Adorno’s Concept of Culture Industry

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Outline

Theodor Adorno, a celebrated philosopher gave his critical analysis on the culture industry, late modernization, and the idea of free time in a series of his publications. Some of his works like “On popular music”, “Culture Industry Considered” and many more he delved what is seen as a scathing attack on the culture of modernization by saying that that idea of capitalism is a culmination of the concept of “popular” and “serious” where the capitalist’s idea has changed virtually everything. An idea perpetuated by the use of the music and film industry. This is where Adorno suggests that the creators of art must learn to be unique and authentic to reinforce the respect for creativity in the art industry and that consumers should learn to think critically and independently to avoid self-deceit.

Introduction

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), a celebrated late modernist and philosopher, developed a comparatively extreme analysis of the “contemporary popular culture; culture industry and late modernization”. This extreme analysis was derived from his effort to reconstruct a new version of modern art thereby comparing the culture industry to his late theory of late modernization as an extreme of one another.

Adorno believed that the culture industry is an exaggerated form of art because it transforms the familiar old into a new style and quality that in essence is just a pure duplication of the already existing art. He argues that the main reason behind this form of duplication is purely to follow what is popular and sells at the present. As seen on page 99, Adorno says, “The term culture industry was perhaps used for the first time in the book Dialect of Enlightenment, which Horkheimer and I published in Amsterdam in 1947.

In our drafts we spoke of “mass culture industry” to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates; that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art”(Adorno, 2001). He, therefore, suggests that culture industry must be separated from the extreme elements of production (Adorno, 1941)

The concept of the culture industry

Adorno explains that the culture industry is expressed in a narrative and repetitive form of art, saying that it does not engage your mind to think and instead lays out the art and furnish you with a narrative. For instance, producers of shows copy storylines with clear intent; to receive a rating in the market that will boost their profit margin. They also apply storyline duplication as it happened in hospital storylines in shows like E.R, Grey Anatomy, and Scrub.

Based on patient care action, E.R was the pioneer show, then with a similar setting came Scrubs, produced in form of comedy instead, and finally, the Grey Anatomy set in form of a drama in hospital staffs’ lives.

It is visible that they have different storylines but the same setting or stage, hospital. The work of producers is only seen in changing the themes to get the rating in the market. As he puts it, the modern industry has invented a clever way of packaging their products such that what should be looked at in its “use value in the reception of cultural commodities is replaced by exchange value” where the consumer is paying not for the “quality of value” but the “exchange value, price and rating in the marketing world” while in the real sense, the new style is mixed in the old elements (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972).

Even though they used to seek for this profit indirectly in early cultural forms, nowadays it is an open business with precise calculation in mass culture for the profit motive, well illustrated when he says; “the entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms (Adorno 2001). Ever since these cultural forms first began to earn a living for their creators “as commodities in the market – place they had already possessed something of this quality (Adorno, 1941). “But then they sought after profit only indirectly, over and above their autonomous essence. New on the part of the culture industry is the direct and undisguised primacy of a precisely and thoroughly calculated efficacy in its most typical products.” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972)

The culture of conformity

According to Adorno, the culture industry leads to a culture of conformity. He says that the masses find themselves resigned into this culture trap without practicing “freedom of mind” as he illustrates on page 66. It, therefore, follows that people will not think analytically and critically and instead conform to this mass culture for fear of being different, hence giving in to the demands of conformity.

He supports this when he says on page 104 that “the culture industry no longer has anything in common with freedom. “It proclaims; you shall conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyway, and to that which everyone thinks anyway as a reflex of its power and omnipresence” (Adorno, 2001).

His theory is in line with Carl Max’s theory of commodity which indicate that people always conform and crave to be deceived, a mass trait that Adorno supports in his phrase “the world wants to be deceived….people are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them, they force their eyes to shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing” (Horkheimer& Adorno, 1972).

By this Adorno means that people always want to live in the world of imagination and deceit, while fantasizing over what they cannot have, a case illustrated in the reality T.V shows that everyone is aware that they are scripted but people keep watching and imagine they are real. For example, the survivor’s backstage pre-work shows the show is not real but for self-gratification, they keep watching and imagine that the wilderness survival episode is real. Another reason for watching these episodes according to Adorno is because of boredom. He also illustrates the soap operas’ ideas with “substitutable episodes”.

All these are meant to fulfill the demands of “monopoly capitalist industry” as he says “that it is no coincidence that cynical America film producers are heard to say that their pictures must take into eleven- year- old and that in doing so they would very much make adults into eleven-year-olds” (Adorno, 2001). In page 105 of the Culture industry (ed), the phrase “the concoction of the culture industry are neither guides for an as blissful life, nor a new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line, behind which stand the most powerful interest” indicates that the culture industry does not lead to good life nor do they have any moral teachings to the consumers but a calculation to conform with the intention of profit maximization (Adorno, 2001).

Workplace

In late capitalism, the workplace can simply be avoided by the method of approximating an individual’s “leisure time”. That free time and leisure are designed to suit more work as he says, “the contraband of modes of behaviors proper to the domain of work, which will not let people out of its power, is being smuggled into the ream of free time”. He reiterates this on page 137 of his work with Horkheimer that in such a situation no one can think independently, but one can only be seen as “product prescribes reaction” because they think for pay so they don’t see any time wasted in the leisure.

According to my interpretation, Adorno says that the idea of free time is just but another way of exhortation where people take their so-called “free time” to spend what they have produced in another area of capitalism, an idea that is designed for profit again.

Popular music

In the essay, “On Jazz”, he says that the essence of popular music has been transformed in a manner that it is being standardized to suit other people’s demands. This idea is also repeated in the “On Popular Music”, 1941, where he and George Simpson reiterate that “The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization” (Adorno, 1941).

Critics may reason out that in late capitalism, cultural product standardization is a result of technology. Adorno however argues that Technology is advanced by the power of “monopolies and great corporations, which bid production industries, and banks control the monopoly culture, which he says, are weak and dependent in comparison” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972), and this is the source of mass culture marketing, a sign of “distraction” that is related to capitalism- that has its main goal; to maximize profit. He emphasizes the impact of distraction when he says, “the tunes lull the listener to inattention” (Adorno, 1941).

Conclusion

In general, Adorno relates the natural theory of the cultural products and how it is evaluated. How culture products are interchanged and standardized in the late capitalism and that this is meant to interchange the consumers, a concept that perpetuates through the use of art and creative approach to mass culture ideas, hence making the culture industry unreal because of its duplication to suit profit motives without gastro. He, therefore, advises modern consumers to learn to think critically and work on modern art and be unique in their production. Dedication in an artist will create special uniqueness hence leads to personal permanent growth and success.

Reference

Horkheimer, M. &Adorno,T. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Herder & Herder.

Adorno, T. 1941. On Popular Music- Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences Vol. IX, No. 1, pp. 17-18.

Adorno, T. 2001. The Culture Industry (Ed), New York, Routledge.

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