RTF 307 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer, Culture Industry
19 Oct 2017
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Concerned with consumerism and mass replication of culture. Focuses on questions of power and ideology: how economic, political, and symbolic power interact in the sphere of culture. Conditions of production are important: media ownership, market regulation, market concentration (cid:862)culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together. (cid:863) (p. 94) It appears differe(cid:374)t (cid:271)ut it reall(cid:455) is(cid:374)"t all that differe(cid:374)t. Pacifies the masses to make them content in spite of economic woes. Creates a (cid:862)false consciousness,(cid:863) i. e. people (cid:449)ho (cid:271)elieve their psychological needs can be met through consumption (cid:862)capitalis(cid:373) (cid:272)orrupts us (cid:271)(cid:455) (cid:374)ot selli(cid:374)g us the thi(cid:374)gs (cid:449)e reall(cid:455) (cid:374)eed(cid:863) -adorno. Culture industry can frustrate real needs through promising without delivering. The desire for consumable things is insatiable because the things are not actually what people need. Alienation the lives we build for ourselves in our modern culture are highly connected to the things we are able to consume.
