Capri Sun, Horkheimer and Adorno

Horkheimer and Arorno talk about the mass media within American society, primarily Television, Film and radio, and its effect of the public. Although, only a select few individuals control the Media, their way of production has created certain images that society, as a whole believes as normal. This is what Horkheimer and Adorno call “sameness” which is the belief that even though America is made up of people with many different backgrounds they all have an identical idea of how something should be or what something should look like. Media alone is an easy way to spread ideologies and when the media becomes such a monopoly that it is controlled by only a few major corporations it becomes even easier to perpetuate these hegemonic ideologies. I felt that this article was a lot like other theorist we have read about in CMC 300. For starters, I thought about Walter Benjamin and his theories regarding images and reality. Everything we see, we assume is real for the most part, especially the more realistic the image. “The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry. The familiar experience of the moviegoer, who perceives the street outside as a continuation of the film he has just left, because the film seeks strictly to reproduce the world of everyday perception, has become the guideline of production.” (45) People are unable to differentiate the real from the fake even though the movie is an imitation because of how realistic it is perceived. Because movies have such an influence on people, the people filtering their ideas are creating hegemony. Another issue that came to my attention while reading this article was the principle of “sameness.” Last semester I took a sociology class and we talked about how America has this belief in the middle class, that we are a middle class nation. However, this is a false interpretation because there really is no such thing as the middle class. The economic disparities within the United States show that there is a huge division between rich and poor and barely any people living in the middle. Why would we believe in the middle class if it were not realistic? One of the major factors in this preconceived notion is the fact that most movies and television shows are based around the idea of a middle class lifestyle. If we assume everyone is middle class, we all are living in “sameness.” Movies that demonstrate this idea is another way of creating a public belief of the way life is and how it should be.