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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