How Characteristics Of Culture Maintain Capitalist Society

Many people do not understand what overselling capitalism with consumerism means. Based on the essay by Benjamin Barber, I have learned that people mistake the difference between what they want and what they actually need. In the essay he makes a contrast between capitalism and consumerism by giving examples throughout the essay. He also outlines the values of capitalism and how it has a positive impact on society and the impact of consumerism on people.

Jenkins argues that American popular culture will be redefined by the struggles over convergence and media. With the idea of profit in mind,

With the proposed concepts, such as branding in commercialism, High Culture/Low Culture, and the false promises made in uniform products, one is granted to see today’s society as hovering closely to a capitalistic system set up to facilitate the vast desires of the masses. As Adorno and Horkheimer bluntly put it, “personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions” (71). We can only think of ourselves as just another gear in the American machine, churning away endlessly and waiting to be fed with the uniformity of culture, the greed, manipulation, and

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

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.

The question I have posed is a very contentious one, which has been debated by scholars and graduates for some time, with many arguing that popular culture and mass media are ways of brainwashing the 'masses' into the ways of a dominant social order. Others believe that popular culture is a type of 'folk' culture which encompasses the idea of an 'alternative' culture incorporating minority groups, perhaps with subversive values sometimes challenging the dominant control groups, as was scene with the advent of the 'Indie' music scene in the mid nineteen nineties. In this dissertation I aim to uncover whether aforementioned 'subversive values' can be uncovered in popular culture or whether popular culture is really a means by which the masses can direct dominant controlling forces.

“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.

‘Capitalism’ can be loosely defined as ‘An economic and political system in which countries trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.’ Being the driving

Capitalism has been the subject of ethical criticism since it was first introduced into society. I defend the morality of capitalism because it gives people incentive to work, establishes a web of trust between them, satisfies their material well-being, and generates a wide spectrum of prosperity.

Capitalism started up as a system of investing and sharing money in order to increase the value of resources in the future. Capitalism was just an economic system, but then soon turned into a complex system of ethical practices. Harari defines capitalism as, “a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children and even think” (Harari 314). This economic system evolved along with the people that were endorsing it. Capitalism enables the rich to get richer, while the poor continue to get poorer. There are many benefits to capitalism, but there are downfalls as well, and these downfalls tend to be masked because of the rapid speed capitalists grow at. Harari first presents a definition for capitalism, and soon goes into great detail on why capitalism, while fast paced and unforgiving, is able to stand unwavered while other productions fail.

According to Theodor W. Adorno in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, the culture industry is the entertainment business. “The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry” (1113). While people are consuming products from the entertainment manufacturers “with alertness even when the customer is distraught,” real life is not becoming indistinguishable from the movies (1113). The majority of consumers are able to distinguish products from the entertainment manufacturers such as movies, TV shows, radio and books from reality.

Adorno and Horkheimer suggest ideology as the reason dominant culture industries are able to sustain themselves. They argue that “The culture industry tends to make itself the embodiment of authoritative pronouncements, and thus the irrefutable prophet of the prevailing order” (Adorno and Horkheimer 17). Thus, we can think of these “authoritative pronouncements” as methods Hollywood employs to sustain its dominance. By proclaiming a certain set of ideas which convinces the public that no other authority or ideas exist otherwise, Hollywood mystifies and obfuscates all other traces of thought. It normalizes its manipulation of the public by ostracizing other values and ideas outside the predominant notions of standardization and mass production.

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.