The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
The Culture Industry
In the part of the chapter entitled "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" from the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, writers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer whom the main critical theorists about the concept of cultural industry. They are the forerunner in this field, and they had social criticism about "cultural industries" phenomenon in the capitalist system (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944). The argument for this essay is that popular culture is similar to a factory production with standardized and used to manipulate the mass society spread by mass media such as radio, recorded music, film and television. Adorno thinks the culture industry can refer to mass culture, but culture industry is much more complicated. For this reason, Adorno and Horkheimer rejected the term ‘mass culture’ in favour of the term ‘culture industry’. The premise of this essay is to understand the nature of the theory and this essay will critically analyse the nature of the cultural industry and related theory: popular culture. There are two examples will analysis. The first example, talks about Destiny animate, and finally the second example is talking about iPod nano-chromatic advertisement. Both of two examples will analysis from 4 culture industry features.
The Frankfurt School critical theorists Adorno and Horkheimer were some of the first scholars to critically engage with these new cultural conditions. They argue that culture is demonstrated as an important role in contemporary society, moreover, in modern capitalist society, the increasing commodification of culture had transformed culture itself from pure art form into a crucial medium of ideological control in which now simply a response to maintained consumers (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944). In their work, they contrast the term of real or autonomous art and the culture industry product, and they think these two kinds of arts which play the opposite roles. Adorno believes that autonomous
In the part of the chapter entitled "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" from the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, writers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer whom the main critical theorists about the concept of cultural industry. They are the forerunner in this field, and they had social criticism about "cultural industries" phenomenon in the capitalist system (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944). The argument for this essay is that popular culture is similar to a factory production with standardized and used to manipulate the mass society spread by mass media such as radio, recorded music, film and television. Adorno thinks the culture industry can refer to mass culture, but culture industry is much more complicated. For this reason, Adorno and Horkheimer rejected the term ‘mass culture’ in favour of the term ‘culture industry’. The premise of this essay is to understand the nature of the theory and this essay will critically analyse the nature of the cultural industry and related theory: popular culture. There are two examples will analysis. The first example, talks about Destiny animate, and finally the second example is talking about iPod nano-chromatic advertisement. Both of two examples will analysis from 4 culture industry features.
The Frankfurt School critical theorists Adorno and Horkheimer were some of the first scholars to critically engage with these new cultural conditions. They argue that culture is demonstrated as an important role in contemporary society, moreover, in modern capitalist society, the increasing commodification of culture had transformed culture itself from pure art form into a crucial medium of ideological control in which now simply a response to maintained consumers (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944). In their work, they contrast the term of real or autonomous art and the culture industry product, and they think these two kinds of arts which play the opposite roles. Adorno believes that autonomous
Bibliography: Adorno, T.W. 1991. Culture Industry Reconsidered. In J. M. Bernstein (Ed.), The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge. pp98-106. Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. 1944. Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. P127. Adorno. T. W., 2001. The culture industry; selected essays on mass culture. Edited by Bernstein.J.M. London: Routledge. P32. Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. 1976. The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. In Dialectic of Enlightenment pp. 120-167. Continuum International Publishing Group. Maslow, A. H. 1943. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review. Strinati, D. 1995. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. London: Routledge. p10. Storey, J. 2012. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Pearson Education, Limited. P66. WiseGEEK, 2014. What is Cultural Industry? [online] 13 January. Available at: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cultural-industry.htm [Accessed: 25 January 2014]. YouTube, 2014. New apple ipod nano-chromatic ad(High Quality) song: Bruises by Chairlift [online] 25 January. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdep-3ANSgI [Accessed: 25 January 2014]. YouTube, 2014. Recycled movements on Disney 's movies [online] 25 January. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjmaOj3_sKk [Accessed: 25 January 2014].