Mrinal Mehta

Anand Roy
Deepankar Thakur
Ericka Fernandes
Pankaj Sabnani

Culture Industries was proposed by Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt
school in 1944.

It was presented as critical vocabulary in the

chapter The Culture Industry: Enlightenment
as Mass Deception, of the bookDialectic of
Enlightenment.
We think that were living in a good and rational society.

Living in a democracy, we compare ourselves with other

countries which have dictatorship and consider ourselves
to be in a better position.

The creation of this perception is one of the major roles of

Culture Industry.

Culture Industry refers to the standardization

and false-singularity of cultural items, and how
these cultural items are regulated.

It says that we, as people, have become

standardised because corporations produce
standard products which fit our needs and
demands.

So corporations produce our needs and

desires.
 If the cultural products lose their sense of meaning and authenticity due to
their mass production, so do the individuals who buy them.

Subconsciously, we may not realize that each time we buy a new and trendy
product, we are merely buying the new trendy thing to add to our very
own material product of a self.

The truth is that we are buying this product because it is frequently

publicized through media only to illustrate this materialized commodity of
cool that everyone must have.

We are truthfully as much of a commodity as the product itself. Regardless,

we have a situation where the consumers are being victimized by the
producers in thattheyknow what we like and give us whatwewant;
therefore, we no longer have genuine experiences.

We may think we are expressing our sense of self and individuality by

buying the latest Samsung phone of a different colour, because in our mind,
we find that typically everyone buys blue or silver and we want to be
different; thus we conclude we are being unique.
 Take for example pop stars like Britney Spears, Rihanna, Lady
Gaga, and other female performers on the top 40 charts. These
women share similar characteristics that our young population is
attracted to.
The music industry recognizes this and begins to mass produce
more Britneys and more Rihannas and slap a different name to
the new evolving pop star. They too are human beings treated as
manufactured goods that can be purchased or replicated, just like
a Barbie doll or an iPod.
Whether you like it or not, advertising plays a
crucial role in our everyday lives.
Advertising effectively grabs the publics
attention through the use of television
commercials, billboards, magazines, etc. It is
the advertisement that attracts the consumer
to buy a product and ascribe the connotation
of coolness to it.
Inevitably, the product and the advertisement
become two of a kind.
Adorno and Horkheimer proposed
thatfilms,radioprogrammes,magazines, etc.
that are used to manipulatemass
societyinto passivity.

Adorno and Horkheimer criticise the Culture

Industry for promoting a society that is
drowning in a society of mass culture and
industrialisation, instead of encouraging
freedom and individuality.
The Culture Industry in short can be
represented as the Enlightenment or
knowledge as mass trickery or fraud.

In other words, we may be compelled to

wonder if we live in a world of mass deception
in which we are simply kept in the dark.
Mass deception' andSocial control' describe
the ideas and theories thatAdorno and
Horkheimer earnestlyprescribed.
Adorno saw what he referred to as the culture
industry as constituting a principal source of
domination within complex, capitalist
societies.
The Culture Industry is characterized by three
specific ideas: Monopoly, Mass Production,
and Technology.
The crudest way to oppress is to physically force
people to do things or prevent them from doing things.
 The next level up is to use the threat of physical
force to persuade them. This uses no physical
force. Also, this is often accompanied by
restricting freedoms of expression. The oppressed
in this situation still know that they are being
oppressed, but they know they must comply.
 The best method that has been found so far is one where
you directly control the boundaries in which people think.
In this way they don't even know that they are being
oppressed, believing they act they way they do of their
own free will.
It creates a calm and conformist society,
which we cant really break out from.
Culture industry prefers effects and style over
substance and content. Thats one of the
reasons why a films like The Iron Man is
such a huge hit.

Also, most of Salman Khan films are doing

great business despite being low in content.
Critics of the theory say that the products
ofmass culturewould not be popular if people
did not enjoy them, and that culture is self-
determining in its administration.
Adornos has been criticized for not drawing
practical conclusions from his theories.
Adorno is also accused of a lack of consistency in
his claims to be implementing Marxism. Whereas
he accepted the classical Marxist analysis of
society showing how one class exercises
domination over another, he deviated from Marx
in his failure to use dialectic as a method to
propose ways to change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=TrC4FGV_faA

http://jrmediaculture.blogspot.in/2012/02/cult
ure-industry-enlightenment-as-mass.html
http://jeremiah-305-
s11.blogspot.in/2011_04_01_archive.html

http://www.colorado.edu/communication/meta
-discourses/Papers/App_Papers/Porter.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry