Captain Planet 11/01/09

In class on Thursday we discussed Adorno, and his ideas on culture. We went over a lot of quotes that are important to Adorno’s concept about our society and the culture we live in. Adorno was writing in the 1940’s. It’s amazing to see what Adorno was talking about during that time period. During the 40’s we were moving towards the idea that if it’s a mass produced brand name than it must hold value. Hotels were starting to create hotel chains and McDonalds was starting to pop up everywhere. All of society placed a mutual importance and favoritism on mass-produced products. The concept of ‘agreement’ within society is seen in the quote, “To be entertained means to be in agreement” (57). This quote means that today is there isn’t any entertainment that is out of the ordinary. All entertainment is the same because we are all in agreement with what we want to watch. This quote relates to Benjamin and his notion of being a mindless viewer. Because we have all become mindless viewers when we are entertained we are in agreement with the dominant culture of television. We, the audience, don’t want to see anything new; we want to see what we’ve already seen before. The dominant culture has determined what shows the audience will like. TV shows like Lost and Survivor are so similar to each other. They are mimics of each other. One is ‘reality TV’ and the other is a series, but both have the same underlying details. The quote makes you wonder, what happens if we aren’t in agreement? Can we still be entertained? Adorno would say no. Mindless entertainment only happens when we agree on what to see. When there isn’t a mutual agreement the entertainment is no longer ‘mindless’ entertainment.