The Culture Industry
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In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer claim the culture industry eradicates autonomous thinking and preserves the reigning system of capitalism. To support their assertion, Adorno and Horkheimer present the example of radio. Everyone is a listener, with the programming provided in an authoritarian fashion by the stations. While an assortment of stations gives the illusion of choice, there is no significant variety in programming and no means of dialogue or reply. Private transmissions are designated as “amateur” and are organized by a superior controlling body. Creativity in listeners is channeled by talent scouts, competitions, and events into inflexible, unchanging, and simplistic art forms. Nothing is produced that challenges the status quo. The public accepts the monopoly, the social control, and the limitations on self-expression, thereby reinforcing a system that favors the wealthy who control the stations and culture industry. “What is not mentioned is that the basis on which technology is gaining power over society is the power of those whose economic position in society is strongest. Technical rationality today is the rationality of domination. (95)” The answer, Adorno and Horkheimer proposed, is to be found in “pure” art, which exists outside of the culture industry and is created by artists functioning as individuals with the capacity to call attention to societal contradictions.