brookes77, horkheimer & adorno

“ In a film, the outcome can invariably be predicted at the start- who will be rewarded, punished, forgotten and in light music the prepared ear can always guess the continuation after the bars of a hit song and is gratified when it actually occurred.” (44)

Although this reading was incredibly difficult for me to grasp, reading about Culture Industry and how everything is in one form or another the same, similar. I read this quote and I could not help but relating this to the movie Jaws, and how when the shark is about to attack the cliché “danger” music always comes on, so when it happens we can predict what will happen, but some how this still scares us. Also in one of my CMC elective classes about Native American’s in the media, we have been watching stereotypical western films, with the cowboys and Indians. Right from the beginning of the films we see, with the music, costumes, and the way the characters caring themselves, who will be the hero and who will be the victim, they are all very stereotypical from the first few minuets of the film. Although these films are from decades ago, they still follow the format that the quote explains and these were the first examples that came to mind.

“ The concept of a genuine style becomes transparent in the culture industry as the aesthetic equivalent of power”. To me this quote basically defines ideology and how “genuine”, traditional, dreams and visions become intertwined in the dreams that the culture industry has slowly molded for us. And those ideologies that the culture industry has created have become visual symbolisms of power and control. The quote on page 47 then goes further into giving an example of this with art. It explains that he most successful artists are not those whose pieces of art is perfect, yet those who show pain, suffering, and those who have “adopted a style as a rigor… a negative truth”.

Culture Industry seems inevitable in our society. “ Everyone is supposed to behave spontaneously according to a “level” determined by indices and to select the category of mass product manufactured for their type.” Every product and every individual has a category that culture industry has created. Everything can be read and is premeditated. I do not know if I fully understood this reading, although I tried to grasp select parts of it.