Monday, November 3, 2008
The Culture Industry
Horkheimer and Adorno discuss how popular culture has created an easy way to attain pleasure through the purchasing of massed produced items. Further, these items have been standardized by what the industry has created to be the "norm" or the latest and greatest. As we learned in CMC 100, our advertisements today intentionally create the sense of "false needs" that is generated by their profits, which generates capitalism. But then it is capitalism that manipulates us worse? In a way, the culture industry manipulates what we spend our money on for pleasure in entertainment. The cultural industry makes us accept the latest trends in fashion, music, or whatever that may be. As we see in Marx's ideologies, there is a class system that breaks down for those who can afford the higher end of things, continuing to the middle and lower class. However, the culture industry views everyone as one marketplace where individual's true taste is ignored because as a whole a massed produced item generates more money. What I find interesting is that no matter what one's economic status is, there will still be that sense of not being fully satisfied. For most, material wealth means that their 'being' has served it's purpose. By the creation of the 'false need' this means then that their being is never satisfied, because as we discussed there will always be a new and better object out there.
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In Horkheimer and Adorno, they explain the existence and implications of the culture industry. They explain that one of the main contributors to this culture industry is film/television. They claim that as film techniques improve, the line between the real and the imaginary world begin to blur. They say that because film with sound can closely duplicate our experiences in the real world, film blends with the real world. Because of this blending, film systematically perpetuates and reproduces dominant social ideologies and creates the illusion that the content of the film “spills over” into the real world. The difference is that film is a passive medium. Film leaves little room for interaction or interpretation. Film dictates thought and forces the viewers to submit to it in order to be entertained. The passive nature of film forces the audience to accept the ideology presented without questioning. This is how film/TV takes part in creating/reproducing the cultural ideology and creates the illusion that the real world and the world presented in film are one and the same.
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