ginger griffin, horkheimer and adorno

Today in class each table was given a quote from Horkheimer and Adorno, the quote I was given was, "The concept of a genuine style becomes transparent in the culture industry as the aesthetic equivalent of power." My partner and I discussed this and I thought that it meant to be an original is to have all the power. What I mean by this is that if you are an original, you will have many followers and reproductions of whatever the original might be. Then somebody in class mentioned "what is an original anyway, because everything is mass produced?" I thought about that for awhile and I wanted to say that in order for something to be mass produced it must first have an original. Nothing can be produced without having an original of something. Take for instance the example I gave during class, skinny jeans. Somebody somewhere decided one day I'm going to wear skinny jeans, they did, and from there the "fad" started and multiple types and colors were made. Like the Ford and GM example, skinny jeans were made into many different colors but when broken down to its barest, you realize they are all the same, some more expensive because of the logo imprinted on the back pocket and others because of the type of color. Walter Benjamin states, "The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity." The Original has to start somewhere, but where it will end up, well, nobody can answer that.

Horkheimer and Adorno Basically talk about mass reproduction and the concept of originality. They are very closely tied to Habermas and Walter Benjamin. almost every quote that we saw today in class was about originality and how everything is the same and everything is being mass produced and therefore there are no originals left. Everything has been made over and over in so many different ways that we hve almost lost the idea of what an original is. I do not think any originals can be made anymore because everything has been made up and been made different, just ever so slightly but its basis is that of its original piece.