Critical Media Studies

The knowledge of the common person before enlightenment was primarily based on myths and magical beliefs. Adorno and Horkheimer claim that enlightenment should free people from myths, fairy tales and fear. They wanted to substitute belief for knowledge, and refer to Francis Bacon, “the father of experimental philosophy”, who claimed that knowledge through enquiry would establish man as the master of nature.  The authors seek to liberate humans from the circumstances that enslave them, such as old rituals, religions and ideologies. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Critical Theory).

The function of the myth is to give an explanation to various natural phenomenon and the evolution of the world and the humans. It was a way for people to describe what was happening around them, and why. An example from the Swedish mythology was when the god ‘Tor’ was waving his hammer in the heavens; thunder could be heard amongst the humans. By this definition myth is already a form of enlightenment, as it seeks to explain natural phenomenon.   According to Adorno and Horkheimer (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Critical Theory) “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology”, they claimed that mythology has contributed to enlightenment and these religions and rituals still have something worthwhile to contribute.

When Adorno and Horkheimer talks about the by the new media, a concept they are highly critical of,  what they refer to seems to be the mass production of cultural material, such as soap operas, cartoons and stunt movies etc.  It is the easy consumption of popular culture on TV, radio and movie theatres that creates passive and stupid consumers (people).

The opposite of this, the old media, they seem to refer to quality productions, such as classical Garbo-movies, Tolstoy-plays and concerts by Beethoven or Mozart, all of which does not offer a simplified plot, a reduced vocabulary, and that does not make a fool of the audiences’ intellectual ability.  

Adorno and Horkheimer have a very negative perception of what they call the “Culture Industry”, the commercial marketing and mass production of culture.  (The Culture Industry p.108) “The culture industry has abolished the rubbish of former times by imposing its own perfection, by prohibiting and domesticating dilettantism, while itself incessantly committing the blunders without which the elevated style cannot be conceived”.  They refer to the culture industry in the wider term, also incorporating the marketing and advertisement industries which feed the entertainment industry, making it possible for them to produce a never-ending stream of easily digested culture for the masses.

According to the authors the media industry are mass producing culture to the extent that everything is interchangeable. They claim that the  plot of the movies are so alike that if you enter a cinema after the movie has started showing, you cannot be sure of which movie you are watching as they are all the same. They go so far discussing the sameness of the movies that they even claim that (The Culture Industry, p.99)  “Lacking both contrast and relatedness, the whole and the detail look alike.” 

By all of this they imply that the media industry is cheating the audience (deception of the masses) on a true experience. The audience on the other hand is so deceived and obsessed by the amusement mass productions produced by the culture industry that they do not notice, or – maybe worse - do not care.  (The Culture Industry, p.111) ”The culture industry endlessly cheats its consumers out of what it endlessly promises. The promissory note of pleasure issued by plot and packaging is indefinitely prolonged: the promise, which actually comprises the entire show, disdainfully intimates that there is nothing more to come, that the diner must be satisfied with reading the menu.”

As I am lucky enough never to have had to live through a war, I was especially intrigued by the statement on page 132, referring to advertisements: “In wartime, commodities which can no longer be supplied continue to be advertised merely as a display of industrial power.” And they go on quoting Goebbels statement: “l’art pour l‘art” - advertising for advertisings sake, the pure presentation of social power.

I cannot help but wonder if this would be the case also today; is the branding value so important that you need to keep advertising your products even though you cannot produce them, and people cannot buy them.  

This made me think of Coca Cola’s (the pinnacle of capitalistic consumer product) marketing in third world countries where the majority of people cannot afford the luxury of a soft drink; and a story I read in a Chinese magazine a year or so ago, about a desperate mum from a poor village in southern China who one day realized that her son had sold his kidney in order to buy a MacBook and an iPad. The power of marketing and the “I-want-factor" of consumer products is huge also today.

References:

• Adorno och Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944): http://www.revalvaatio.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/horkheimer_et_adorno-the_dialectics_of_enlightenment_philosophical_fragments.pdf

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Theodor W. Adorno: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Critical Theory:  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Max Horkheimer: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/horkheimer/