Adorno's Mass Culture Theory Applied to Argentine Tango

Introduction

Adorno's theories on mass culture and commodification were among the fundamentals of postmodernism as it appeared in the twentieth century. Even if rejected by many, his theories help explain certain cultural phenomena — such as the success of American popular culture, with its Hollywood films and fast-food chains, against traditional European forms.

The tango is one of the most representative forms of expression of the Argentine spirit and people. Born in the mid-1800s, tango was quickly exported to Europe and became a true success story, until its suppression in 1955. It was reborn in 1983 and has flourished ever since.

Investigating Adorno's theories and applying them to the case of tango, we may wonder whether tango is the best example for testing the truth of Adorno's statements. Indeed, while on one hand tango can be considered an element of mass culture — because in many ways it has partly embraced the commercial character that Adorno insists upon — in many other ways, tango remains something unto itself: a form of art, a form of expression.

Adorno's Theory of Mass Culture

Considered by many one of the key postmodernist philosophers of the twentieth century, Theodor W. Adorno's works were continuously criticized for their exaggerated style and moments of extremism. Adorno himself was described as a "modernist, elitist, and party-pooper" because of his pessimism and melancholy, as well as his tendency to find fault in every aspect of twentieth-century society — from culture to politics, economics, and social life.

The cultural theories he projected in his main work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, would become the foundational thesis of theories of mass culture and commodification.

The first emphasis Adorno places is on art's marketability. Classifying an art piece as a market product brings about several necessary conclusions. First, the product must be adapted to market demand and to customer satisfaction. In other words, the trend is driven by consumers themselves, who effectively decide which products will be profitable and which will not. Art thus becomes a commodity, and art products that enter the market cycle have their use value replaced by exchange value. As such, art objects and artistic manifestations lose their own legitimacy and become commodities subject to exchange.

The second element of Adorno's critique of mass culture is his argument that it lacks genuine, carnivalesque vulgarity — the spontaneity of the circus or the street — and is instead based on diluted bourgeois forms. Setting aside the Marxist influences in such a statement, the central idea is that mass culture, with Hollywood as one of its most important representatives, has fully adapted itself to the requirements of the population. Because it has lost art's genuine spontaneity and original character, it has become diluted. It no longer respects its source of inspiration but rather its purpose: being fully adapted to what the market wants — another expression of commodity logic.

The third pillar of Adorno's theory on mass culture rests on the idea that the pursuit of freedom in society is inseparable from the pursuit of enlightenment in culture. Political freedom and cultural freedom are strictly connected and mutually determining, to the degree that the loss of one implies the loss of the other. The clearest example is Nazi Germany, where the loss of political freedom brought about the loss of cultural identity.

On the other hand, culture and mass culture become an effective and efficient means of manipulating the people. Adorno's example is mass culture in the United States, where popular culture helps develop, within an ostensible democracy, a certain degree of governmental control over its citizens.

Many have described Adorno's opinions on mass culture as evidence of a gloomy and melancholic vision, and this characterization is understandable given the implications of his theory. Art and culture become commodities, adaptable to the requirements of the population and inherently manipulative. Furthermore, the original inspirational impulse of any artwork is transformed to fit the demands of the masses.

History of Tango

Most accounts agree that the first piece of tango music was written and performed in 1857. Published in Argentina and entitled "Toma mate, che," it descended from the Andalusian tango, which was already well known in Buenos Aires by the middle of the nineteenth century.

Although the claim that tango was born in the brothels of Buenos Aires is often treated as a cliché, there is a kernel of truth to it: lower-class and poor people were the first to practice the dance, and it passed to the middle and upper classes partly through brothels where it was performed. According to Adorno's mass culture theories, at this particular moment tango would likely still have been in its genuine and unrefined phase — the phase of conception and imagination, before ever becoming an industrial commodity.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, tango crossed the ocean to Europe and was first performed in Montmartre, Paris, in 1909. Wealthy young Argentines who came to Europe for their studies — as was fashionable at the time — popularized the dance, and by 1912 and 1913 tango had literally taken off across the continent, with all of Europe dancing the tango.

The connections with Adorno's theories on mass culture and commodification became obvious in the years that followed. In 1913 and 1914, instructional books on tango were published throughout Europe — several in London alone, in a very brief period. People clearly saw a business opportunity in tango and were eager to exploit it commercially. Argentines, meanwhile, reimported tango back to Buenos Aires from Paris, and the refined European version had, in their view, little to do with the dance practiced by poorer citizens and previously rejected by the middle and upper classes.

In terms of lyrics, the trend was quite similar. Because a market for tango music and tango recordings developed among the middle and upper classes in Argentina, both lyrics and music needed to be adapted to the demands and requirements of that market and its customers. Radio and film later entered the scene to make the business even more profitable.

The military coup that removed General Perón from power in 1955 marked a period of decadence for the dance. The generals and members of the upper classes who now held power had little interest in tango, and, more critically, the culture of the mass of the population was viewed as alien and potentially dangerous. Tango was a natural gathering place where dissent could be organized. Until the fall of the regime in 1983, tango went underground.

The year 1983 and the period that followed became known as the Tango Renaissance, when tango re-emerged as a mass cultural phenomenon. Tango schools reopened and people across Buenos Aires rejoined the clubs to dance.

Conclusion

Tango is still too imaginative and too expressive to be fully assimilated as a product of mass culture or classified as a commodity. To pursue that theoretical path to its end would be to arrive at the tragic conclusion that feelings, emotions, and passion are all for sale. Yet there have always been people — as in any form of cultural manifestation — who have been keen to partly transform tango into entertainment. Like any form of entertainment, it could be sold, and profit could be obtained by promoting something that was well received by its audience and consumer segment. "Passion sells," many might say. While this argument may hold on certain occasions, passion is not always widely understood, and it speaks only to a particular category of people. Passion is not a mass culture product.

Notwithstanding the presentation of both arguments for and against, tango still has a great deal to show on its own terms. Its imaginative passion and the close connection that arises between partners allow it to continually reinvent itself. That capacity for reinvention is, in this view, precisely what distinguishes tango from the commodity described in Adorno's theories of mass culture.

Any cultural product fully assimilated to a commodity will pass through the five stages of a market product and slowly go out of fashion. This has never been tango's fate, and there are no signs it will be any time soon. So, even if one might argue that tango is becoming an industry — with clubs around the world, recordings, and international tango shows — the self-renewing characteristic of strong cultural expressions is sufficient reason to conclude that tango is not a commodity. Tango remains the purest expression of Argentina and the Argentine spirit.