Thursday, October 15, 2015

CMNS 130 - Week 6
Critical Theory and the Rise of the Culture Industries
The Rise of the Cultural Industries

- The Frankfurt School perspective, and the critical theory they developed, is different from that of the dominant paradigm (Frankfurt School = [and] Critical Theory)

- Offers a response to, and critique of, the integration of mass communication into industrial capitalism
• Media reinforced elites within capitalism societies
• Mass Media enabled our domination

- Before the advent of the mass communication system, culture was produced differently - Vaudeville theatre was popular before the rise of the culture industry
• (Mass, Personal and Popular Media - Vaudeville is closer to popular)
The Frankfurt School: Biography and Historical Context
(Critical Theory)

- Develops within the Institute for Social Research, based in Frankfurt in the 1920s
(Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer)

- Their perspective was marked by German fascism and American consumer culture
- Was interested in the “social contradictions” of capitalism
- We are going to focus on their theory of mass media
- “The Culture Industry” = the standardized production of cultural goods (that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity)
The Enlightenment and its Perversion

- The Enlightenment is a way of thinking about the world that emerges in the 18th and
19th centuries

- It challenges traditional ways of seeing the world, including those of the Catholic church and monarchies

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• Tries to replace religion with humanism and the scientific method
- It included an underlying belief in progress for all through science and rationality
- However, Adorno & Horkheimer believed the Enlightenment dream had been turned into a nightmare…

• The rise of dictatorships but also the rise of the mass media - used to dominate and enslave people, the enlightenment had been betrayed

• For the Frankfurt school, the technology created to help us, ultimately did the opposite during the enlightenment

- …bringing us “progressive technical domination”
- The masses are revolting (but not in the right way)
• Instead of starting a revolution, people bought into capitalism and their own domination - Explanation for why people were buying into their own domination was to be found outside the workplace, in the mass media
The Mass Production of Culture

- Culture becomes an industry like any other
• produces our consciousness unlike physical commodities
- For Gunster, the culture industry is: “the systematic application of the principles, procedures and values of industrial capitalism to the creating and marketing of mass culture” • The production of culture was being rationalized
• in the process, culture itself became standardized
• the appearance of individuality masked the level of standardization

- Culture was rationalized and mass produced
- The appearance of individuality masked the sameness of culture
• The culture industry eliminates the barrier between high culture and low culture
• ex. High Culture like classical music could have been a place for high art was being destroyed by the cultural industry

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• Working class culture was being destroyed - ex. the circus, peep show, and the brothel. Used to threaten the system but mass culture had de-based culture in general • pop culture is cruel in nature - inspires cruelty ex. Cartoons like Tom and Jerry, the protagonist become the general subject of organized violence and cruelty

- This culture of cruelty reinforces competition and aggression
- Not a distraction from real life, but actually becoming real life
Commodity Fetishism

- With commodity fetishism, we see commodities as almost magical objects rather than produced by a set of social relations
• ex. Enda’s shoes (not elves who bring him the shoes but a specific set of social relations brought him to buy shoes. (i.e made in china, companies, who is selling, etc) - The audience can’t see the relationship between the mass media product and the industries and social system they emerge from

- We may think of media as an escape, but consumption mirrors production
The End of Resistance?

- Through this process, capitalism has been able to resolve its contradictions
- The masses are “buying into” capitalism
- They are accepting what Herbert Marcuse called “false needs”
- But in the end they (we) are dumped, and not aware of real needs
The Frankfurt School in Context

- For critical theorists the culture industry produces, controls and dictates the audience’s needs

- Adorno famously hated jazz: but if not jazz or doo-wop, what music was good?
- To be fair, the Frankfurt School is a varied tradition, and a product of its history
- It also lays the foundation for the political economy of communication
- Offers us a way to think about the industrialization of culture

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Who holds and exerts the power?
Frankfurt school = foundation/fits in with the Critical Paradigm

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