DoubleBubble, 11/1 MAKEUP

Since I was out with the Flu the week during which we went over Adorno and Horkheimer I thought I could base my post class post on the ideas and theories I developed myself from the reading based on the quotes given in Dr. Rog’s powerpoints.

One quote that stood out to me was, “Amusement always means putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even when it is on display. At its root is powerlessness”. The idea that Adorno and Horkheimer are expressing behind this quote I believe is the idea of how in order for the general public to be entertained by something we must sometimes block out the inequalities and forgetting about tem for a minute in order to grasp the idea behind what is initially being displayed. Inequalities also mean the inequalities of the messages behind the images we are being shown because if we do not block out these inequalities we will not be amused by what we are seeing. Power comes into play with the idea of how we feel powerless to change it, because we are not in control of what we are seeing, and therefore we have to ignore it. This idea of power and ignorance connects to the idea of superficial interpretations given to us by Jameson. We look at something only one way, the way it is presented to us and that allows us to ignore the underlying messages that influence our amusement.

Another quote that stood out to me was, “Advertising and the culture industry are merging technically no less than economically. In both, the same thing appears in countless places”. Advertising industries and the creators of pop culture are coming together to reproduce things into the general public over and over again. They do this so that we buy into this product and as a result we do not have any other options of what to consume. The reproduction and redundancy of this product occurs so often to the general public that we are adapted into believing and following the “spell” of advertisers. Jameson and his concept of Multinational Capitalism come into play here because only some companies are able to control large amounts of products, and large amounts of products have control over large amounts of people. Jameson and his idea of multinational capitalism come into play because wherever you go, no matter if a different country, you encounter the same idea in products because it has been repeated so many times.