You all had to know it was only a matter of time before Adorno got thrown into this one:
"In our drafts we spoke of 'mass culture'. We replaced that expression with 'culture industry' in order 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. From the latter the culture industry must be distinguished in the extreme. The culture industry fuses the old and familiar into a new quality. In all its branches, products which are tailored for consumption by masses, and which to a great extent determine the nature of that consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan."
And:
"The total effect of the culture industry is one of anti-enlightenment, in which, as Horkheimer and I have noted, enlightenment, that is the progressive technical domination of nature, becomes mass deception and is turned into a means for fettering consciousness. It impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves.
"These, however, would be the precondition for a democratic society which needs adults who have come of age in order to sustain itself and develop. If the masses have been unjustly reviled from above as masses, the culture industry is not among the least responsible for making them into masses and then despising them, while obstructing the emancipation" of humans.
Brian
On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> >Good point Yoshie. The name "popular culture" obscures the difference
> >between the work of artists ...(and).. culture produced by mass
> >marketing...
> >-----------
> >
> >I prefer to look upon mass culture as `official' culture, that
> >produced by the establishment for the masses. It has essentially
> >nothing to do with traditional arts primarily because the media are
> >different. So, whatever opinions or critiques of it are not critiques
> >of the masses, but of officialdom.
>
> Who do you think produces the stuff that Sony et al market? They
> still need real artists to write songs and books and movie scripts.
> Of course big capital appropriates the product, and the artists at
> the top of the heap even get a cut of the profit flow, but they can't
> industrialize the process entirely. Case in point: the absolute
> failure of MBAs to rationalize book publishing.
>
> Doug
--
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Il etait enfin venu, le jour ou je fus un pourceau!" - Comte de Lautreamont, Les Chants de Maldoror, 4th Hymn, Strophe 6