Smiley Face - 3/29

What stuck with me most from class this week was the clash between the presence of subcultures in society and the concept of multinational capitalism. Culture, from the perspective of Horkheimer and Adorno, 'infects' everything with the notion of 'sameness.' They believe that culture takes different formats of culture and mashes them together in order to make one generalized culture that is accessible to all as well as being a safe way of ensuring profit. In previous classes we discussed the development of certain shows (such as Lost from Guilligan's Island) that are in fact the same format but have been reproduced to seem 'newer' and 'better,' bordering Habermas's "cult of the new." The sameness originally came from the needs of the consumers, yet over time that 'need' gets easily mistaken for 'want' and therefore the sameness of culture emerges. One way Horkheimer and Adorno recognize as a way of the ruling class maintaining control over the reproduction of sameness is culture is by creating and re-creating the 'success' myth, the American Dream in the US, to have the masses constantly following the ideology and consequently accepting the repetition of culture. Another means of keeping that control is by the presence of 'pseudoindividuality,' the individual personalization of the same thing available to everyone else. Here it is obvious to contrast the American ruling class ideologies of fast, new, active, and many to slow, old, passive and few (going back to Marx). Culture presents itself to the consumer as unique, yet it is appealing to the consumer because it is similar to what they have previously experienced.
To go further with the idea of sameness to guarantee profit, Jameson introduces the term 'multinational capitalism' in reference to the guarantee of profit from a global stand-point, and holds many similarities to postmodernism. Culture creates an 'economic urgency' to reproduce the 'new' not because it is necessary but because consumers are lead to believe they 'nee' it.
Culture, from the view of Horkheimer and Adorno, is progressing in an unoriginal fashion while Jamerson recognizes culture as being dominated with a corporate need for profit. The consumers and producers understanding of 'need' has altered over time to having a 'want.' Greed now rules culture.