The Culture Industry - Adorno, Horkheimer, Neomarxism and Ideology

Summary

The video script explores the concept of the 'culture industry' as critiqued by Adorno and Horkheimer, highlighting how mass media creates homogeneity in cultural products. It argues that this industry, driven by profit, stifles creativity and revolution, promoting a passive consumerist culture. The script also discusses how the culture industry uses psychological control and catharsis to maintain the status quo, co-opting social justice to sell products without instigating real change. It concludes by challenging viewers to consider the impact of media monopolies on democracy and the potential for art to inspire genuine action.

Takeaways

• 📚 The video discusses the concept of the 'culture industry' as theorized by Adorno and Horkheimer, highlighting how mass media creates homogeneity in cultural products.
• 👥 Adorno and Horkheimer, Jewish intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany, analyzed American capitalism's culture industry and its impact on society's taste and opinion.
• 🔄 The culture industry promotes a cycle of reboots, sequels, and spin-offs, avoiding risk and stifling innovation, leading to a loop of sameness in media.
• 🎨 Art and culture once held an 'aura' of individuality and human touch, but mass production has led to the imitation of these products, creating a bland consumer base.
• 🧐 The culture industry is seen as a form of psychosocial control, shaping people into a uniform type that is easily managed and not inclined towards revolution.
• 🤔 The critique of the culture industry is not about the products or individuals but about the industry itself and its profit-driven mass production.
• 🌐 The internet has disrupted the traditional culture industry to some extent, offering alternative channels for consumption and creation.
• 🎭 Walter Benjamin's idea of the 'aura' being lost in the age of mechanical reproduction is contrasted with the culture industry's polished, artificial products.
• 👮‍♂️ Capitalism is portrayed not just as an economic system but as a psychological one, with the culture industry enforcing a status quo that prevents spontaneous action.
• 🏢 Today's culture industry is heavily monopolized by a few companies, controlling a vast majority of media, news, and politics.
• 🤝 The concept of 'catharsis' in the culture industry allows for the co-opting of social justice and rebellion, providing a false sense of participation and maintaining the status quo.

Q & A

What is the main argument presented by Adorno and Horkheimer regarding the culture industry?

Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the culture industry generates homogeneity in products, leading to consumers becoming passive and unimaginative. They view the culture industry as a mechanism of psychosocial control that maintains the status quo and stifles revolutionary thought.

How does the culture industry contrast with artisanship according to the video?

Artisanship is presented as creating unique goods that maintain an 'aura' of the designer or artist, reflecting a human touch, in contrast to the mass-produced products of the culture industry which lack individuality and uniqueness.

What role does the culture industry play in American capitalism according to Adorno and Horkheimer?

In American capitalism, the culture industry plays the role of a dictator over taste and opinion, shaping consumer desires and preferences to maintain the status quo and prevent revolutionary change.

Why do Adorno and Horkheimer believe that the public is opposed to revolution despite economic contradictions?

They suggest that the culture industry, through its repetitive and unsurprising forms of entertainment, pacifies the public, making them complacent consumers who do not see a better world as possible or worth fighting for.

What is the concept of 'catharsis' in the context of the culture industry?

Catharsis in the context of the culture industry refers to the process by which the industry co-opts feelings of dissatisfaction and incorporates notions of rebellion or social justice into their products, giving consumers a false sense of participation and resolution without requiring real action.

How does the culture industry manipulate consumer desires according to the video?

The culture industry stimulates the desire for pleasure and entertainment but defers it to the next product, creating a cycle of habituation and repetition that resigns consumers to the status quo without any real fulfillment.

What is the difference between pop culture and folk culture as discussed in the video?

Pop culture refers to the collection of cultural products that are marketed via mass media from the top down, while folk culture refers to practices that have been popularized by ordinary people themselves.

How does the culture industry impact the perception of art and its purpose?

The culture industry reduces the perceived 'aura' or aesthetic intimacy of art by mass-producing it, turning it into a commodity. This erases any trace of the real human from art, and its purpose becomes one of business and ideology rather than artistic or intellectual merit.

What is the concept of 'Capitalist Realism' as discussed in the video?

Capitalist Realism, as explored by Mark Fisher, is the idea that consumer capitalism has become so pervasive that even anti-capitalist themes in pop culture do not challenge the ownership structure of the culture industry but rather reinforce it.

How does the culture industry use social justice issues to maintain control?

The culture industry incorporates social justice issues into its products to stimulate emotional connections, which in turn sells products. This gives consumers a cathartic release as if they have participated in social action, without requiring them to act in real life.

What is the Frankfurt School's perspective on the relationship between capitalism and psychology?

The Frankfurt School, including Adorno and Horkheimer, views capitalism not just as an economic model but as a whole psychology that stifles freedom and creativity. They argue that the culture industry plays a significant role in shaping consumer desires and behaviors to maintain the status quo.

Outlines

00:00

🎥 The Culture Industry and Capitalist Homogeneity

The video discusses the concept of the culture industry, introduced by Adorno and Horkheimer, who were Jewish intellectuals that fled Nazi Germany. They analyzed how American capitalism's culture industry promotes homogeneity through mass-produced media, leading to passive and unimaginative consumers. The video contrasts mass production with artisan craftsmanship, which retains the 'aura' of individuality. It criticizes the lack of risk in media innovation, instead favoring sequels and spin-offs that perpetuate the status quo. Adorno and Horkheimer view the culture industry as a tool for psychosocial control, shaping consumer tastes and opinions, and stifling the desire for change or revolution.

05:03

🎨 Art, Pop Culture, and the Commodification of Creativity

This paragraph explores the impact of the culture industry on art and creativity. It contrasts the risk-taking and innovation of past with the safe, formulaic output of modern media companies. Adorno and Horkheimer's views on how the culture industry stifles revolution by creating a consumerist loop of desire and deferral are examined. The paragraph also discusses the commodification of art as an investment rather than a means for social change. The critique is not against individuals or pop culture products themselves but against the industry that produces them solely for profit. The video touches on how the culture industry manipulates our leisure time, ensuring we remain passive consumers rather than active creators.

10:05

📺 The Psychological Control of the Culture Industry

The video script delves into the psychological control exerted by the culture industry within the capitalist economy. It describes how, after a day of alienated labor, workers seek passive entertainment, which complements their role as producers and maintains the status quo. The script references Karl Marx's concept of alienated labor and how capitalism reduces human activity to mere consumption. The culture industry is shown to restrict freedom by dictating tastes and producing only sanctioned entertainment, preventing spontaneous action like protests. The Frankfurt School's perspective on capitalism as a psychological model is also introduced, with Herbert Marcuse's analysis of how societal repression affects our psychology and potential for action.

15:10

🤔 Capitalist Realism and the Illusion of Participation

The final paragraph addresses the concept of capitalist realism, where consumer capitalism has become so pervasive that it conditions not only culture but also work and education, acting as a barrier to thought and action. The culture industry is accused of co-opting our dissatisfaction by incorporating themes of rebellion and social justice into its products, providing a false sense of participation through catharsis. The script criticizes the industry for selling back our emotions and desires, including our calls for justice, as products, which ultimately reinforces the status quo. It concludes by questioning the effectiveness of social justice causes that do not advocate for a change in ownership and suggests that without such change, these causes are merely public relations.

Keywords

💡Culture Industry

The term 'culture industry' refers to the mass production and dissemination of culture and cultural products, such as movies, music, and news, by a few dominant corporations. In the video, it is discussed as a mechanism that generates homogeneity and conformity, stifling creativity and individuality. The script mentions how Adorno and Horkheimer analyzed the culture industry as a tool for psychosocial control and maintaining the status quo in American capitalism.

💡Homogeneity

Homogeneity in this context means the uniformity and sameness in cultural products produced by the culture industry. The script argues that mass production leads to a lack of diversity and individuality in media and art, making consumers passive and unimaginative. Examples from the script include the repetition of reboots, sequels, and spin-offs in the film industry.

💡Artisanship

Artisanship is the practice of creating unique, handcrafted goods that embody the personal touch and 'aura' of the artist or designer. In contrast to mass production, artisanal products are highlighted in the video as maintaining a human element and uniqueness. The script contrasts artisanship with the mass-produced, bland products of the culture industry.

💡Psychosocial Control

Psychosocial control refers to the influence exerted by the culture industry over people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The script describes it as a mechanism through which the culture industry shapes public taste and opinion, effectively acting as a 'dictator' over society's preferences and suppressing the desire for change or revolution.

💡Status Quo

Status quo denotes the existing state of affairs or the current situation in society. The video discusses how the culture industry perpetuates the status quo by producing content that reinforces existing social structures and power relations, rather than challenging them.

💡Alienation

Alienation in the video is used to describe the estrangement of individuals from their work, their society, and their own human potential under capitalism. It is linked to the concept of labor where people do not have control over what they produce, leading to a sense of powerlessness and a lack of fulfillment. The script connects this to the repetitive and uninspiring nature of mass-produced culture.

💡Mass Media

Mass media is the means of communication that reaches a large audience, such as television, newspapers, and the internet. In the script, mass media is portrayed as a key component of the culture industry, used to disseminate uniform cultural products and ideas, contributing to the passivity and conformity of the audience.

💡Catharsis

Catharsis in the context of the video refers to the emotional release or satisfaction that audiences feel when they consume media that addresses social issues or rebellion. However, the script argues that this is a superficial form of participation, as it does not lead to real-world action or change, but instead maintains the dominance of the culture industry.

💡Capitalist Realism

Capitalist realism is a concept discussed in the video that describes the pervasive belief that there is no alternative to capitalism and that it is the natural order of society. The script uses this term to critique how even anti-capitalist themes in pop culture do not challenge the underlying ownership structures of the culture industry.

💡Rebellion

Rebellion in the video is depicted as a theme that is co-opted by the culture industry to give audiences the illusion of resistance and change. The script points out that while media products may contain rebellious elements, they do not encourage real-world rebellion or threaten the status quo.

💡Social Justice

Social justice in the video is shown as a cause that is often incorporated into cultural products to make them seem relevant and meaningful. However, the script argues that this is a form of exploitation where genuine concerns for social justice are commercialized and used to sell products, without any real commitment to social change.

Highlights

The culture industry generates homogeneity in every product, leading to a passive and unimaginative consumer base.

Mass production contrasts with artisanship, where unique products retain an 'aura' of human touch.

Adorno and Horkheimer, fleeing the Holocaust, critiqued American culture industry as a mechanism of psychosocial control.

The culture industry molds consumers into a type, unfailingly reproduced in every product without nuance.

Media is stuck on a loop, with new content rarely breaking through, leading to a lack of innovation.

The culture industry stimulates desire for pleasure and entertainment, only to defer it to the next product.

Mass culture under monopoly is identical, with all branches forming a system that propagates sameness.

The culture industry alienates consumers from the creation process, leading to a pacified and compliant populace.

Art and culture have become commodities, with the super-rich investing in art for financial gain rather than appreciation.

The culture industry erases traces of real humans from art, music, and political personas, creating a polished veneer.

Art should confront the masses with what they could be, not conform to their degraded state.

Capitalist realism conditions not only culture production but also work and education, acting as a barrier to thought and action.

The culture industry co-opts dissatisfaction with the status quo by incorporating notions of rebellion into their products.

Catharsis in the culture industry gives consumers a false sense of participation through emotional engagement with entertainment.

Consumer capitalism has become so pervasive that even anti-capitalist themes in pop culture reinforce the ownership problem.

The culture industry sells back to consumers their own desires for change or social justice, maintaining its domination.

Any cause or campaign not advocating for a change in ownership is merely PR within the capitalist system.

Transcripts

Hello this is Plasticpills on the culture industry. I think this topic was

the first ever request I received for a video, so I do listen. This video was

co-written with Shalon Van Tine more of her work, excellent work, is in the

description below. Roll intro! [Bernie Sanders] We cannot live in a vibrant

democracy unless people get divergent sources of information and have the

opportunity to hear a serious debate about the major issues facing our

country.

Adorno and Horkheimer were Jewish intellectuals who fled Nazi

Germany and moved to California, where they wrote this book. In it, they analyzed

the culture industry of American capitalism--wait think about that

two Jews fled the Holocaust only to dunk on how bleak American culture is. Damn.

Anyway, they co-authored this book discussing how media generates

homogeneity: that is, the same bleak sameness in every product. Mass

production stands in contrast with artisanship which is admittedly less

efficient but goods created by artisans are unique and maintain a sort of "aura"

of the designer or artist, a remnant of human touch. That lasted until art

started to imitate the products of mass production. So now the consumers of these

products are also blandly similar, passive, and unimaginative. What are they

talking about eh? Reboot, sequel, sequel, crossover, spinoff. Anything new

would be risky, too risky, so mass media is essentially stuck on loop. Not all, not

all, but anything that breaks in here just gets looped through every other

aspect of the culture industry.

Adorno and Horkheimer--Adork--diagnose the culture industry as a mechanism of

psychosocial control, and in American capitalism it plays the role of dictator

over taste and opinion. Remember they are talking about dictators when they just

escaped this guy. They write "Real life is

becoming indistinguishable from the movies" and Hollywood films are

responsible for "the stunting of the mass media consumer's power of imagination"--

1940s remember--"the culture industry as a whole has molded man as a type

unfailingly reproduced in every product... not nuanced in any way." Again: 1940s.

That's what Disney was still this--not this. Hey we can wait...

The culture industry stimulates the desire for pleasure, for entertainment, only to defer

it to the next thing; to reboot, sequel, sequel, crossover,

spin-off. Habituation and repetition that resigns subjects to the status quo, lulled

to sleep, as it were, in a flow of products. And it's not just film. Adorno

and Horkheimer started a tradition of studying mass culture as a mechanism for

the maintenance of a status quo, one that continues later in Barthes, Baudrillard,

Jameson and Plasticpills. As with many Marxists in the post-war period where we

get the moniker neo-marxist, Adork were trying to get a handle on why,

despite all the economic contradictions, particularly inequality and alienation,

the public is actually opposed to revolution. They would rather be asleep

as complacent consumers, and really they don't draw much of a distinction between

this, and this. Both are basically technocratic regimes of instrumental

rationality, according to Horkheimer, and oppose the

idea that a better world is possible or worth fighting for. So are they just

elitist culture snobs? Well no, the critique of the culture industry, this

Walmart dreamworld, is not a critique of individuals per se, or even of the pop

culture products themselves. The problem is rather with the

industry that produces them and how their sole purpose is to mass-market

mass-produce products for profit. There's no other human goal to which producers

or even artists aspire. The products of pop culture are not created for the

purpose of artistic or intellectual merit but for the least risky avenue for

making more money--again that's no surprise to anybody. This movie for

example totally redefined what was possible for animation at the time, and

afterwards. See? Look at this. Plus, it almost bankrupted the studio. It's full

of these effects never before even attempted. Some of their animators spent

a full year animating waves and splashes, and anyway, this guy's character

flaws, aside they didn't know if it would work! Compare this to the company who

pumps this out, year after year. These days it's

impossible to imagine them ever taking the risk of a loss, which is why pop

culture is stuck on loop. Still, Adork wrote that all this was the case when

this was on the screen. Just imagine what they'd say about this shlock.

They wanted to figure out how the culture industry stifles revolution. It's exactly

because of the nightmare of fascism that Adorno sought to understand how people

can become dominated by capitalism and what would be required to liberate them from it.

So let's go a bit deeper into Adork's arguments about the culture industry

and pop culture. To clarify: when we say pop culture we don't simply mean

the practices that have been popularized by ordinary people--that's called folk culture.

Rather pop culture is the collection of cultural products that

have been marketed via the mass media, specifically the culture industry; that

is, from the top down. In other words, the cultural products that are created,

marketed, and distributed for mass consumption. The fact that all these

products are produced, advertised and distributed means that ordinary people

only share in the consumption--not in creation. Thus they're pacified by it.

Politics, news, entertainment all follow the same channels in the culture industry.

Though the Internet has disrupted that to a degree.

In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adork sought to explore why the inequality of

capitalism does not spur revolution in America. Capitalist society pumps out

repetitive, unsurprising forms of entertainment to stimulate desire and

make money. It's not concerned with the creation of intellectual or

revolutionary art. I don't know if you know this but art used to matter to some people.

Walter Benjamin, Adorno's mentor, articulated this idea in the Work of Art

in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction which argued that mechanical, factory-like

reproduction of art objects reduces its perceived aesthetic intimacy with

the artist, its "aura", that's what made it special. Advertising replaces the aura and

tries to associate what we now call a brand with the product. The purpose of

art is, or at least could be, according to Adorno is that it shakes you away from

your Walmart dreamworld. If you know anything about art these days it has

become its own cultural industry where the super-rich can park their money as

an investment. Owning the present isn't enough for them so they buy the past as

well. Well played. Everything produced by the culture industry takes on this

polished veneer: bright colors, plastic, and costume, such that any trace of the

real human is erased from art, from music, and from artificially constructed

political personae. For these Marxist humanists you need something really

human to inspire action and you could say that the entire purpose of the culture

industry is to alienate the activity of consumption from every other part of life.

It becomes a frictionless process that then just endlessly reboots itself.

They held out for more when it came to art. In his book on aesthetics, or what

he imagines art could be, Adorno writes:

"Art respects the masses by confronting them as that which they could be rather

than conforming to them in their degraded state.: So Benjamin was somewhat

optimistic about pop culture. The death of the aura, he theorized, might

mean that pop culture had the potential for stimulating real

democratic action. However he committed suicide, rather than being captured by

the Nazis, before he could get to the US, so he never got to see the American

culture industry up close. Adorno and Horkheimer, on the other hand, came to see

the culture industry as a powerful agent in perpetuating capitalism. They write:

"Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines

form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are

unanimous together. Even the aesthetic manifestations of political opposites

proclaim the same inflexible rhythm... all mass culture under monopoly is identical.

Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth is

that they are no longer anything but business used as an ideology to

legitimize the trash they intentionally produce." I mean damn, that's hard to argue

with. It's hard to argue with that. So besides the obvious examples of

advertising and product placement the culture industry has another function in

the capitalist economy: psychological control. Picture this: after a long day of

alienated wage labor you're tired; not looking for art to challenge you. Instead,

you want to chill to the drone of sports or to the comfortable formulae of

sitcoms or reality TV. These two realms of life, the active producer and the

passive consumer, complement each other perfectly in the maintenance of this

particular status quo. Way back when, bad Santa himself, Karl Marx, addressed this

duality: "What then constitutes the alienation of Labor?

Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the

human brain, and the human heart operates on the individual independently of him--

that is, operates as an alien divine or diabolical activity--so is the worker's

activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his

self. As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active

in his animal functions--eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his

dwelling and in dressing-up etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels

himself to be anything but an animal." So for Marx, labour is essential to being

human. That is creating, having pride in what you do in a day, and having agency

over your own destiny, but since your labour is owned by someone else you have

to act your freedom in your leisure time alone. But for most people leisure time

is basically reduced to consuming, not creating, and "what is animal becomes

human and what is human becomes animal." There's an argument for capitalism that

you've likely heard: that you're free to consume as you wish--but not to create as

you wish, because that requires the privilege of ownership.

Now the culture industry does its best to take that freedom from you too, by

codifying your leisure time, by determining taste, and then only

producing sanctioned forms of entertainment that will not upset or

subvert the status quo. So what Marx called "spontaneous action" becomes

increasingly difficult, if not impossible, so the canned formula of TV works in tandem

with the repetitive drudgery of labour, capitalist labor, in order to prevent

anything like spontaneous action, such as protest, from occurring and it seems to

work! This is why, for the Frankfurt School, capitalism is not just an

economic model but a whole psychology. A friend of Adork--Herbert Marcuse--

explores this psychology in his book Eros and Civilization, where he argues that

freedom and creativity are stifled. He combines Marxist analysis of the

alienation of Labor with a Freudian analysis of how institutional repression

affects our psychology; particularly in which actions or goals we consider

possible to undertake or accomplish. Now I may be repeating myself, fair enough,

but there is a very important point here yet to make: every book I have referenced

so far is over sixty years old, and since then everything about the culture

industry has gotten much, much worse. I know these facts are endlessly trotted

out but check out how amazingly perceptive these

guys were, in the 40s, it's incredible. The culture industry today is monopolized by

these few companies, that's it! 90% of it is owned by five companies!

Virtually all pop culture: TV, movies, advertising, and most importantly news

and politics are filtered through the interests of these companies. So please,

make no mistake, the culture industry is not some amorphous concept-blob invented

by neo-marxists; It's just this! Right here! and you best believe that if you say

you're gonna get money out of politics or break up a media monopoly you're

gonna have this cabal to answer to. [Bernie Sanders] when you have a smaller and

smaller number of large media conglomerates owning and controlling what the American

people see, hear, and read you have a real threat to the kind of democracy that

many of us want this country to be. Alright, let's talk about catharsis,

because it gets worse. Owners don't think we're stupid--they know we're not happy

and they know we're not blind, so the culture industry co-opts our dissatisfaction

with the status quo by incorporating notions of rebellion or

calls for social justice into their products. This is called catharsis and

goes way back to Aristotle's aesthetics... Never mind. Catharsis gives us the sense

that we're participating by feeling the emotions displayed to us in

entertainment even though they aren't our own emotions. Advertising deploys the

sentiments of social justice so that we can feel like consuming products is

participating in those causes, when the roots of those causes are part of the

system maintained by those same owners of production. And thus being entertained

we never have to go so far as to act on them in any way. Hell, I'm not even immune

to that criticism: this platform is owned by the second or third most valuable

corporation to ever exist. So Mark Fisher explored this idea in Capitalist Realism,

which argued that consumer capitalism has become so pervasive in

modern society that even having explicitly anti-capitalist

or pseudo-revolutionary themes in pop culture doesn't affect the ownership

problem in any meaningful way. In fact, it actually reinforces it:

obviously symbols of rebellion don't bother them in any way.

Joker came right out of here and made them a billion dollars. "Capitalist

realism is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the

production of culture but also the regulation of work in education, and

acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action." Okay so

this is gross. In essence the culture industry takes legitimate sentiments

regarding social justice causes or protest and inserts them into the pop

culture products, then sells it back to us! In turn, we once more feel the

cathartic release of having participated in spontaneous action all the way

maintaining the domination of that exact same culture industry.

Calm down.

I did a video a while back on how advertising proffers spiritual or symbolic commodities

like justice, to veil the injustice required to produce such a product in

the first place. You cannot resolve the injustice inherent to a capitalist

economy by consuming more. Film and advertising legitimate social justice

issues as a way to stimulate an emotional connection in order to sell

you movie tickets, shoes, and corn syrup. Wait, go back to Adorno: "the triumph of

advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and

use its products even though they see through them." [Zizek] I already did my duty to

our society it's pure ideology and the culture industry is it engine. Anything

human in us: the desire for change or social justice, our heroes, our villains,

even our fears and anxieties are sold back to us. As Terry Eagleton put it:

"Nothing is more generously inclusive than the commodity, which in its disdain

for distinctions of rank, class, race, and gender will nestle up to anyone at all

provided they have the wherewithal to pay for it."

Social justice is important. Causes are important. But if you buy this thesis

than any cause, call for justice, or campaign that does not advocate for a

change in ownership...it's just PR.

You can do something, or you can do nothing.

Most likely nothing will change either way.

But it could...