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CRITICAL THEORY: CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND MASS CULTURE IN

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CRITICAL THEORY:
CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND MASS CULTURE IN CAPITALIST
SOCIETIES
Rodrigo Pena Barbeito

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Rodrigo Pena Barbeito

Abstract: This essay attempts to offer a sociological approach on the matter of culture and mass
media embodied in the capitalist societies. The ideas brought by the Frankfurt School in the XX
century and its legacy in the current sociology will be the starting point of analysis here, defining
them in the most clear way and pointing out the achievements and failures of the critical theory and
its value nowadays as a mean to understand the mass culture and the cultural industries. The
reviewed literature about the topic will lead the argument towards the critical analysis while the
paper's conclusions will aim to shed light on wheter the new technologies and the
commercialisation of the culture in the capitalism are a kind of “social control” tool or not as the
critical theory seems to imply (technocapitalism and technoculture). So we will be able to
understand its role in the capitalism.

Key words: Social theory, critical theory, neomarxism, Frankfurt School, mass culture, cultural
industries, mass media, capitalism, modern society, technology, control.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE CRITICAL THEORY AND ITS IDEAS ABOUT CULTURE AND
CAPITALISM.
We will begin this essay explaining that the critical theory is the very result of a group of german
neomarxists who felt disappointed with the idea that the marxian theory developed to that moment
wasn't enough (Berstein, 1995; Kellner, 1993; for a more general view of the critical theory check
Agger, 1998) and particularly with its disposition towards economic determinism. The organization
associated with the critical theory, the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung ),
was founded in Germany in 1923, where it was (and as of 2005 once again is) affiliated with the
University of Frankfurt am Main. T.W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich
Fromm produced some of the first accounts within critical social theory of the importance of mass
culture and communication in social reproduction and domination. The Frankfurt School also
generated one of the first models of a critical cultural studies that analyzes the processes of cultural
production and political economy, the politics of cultural texts, and audience reception and use of
cultural artifacts (Kellner 1989 and 1995). Critical theory though has spread beyond the Frankfurt
School (Telos 1989-1990), but we will see this later. The critical theory was, and it still is a major
european orientation, although its influence in the american sociology hasn't stop rising (Van den
Berg, 1980).
The critical theory, as its noun indicates, consists in diverse critical analysis about several aspects of
the social and intelectual life, but its ultimate goal is disclose in a better way the nature of the
society itself (Bleich, 1977). Those critiques exhibit a preference for the oppositional thinking and
for unveil the angles of the social reality (Connerton, 1976)
The critiques towards culture and modern society were some of the strongest points of the critical
theory from the the start. The critical theory stated that the economic determinists failure was not
given significance to the economy, but to left behind other aspects of the social life. As we will see,
the aim of the Critical School was to rectify this unbalance focusing in the cultural field. The target
of a large amount of the labour from the Critical School is the critical analysis of the modern society
and its components. Whereas the initial marxian theory focused on the economy, the Critical School
turned to the cultural level, onto what they reckon were the realities of the modern capitalist society.
In other words, they backed up the idea of the locus of control in the modern world had changed
from the economy to the culture. That doesn't mean they lost interest in the domination and the

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social control1. But from their point of view they argued the domination in the modern world was
related to the cultural elements more than the economic ones. Therefore, one of the aims of the
Critical School is to analyze the cultural repression of the individual in the modern society
The inspiration of the critical thinkers came not only from the marxian theory, but from the
weberian, fact that is embodied in their view of the rationality as the most important development of
the modern world. In fact, the performers of this perspective are called “weberian marxists”
(Dahms, 1997; Lowy, 1996). As Tren Schroyer (1970) explained, the Critical School considers that
in the modern society, the repression caused by rationality ousted the economic exploitation as the
dominant social problem. The Critical School plaintly assumed the Weber distinction between
formal rationality and substantive rationality or what the critical theorists call reason. According to
them, the formal rationality is thoughtlessly defined as the adequacy of the most effective means
towards any particular purpose (Tar, 1977). This is considered an example of “technocratic
thinking” which aims to serve the domination forces, not to people's emancipation. The goal is to
simply to find the most effective means to get any important end for those who are in power. The
technocratic thinking opposes to the reason, which is for the critical theorists, the greatest hope for
society. Reason implys the evaluation of the means in terms of human values essential for the
justice, peace and happiness. The critical thinkers identified the nazism in general, and particulary
the concentration camps, as clear examples of formal rationality in conlict with reason. So Goerge
Friedman stated “Auschwitz was a rational place, but not a reasonal one” (1981: 15 also chapter 12
and Brauman's analysis, 1989).
Despite the seeming rationality of the modern life, the Critical School believes that modern
societies are plenty of irrationality (Crook, 1995). This idea can be coined as “irrationality of
rationality” or more specifically, the irrationality of formal rationality. As herbert Marcuse pointed
out, although it seems full of rationality “this society is irrational overall” (1964: IX; also Farganis,
1975). Is irrational the fact that the rational society destroys the individuals and their needs and their
aptitudes; that peace is kept through constant war threats and despite the existence of enough means
to help, there are still poor people, repressed and ruled, unable to fullfilling themselves. The Critical
School leads most of the critiques towards one kind of formal rationality: the modern technology
(Feenberg, 1996). Marcuse (1964) for example, strongly criticized the modern technology as he
thought it leaded to the totalitarianism. In fact, he esteemed that it provided with new ways of
control, more efficients and even more “likables”. The main example would be the use of television

1 Trent Schoroyer (1973) states this when he entitles his book about the critical theory as The Critique of Domination

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as a way of socialize and tame the people. (other examples were mass sports and sex). He rejected
the idea of technology being neutral in the modern society and he saw it as a mean of domination. It
is really efficient, because it seems even and neutral, when the reality is that it is enslaver. It works
as a tool to remove individuality from society. Modern technology has invaded and hamstrung the
actor's inner freedom. The result is what Marcuse called a “one-dimensional society” whereby the
individuals lose their ability to think in a critical or negative way about society. Although Marcuse
didn't think technology itslef had to be considered an “enemy”, the capitalist society used it for its
own benefit. "Technology, no matter how 'pure,' sustains and streamlines the continuum of
domination. This fatal link can be cut only by a revolution which makes technology and technique
subservient to the needs and goals of free men" (1969:56).
Moving on, the critical theorists level significant criticisms at what they call the "culture industry,"
the rationalized, bureaucratized structures (for example, the television networks) that control
modern culture. Interest in the culture industry reflects their concern with the Marxian concept of
"superstructure" rather than with the economic base. The culture industry, producing what is
conventionally called "mass culture," is defined as the "administered ... nonspontaneous, reified,
phony culture rather than the real thing" (Jay, 1973:216). Two things worry the critical thinkers
most about this industry. First, they are concerned about its falseness. They think of it as a
prepackaged set of ideas mass-produced and disseminated to the masses by the media. Second, the
critical theorists are disturbed by its pacifying, repressive, and stupefying effect on people (D.
Cook, 1996; Friedman, 1981; Tar, 1977:83; Zipes, 1994).
Douglas Kellner (1990) has self-consciously offered a critical theory of television. While he embeds
his work in the cultural concerns of the Frankfurt school, Kellner draws on other Marxian traditions
to present a more rounded conception of the television industry. He critiques the critical school
because it "neglects detailed analysis of the political economy of the media, conceptualizing mass
culture merely as an instrument of capitalist ideology" (Kellner, 1990:14)
Thus, in addition to looking at television as part of the culture industry, Kellner connects it to both
corporate capitalism and the political system. Furthermore, Kellner does not see television as
monolithic or as controled by coherent corporate forces but rather as a "highly conflictual mass
medium in which competing economic, political, social and cultural forces intersect" (1990:14).
Thus, while working within the tradition of critical theory, Kellner rejects the view that capitalism is
a totally administered world. Nevertheless, Kellner sees television as a threat to democracy,
individuality, and freedom and offers suggestions (for example, more democratic accountability,

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greater citizen access and participation, greater diversity on television) to deal with the threat. Thus,
Kellner goes beyond a mere critique to offer proposals for dealing with the dangers posed by
television.
The critical school is also interested in and critical of what it calls the "knowledge industry," which
refers to entities concerned with knowledge production (for example, universities and research
institutes) that have become autonomous structures in our society. Their autonomy has allowed
them to extend themselves beyond their original mandate (Schroyer, 1970). They have become
oppressive structures interested in expanding their influence throughout society.
Marx's critical analysis of capitalism led him to have hope for the future, but many critical theorists
have come to a position of despair and hopelessness. They see the problems of the modern world
not as specific to capitalism but as endemic to a rationalized world. They see the future, in Weberian
terms, as an "iron cage" of increasingly rational structures from which hope for escape lessens all
the time.
One factor motivating this shift is that the critical school feels that Marxists have overemphasized
economic structures and that this emphasis has served to overwhelm their interest in the other
aspects of social reality, especially the culture. In addition to this factor, a series of external changes
in society point to such a shift (Agger, 1978). In particular, the prosperity of the post-World War II
period in America seems to have led to a disappearance of internal economic contradictions in
general and class conflict in particular. False consciousness seems to be nearly universal: all social
classes, including the working class, appear to be beneficiaries and ardent supporters of the
capitalist system. In addition, the former Soviet Union, despite its socialist economy, was at least as
oppressive as capitalist society. Because the two societies had different economies, the critical
thinkers had to look elsewhere for the major source of oppression. What they looked toward
initially was culture.
To the previously discussed aspects of the Critical School's concerns (rationality, the culture
industry, and the knowledge industry) can be added another set of concerns, the most notable of
which is an interest in ideology. By ideology the critical theorists mean the idea systems, often false
and obfuscating, produced by societal elites. All these specific aspects of the superstructure and the
critical school's orientation to them can be subsumed under the heading "critique of domination"
(Agger, 1978; Schroyer, 1973). This interest in domination was at first stimulated by fascism in the
1930s and 1940s, but it has shifted to a concern with domination in capitalist society. The modern
world has reached a stage of unsurpassed domination of individuals. In fact, the control is so

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complete that it no longer requires deliberate actions on the part of the leaders. The control prevades
all aspects of the cultural world and, more important, is internalized in the actor. In effect, actors
have come to dominate themselves in the name of the larger social structure. Domination has
reached a complete stage where it no longer appears to be domination at all. Because domination is
no longer perceived as personally damaging and alienating, it often seems as if the world is the way
it is supposed to be. It is no longer clear to actors what the world ought to be like. Thus, the
pessimism of the critical thinkers is overwhelming, because they no longer can see how rational
analysis can help alter the situation.
One of the Critical School's concerns at the cultural level is with what Habermas (1975) called
legitimations. These can be defined as systems of ideas generated by the political system, and
theoretically by any other system, to support the existence of the system. They are designed to
"mystify" the political system, to make it unclear exactly what is happening.
In addition to such cultural interests, the critical school is concerned with actors and their
consciousness and what happens to them in the modern world. The consciousness of the masses
came to be controlled by external forces (such as the culture industry). As a result, the masses failed
to develop a revolutionary consciousness. Unfortunately, the critical theorists, like most Marxists
and most sociologists, often fail to differentiate clearly between individual consciousness and
culture or specify the many links between them. In much of their work, they move freely back and
forth between consciousness and culture with little or no sense that they are changing levels.
Of great importance here is the effort by critical theorists, most notably Marcuse (1969), to integrate
Freud's insights at the level of consciousness (and unconsciousness) into the critical theorists’
interpretation of the culture. Critical theorists derive three things from Freud's work; first, a
psychological structure to work with in developing their theories; second, a sense of
psychopathology that allows them to understand both the negative impact of modern society and the
failure to develop revolutionary consciousness; and third, the possibilities of psychic liberation
(Friedman, 1981). One of the benefits of this interest in individual consciousness is that it offers a
useful corrective to the pessimism of the Critical School and its focus on cultural constraints.
Although people are controled, imbued with false needs, and anesthetized, in freudian terms they
also are endowed with a libido, which provides the basic source of energy for creative action
oriented toward the overthrow of the major forms of domination.
The domination of people by social and cultural structures; the "one-dimensional" society, to use
Marcuse's phrase; is the result of a specific historical development and is not a universal

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characteristic of humankind. This historical perspective counteracts the common-sense view that
emerges in capitalism that the system is a natural and inevitable phenomenon. In the view of the
critical theorists (and other Marxists), people have come to see society as "second nature"; it is
"perceived by commonsensical wisdom as an alien, uncompromising, demanding and high-handed
power; exactly like non-human nature. To abide by the rules of reason, to behave rationally, to
achieve success, to be free, man now had to accommodate himself to the `second nature"' (Bauman,
1976:6). The critical theorists also are oriented to thinking about the future, but following Marx's
lead, they refuse to be utopian; rather, they focus on criticizing and changing contemporary society
(Alway, 1995). However, instead of directing their attention to society's economic structure as Marx
had done, they concentrate on its cultural superstructure. Their dialectical approach commits them
to work in the real world. They are not satisfied with seeking truth in scientific laboratories. The
ultimate test of their ideas is the degree to which they are accepted and used in practice. This
process they call authentication, which occurs when the people who have been the victims of
distorted communication take up the ideas of critical theory and use them to free themselves from
that system (Bauman, 1976:104). Therefore we arrive at another aspect of the concerns of the
critical thinkers: The liberation of humankind (Marcuse, 1964:222).
In more abstract terms, critical thinkers can be said to be preoccupied with the interplay and
relationship between theory and practice. The view of the Frankfurt school was that the two have
been severed in capitalist society (Schroyer, 1973:28). That is, theorizing is done by one group,
which is delegated, or more likely takes, that right, whereas practice is relegated to another, less
powerful group. In many cases, the theorist's work is uninformed by what went on in the real world,
leading to an impoverished and largely irrelevant body of marxian and sociological theory. The
point is to unify theory and practice so as to restore the relationship between them. Theory thus
would be informed by practice, whereas practice would be shaped by theory. In the process, both
theory and practice would be enriched.
One of the best-known dialectical concerns of the critical school is Jurgen Habermas's (1970, 1971)
interest in the relationship between knowledge and human interests (an example of a broader
dialectical concern with the relationship between subjective and objective factors). But Habermas
has been careful to point out that subjective and objective factors cannot be dealt with in isolation
from one another. To him, knowledge systems exist at the objective level whereas human interests
are more subjective phenomenom.
Habermas differentiated among three knowledge systems and their corresponding interests. The

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interests that lie behind and guide each system of knowledge are generally unknown to the average
people, and it is the task of the critical theorists to uncover them. The first type of knowledge is
analytic science, or classical positivistic scientific systems. In Habermas's view, the underlying
interest of such a knowledge system is technical prediction and control, which can be applied to the
environment, other societies, or people within society. In Habermas's view, analytic science lends
itself quite easily to enhancing oppressive control. The second type of knowledge system is
humanistic knowledge, and its interest lies in understanding the world. It operates from the general
view that understanding our past generally helps us understand what is transpiring today. It has a
practical interest in mutual and self-understanding. It is neither oppressive nor liberating. The third
type is critical knowledge, which Habermas, and the Frankfurt school in general, embraced. The
interest attached to this type of knowledge is human emancipation. It was hoped that the critical
knowledge generated by Habermas and others would raise the self-consciousness of the masses
(through mechanisms articulated by the freudians) and lead to a social movement that would result
in the wished emancipation.
While Habermas is the most prominent of today's social thinkers, he is not alone in struggling to
develop a critical theory that is better adapted to contemporary realities (see, for example, the
various essays in Wexler, 1991; Antonio and Kellner, 1994). Castells (1996) has made the case for
the need for a critical theory of the new "information society." To illustrate these continuing efforts,
a brief discussion follows of Kellner's (1989c) effort to develop a critical theory of what he labels
"technocapitalism."
Kellner's theory is based on the premise that we have not moved into a postmodern, or
postindustrial, age, but rather that capitalism continues to reign supreme, as it did in the heyday of
critical theory. Thus, he feels that the basic concepts developed to analyze capitalism (for example,
reification, alienation) continue to be relevant in the analysis of technocapitalism. Kellner defines
technocapitalism as:
“A configuration of capitalist society in which technical and scientific knowledge, automation, computers
and advanced technology play a role in the process of production parallel to the role of human labor
power, mechanization and machines in earlier eras of capitalism, while producing as well new modes of
societal organization and forms of culture and everyday life.” (Kellner, 1989c:178)

In technical marxian terms, in technocapitalism "constant capital progressively comes to replace

variable capital, as the ratio between technology and labor increases at the expense of the input of
human labor power" (Kellner, 1989c:179). Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that

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technocapitalism remains a form of capitalism, though one in which technology is of far greater
importance than ever before.
Kellner has learned from the failures of other Marxists. For example, he resists the idea that
technology determines the "superstructure" of society. The state and culture are seen as at least
partially autonomous in technocapitalism. He also refuses to see technocapitalism as a new stage in
history, but views it as a new configuration, or constellation, within capitalism. Kellner does not
simply focus on the problems caused by technocapitalism, but also sees in it new possibilities for
social progress and the emancipation of society. In fact, a key role for critical theory, in Kellner's
view, is not just to criticize it, but to "attempt to analyze the emancipatory possibilities unleashed by
technocapitalism" (1989c:215). Kellner also refuses to return to the old class politics, but sees great
potential in the various social movements (women, the environment) that have arisen in the last few
decades.
Kellner does not endeavor to develop a full-scale theory of technocapitalism. His main point is that
although it has changed dramatically, capitalism remains predominant in the contemporary world.
Thus, the tools provided by the critical school, and Marxian theory more generally, continue to be
relevant in today's world. We close this introduction with Kellner's description of "technoculture,"
since a concern with culture was so central to critical theory in its prime:
Technoculture represents a configuration of mass culture and the consumer society in which consumer
goods, film, television, mass images and computerized information become a dominant form of culture
throughout the developed world [and] which increasingly penetrate developing countries as well. In this
techno-culture, image, spectacle, and aestheticized commodification, or "commodity aesthetics," come to
constitute new forms of culture which colonize everyday life and transform politics, economics and social
relations. In all these domiains, technology plays an increasingly fundamental role. (Kellner, 1989c:181)

LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE IDEAS OF CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND MASS

CULTURE IN CAPITALISTS SOCIETIES
Once we have an understanding of the critical theory main points (such as cultural industries, mass
culture, and technocapitalism) we can now take a look at the literature of some authors embodied in
the critical theory and offer a critical review of the topic.
Adorno and Horkheiner contribution can be stated as a mix of mass culture, cultural industries and
music as a way of explaining such a big phenomena as the culture in the capitalist society. As
Horkheimer and Adorno stressed, the essential characteristic of the culture industry is repetition.

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Adorno illustrates this by contrasting "popular" and "serious" music. As early as his 1936 essay "On
Jazz," Adorno had argued that an essential characteristic of popular music was its standardization.
"On Popular Music," written in 1941 "with the assistance of George Simpson," repeats this point.
"The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to
circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most
specific ones."Standardization implies the interchangeability, the substitutability of parts.
By contrast, "serious music" is a "concrete totality" for Adorno, whereby "every detail derives its
musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece." This is a dialectical relationship, whereby the
totality is constituted of the organic interrelation of the particulars. In the case of serious music,
interchangeability is not possible; if a detail is omitted, "all is lost."
Other illustrations could be given, such as the soap operas with their substitutable episodes, horror
films with their formulas, etc. This repetition is due to the reflection in the sphere of cultural
production of the standardized and repetitive processes of monopoly capitalist industry. Under late
capitalism, what happens at work, in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped by
approximating it in one's leisure time. This sets the terms for cultural products: "no independent
thinking must be expected from the audiences" instead, "the product prescribes every reaction."/6/
The standardization of the cultural product leads to the standardization of the audience. "Man as a
member of a species has been made a reality by the culture industry. Now any person signifies only
those attributes by which he can replace everybody else; he is interchangeable." Standardization,
says Adorno, "divests the listener of his spontaneity and promotes conditioned reflexes." To this
point, the argument suggests that both popular culture and its audience suffer a radical loss of
significance under late capitalism.

It might be argued that the standardization of the cultural product under late capitalism is
technologically determined, the same as an industrial product such as a can of green beans.
Horkheimer and Adorno begin by considering, and dismissing, the claim that the standardization,
the identity of mass culture, can be explained in technological terms. Technology attains its power,
they argue, only through the power of monopolies and great corporations. The most powerful
industries, viz. banks, chemicals, electricity, petroleum, steel, control the culture monopolies, which
are "weak and dependent in comparison." The latter produce and market the mass culture.
As Stuart Ewen has pointed out, mass society has two aspects, mass production and mass
consumption. Adorno stresses that the standardization of the cultural product is not a consequence

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of mass production. He states that "the expression “industry” (in the concept “culture industry”) is
not to be taken literally. It refers to the standardization of the thing itself – such as the Western,
familiar to every movie-goer – and to the rationalization of distribution techniques, but not strictly
to the production process." Earlier, he had been even more specific. "The production of popular
music can be called 'industrial' only in its promotion and distribution, whereas the act of producing
a song-hit still remains in a handicraft stage." It is "still 'individualistic' in its social mode of
production." Rather, standardization is a necessity of mass consumption. "Popular music must
simultaneously meet two demands. One is for stimuli that provoke the listener's attention ... by
deviating in some way from the established 'natural' (music)... The other is for material to fall
within the category of what the musically untrained listener would call 'natural' music ... that it
maintain the supremacy of the natural against such deviations."
Adorno continues that "the paradox in the desiderata – stimulatory and natural – accounts for the
dual character of standardization itself. Stylization of the ever identical framework is only one
aspect of standardization." "The necessary correlate of musical standardization is pseudo-
individualization, in example, endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or
open market on the basis of standardization itself." Pseudo-individualization, for its part, prevents
the listener from resisting the standardization which is reducing him to the animalistic level by
making him forget that the music was standardized.
This dual characteristic of popular music also proves to be significant for purposes of marketing it.
In order to be mass marketed, "a song-hit must have at least one feature by which it can be
distinguished from any other, and yet possess the complete conventionality and triviality of all
others." Without pseudo-individualization, what the marketing industry calls "product
differentiation," the song could not be successfully marketed. Without standardisation, it could not
be "sold automatically, without requiring any effort on the part of the customer;" it could not be
mass-marketed at all.
As Horkheimer and Adorno point out, "modern communications media have an isolating effect."
This includes both social and physical isolation. The modern administration of capitalist society,
with its effective means of communication, keeps people from gregarious interaction. Automobiles
facilitate travel of people "in complete isolation from each other." They continue that
"communication establishes uniformity among men by isolating them." Let us consider how this
uniformity is generated by popular music.
Popular music either promotes the thoughtlessness of the masses or else provides the content of

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their thought. Regarding the first of these, Adorno invokes the Distraction Thesis. "Distraction" is a
correlate of capitalism; this mode of production, "which engenders fears and anxiety about
unemployment, loss of income, war, has its 'non-productive' correlate in entertainment; that is,
relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all." Thus, distraction is a
presupposition of popular music. It is also a product of that music; "the tunes lull the listener to
inattention."
Regarding the next of these, Adorno suggests that popular music serves an ideological function for
its listeners. Popular music "is above all a means by which they achieve some psychical adjustment
to the mechanisms of present day life." There are two major types of mass response to popular
music, that of the "rhythmically obedient" type and that of the "emotional" type. Listeners of the
rhythmically obedient type are particularly susceptible to "masochistic adjustment to authoritarian
collectivism."
Listeners of the emotional type "consume music in order to be allowed to weep. They are taken in
by the musical expression of frustration rather than by that of happiness." Adorno continues: "Music
that permits its listeners the confession of their unhappiness reconciles them, by means of this
'release,' to their social dependence."

N.Postman offers another ideas in his book, it seems almost unnecessary to state, but Media is the
primary theme of Amusing Ourselves to Death. One could conceivably argue that media as a
general theme is more important to the book than television itself is. Whereas the book is centered
on an examination of television, Postman's major point seems to be that we must understand the
way media informs our public discourse. It takes almost half of the book for him to directly address
television, while the first half is focused on print and oratory based cultures. Overall, in the final
chapter, his best advice for navigating the difficulties posed by television is that we must become
aware of the way media informs us. The fear is that media controls us, when we should control it.
The importance of news seems huge to Postman. In every culture he describes, he considers the way
in which news about life informed and affected people. Therefore, he is perturbed by the "Now…
this" culture of news in the Age of Show Business. News has, he argues, becomes inane, irrelevant,
and decontextualized information. We collect news stories divorced from any context, much less
any context that directly affects our lives. Instead, news becomes merely an impetus for us to
develop opinions, which in turn become news themselves. Ultimately, his fears about news echo his
general thesis – news has lost its power to inform our lives and inspire action, and has instead

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become a form of entertainment that diverts us rather than informs or inspires us.
Throughout the book, Postman avoids making too many direct claims about the public's culpability
in its own duping. Instead, he implies that the public of any civilization is often helpless before the
media-metaphor that defines it. In the same way that the public of Typographic America was led to
expect and understand complicated phrases and dialectics, so do the citizens of the Age of Show
Business learn to seek entertainment as the sole important means of discourse. Though he avoids
ever contrasting the general public with larger, richer entities that one could argue control the
discourse for their advantage, Postman does suggest that the public is ultimately helpless against the
forces wrought by media. His suggestions in the final chapter for improving our relationship with
television seem to belie this interpretation (by suggesting we could take action to change it) -
though even he acknowledges that the suggestions are likely to fail.
Though Postman does not directly confront the way advertising works until "Reach Out and Elect
Someone," his understanding of advertising affects his arguments throughout. Advertising once had
a rational component in Typographic America; a proprietor made a claim in language that the
consumer could choose to accept or reject. So important is this premise to the supply-and-demand
laws of capitalism that the United States has made false advertising illegal. However, advertising in
the television age no longer follows that model, instead offering commoditized ideals. It cannot be
called false advertising because it does not make a claim at all. Instead, it works as a type of
psychology, creating pseudo-myths and basic parables that attempt to touch on what we fear we are
missing from our lives. Advertising has become another way to entertain us, by convincing us we
can fill our missing desires if we merely buy a product (or elect a candidate, or embrace a
televangelist's religion, etc.) In effect, Postman's argument suggests that all discourse has become a
type of advertising in the television age, selling commoditized ideas rather than actual facts or
details. We can conclude that Postman offers more of interesting reflections than actual new
concepts.
To sum up, even their work was capital for the development of the theory, a common misconception
about the term cultural industries is that its use implies an adherence to Adorno and Horkheimer’s
critique of “the Culture Industry”(1977/1944).It is more accurate to think of the term as an attempt
to pluralize and sociologize the conception of cultural production in Adorno and Horkheimer’s
brilliant but flawed essay, and to question some of the simplifications arising in the adoption of the
idea by student radicals and others in the 1960s/1970s coun-terculture. The French sociologist
Bernard Miège, for example, introduced a collection of his translated essays in 1989 by outlining

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the main limitations, from his perspective, of the culture industry idea:its failure to see howt
echnological innovations had transformed artistic practice; its paradoxical emphasison markets and
commodities rather than on culture as an industry, as a process of production with limitations and
problems;and the implication in the term “culture industry” that analysts were addressing a unified
field governed by one single process, rather than a complex and diverse set of industries competing
for the same pool of disposable consumerincome, time, advertising revenue and labour.However,
there is another distinction crucial to understanding the term. The term “cultural industries” was not
just a label for a sector of production, it was also a phrase that came to signify an approach to
cultural production based on these and other principles, developed by Miège and other french
sociologists, but also by influential British analysts, notably Nicholas Garnham. This cultural
industries approach was connected to a broader set of approaches to culture that had come to be
known as
political economy of culture. Political economy in its widest sense is a general term for an entire
tradition of economic analysis which differs from mainstream economics by paying much greater
attention to ethical and normative questions.The term is prefaced with the word “critical” by
analysts who wish to differentiate their work from conservative versions.Critical political economy
approaches to the media and culture developed in the late 1960s amongst sociologists and political
scientists concerned by what they felt were increasing concentrations of communicative power in
modern societies (whether in the form of state control or business ownership). Proponents and
opponents of political economy of culture often portray the field as a single unified approach but it
is more complicated than that. In other work, building on Vincent Mosco’s important overview
(Hesmondhalgh2,2007: pp. 33–37; Mosco, 1995: pp. 82–134) distinguished between, on the one
hand, a tradition of North American political economy of culture, exemplified in the work of
Herbert Schiller, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and Robert McChesney, and on the other, the
cultural industries approach, introduced above. The latter tradition is more nuanced than the former,
more able to deal with contradiction, and with historical variations in the social relations of cultural
production, and most importantly of all, it provides – and indeed is founded upon – ananalysis of
the specific conditions of cultural industries.This is significant because it means that the cultural
industries approach has been able to offer explanation of certain recurring dynamics, rather than
polemically be moaning the processes of concentration and integration that are a feature of capitalist
production (including media production). Drawing upon industrial economics, cultural industries

2 For more works from this author https://leeds.academia.edu/DavidHesmondhalgh

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writers such as Garnham outlined the problems of capital accumulation distinctive to that sector.
Their definition was restricted to those industries that use characteristic forms of industrial
production and organization to produce and disseminate symbols. This was very much centred on
the media. The problems of accumulation they identified included the especially high risks
associated with capital investment in this area,which in turn derived from the difficulty, even in
cases where substantial promotional and marketing budgets were available, of predicting which
products (whether individual films, TV programmes or books) or creators (performers, musicians,
writers, etc.) would achieve success. All capitalist production involves risk to a greater or lesser
degree, but there was a substantial case for believing that the cultural industries were riskier than
most.

CONCLUSION, WHAT CAN WE SPECT FROM THE MASS CULTURE IN THE CAPITALIST
SOCIETY?
It seems as the ideas shared by the critical thinkers lead us to believe that culture is a sort of weapon
in the hands of those who hold the power in the modern society. Also we see as in the same way
capitalism brought us “fast food” it did the same with culture, like a “McDonaldization” 3 providing
a product that overcomes quality with “what people want”. So, at the dawn of the twenty-first
century, does the culture of the masses still present a threat to high culture, as Adorno and
Horkheimer then feared? Or have the culture today completely lost out in the battle against
standardisation, leveling, commercialisation and popularisation? Has culture finally become a
lucrative business in the modern economy, a mere component of the entertainment sector, or can it
still operate autonomously and critically? And if so, what are the visual and discursive, material and
conceptual strategies at hand? Or has the picture never been as pessimistic as Adorno and
Horkheimer painted it? Is there still a division to be drawn between elite and popular, bourgeois and
everyday culture, or do we need other terms to assess present-day developments and events in the
cultural sphere? Certanly after reviewing the critical theory everybody could be asking these
questions or even more. It seems the culture embodied in capitalist society removes the individual
thinking and becomes “the mass culture”, where they give us “what people want” when the media is
the one who creates the very needs that people want 4. With the commercialisation of the culture we

3 A term used by sociologist George Ritzer in his book “The McDonaldization of Society “(1993). He explains that it
becomes manifested when a culture adapts the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant. McDonaldization is a
reconceptualization of rationalization, or moving from traditional to rational modes of thought, and scientific
management.
4 See N.Postman ideas stated on his book “Amusing ourselves to death” (2005)

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see as now everything is a big business. And even some critical thinkers saw the culture as the hope
for human kind, if we could get the reason into it, nowadays the first ideaas of the critical theory
appear to be as current as in the 20th century, or even more. Now that the tehcnology allows it, all
the social media, for example seems to be an even more powerful tool than the television. We can
see how people walk through the streets without looking anything else than their cell phones 5, this
only evidence the HokHorkheimer and Adorno's idea of the isolating effect of the mass media.
Society is tamed by the media. There's a good exemple every week, news that have a completely
different approach depending on the tv channel, the website or the newspaper 6. So technology has
become another nail in the coffin of culture, if we understand culture as a way of overcome the
power. A good example of this, following Adorno's lead, would be the Punk in the 70's or the
grunge in the 90's, while they begun as a direct affront to the system they ended being just another
broken toy ruled by the music industry, just another bureaucratised structure, an example of the
cultural industries. We have to remember that technology doesn't have to be the enemy, as it's been
said before by Marcuse (1969) but it is certanly not neutral in this matter. We could see us in what
this author called a“one-dimensional society”, we seem to have lost our ability to criticize and we
are ruled by the media. The audience share, the trending topic and so on... They are just making an
strong argument for the critical theory. But as a final thought, we should say that one of the biggest
flaws about the critical theory is that usually it doesn't provide with the solution. And yes, some
critical thinkers allude to the revolution, or using the same culture and technology as a double-
edged sword – think about wikileaks. But they didn't worked up those ideas. Thinking of the culture
nowadays as a doomed victim of the capital society may be too harsh, but also is the idea of
underestimate the social control performed by the cultural industries. The next step would be to
finally come up with a way of changing this, the sociology, at least if we think in a critical way, has
a lot work to do in this matter or we could end up facing the “big brother” that Orwell imagined in
“1984”. Only not a goberment, but companies would be behind it. In the so-called information
society, maybe we get too much information, but we just let other people to think for us.

5 To that matter there has been coined a new term, ironcally from a advertising agency, Phubbing. This is a term
coined as part of a campaign by Macquarie Dictionary to describe the habit of snubbing someone in favour of a
mobile phone. In May 2012, the advertising agency behind the campaign - McCann Melbourne - invited a number
of lexicographers, authors, and poets to coin a neologism to describe the behaviour. The term has appeared in media
around the world, and was popularized by the Stop Phubbing campaign created by McCann.
6 You can see an example with a chart released by Reuters and analyzed in this website:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/04/17/how-to-lie-with-statistics-stand-your-ground-and-gun-deaths/

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