Sunday, September 20, 2015

What are the main points in Adorno and Horkheimer's "From The culture industry: Enlighenment as Mass Deception"?

The chapter, contained in Dialectic of
Enlightenment
(1944), is representative of the Frankfurt
School's mistrust of popular culture. Through technological improvements, the products
of mass culture are becoming increasingly standardised and aim to make their consumers
more and more passive and easier to manipulate. Mass culture sacrifices "the idea" in
favor of "the effect" and technological perfection. This allows mass culture to pass
itself off as reality, while, in fact, it is only a representation of reality: "Real
life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies." Adorno and Horkheimer cite
avant-garde art (the chapter makes explicit reference to Picasso, Dadaism and
Expressionism) as a possible resistance to the tendency of privileging style over
matter.

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