Popular culture

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at arts.usyd.edu.au
Sat Jan 11 06:34:57 PST 2003


I love to give my students the bulk of Adorno's "On Popular Music". They pretty much all get into, agreeing to greater or lesser degrees about how banal and unstimulating popular music is, and how unrepresentative of contemporary selves in comparison to the the (more genuinely popular) music of earlier decades. I have never yet not found a real thrill in the moment when I reveal that Adorno was talking about "jazz". Admittedly "popular jazz", but still characterised by most of the criteria they establish for real rather than mass-produced music. It works so well because it raises, then, debates about what the so casually accepted terms "mass culture" and "popular culture" actually involve, and what trashing without discrimination either of the above implies. And yet, this essay by Adorno continues to circumscribe most of the moves made by critiques of popular culture as nothing more than "culture industries". So, yes, we play "Adorno", of course. And I'm happy to accept the things about Adorno's discussion that are really valuable. Including the serious consideration he understands popular culture to warrant.

I haven't addressed the quotes here, not that they're not interesting. It's just late, and possibly no one is all that interested in moves I confess in advance having rehearsed many times.

Anyway. Tired now. House-hunting in Sydney is a bitch.

Catherine

Quoting "Brian O. Sheppard" <bsheppard at bari.iww.org>:


>
> 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
>
>

-- Dr Catherine Driscoll School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry University of Sydney Phone (61-2) 93569503

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