Adorno and Horkeimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment
In this essay I am going to analyse of Adorno and Horkheimer 's Dialectic of Enlightenment, I will use various texts and ideas including George Orwell 's 1984 and Weber 's theory of Disenchantment, to criticise the extract and outline the relationship between film/literary representation and the real world.
Adorno and Horkheimer 's view on art within the extract can be interpreted as both positive and negative, they use words which are open to interpretation such as 'enchantment ', 'magic ' and 'spiritual ', the association of magic and fantasy with enchantment could at first portray a sense of wonderment with positive recollections of art that has emplaced a feeling of joy and created a fantasy. On the other hand to critique this from a religious point of view the implication of sorcery and seduction is immediately thought of as a negative temptation. Adorno and Horkeimer were Neo Marxist writers In 1930 's Germany when fascism was on the rise and the suppression of a population was prevalent. They describe art as having 'special laws ' which 'closes it off from actuality ', I interpret this to mean that art is not there to influence and creates a means of communication within its own confines outside the laws of society and without conforming to social norms. If we use George Orwell 's 1984 which, in its own form of political fiction, was written in 1949 as a forewarning to a society which was at the time, recovering from Hitler 's dictatorship as an example of an extremely influential piece of literature considering the time we can see that the meaning behind the message was purposeful. The novel depicts a society with a totalitarian government who create a completely controlled civilization where the people are watched by the government 24 hours a day within their own homes and control every aspect of life. Freedom of expression is suppressed even to the point where 'a subsection of the music department ' uses a machine called a 'versificator ' to
Adorno and Horkheimer 's view on art within the extract can be interpreted as both positive and negative, they use words which are open to interpretation such as 'enchantment ', 'magic ' and 'spiritual ', the association of magic and fantasy with enchantment could at first portray a sense of wonderment with positive recollections of art that has emplaced a feeling of joy and created a fantasy. On the other hand to critique this from a religious point of view the implication of sorcery and seduction is immediately thought of as a negative temptation. Adorno and Horkeimer were Neo Marxist writers In 1930 's Germany when fascism was on the rise and the suppression of a population was prevalent. They describe art as having 'special laws ' which 'closes it off from actuality ', I interpret this to mean that art is not there to influence and creates a means of communication within its own confines outside the laws of society and without conforming to social norms. If we use George Orwell 's 1984 which, in its own form of political fiction, was written in 1949 as a forewarning to a society which was at the time, recovering from Hitler 's dictatorship as an example of an extremely influential piece of literature considering the time we can see that the meaning behind the message was purposeful. The novel depicts a society with a totalitarian government who create a completely controlled civilization where the people are watched by the government 24 hours a day within their own homes and control every aspect of life. Freedom of expression is suppressed even to the point where 'a subsection of the music department ' uses a machine called a 'versificator ' to
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