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Burns 20 February 1994
Response to Horkheimer/Adorno
These people are paranoid. Digging deep into the notion of Donald Duck as analog to the
proletariat is a fundamentally paranoid way of looking at these things. Mickey Rooney does not
neccesarily mean the end of art, the death of the individual. Betty Boop is neither more nor less
culturally significant than any of Disney’s characters. The idea that popular culture will kill high
art is alarmist and arrogant. Jazz is a freedom, not a slavery, and it does not pollute “higher”
forms of music. Hierarchies in general, I think, are paranoid, since they give the low end reason
to suspect a loss of control, and give the higher end a reason to suspect revolution. Adorno and
Horkheimer are no exception to this. They, as critics of high art, are naturally fearful of a lower
art that is more difficult to critique. Contrary to what they suggest, lower art forms are not plots
executed by masters; they are means of empowerment for those who are traditionally robbed of
a culture of their own. Adorno, as a Marxist, is too quick to see the persecution of the proles in
all the texts he reads. Were he a little more relaxed, a little more openminded, he might enjoy
the comedy of Donald Duck, rather than look for dialectics.
The ills of technology, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, are related to the commodification
of culture. The culture industry, they argue, reproduces flat copies of art already achieved, or it
modifies the art with some kitsch variation such as jazz. This collapses the aesthetic sensibility
of millions into a single, unquestioning taste for whatever the industry puts forward. Such a
sweeping idea, put in the form of this sytem, is also paranoid. The masters are not in complete
control of either art or the masses.
Adorno and Horkheimer believe the culture industry can take away indiviudual identity. “The
public is catered for with a hierarchical range of massproduced products of varying quality,
thus advancing the rule of complete quantification. Everybody must behave (as if
spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the
category of mass product turned out for his type” (123) The pair fails to realize that no one is
holding a gun to the head of the consumer. To the contrary, manufacturers provide a wide array
of choices, perhaps marketed to certain tastes, but certainly not bland or without variation.
Their argument that “mechanically differentiated products prove to be all alike in the end,”
whether an types of automibiles or movies does not work. Too many choices, made available by
their marketing campaigs. Certain cars run better, certain movies offer more enjoyment.