accept existing society as natural by endlessly repeating and reproducing similar views of the world which present the existing way of life as the way of the world. Adorno and Horkheimer are critical of a form of standardized mass culture that is part of the industrial processes of mass production and consumption within contemporary capitalism which in turn contributes to processes of homogenization and massification of both culture and audiences. They suggest that reflection on the culture industries

The concept of hegemony is used to capture the many ways in which a society’s culture is organized such that it makes certain practices appear so normal that we freely consent to them. (Dillon, 2014) This concept can be identified as the central issue that Horkheimer addresses. This promotion of a culture of sameness suppresses individuality and variation. Television does not “bring the entire world into our homes” as much as it moves everybody who is watching to the same place and into the same events. (Wexler, 1991) Critical theorists conclude that mass consumer society produces a new form of totalitarianism, a cultural totalitarianism. Cultural totalitarianism is the repression of diversity in the expression of individual needs and opinions that is at odds with those mass marketed. (Dillon, 2014) Even though cultural totalitarianism accurately describes how our society is today, there are still individuals who actively reject mass media and consumer culture. Horkheimer’s critical theory allows us to create an emancipated society that is autonomous from the controlling demands of competitive

Mass culture can be defined as the collective culture created by exposure to the same news sources, music, literature, art and consumer advertising. The rise of mass culture is a relatively new phenomenon that has occurred largely because of the rise of a leisure class fueled by technological innovations, the surplus in production brought about by the industrial revolution and the time the average consumer had to dedicate to non-work pursuits brought about by the delineated work schedule favored by mass production and labor laws which defined the limits of the production schedule, and created a new space for workers and their families (Jacobs 13). Prior to the advent of mass

“The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture” Sigmund Freud. American popular culture is largely impacted by mass media in every sense. Popular culture in American is influenced by the internet and globalized because of the various was to communicate quickly around the world. American popular culture is what each person makes of it in their own terms based on the perception of the information received through mass media. The many forms of relaying the mass media information such as television, radio and Internet to name a few have sculpted the way Americans feel, believe, act and react to various situations. A person cannot avoid mass media unless he or she had no form of electronics nor did he or she walk outside or read the newspaper. Therefore, each decision and thought created in the minds of Americans is somehow affected by American popular culture. The decisions do not always follow the crowd but move against it, either way a person can make the decision to follow or drift alone. These decisions, methods of thinking, actions and reactions have all developed into cultural values of the American people. Cultural values revolve around popular culture because they create the ideals that people live by.

Oppositional art looks to turn prominent societal images and norms on their heads. For this project, we chose to address the stereotypical and common images found in both Hollywood and beauty product advertisements. Many movie and television advertisements portray lead characters who exemplify hegemonic norms: white, heterosexual, and patronizing. The advertisements in the beauty industry highlight similar images; models are young and beautiful and they promote the idea that being youthful is better and more acceptable than appearing ‘old’. The first image is a popular movie poster that originally featured a heterosexual couple with the woman in a submissive pose. Our second image is an advertisement that plays on products that are marketed to women who want to appear younger. Using a feminist perspective and oppositional gaze, we will critically analyze the hegemonic norms represented in the chosen images and then highlight how our art is challenging those norms.

Studying popular culture reveals the culture of society at the time. Further, popular culture reveals the underlying belief, power structures, and philosophical and moral frame of the society that produces those cultural products. Studying popular culture gives us an accessible vehicle through which to explore philosophical and moral questions, as well as the functioning of society on a smaller scale (fan based, consumption), through which we can make larger assumptions. Studies of popular culture may be broad based or very specific, depending on who is conducting the studies. Popular culture includes cultural artifacts, such as books, films, music genre, as well as how the culture is being marketed and the market that is being targeted.

This lecture considers how the Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School sought to understand the relationship of culture and society in an age of advanced capitalism and mass media.  It explores their analyses of popular culture, and poses the question of whether the term 'culture industry' has now lost its original, critical meaning.

Popular culture, can be described in many ways; however, theorist John Fiske describes it as ‘the process of generating meaning inside a given social system’ (Sokolowski on Fiske, n.d). Popular culture is representative of what is important to people at the current time, giving indications of what is valued by that

They were the first social theorists see the reproduction of contemporary society they call "cultural industries", where the so-called mass culture and the importance of the media stand in the centre of leisure activities, socialization is an important agent, intermediary political reality, but it should be seen with a variety of economic, political, cultural and social impact of major institutions of contemporary society. Early studies of cultural industries include popular music, television and popular phenomena such as character analysis Adorno. In their criticism of mass culture and communication, members of the Frankfurt School is the first systematic analysis of critical social theory and critique of popular culture and television