Rubber Soul, Horkheimer and Adorno

"You are free not to think as I do; your life, your property-all that you shall keep. But from this day on you will be a stranger among us" (49).

Max and Theodor argue that culture has been restricted to a standardized scheme in the media. Style and ingenuity have been erased due to the economic pressures of media production. "The unified standard of value consists in the level of conspicuous production, the amount of investment put on show" (43). The theorists go on to explain how the familiar sells in our society-- these "ready-made cliches" when one can predict the outcome from the very start of a film as to who will prevail and who will be punished in the end. Nothing really is left up to the imagination. The small details in the films may vary but ultimately the plot is solidified. "The so-called leading idea is a filing compartment which creates order, not connections" (45). Film is designed to disallow the audience the freedom to interpret because the objective of its framework is to make reality indistinguishable to film. Thus, the consumer identifies with what is seen in the movies, what is seen in the movies is naturalized, and therefore culture is understood only confined to this limited structure. Media has become a totalizing metanarrative. Lyotard would stress that we need to "wage a war" on the structure of the media's mind-numbing tendencies. "...the basis on which technology is gaining power over society is the power of those whose economic position in society is strongest. Technical rationality today is the rationality of domination" (42). Considering media as an art form is irrelevant because everything presented to us through film, radio, and television follow regulations constituted by a small number of big corporations that own these media outlets. Democracy in the media is the only way we can create a genuine, horizon-broadening culture. There is a song lyric by Jewel that I thought was relevant to this reading:"Maybe if we were all surrounded in beauty, someday we would become what we see." Until then, those who attempt to go against the grain of the trash we are accustomed to seeing and who attempt to create something truly unique, are cast out as strangers.