Mass Culture and Culture Industry

Question: Discuss about the Mass Culture and Culture Industry. Answer: Introduction: The terms culture and industry denote two opposite meanings. These two words are not supposed to go together. When these two terms are combined to form a new word, then it describes a paradoxical situation that exists in this world today. Culture means the way of life of a particular section of people in a given point of time. It describes the general customs and beliefs of a particular group of people. The term Industry on the other hand is used to describe the companies and the activities that are involved in the procedure of producing goods and services for sale mainly in an industrial unit. This essay outlines the discussion of the concepts raised by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. This write-up traces and discusses the points raised by these two Frankfurt school scholars in context with an advertisement that highlights this concept. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, were two Frankfurt school scholars who proposed the term of culture industry. This term was first used in the chapter of their book, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). According to Adorno and Horkheimer, a man with leisure, accepts or rather has to accept what the manufacturers of culture offer him. The theory critically discusses the cultural economies that are supply-driven (Berry 2013). The authors argue that the aim of the mass-produced entertainment is to appeal to vast audiences. The chapter in the book first elucidated the term, which essentially highlighted the structure and set up of media today. In the chapter, they elaborated that the popular culture is similar to a factory that produces homogeneous cultural goods which are used to lull the mass society into passiveness. The goods that they both talked about was the different products that the media produces like films, magazines and radio programs. The consumption of the easy and readyma de pleasures that the media offers lulls its consumers into a trance despite their economic background (Nealon and Irr 2012). The danger that this phenomenon casts on the society is that it creates a false sense of psychological need that can only be met through the consumption of the products of capitalism, whereas the true psychological needs are freedom, happiness and creativity. The consumption of the simple products of the popular culture, which are readily available with the help of mass media, renders the audiences and the consumers passive and content irrespective of their economic standard (Miklitsch 2012). Therefore, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, the mass-produced culture is dangerous to the more refined and evolved fine arts. The concept is concerned with the production of cultural economies as well as the apparently inferior products of the system. They emphasized the existence of mass-produced culture which is created and distributed by exclusive institutions and consumed by an inert audience (Nava et al. 2013). Adorno and Horkheimer developed the term culture industry to denote the process of the industrialization of a culture that is mass-produced, and the force that drove the structure. They coined the term to highlight the commercialization and mechanization of culture under the influence of capitalist mode of production (Agger 2014). They were inspired greatly from a Marxist structure of analysis, which sees capitalism as deeply exploitative, and believed that it must be ousted for human race to attain its complete potential. According to the two, culture industry plays a pivotal role in strengthening its audience to the status quo. One of the fundamental arguments of Theodore Adorno is the idea that under particular social conditions, art provides an alternate and different version of reality. He argued that art has the capability to highlight the differences and the inequalities of the society by bringing forth an ideal vision of what people can desire (Hammer 2013). Adorno assumed that the growth of the culture industry resulted in the homogeniety and rationalization of the form of culture, and that this in turn had weakened, emaciated and ruined the aptitude of an individual to think and act in a decisive and independent way.As the culture industry enlarges, the process has become more focused (Oakley and Connor 2015). Adorno and Horkheimer opined that the culture industries dilutes the demarcation of the real world and the illusionary world that is created by the culture industry. They stated that the consumers are dumbed down by the dullness of the media. They lose their sense of individuality and thus cannot function properly as the citizens of a country. The social theorists from the neo-Marxian group examined the consequences of mass culture and the rise of consumerism in the general working class of a country (Hepp 2013). To illustrate this term coined by Adorno and Horkheimer, we have to consider an advertisement, which propagates a plastic and idealized sense of beauty. The advertisement of an Australian online fitness store by the name of Protein World used a female model in a two-piece yellow bikini. The copy of the advertisement said, Are you beach body ready?. The advertisement showcased different types of weight-loss products brought in by the company. The fitness store harped on the body image issue of women as it claimed that the image of the model is not photoshopped. Three hundred and seventy eight complaints were lodged with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) against this advertisement. The Protein World however maintained their unapologetic attitude on the subject. The ASA opined that the term beach body had the connotation of an athletic and toned figure, which is desirable by many women. The fact that it harped on the sense of achieving the perfect body image by maximum women est ablishes the relevance of the theory that was proposed by Adorno and Horkheimer. To sum up, we can conclusively say that the concept of culture industry coined by these two social theorists is still very much relevant in todays day and age. In the present day world, where the concept of consumerism rules supreme, it is seen that the capitalist media enforces a culture, which renders the audience dull and unable to think clearly with a fresh perspective. The theorists opined that culture industry considers the audience as something to be manipulated. This turns the audiences into passive subjects of consumerism. They cannot function or act freely which in turn passively threatens democratic rights of the consumer. They are unaware how easily they are being submissive to the capitalist media. The world nowadays simply exemplifies this term coined by the two social theorists of the Frankfurt school. References: Berry, D. ed., 2013.Revisiting the Frankfurt School: essays on culture, media and theory. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. Nealon, J.T. and Irr, C. eds., 2012.Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative legacies of cultural critique. SUNY Press. Nava, M., Blake, A., MacRury, I. and Richards, B., 2013.Buy this book: studies in advertising and consumption. Routledge. Agger, B., 2014.Cultural studies as critical theory. Routledge. Hammer, E., 2013.Adorno and the Political. Routledge. Hepp, A., 2013.Cultures of mediatization. John Wiley Sons. Oakley, K. and Connor, J.O. eds., 2015.Valuing cultural industries(pp. 35-72). London: Routledge. Miklitsch, R., 2012.Roll over Adorno: critical theory, popular culture, audiovisual media. SUNY Press.