The Culture Industry and How it Makes Culture a Commodity

Frankfurt School is group of German-American theorists, 1920s-30s -- first neo-Marxiann theorists to examine the effects of mass culture/consumerism on working classes: they consist primarily of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal and Erich Fromm

Devised theory of "culture industry" -- mass communication, media production -- the industrialization and commercialization of culture under capitalist relations of production: Hollywood, basically

The School noted the social and ideological effects of mass media in the U.S.

Mass-media productions exhibited same features as other mass-produced consumer items: commodification, standardization, massification

Popular media/culture resulted in populace control

Dialectic of Enlightenment (1948) (by Horkheimer and Adorno): film, radio, news -- all controlled by advertising and commercial imperatives, and served to make consumers slaves of consumer capitalism

The School generally makes sharp distinctions between high and low culture

Ideology forms the basis of media culture

Adorno stressed the need to examine television's effects on many layers

Marcuse viewed broadcasting as "part of an apparatus of administration and domination in a one-dimensional society" (p. 10). One-Dimensional Man (1964)

School strongly influenced the New Left in the 60s

Frankfurt School continues to influence thinkers like Douglas Kellner, who are critical of corporate media and politics, foreign/domestic policy, scandals, wars

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1944)

Culture has survived the loss of established religion, the remnants of pre-capitalism, and technological specialization

That culture comes primarily from mass media, produced by proponents within a system of capitalism in the U.S. "Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries ... " (p. 1)

The "culture industry" is ruthlessly unified

"Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies" (p. 3) ... there is no room for imagination/reflection ... sound-film has killed it

The movie industry is as regimented and obsessed-over as any medieval architectural school: "everything down to the last detail is shaped accordingly" (p. 4)

"The unity of style [of every historical era] ... expresses in each case the different structure of social power" (p. 5).

The culture industry is all style, no substance -- the message: "obedience to the social hierarchy" (p. 5).