The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception- Theodor Adorno and Max

Horkheimer
the following write up on The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception is
by Jaimon Antony

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception is an excerpt from the final
chapter of critical theorists Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Theodor Adorno
(1903–1969) Dialectic of Enlightenment. The book is the cornerstone of critical
theory and essentially claims that science is irrational and that the Enlightenment is a
trick and nothing happened during that time period. Adorno claims that
enlightenment was supposed to bring pluralism and demystification but instead
society is said to have suffered a major fall as it is corrupted by capitalist industry with
exploitative motives. Both Adorno and Hokeimer belong to the Frankfurt school
which tried to theorize ‘cultural Industry’ as being controlled by the Capitalist
Economy.
Elements

This essay remains a classical denunciation of ‘cultural Industry’. This is a socialist

approach to the industrialization of cultural commodities. Adorno and Hokheimer are
of the opinion that the transition of the cultural production from the artisanal stage to
the industrial stage has made the society lose its capacity to nourish true freedom and
Individuality – as well as the ability to represent the real conditions of existence.
According to them the modern cultural industry produces standardized goods to
satisfy the larger need of the capitalist economy.

Adorno and Horkheimer begin by defining the “culture industry” as an economic

union of microcosm and macrocosm in a society of producers and consumers united
by work and pleasure whose technology does not extend beyond standardization and
mass production. They move through all aspects of popular culture (from their time
period)-radio, movies and music- applying the Marxist idea of alienation of labor to
the condition of consumers in a post-Enlightenment capitalist society. Horkheimer
and Adorno argue that since the Enlightenment popular culture has become a sort of
factory, producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into
passivity, which they term the “culture industry”. Horkheimer and Adorno viewed the
mass-produced culture as a threat to true or “high” arts. They argue that the “culture
industry”, by trying to satisfy the demands of the capitalist economy, deceives the
masses, homogenizes culture, and creates false needs.
The role of capitalism is key, “the dependence of the most powerful broadcasting
company on the electrical industry, or of the motion picture industry on the banks, is
characteristic of the whole sphere, whose individual branches are themselves
economically interwoven.” Horkheimer and Adorno claim that the media--
advertisements, movies, radio broadcasts--are essentially propaganda used to maintain
society’s state of false consciousness; this propaganda hide the reality of domination
and oppression of the masses under capitalism.
The essay stresses that culture industry has become so successful that ‘art’ and ‘life’
are no longer wholly separable. The whole world is made to pass through the filter of
the culture Industry and flawless techniques used in the expressions of art duplicate
empirical objects in such a way that the consumer can’t really make distinction
between what is real and what is unreal. This Idea was later taken up by theorists of
postmodernism to reinstate that real life has become indistinguishable from art. while
emphasizing the fact that the ‘mass culture’ is a threat to the ‘high art’, Adorno and
Horkheimer argue that there can be no more original culture – that there can be no
art in modern capitalism.

Observations
Adorno and Hokheimer are too cynical about the ‘cultural Industry’ that they fail to
see the opportunities and collective creativity which ‘cultural Industry’ provides for all
kinds of Individuals. They become highly pessimistic that they even undermine the
Marxist notion that the consumers will be able to overthrow or overcome the
capitalist manipulation and deception of the society.

Summary: Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception by

Adorno and Horkheimer
"Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a chapter in Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer's book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" which discusses
their famous notion of the "culture industry". In this chapter Adorno and
Horkheimer view capitalist society's culture industry as an aspect of the enlightenment
has betrayed itself by allowing instrumental logic to take over human social life (a
notion developed throughout "Dialectic of Enlightenment").
According to Adorno and Horkheimer culture industry is a main phenomenon of late
capitalism, one which encompasses all products and form of light entertainment –
from Hollywood films to elevator music. All these forms of popular culture are
designed to satisfy the growing needs of mass capitalistic consumers for
entertainment. Adorno specifically notes that the term "culture industry" was chosen
over "mass culture" in order to make sure that it is not understood as something
which spontaneously stems from the masses themselves.
Products of the culture economy take the appearance of artwork but are in fact
dependant on industry and economy, meaning they are subjected to the interests of
money and power. All products of the culture industry are designed for profit.
According to Adorno and Horkheimer this means that every work of art is turned
into a consumer product and is shaped by the logic of capitalist rationality (i.e.
whatever sells best). Art is no longer autonomous, but is rather a commodified
product of the economic relations of production.
The main argument of "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is that
the commodification of culture is the commodification of human conciseness.
Adorno and Horkheimer assert that culture industry eradicates autonomous thinking
and criticism, serving to preserve the reigning order. It provides easy entertainment
which distracts massed from the wrongs and sickness of the ruling order. They argue
that culture industry has taken over reality as the prism through which people
experience reality, thus completely shaping and conditioning their experience of life.
In addition culture industry serves to keep workers busy, as expressed by the famous
quote from "Dialectic of Enlightenment": "Amusement has become an extension of
labor under late capitalism". Popular culture appears to be offering a refuge and
distraction for work, but in fact it causes the worker to further dwell into a world of
products and consumerism. The only freedom culture industry has to really offer a
freedom from thinking.
Adorno and Horkheimer claim that culture industry positions the masses ad objects
of manipulation (instead of just satisfying their wants and needs). This turns people
into passive and subordinated subjects, unable to fully take critical responsibility for
their own action, a thing which is crucial for a functioning democracy. People
therefore gladly give in a help maintain the system by taking part in it.
in "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" Adorno and Horkheimer
stress the fact that culture industry uses a production-line mentality in producing
cultural products. Seemingly all films and TV shows we watch are different, but in fact
they follow the same recycled formulas as in other types of consumer goods. Like
consumers goods, it feels like "there is something for everyone" here but in fact it's all
variations of the same thing. This is a main feature of the culture industry, for the fact
that all products are produced under the same scheme allows them to be "readable"
and effortlessly digested. This is how culture industry imposes conformity – with
things that only seem to be different but are in fact all (slight) variations of the same
thing. The final argument posed by Adorno and Horkheimer is that people under
capitalism suffer the same fate of art under the culture industry – they are reduced to
the exchange value with no intrinsic or unique traits as the Enlightenment dreamed.
A summary of Adorno and Horkheimer’s quite interesting and staggeringly
pretentious views on Art

Posted on November 27, 2012

The early 20th century witnessed a proliferation of new forms of mass

communication, and the emergence of an enormous entertainment industry geared
towards the creation of a profit through the production and distribution of cultural
products. Adorno and Horkheimer were some of the first scholars to critically engage
with these new cultural conditions. They argued that, in modern capitalist society, the
increasing commodification of culture had transformed culture itself into a crucial
medium of ideological domination, and a vital means by which the capitalist order
itself was maintained.

Historical and Theoretical Context of their work.

In order to understand the emphasis that Adorno and Horkheimer placed upon the
imperative need to undertake an analysis of the nature of mass culture in
contemporary society, it is necessary first of all to situate their cultural theory within
the wider context of their theory as a whole, given its fullest expression in Dialectic of
Enlightenment.

At the heart of Adorno and Horkheimer’s work lies a deep discomfort with the nature
of modern capitalist society. They drew heavily upon a Marxist framework of analysis,
seeing capitalism as fundamentally exploitative, and believing that it must be
overthrown for humanity to achieve its full potential. However, witnessing the rise of
fascism, failure of socialism and dominance of monopoly capitalism, they argued that
critical theory must move beyond a traditional Marxist emphasis on the mode of
production alone, which they felt was unable to satisfactorily account for these
developments.
Marx’s emphasis on the economic base led, they argued, to the conclusion that
capitalism was doomed to be replaced by socialism. However, in fact they believed
Capitalism’s more logical endpoint to be the creation of a ‘verwaltete velt’, in which
mankind subjected itself to irrational rule in an entirely rational manner.

Adorno and Horkheimer argued that as mankind had increased its technical mastery
over nature humanity itself had become caught up in this process of domination. In
such a society the genuine aim of enlightened reason – to critically negate what is
given – had been eradicated, allowing for the use of entirely rational methods to carry
out the most irrational of goals, such as genocide or war. A belief in the need to
understand the process of rationalisation led Adorno and Horkheimer to see it as
critical to expand critical theory beyond a focus on political economy alone. Rather, it
was necessary to uncover the processes which were leading to the creation of an
entirely rationalised social totality, dominated by the logic of the market. Within the
social totality, the previously distinct spheres of culture, politics and the market were
increasingly merging, and each had come to play a central role in the maintenance of
the whole. Culture in such a society could, they claimed, not be seen as a mere
epiphenomenon determined by the base, but rather played a role in the creation of the
base itself. Political economy declined in relative significance and the need for a
critical analysis of culture became more pressing.

The Culture Industry.

Adorno and Horkheimer witnessed the emergence of new forms of mass media
communication and the entertainment industry, and argued that these developments
were of profound significance. What this represented, they argued, was the
subsumption of the previously relatively autonomous realm of culture into the market,
governed by instrumental logic. They use the term culture industry to describe the
commodification of cultural forms that had resulted from the growth of monopoly
capitalism. The culture industry, they argue, plays a central role in cementing its
audience to the status quo, and had transformed culture itself into an ideological
medium of domination. However, culture had not always served this role, rather the
meaning and function of art changes historically. In their work, they contrast the
emancipatory potential of what they term ‘genuine’ or ‘autonomous’ art, and the
products of the culture industry, which play the opposite role. By uncovering the
social conditions that gave rise to both forms of art, they claim to reveal the impact
that commodification has had upon art itself, and hence on society as a whole and our
very consciousness.

A central tenet of Adorno’s argument is the idea that under certain social conditions,
art can provide an alternate vision of reality. He argues that autonomous art has the
capacity to highlight the inequalities and irrationality of the status quo, by presenting
an ideal vision of what mankind can aspire towards. As such it has an emancipatory
character. The radical character of autonomous art stems not from its content but
from its form. Therefore unlike other cultural critics they argued that the most radical
form of art is not that which contains a political message, because this requires an
attempt to work within the existing realm of ideas to demand change. Rather the most
radical art is that which compels change through its form.

Art, Adorno argued, is only autonomous when it is not subject to specific demands
and is not produced for any purpose other than its ‘functionlessness’. In the era of
monopoly capitalism he believed that new techniques of production and distribution
of art had meant that the free circulation of cultural products that had characterised
the bourgeois era had come to an end. Rather production and circulation of cultural
goods had come under the monopolistic control of the culture industry. This
represented the triumph of instrumental reason over the role of culture. Rather than
being produced for the inherent value of the piece itself, which for Adorno lay
entirely in its lack of use value – its purposelessness – art had now been almost
entirely commoditised. Consequently, it had lost its autonomy and with it its critical
potential. No longer free from the demands of the market the gap between art and
reality which is the basis of its critical potential had been undermined, and art had
become a means by which to cement mass audiences to the status quo. In their
critique of the culture industry Adorno and horkheimer describe the way in which
culture becomes a tool for domination.
Adorno believed that the rise of the culture industry has resulted in the
standardisation and rationalisation of cultural form, and that this in turn had
weakened, atrophied and destroyed the capacity of the individual to think and act in a
critical and autonomous way. He argued that standardisation emerges largely as a
result of the capacity of those with power to control the production of cultural goods
to employ positivistic methods in an attempt to formulate a scientific measurement of
people’s precise ‘tastes’ and expectations, and in doing so increase profitability. As the
culture industry develops this process has become more specialised, leading to the
emergence of a very precisely targeted hierarchical range of goods aimed precisely to
align with consumers preconceived expectations of the product itself ‘so none may
escape’. Horkheimer and Adorno focused on Hollywood as a particularly glaring
example of this phenomenon. In its attempt to produce a profit, Hollywood pumps
out an endless stream of movies, all classified according to the exact tastes of
particular groups, ensuring the viewer has to exert next to no mental energy in
understanding the film. Whilst there are differences in the content of each film, these
differences amount to merely pseudo-individualism, that serves to mask the fact that
the style and form of the film is identical to all others; all differences, such as
variations in plot, character type etc, are simply superficial imitations of individuality
that mask the fundamental uniformity of all its products. Thus studios spend
enormous amounts promoting ‘bigger better’ films, new bands, a new star, but rather
than these differences in fact it is the underlying structural uniformity which is the
‘really meaningful content’ of the film.
Standardised art does nothing to stimulate critical social reflection. Rather, it creates
standardised responses. Unlike authentic art it doesn’t challenge our conception of
existing social norms and reality, but rather reinforces them. The viewer is presented
with a smooth and comfortable spectacle that requires no deep concentration, and
elicits no genuine attempt to criticise the art. Everything has been pre-classified by the
production team and the audience has no choice but to become a passive unreceptive
recipient of the art. This process is reinforced by the incessant and deliberate
incorporation of ‘cues’ within the works themselves, which direct us and leave us with
little doubt as to the ‘correct’ reaction. A TV show will contain canned laughter, a
movie sad music, and so on. Thus ‘programmes watch for their audiences and popular
music hears for those who listen’. (Held 96).
By repeatedly supplying formulaic products that vary only very little in their
underlying form, and which are explicitly designed with the aim of eliciting a particular
response requiring minimal mental effort, the culture industry serves to create
dependence upon its own products by making us fearful of anything genuinely new or
innovative. It is psychoanalysis in reverse. Rather than challenging our repetitive and
destructive patterns of thought and behaviour, it serves to reinforce these patterns.
For this reason, Adorno and Horkheimer rejected the term ‘mass culture’ in favour of
the term ‘culture industry’, which it was hoped would highlight the extent to which
the cultural products that we consume, and the demand that gives rise to them, are
imposed upon us from above, rather than arising spontaneously from the masses.

Unlike autonomous art, which was able to main some autonomy from the market
place, today art is entirely a commodity. Thus the autonomy which allowed art to
maintain its distance from reality has been eradicated, and its production is
determined by need. Consequently, art is no longer able to maintain any distance from
reality. Rather it creates art that is indistinguishable from reality. This is the ‘new
ideology of the culture industry’. Adorno and horkheimer argue that the culture
industry represents a new form of ideological domination. In that past, ideology had
been dependent upon defining society as it is not, and thus could be subjected to a
critique in its own terms, for example ‘is the market just based upon the definition of
justice provided by capitalism itself’, today culture was ideological precisely because it
depicted reality exactly as it is. The culture industry’s products do not serve to
challenge our existing normative assumptions. Rather they reinforce the status quo by
depicting it as entirely natural and unquestionable. This is a form of pseudo-realism,
as it prevents critical analysis of the existing social and economic order. It serves to
create a sense of fatalism and an acceptance of the existing order as unquestionable. It
passifies any social discontent by presenting not a picture of an alternative reality, but
an alternative picture of the existing reality (Craib).
Adorno and Horkheimer believed that a key function of the culture industry was to
extinguish the revolutionary potential of the masses, by providing relief from the
stresses of life under capitalism through brief and surface level distractions. However
it cannot provide genuine happiness, only short-lived and meaningless pleasure. Real
happiness comes from the challenge of decoding complex work and the intellectual
stimulation that this provides; the culture industry by contrast provides only a
formulaic and predictable escape form reality, and one which stays within existing
social and artistic boundaries.