COMS 2003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Nazi Party, Studio System, Theodor W. Adorno
25 Oct 2017
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The Frankfort School: Week 5
• you can understand theories of communication and media historically.
• Ideas about comm and media and the theories that come with them have
been going on for a long time. So long, that they were created before they
were even called communication and media studies.
• The theorists build on the work of those that preceded them.
• Much of what we understand as comm and media theory emerges from the
transition from traditional to modern society (eg: urbanization, mass
production, immigration etc.)
• Modernity is what triggered all of this thought and contemplation about
communication
• Lebon; alienation and abstraction.
• Marx: repression and subconscious
• Freud: anti modernity
• While these 3 are not media theorists, their ideas come to be put into use by
scholars to make sense of media and communication. They are foundational
because they sit at the foundations of what we understand today as
communication and media theory and we draw from them as we go.
• Consequences of modernity: the emergence of what we understand as mass
media. What were once small things are now MASS things thanks to mass
productions and the growth of society due to urbanization. No longer rural
villages where communication was completely different (comm happened
amongst the people).
The Frankfort school of critical theory:
- Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
- “Pop Music 101” and modern ‘art’: We see a gap between our perception of the
independence of art, what art can be, and commodity. Not authentically
independent, it is manufactured to look as if it were.
- What is the extended scope of our agency and free will? Are you in charge of
your life? How free are you to do whatever you want and to choose your own
destiny?
- These questions are taken up by Adorno and Horkheimer in Frankfort. They
are a part of a powerful and unflinching/brutal critique of the way that the
promises of art has been ruined by processes associated with modernity.
- 1920s & 30s in Germany: aftermath of a couple of major revolutions (French
and Russian), strong dictators in power (Stahlin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco),
the rise of the nazi party running on a campaign to return Germany to its
‘once amazing glory’ and would create a super-human race called the
Aryans…
- Adorno and Horkheimer become employed in the Frankfort school of research
in the University of Frankfort. Set up originally to think about what the ideal
conditions would be for the political left to rise up in Europe. Both of them
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The frankfort school: week 5: you can understand theories of communication and media historically, ideas about comm and media and the theories that come with them have been going on for a long time. What were once small things are now mass things thanks to mass productions and the growth of society due to urbanization. No longer rural villages where communication was completely different (comm happened amongst the people). Pop music 101 and modern art": we see a gap between our perception of the independence of art, what art can be, and commodity. Not authentically independent, it is manufactured to look as if it were. These questions are taken up by adorno and horkheimer in frankfort. They are a part of a powerful and unflinching/brutal critique of the way that the promises of art has been ruined by processes associated with modernity.
