Adorno, Theodor - Culture Industry.pdf - Adorno - MKTK

The Culture Industry

by Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969)

Introduction

These two essays, ﬁrst published in the late 1940's, are the most prophetic works ever written on the subject of mass

culture–the agglomeration of television, radio, ﬁlm, and advertising concerns that Adorno terms "the culture industry". His

prediction of the fusion of all forms of art into one (MTV's music videos), the indistinguishability of advertising and

entertainment, and the contrived catharsis (emotional purging) of talk shows such as Oprah and Jerry Springer is one that

stands on its own merit. I will not try to paraphrase his arguments, nor summarize his theses, but give the reader a brief

insight into Adorno's curious place in the development of the American entertainment industry.

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was born to Jewish parents in Frankfurt, Germany. His academic career took off while

involved with the Frankfurt School–an extension of COMINTERN, the Communist International. Adorno's collaboration with

Walter Benjamin at the Frankfurt School from 1928-1932 had a tremendous impact on Jewish intellectual movements of the

time. Benjamin is given credit for developing the theory of modern opinion-polling, as well as theories in brainwashing and

the effects of social isolation. Benjamin's hypothesis that the mechanical reproduction of art belonged as a cornerstone of

Marxist theory became quickly accepted in international circles (even by those who had never heard of his name). Adorno,

however, rose to international acclaim while Benjamin remained forgotten for several decades. After his exile to America in

1934, Adorno became one of the most eminent ﬁgures of the neo-Marxist movement, enlisted by the American Jewish

Committee and the U.S. War Department to ﬁght "Fascism" and other perceived threats to Jewish interests.

One must ﬁrst understand Marxism as displayed in Capital and The Communist Manifesto before one can understand those

such as Adorno who labor under Marx's ideology. From its inception Marxism has been not a strict ideology, but a means to

an end. What Jewish intellectuals of the 19th century desired was an overthrow of bourgeois "Capitalism" (run by non-Jews)

and a replacement of it with a kosher form of government (run by Jews). Despite the ﬁerce rhetoric of overthrowing the

nobility and empowering the proletariat, the fact remains that there has never been a single Jewish noble or peasant in

Western Europe outside of Moorish Spain. The only social positions Jews could possibly ﬁll would be those in the emerging

Middle Class of artisans, merchants, and shop-owners. In appearance, Marx developed an ideology that directly attacked

the class to which every Jew in Western Europe necessarily belonged. In reality, Marxism was carefully designed as a

weapon to be employed speciﬁcally against the Goy (i.e non-Jewish) middle-class.

Unarmed peasants did not provide any direct threat to Jews (despite continuous howls of anti-Semitism), and noblemen

generally welcomed them with open arms. In the class rivalries of industrial societies, Marx saw a weak spot in the side of

Western Civilization and he attacked. Every Jewish intellectual movement since (including the Frankfurt School) has been

obsessed with the weaknesses of our industrial-technological society–yet none of them wish to destroy the implements of

that society. The dual goal that drives them is the destruction of the Goy middle-class by the enraged masses coupled with

the replacement of the prevailing Goy intelligentsia by a policy of intermarriage and low birth-rates. Our technology, our

capitalism, and our labor are merely implements in this war, not combatants. Marx himself saw capitalism as an integral part

of his scheme (there could be no true Communist Revolution without a preceding capitalist buildup)–just as his "worker's

paradise" would be not the destruction and devolution of the indutrial-technological system but the perfection of it!

The years of the Third Reich and the war in Europe gave followers of the Frankfurt School new motivation to appropriate

any and all elements of the culture industry in their continuing struggle against the Goyim. Where Marx had enlisted the idea

of class struggle from intellectuals such as Robespeirre during the French Revolution, neo-Marxists quickly realized the

tremendous power of propaganda once it was placed on display following Germany's defeat. Marxism's "New Deal" was

appropriated right from Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, Chapter 6! Despite the obvious historical ironies involved, the perfection

of the culture industry was the aim of the Frankfurt School, as much as Adorno speaks of constant rebellion against it. Where

previous Marxists relied almost solely on organized labor as their ammunition, Adorno quickly perceived the tremendous

power of mass media as an organizing force–not during work hours–but during one's leisure hours; if I may coin a term:

"organized leisure." This may help explain the ease with which traditional Marxists have been able to "embrace" capitalism

despite massive investments in making the spirit of free-enterprise a faux pas in academic circles.

The author's motives are hardly clear in writing the following essays. Adorno takes up a mask of ﬁghting "Fascism" much like

the one displayed in his landmark Authoritarian Personality. But he was not ﬁghting fascism when the ﬁrst essay was

published in 1947–there were simply no fascists anywhere near the centers of power in America. As detailed in Neal

Gabler's An Empire of Their Own and Ben Stein's The View from Sunset Boulevard, Jews have not just been an integral part

of the advertising and entertainment industries in the United States–they were the sole founders. One might well ask why

Adorno would attack his own tribesmen (i.e. fellow Jews) in public?

Although I can give no definitive answer to the above question, I wish to point out that Adorno was bred in a multilingual

Europe and like many "upper-crust" Jews, he abhorred the Jewish Maﬁa "scene" in Los Angeles–the seedy home of Bugsy

Seigel and Sam Goldwyn. As much as the culture industry in New York, Hollywood, and Las Vegas was a creation of Jews,

Adorno obviously felt they lacked the proper "manners" of the Old World and was shocked at their violence, lack of religious

devotion, and the amazing quickness with which successful Jewish businessmen married attractive Goy women. Again, I

can merely speculate that Theodor Adorno may be one of the founding fathers of "neo-conservatism"–the ideology of the

passive (and loyal) opposition; ardent supporters of capitalism when their interests dictated that support, but ﬁerce tribalists

on issues concerning Israel and "minority rights".

In closing I would like to emphasize the historical importance of this work as a critique of mass media as well as Adorno's

questionable role in promoting opinion-polling and modern mind-control techniques. His analysis of capitalism is among

the most brilliant of the century, even if he does take an unique view of the business of "business". I regard Adorno as

second only to Joseph Schumpeter in his ability to explain the society in which we live. As much as George Orwell's 1984 is

hailed as a picture of society ordered by authoritarianism and mind-control, I think Adorno's negative utopia has been more

prescient and tangible in every way. But I suppose I should let the reader judge for himself!

SIEGFRIED

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Culture Industry

THEODOR ADORNO AND MAX HORKHEIMER

THE CULTURE INDUSTRY: ENLIGHTENMENT AS MASS DECEPTION (from Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York:

Continuum, 1993. Originally published as Dialektik der Aufklaerung, 1944)

THE sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of

precapitalism, together with technological and social differentiation or specialization, have led to cultural chaos is disproved

every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is

uniform as a whole and in every part. Even the aesthetic activities of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic

obedience to the rhythm of the iron system. The decorative industrial management buildings and exhibition centers in

authoritarian countries are much the same as anywhere else. The huge gleaming towers that shoot up everywhere are

outward signs of the ingenious planning of international concerns, toward which the unleashed entrepreneurial system

(whose monuments are a mass of gloomy houses and business premises in grimy, spiritless cities) was already hastening.

Even now the older houses just outside the concrete city centers look like slums, and the new bungalows on the outskirts

are at one with the ﬂimsy structures of world fairs in their praise of technical progress and their built-in demand to be

discarded after a short while like empty food cans. Yet the city housing projects designed to perpetuate the individual as a

supposedly independent unit in a small hygienic dwelling make him all the more subservient to his adversary - the absolute

power of capitalism. Because the inhabitants, as producers and as consumers, are drawn into the center in search of work

and pleasure, all the living units crystallize into well-organized complexes. The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm

presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of the general and the particular. Under monopoly all mass

culture is identical, and the lines of its artiﬁcial framework begin to show through. The people at the top are no longer so

interested in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies and radio need no

longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they

deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors' incomes are published, any doubt about the

social utility of the ﬁnished products is removed.

Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it,

certain reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisﬁed

with identical goods. The technical contrast between the few production centers and the large number of widely dispersed

consumption points is said to demand organization and planning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that standards

were based in the ﬁrst place on consumers' needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is

the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of

the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over

society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive nature of society alienated

from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together until their leveling element shows its strength in

the very wrong which it furthered.

It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production,

sacriﬁcing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system. This is the result not of

a law of movement in technology as such but of its function in today's economy. The need which might resist central control

has already been suppressed by the control of the individual consciousness. The step from the telephone to the radio has

clearly distinguished the roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to play the role of subject, and was liberal. The latter

is democratic: it turns all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all

exactly the same. No machinery of rejoinder has been devised, and private broadcasters are denied any freedom. They are

conﬁned to the apocryphal ﬁeld of the "amateur," and also have to accept organization from above. But any trace of

spontaneity from the public in ofﬁcial broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions and

ofﬁcial programs of every kind selected by professionals. Talented performers belong to the industry long before it displays

them; otherwise they would not be so eager to ﬁt in. The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the

system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it. If one branch of art follows the same formula

as one with a very different medium and content; if the dramatic intrigue of broadcast soap operas becomes no more than

useful material for showing how to master technical problems at both ends of the scale of musical experience–real jazz or a

cheap imitation; or if a movement from a Beethoven symphony is crudely "adapted" for a ﬁlm sound-track in the same way

as a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a ﬁlm script: then the claim that this is done to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is

no more than hot air. We are closer to the facts if we explain these phenomena as inherent in the technical and personnel

apparatus which, down to its last cog, itself forms part of the economic mechanism of selection. In addition there is the

agreement–or at least the determination–of all executive authorities not to produce or sanction anything that in any way

differs from their own rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all themselves.

In our age the objective social tendency is incarnate in the hidden subjective purposes of company directors, the foremost

among whom are in the most powerful sectors of industry–steel, petroleum, electricity, and chemicals. Culture monopolies

are weak and dependent in comparison. They cannot afford to neglect their appeasement of the real holders of power if

their sphere of activity in mass society (a sphere producing a speciﬁc type of commodity which anyhow is still too closely

bound up with easygoing liberalism and Jewish intellectuals) is not to undergo a series of purges. The dependence of the

most powerful broadcasting company on the electrical industry, or of the motion picture industry on the banks, is

characteristic of the whole sphere, whose individual branches are themselves economically interwoven. All are in such

close contact that the extreme concentration of mental forces allows demarcation lines between different ﬁrms and technical

branches to be ignored. The ruthless unity in the culture industry is evidence of what will happen in politics. Marked

differentiations such as those of A and B ﬁlms, or of stories in magazines in different price ranges, depend not so much on

subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers. Something is provided for all so that none may

escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass-

produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantiﬁcation. Everybody must behave (as if

spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product

turned out for his type. Consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups

into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda.

How formalized the procedure is can be seen when the mechanically differentiated products prove to be all alike in the end.

That the difference between the Chrysler range and General Motors products is basically illusory strikes every child with a

keen interest in varieties. What connoisseurs discuss as good or bad points serve only to perpetuate the semblance of

competition and range of choice. The same applies to the Warner Brothers and Metro Goldwyn Mayer productions. But even

the differences between the more expensive and cheaper models put out by the same ﬁrm steadily diminish: for

automobiles, there are such differences as the number of cylinders, cubic capacity, details of patented gadgets; and for ﬁlms

there are the number of stars, the extravagant use of technology, labor, and equipment, and the introduction of the latest

psychological formulas. The universal criterion of merit is the amount of "conspicuous production," of blatant cash

investment. The varying budgets in the culture industry do not bear the slightest relation to factual values, to the meaning of

the products themselves. Even the technical media are relentlessly forced into uniformity. Television aims at a synthesis of

radio and ﬁlm, and is held up only because the interested parties have not yet reached agreement, but its consequences

will be quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of aesthetic matter so drastically, that by tomorrow the

thinly veiled identity of all industrial culture products can come triumphantly out into the open, derisively fulﬁlling the

Wagnerian dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk–the fusion of all the arts in one work. The alliance of word, image, and music is

all the more perfect than in Tristan because the sensuous elements which all approvingly reﬂect the surface of social reality

are in principle embodied in the same technical process, the unity of which becomes its distinctive content. This process

integrates all the elements of the production, from the novel (shaped with an eye to the ﬁlm) to the last sound effect. It is the

triumph of invested capital, whose title as absolute master is etched deep into the hearts of the dispossessed in the

employment line; it is the meaningful content of every ﬁlm, whatever plot the production team may have selected.

The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him. Kant's formalism still expected a contribution

from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied experiences of the senses to fundamental concepts; but industry

robs the individual of his function. Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for him. Kant said that there

was a secret mechanism in the soul which prepared direct intuitions in such a way that they could be ﬁtted into the system of

pure reason. But today that secret has been deciphered. While the mechanism is to all appearances planned by those who

serve up the data of experience, that is, by the culture industry, it is in fact forced upon the latter by the power of society,

which remains irrational, however we may try to rationalize it; and this inescapable force is processed by commercial

agencies so that they give an artiﬁcial impression of being in command. There is nothing left for the consumer to classify.

Producers have done it for him. Art for the masses has destroyed the dream but still conforms to the tenets of that dreaming

idealism which critical idealism balked at. Everything derives from consciousness: for Malebranche and Berkeley, from the

consciousness of God; in mass art, from the consciousness of the production team. Not only are the hit songs, stars, and

soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the speciﬁc content of the entertainment itself is derived

from them and only appears to change. The details are interchangeable. The short interval sequence which was effective in

a hit song, the hero's momentary fall from grace (which he accepts as good sport), the rough treatment which the beloved

gets from the male star, the latter's rugged deﬁance of the spoilt heiress, are, like all the other details, ready-made cliches to

be slotted in anywhere; they never do anything more than fulﬁll the purpose allotted them in the overall plan. Their whole

raison d'etre is to conﬁrm it by being its constituent parts. As soon as the ﬁlm begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who

will be rewarded, punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear has heard the ﬁrst notes of the hit song, it can

guess what is coming and feel ﬂattered when it does come. The average length of the short story has to be rigidly adhered

to. Even gags, effects, and jokes are calculated like the setting in which they are placed. They are the responsibility of

special experts and their narrow range makes it easy for them to be apportioned in the ofﬁce. The development of the

culture industry has led to the predominance of the effect, the obvious touch, and the technical detail over the work

itself–which once expressed an idea, but was liquidated together with the idea. When the detail won its freedom, it became

rebellious and, in the period from Romanticism to Expressionism, asserted itself as free expression, as a vehicle of protest

against the organization. In music the single harmonic effect obliterated the awareness of form as a whole; in painting the

individual color was stressed at the expense of pictorial composition; and in the novel psychology became more important

than structure. The totality of the culture industry has put an end to this. Though concerned exclusively with effects, it

crushes their insubordination and makes them subserve the formula, which replaces the work. The same fate is inﬂicted on

whole and parts alike. The whole inevitably bears no relation to the details–just like the career of a successful man into

which everything is made to ﬁt as an illustration or a proof, whereas it is nothing more than the sum of all those idiotic

events. The so-called dominant idea is like a ﬁle which ensures order but not coherence. The whole and the parts are alike;

there is no antithesis and no connection. Their prearranged harmony is a mockery of what had to be striven after in the great

bourgeois works of art. In Germany the graveyard stillness of the dictatorship already hung over the gayest ﬁlms of the

democratic era.

The whole world is made to pass through the ﬁlter of the culture industry. The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees

the world outside as an extension of the ﬁlm he has just left (because the latter is intent upon reproducing the world of

everyday perceptions), is now the producer's guideline. The more intensely and ﬂawlessly his techniques duplicate

empirical objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the outside world is the straightforward continuation of

that presented on the screen. This purpose has been furthered by mechanical reproduction since the lightning takeover by

the sound ﬁlm.

Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound ﬁlm, far surpassing the theater of illusion, leaves no

room for imagination or reﬂection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the ﬁlm, yet

deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the ﬁlm forces its victims to equate it directly with

reality. The stunting of the mass-media consumer's powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back

to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products

themselves, especially to the most characteristic of them, the sound ﬁlm. They are so designed that quickness, powers of

observation, and experience are undeniably needed to apprehend them at all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if

the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts. Even though the effort required for his response is semi-automatic, no

scope is left for the imagination. Those who are so absorbed by the world of the movie–by its images, gestures, and

words–that they are unable to supply what really makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particular points of its mechanics

during a screening. All the other ﬁlms and products of the entertainment industry which they have seen have taught them

what to expect; they react automatically. The might of industrial society is lodged in men's minds. The entertainments'

manufacturers know that their products will be consumed with alertness even when the customer is distraught, for each of

them is a model of the huge economic machinery which has always sustained the masses, whether at work or at

leisure–which is akin to work. From every sound ﬁlm and every broadcast program the social effect can be inferred which is

exclusive to none but is shared by all alike. The culture industry as a whole has molded men as a type unfailingly

reproduced in every product. All the agents of this process, from the producer to the women's clubs, take good care that the

simple reproduction of this mental state is not nuanced or extended in any way.

The art historians and guardians of culture who complain of the extinction in the West of a basic style-determining power are

wrong. The stereotyped appropriation of everything, even the inchoate, for the purposes of mechanical reproduction

surpasses the rigor and general currency of any "real style," in the sense in which cultural cognoscenti celebrate the organic

precapitalist past. No Palestrina could be more of a purist in eliminating every unprepared and unresolved discord than the

jazz arranger in suppressing any development which does not conform to the jargon. When jazzing up Mozart he changes

him not only when he is too serious or too difﬂcult but when he harmonizes the melody in a different way, perhaps more

simply, than is customary now. No medieval builder can have scrutinized the subjects for church windows and sculptures

more suspiciously than the studio hierarchy scrutinizes a work by Balzac or Hugo before ﬁnally approving it. No medieval

theologian could have determined the degree of the torment to be suffered by the damned in accordance with the ordo of

divine love more meticulously than the producers of shoddy epics calculate the torture to be undergone by the hero or the

exact point to which the leading lady's hemline shall be raised. The explicit and implicit, exoteric and esoteric catalog of the

forbidden and tolerated is so extensive that it not only deﬁnes the area of freedom but is all-powerful inside it. Everything

down to the last detail is shaped accordingly. Like its counterpart, avant-garde art, the entertainment industry determines its

own language, down to its very syntax and vocabulary, by the use of anathema. The constant pressure to produce new

effects (which must conform to the old pattern) serves merely as another rule to increase the power of the conventions when

any single effect threatens to slip through the net. Every detail is so ﬁrmly stamped with sameness that nothing can appear

which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at ﬁrst sight. And the star performers, whether they produce or

reproduce, use this jargon as freely and ﬂuently and with as much gusto as if it were the very language which it silenced

long ago. Such is the ideal of what is natural in this ﬁeld of activity, and its inﬂuence becomes all the more powerful, the

more technique is perfected and diminishes the tension between the ﬁnished product and everyday life. The paradox of this

routine, which is essentially travesty, can be detected and is often predominant in everything that the culture industry tums

out. A jazz musician who is playing a piece of serious music, one of Beethoven's simplest minuets, syncopates it

involuntarily and will smile superciliously when asked to follow the normal divisions of the beat. This is the "nature" which,

complicated by the ever-present and extravagant demands of the speciﬁc medium, constitutes the new style and is a

"system of non-culture, to which one might even concede a certain 'unity of style' if it really made any sense to speak of

stylized barbarity."1

The universal imposition of this stylized mode can even go beyond what is quasi-ofﬂcially sanctioned or forbidden; today a

hit song is more readily forgiven for not observing the 32 beats or the compass of the ninth than for containing even the most

clandestine melodic or harmonic detail which does not confomm to the idiom. Whenever Orson Welles offends against the

tricks of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all

the more strongly to conﬁmm the validity of the system. The constraint of the technically-conditioned idiom which stars and

directors have to produce as "nature" so that the people can appropriate it, extends to such ﬁne nuances that they almost

attain the subtlety of the devices of an avant-garde work as against those of truth. The rare capacity minutely to fulﬁll the

obligations of the natural idiom in all branches of the culture industry becomes the criterion of efﬁciency. What and how they

say it must be measurable by everyday language, as in logical positivism. The producers are experts. The idiom demands

an astounding productive power, which it absorbs and squanders. In a diabolical way it has overreached the culturally

conservative distinction between genuine and artiﬁcial style. A style might be called artiﬁcial which is imposed from without

on the refractory impulses of a form. But in the culture industry every element of the subject matter has its origin in the same

apparatus as that jargon whose stamp it bears. The quarrels in which the artistic experts become involved with sponsor and

censor about a lie going beyond the bounds of credibility are evidence not so much of an inner aesthetic tension as of a

divergence of interests.The reputation of the specialist, in which a last remnant of objective independence sometimes ﬁnds

refuge, conﬂicts with the business politics of the Church, or the concern which is manufacturing the cultural commodity. But

the thing itself has been essentially objectiﬁed and made viable before the established authorities began to argue about it.

Even before Zanuck acquired her, Saint Bernadette was regarded by her latter-day hagiographer as brilliant propaganda

for all interested parties. That is what became of the emotions of the character. Hence the style of the culture industry, which

no longer has to test itself against any refractory material, is also the negation of style. The reconciliation of the general and

particular, of the rule and the speciﬁc demands of the subject matter, the achievement of which alone gives essential,

meaningful content to style, is futile because there has ceased to be the slightest tension between opposite poles: these

Adorno, Theodor - Culture Industry.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: