The Culture Industry

1. The Culture Industry COMU2020 Phil Graham Week 7

2. Context • The piece is first published in 1947 following WWII. • Adorno and Horkheimer are German refugees living in the US • Movies have become very sophisticated • Leni Riefenstahl pioneers the “blockbuster” propaganda technique with Triumph of the Will (cf ‘triumph of invested capital’ p. 124) • Television is new and has yet to develop its genres • Monopoly of production and distribution becomes overt

3. Key Points I • By being industrialised, culture takes on a quantitative, formulaic, technologised form. Aims at repeatability and predictability. • All products are therefore alike and exist to promote themselves and the system they represent. This results in the ‘freedom to choose what is always the same’ (p. 167). • The industry adopts ‘a technological rationale’ for this, but at the same time claims ‘this is done to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public’ (pp. 120-122) • First to notice that audiences are a product of media industries. Dallas Smythe realises this again in 1981 (Smythe, 1981).

4. Key Points II • Culture becomes ‘mass education’ – interesting point • Culture becomes ‘publicity’ • Uses Nazi propaganda to illuminate the amplifying aspects of mass media, especially in respect of language (“that is so not cool”) • Means of assisting free markets to an end – compares advertising in a competitive market as informing people of differences; compares this with the role advertising in monopoly capitalism: that of creating false differences. • Notes the impact on ditributions of power: the culture industry ensures ‘power remains in the same hands’ (p. 162)

5. Politics of culture • Culture industries provide a dynamic definition of what is desirable in people, places, things—Discourse in general. 2004 1960 1955

6. Beauty (?) II • Mr Universes 1960 1970 2000

7. Producing tastes • “The stronger the positions of the culture industry become, the more summarily it can deal with consumers’ needs, producing them, controlling them, disciplining them, and even withdrawing amusement: no limits are set to cultural progess of this type” (p. 144) • “What do you want? “ • Answers … • WHY do you want those things? • WHAT is the the basis of those desires? • HOW do you know about the objects of your desire? • WHEN do you want them? • WHERE do you see youself when and if you have these?

8. Critique • The idea that media industries shape desires and attitudes is abhorrent to many people. • This is called “media determinism” • That means that the media determine our tastes and desires and that we are passive receptacles. • Is that true? • If so, why and to what degree? • If not, why not?

9. Political economy of culture • The diachronic transition from the concrete commodity-forms of Marx’s day to the more abstract cultural commodities of late capitalism creates an increased immediacy [that] takes the place of the mediated, exchange- value itself. If the commodity in general combines exchange- value and use value, then the pure use value, whose illusion the cultural goods must preserve in a completely capitalist society, must be replaced by pure exchange-value, which precisely in its capacity of exchange-value deceptively takes over the function of use value (Adorno, 1991, p. 34). In other words, the culture industries facilitate more and more intricate forms of human activity to be rendered as part of the labour process.

10. Conclusions • The culture industry was a shock to the people who noted what was happening at a political economic level in the development of mass mediations • This was amplified by the success of propaganda campaigns in WWI and WWII • There is a close relationship between new media, culture industries, language, and the meaning of being human • In this sense, it important that, as professionals, you create mass communication instruments with this in mind. • There are practical reasons for this, including the capacity for creativity, the ethics of labour appropriation, and the, owneship of leisure – the lack of a creative society means the lack of creative producers and consumers – it can create intellectual morbidity.

11. References and suggested readings • Adorno, T. W. (1991). The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture. London: Routledge. • Carey, J. (1989), Communication as Culture. London: Routledge • Smythe, D. (1981). Dependency Road: Capitalism, Communication, Culture, and Canada. New York: Ablex • Hart, K. (2000). The memory bank: Money in an unequal world. London: Profile • Graham, P. (2000). A Bunch of Notes and Quotes III: Labour. LNC http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/lnc/papers/notes3.htm • Jarvis, S. (1998). Adorno: A critical introduction. London: Polity.