MEDIA AS CULTURAL INDUSTRY

Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by
members of a society as a set of the practices, beliefs, and objects that are dominant or
prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Heavily influenced in modern times by mass
media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society.
Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards
certain topics. It is generally viewed in contrast to other forms of culture such as folk
cults, working-class culture, or high culture.

The primary driving force behind popular culture is mass appeal, and it is produced by the
"culture industry."

The term culture industry was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer, and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture
Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947).
They use “culture industry” to refer to the branch of industry that deals specifically with
the production of culture. They proposed that popular culture is likened to a factory
producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that
are used to manipulate mass society into passivity.

They argue that culture industry is associated with late capitalism in which all forms of
culture (from literature, through films and all the way to elevator music) become part of
the capitalist system of production which also has deep cultural mechanisms and not just
economical ones. According to Adorno and Horkheimer these cultural products are not
only meant for profit (appealing to the lowest common denominator) but also produce
consumers that are adapted to the needs of the capitalist system.

A simplified example which can help explain culture industry is TV lifestyles. Ever noticed
how characters on TV shows you watch usually have great homes and nice cloths (except in
the case in which the character is poor)? According to Adorno and Horkheimer this is not a
coincidence since it's not only nice to watch good looking people leading a good looking
life, these shows also send a consumerist message about how good lives should look,
prompting people to adopt a certain version of the American Dream.

In 1963, Adorno wrote the essay “Culture Industry Reconsidered”, in which he discusses
the Frankfurt School concept of the culture industry and its applications in media.

The "Frankfurt School" refers to a group of German-American theorists who developed

powerful analyses of the changes in Western capitalist societies that occurred since the
classical theory of Marx. Working at the Institut fur Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, Germany
in the late 1920s and early 1930s, theorists such as Horkheimer, 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. In their view, mass culture and communications stand in the center of leisure
activity, are important agents of socialization, mediators of political reality, and should thus
be seen as major institutions of contemporary societies with a variety of economic,
political, cultural and social effects.

[Refer: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/fs.htm ]

In “Culture Industry Reconsidered”, Adorno clarified that instead of ‘mass culture,’ he

preferred the use of the term ‘culture industry’ as it better defines the rigorously calculated
plan by which products are produced, distributed and consumed to the masses in line with
a specific cultural idea in mind, as opposed to a cultural idea arising from the spontaneous
consumerism of a product.

Industry is used in a figurative sense in that it creates a standardization to which we can

compare products, rationalizes distribution practices of such products but does not
necessarily address specific production processes. The culture industry sees the artistic or
practical characteristics of its products as generally arbitrary, being more concerned with
the distribution and mechanical reproduction of the products.

Adorno has a generally critical view of the culture industry, seeing it as being a mechanism
to achieve the conformity within the consumer of its products. He proposes that the ideas
and morals put forth by the culture industry are absurd, yet effective in getting people to
fall into believing. The culture industry is able to achieve a sense of conformity and
acceptance of the masses through what Jü rgen Habermas would consider the “public
sphere”. Since access to this public sphere is available to all citizens, the public opinion of
people can be easily shaped if a strong enough force is injected into it, such as the ideas and
morals propagated by the culture industry.

The culture industry gives the illusion of being informed and involved, while in reality the
consumer of mass media is being reduced to minding himself with his own petty matters.
According to Adorno, the public refrains from criticizing the media because they are
dependent upon it. They need the culture industry in order to achieve pleasure and
satisfaction and cannot imagine their lives without it. The culture industry preserves its
power by presenting "the good life" as reality and through false conflicts that trade him for
his real ones. The culture industry, according to Adorno, spreads false values and
establishes the individual's willingness to be a part of society and to coordinate his
interests with it, as they are portrayed by the culture industry. The culture industry takes
advantage of the weaker classes by making its content shallow and widely appealing and
thus demoting the value of culture.
The overall effect of the culture industry is anti-enlightenment, getting in the way of
independent and individual thought and development in society, leaving us with a mass of
people who are all forced to think, act and behave the same way without realizing it.

According to the theory of culture industry, the properties of media culture are reflected in
the following aspects.

Standardization and Mass Production: Media culture is a product of communication

technology, which makes mass production and standardization possible. Horkheimer and
Adorno argue that in a capitalist society media culture is akin to a factory producing
standardized cultural goods, such as films, radio programs, magazines, etc. Certain
reproduction processes are necessary to achieve the goal for “identical needs in
innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods”. By standardization and mass
production, cultural products become homogenized and whatever diversity remains is
constituted of small trivialities. Horkheimer and Adorno point out that “culture today is
infecting everything with sameness”. Film, radio, magazines, and other cultural products
together form a standardized cultural system that lacks diversity.

Commercialization and Commodity: The culture industry, like other industries, is

commercial in nature. Horkheimer and Adorno note that cultural products “no longer need
to present themselves as art”. Adorno had shown that popular music, like many other
popular cultural products, shows “the characteristics of a commodity, dominated more by
exchange than by use value”. In other words, the commercialized cultural products have
lost their function in order to be responsive to changes in social realities. They are market-
oriented and just present the prevailing ideas.

Manipulation and Deception: What Horkheimer and Adorno stress most is that in the
context of modern society, cultural products are used to manipulate public opinions and
values. The implication of such a development is crucial to understanding their critical
studies of media culture. They note that “the mechanical repetition of the same culture
product has come to be the same as that of the propaganda slogan”. The culture industry
transforms art and culture into a system of consumption, treating people as mere
consumers. Culture industry’s influence over the consumers is established by
entertainment and the entertainment makes people believe that the deception is a kind of
satisfaction.

The culture industry falsely represents a seemingly democratic participation by the people.
It is not something being produced by the masses or which conveys the representation of
the masses. The involvement of the masses is superficial. Commercialized media culture is
dependent on a passive audience and it is largely absent of inherent critical potential. It
mainly serves to reconcile the masses to the status quo and thus constitutes a profound
threat to freedom and individuality. Adorno argues that what is actually occurring is a type
of “defrauding of the masses”.

Culture industry does not seek to satisfy a need the consumer already had, but rather aims
at creating an “artificial need ”that was not previously felt. The result is that in late
capitalist society, one is alienated not only from one’s creative, productive capacities, but
also from one’s needs, drives, and imagination.

Culture industry tends to mask the alienation by providing diversion and pleasure, both of
which make alienated life more tolerable. Media culture provides the illusion of a
reconciliation between the individual and society through entertainment and pleasure,
which gives the individual the feeling of being in harmony with his faculties rather than
alienation from them by a repressive and manipulative society.

The theory of culture industry shows that media culture is akin to a factory producing
standardized cultural goods. Through the repetition of certain well-established cultural
formulas, capital and power administer, control, and produce superficial forms of a
consumer culture. This mechanical reproduction adversely affects the capacity of human
imagination and independent thinking.