Spaghetti, Horkheimer and Adorno

As we continue the readings for CMC300, I have been recognizing apparent trends in the works we study and the opinions held and expressed by the authors of those pieces. So many of the theorists we have studied are disappointed with the progression of art as an expression and they fear for its future. When Horkheimer and Adorno state that "culture today is infecting everything with sameness," they convey an image of sickness, of disease (41). They discuss their opinions of the progression of culture, and more specifically art, as an amalgamation of all things once uniquely and individually celebrated. No doubt Lyotard would comment on this piece reinforcing his idea that artists and writers need to be the healers of a community, a statement which coincidently perpetuates the image of developing culture as an illness.
The two authors discuss the notion of supply and demand and reproduction, which reflects on Benjamin's ideas. When they state that "traditional rationality today is the rationality of domination," they allude to Hebdige's article we read last week which references hegemony. In their analysis of elements of culture which are destructive in nature and yet commonly cited as forms of pleasureable entertainment, Horkheimer and Adorno could easily be connected back to ideas expressed in the writings of Zizek.
One connection that I found most interesting was the theme of avant-garde vs, traditionalism buried in this piece. When they discuss media as an integrated whole, they touch on the idea that so many theorists we have studied (Benjamin and Habermas to name a couple) seem to be preoccupied with: authenticity and the truely "new." Horkheimer and Adorno discuss music, film, radi---everything is fair game for critique; and they point out that nothing is really ever "new." This got me thinking more specifically about different texts i have encountered which are recreations of a former text. For some reason, I remembered the Woody Allen film, "Matchpoint." Only half way through it did I realize that the general plot line was almost an exact replica of that in Dostoevsky's famed novel, "Crime and Punishment." As soon as I realized this, I whispered it to my friend, who had not read the book. Although this is an idea proposed by another theorist (Benjamin), This particular reading sparked this though process for me. Does the original really need to be known in order to fully understand and recognize a reproduction? ....Drawing on the notion that everything is a replica of something else, perhaps my friend could have said in response to my comment, "No, it's not, it's based on the movie 'crime and Punishment in Suburbia' ,"(a movie also based on the novel). Even though she did not know the original novel, she knew an earlier replication of it. Which is the original? If everything is interconnected in media especially, and if everything influences everything else, then what is really original?