T. W. Adorno

[Otto]

Theodor Adorno (September 11, 1903 - August 6, 1969)

Adorno (1903-69) argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a
'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively
satisfied and politically apathetic.

Adorno saw that capitalism had not become more precarious or close to
collapse, as Marx had predicted. Instead, it had seemingly become more
entrenched. Where Marx had focussed on economics, Adorno placed emphasis on
the role of culture in securing the status quo.

Popular culture was identified as the reason for people's passive
satisfaction and lack of interest in overthrowing the capitalist system.

Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of
unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more
'difficult' and critical art forms which might lead people to actually
question social life.

False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are
needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and
which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human
potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness.

Commodity fetishism (promoted by the marketing, advertising and media
industries) means that social relations and cultural experiences are
objectified in terms of money. We are delighted by something because of how
much it cost.

Popular media and music products are characterised by standardisation (they
are basically formulaic and similar) and pseudo-individualisation
(incidental differences make them seem distinctive, but they're not).

Products of the culture industry may be emotional or apparently moving, but
Adorno sees this as cathartic - we might seek some comfort in a sad film or
song, have a bit of a cry, and then feel restored again.

Boiled down to its most obvious modern-day application, the argument would
be that television leads people away from talking to each other or
questioning the oppression in their lives. Instead they get up and go to
work (if they are employed), come home and switch on TV, absorb TV's
nonsense until bedtime, and then the daily cycle starts again.
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-ador.htm

http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~cmnF93/culture_ind.txt

http://www.popcultures.com/theorists/adorno.html

http://pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/Adorno.html

quotes from "Minima moralia"
http://www.ldb.org/adorno.htm

timeline
http://www.murfit.de/adorno.html

It's interesting in the light of the "Vineland"-discussion that in their
preamble to "Dialectic of Enlightenment" Horkheimer and Adorno say that
prohibition always opens the doors to the more poisonous product, an
assertion that turned out to be true considering the anti-marijuana campaign
that first helped spreading heroin (after the end of the Vietnam War) and
later cocaine and crack.

Their beautifully binary main thesis is that progress turns back into
regress; that the myth is enlightenment already and that enlightenment turns
back into mythology.

"Das Programm der Aufklärung war die Entzauberung der Welt. Sie wollte die
Mythen auflösen und Einbildung durch Wissen stürzen." (Fischer, Frankfurt
1971, p. 7)

-- sorry, got no English text.

Otto