Culture industry - enlightenment as mass fraud

Culture Industry - Enlightenment as Mass Fraud is a chapter from the Dialectic of Enlightenment , a collection of essays by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno from 1944. In this chapter, the authors analyze the changed production and function of culture in late capitalism .

“Culture industry” is a complex and not a static term and cannot be clearly defined. It replaced the term “ mass culture ” originally used by the authors . The term culture industry mostly refers to the core theses of the chapter: All culture becomes a commodity; Art is defined by its economic value, not by aesthetic points of view, which play a role in the analysis of the autonomous work of art in bourgeois society. In this way, the aesthetic itself becomes the function of the commodity by pre-determining the images of the advertisement.

By culture industry, the authors mean the social implications of cultural events and products. In it, Adorno / Horkheimer describe the form of goods and the ideology of the same as the two central moments of capitalist socialization . The cultural industry appears as a delusion that naturalizes the social relations of domination. This “social cement”, as Erich Fromm called the ideology of the culture industry, acts as a means of domination and integration . This integration by the culture industry is also based on the observation that production always also regulates consumption . The form of administration of culture, which also forces intellectuals to produce knowledge that is subject to a benefit ratio, characterizes the culture industry as domination from above.

Goods character of cultural products

When analyzing cultural products, Adorno / Horkheimer essentially refer to two basic methods of viewing goods:

1. The characterization of goods according to Marx , with the distinction between use value and exchange value
2. On the other hand, it provides cultural goods authentic art works over

The following should be explained on the first point: According to Marx, the usefulness of an object to satisfy a human need determines its use value: “The usefulness of a thing makes it use value”. The use-value is therefore immanent in the object, while the exchange-value arises only through the exchange of the product among people: at this moment the product has become a commodity. Marx also says that exchange - and thus exchange value - are constitutive for an object to be a “commodity”. The capitalism is based upon Marx to "exchange value". The products are not produced in order to provide the capitalists with a use value, but for the potential buyers. It is therefore produced for the market in order to realize exchange value, with the help of which use values ​​can then be appropriated. The “authentic work of art” mentioned in the second point is considered a contrast to the cultural goods. With these two methods the authors subject the culture industry to a critical analysis. The authors split the analysis into two sections to show the difference in culture before and during the onset of the culture industry:

• bourgeois-liberal age
  • Art and culture stand for emancipation
  • A critical impulse came from art and culture
    • Art and culture were resistant in their attitudes towards powerful opponents
  • Art and culture were relatively autonomous
  • Art and culture were able to develop beyond social reality and thus develop ideas for change
• Late capitalism
  • The culture industry has changed the content of culture
  • The autonomous character of culture has completely developed into a heteronomous character
  • The cultural world is divided into 2 parts:
    • Large range of cultural-industrial goods
    • Small area of ​​authentic, remaining bourgeois art
  • As heirs of bourgeois culture, cultural-industrial works therefore take the place of this now “true” art

In the bourgeois-liberal age, according to Adorno / Horkheimer, art had to be regarded as always elitist - in the dialectic of the Enlightenment the authors speak of bourgeois art, which from the beginning was bought with the exclusion of the lower class . However, it was always oriented towards the collective common good and was beneficial to this. It was their impulses that enabled the further development of society. From the age of late capitalism , this task changed as the engine of society. From an art that, according to Adorno / Horkheimer, its value primarily in itself - a use value in the sense that the need for social justice is met - to a product of the market, the value of which results from how often it is exchanged. This art has lost its autonomous character in that it has been branded as a means to an end (the generation of capital). To achieve this very purpose, the culture industry, to which the autonomy of art has been lost, has now created a global network . In its basic structure, this consists of cultural production, which produces cultural goods: the cultural goods that are distributed all over the world. Second, it creates the cultural market, which acts as a link between goods and consumers, who ultimately represent the fourth link in this structural network:

With the advent of industrialization , the expansion of communication options and the appearance of the first national newspapers, the situation of the cultural industry was new. Without this situation, a culture industry would not have been possible. According to Adorno / Horkheimer, every cultural product, including the mass media in particular, is at the mercy of the culture industry - and vice versa. Industry and product are always linked to one another to such an extent that they can be seen as one. Media, like all cultural products, are also a product of the culture industry. According to the authors, cultural products of the culture industry are not based on their own content and consistent design, but rather on their exploitation. The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive to the spiritual structure. According to Adorno / Horkheimer in summary, intellectual structures of the culture-industrial style are no longer also goods, but are through and through.

The public

From the existence of a commodity described in the previous chapter, it follows that the commodity culture as such must also find its consumers. Goods find their consumers when the consumer sees a benefit in them - or believes he sees a benefit in them. The striving from the situation of the artist or the apparatus that surrounds him to reach a customer leads to an adaptation to this customer. As a result, culture in turn loses the function of the critical moment in society and becomes an integrative. In this exchange process, however, the audience does not act demanding, but allows itself to be served by the culture, so to speak. According to Adorno / Horkheimer, culture falls into the sphere of leisure . But free time is only the regenerative phase, which is subject to the work phase. As a regenerative phase, it should therefore use as little energy as possible. Culture tries to guide itself for this.

Interaction between the subject and mass consumer goods

For Horkheimer and Adorno, the culture industry manipulates people. This manipulation is not always intended and controlled, nor does it tend in one direction. Nevertheless, this dripping water on the stone of society necessarily undermines it. They state the manipulative effect at two moments:

1. The culture industry reduces the individual to the role of consumer
2. The culture industry feeds consumers with trivial , superficial trifles

But this also makes it clear: The culture industry is a culture led by elites and not what the predecessor term mass culture can say, it is not a culture of the masses, not a folk culture. Adorno also writes this in "Cultural Criticism and Society":

“We [he refers to himself and Horkheimer, NSM] replace the expression [mass culture, NSM] with“ culture industry ”in order to eliminate from the outset the interpretation that the lawyers approve of the matter: that it is something like spontaneous culture rising up among the masses itself is the current form of folk art. "

- Theodor Adorno : Cultural criticism and society

However, the “elites” are not actors in a conspiracy. They are not inclined to dominate culture because of its critical influence and to drive it into triviality , but they are actors of capitalism, which through the structure of itself "tries" to make everything a commodity.

Anyone who wants to use culture in their free time, i.e. the consumer, must expect the degeneration of culture into commodities. The consumer, on the other hand, has to be served by the industry with what he wants, what he understands, what does not confuse him, with catchy melodies, simple crime novels and films where you know from the start who will laugh at the end. This is precisely the interaction between the subject and the culture industry. This cycle, described many times and over and over again, is the vicious circle from which the way out has not been found and from which a way out may not even exist.

Influence of the ideology that affirms the culture industry on society

The consequences of the culture industry on the intellectual attitude of society are not only intellectual stagnation , there are many others. These can be divided into:

1. Influence on the subject: The cultural industry acts as an intermediary between industry and the public. In this mediating position, she also has an influence on the awareness of people, because what is not disseminated through cultural objects, which, as has already been stated, participate in the essence of the culture industry, does not happen today.
2. The effect in the subject: culture industry prevents the development of critical thinking skills. This also prevents people from opposing this culture industry.

The culture industry is therefore also a power stabilizer. This stabilization of rule is not a follower of the effects of the culture industry, but the essence of the culture industry. She suggests her thoughts to the audience. With this suggestive power, the culture industry achieves that it defines the standards by which people are to measure the culture industry. Adorno gives an example of this in the Minima Moralia :

“It is part of the mechanism of rule to forbid the knowledge of the suffering it produces, and a straight path leads from the gospel of joie de vivre to the construction of human slaughterhouses so far back in Poland that each of their own national comrades can persuade themselves that they are listening the screams of pain no longer. "

This is the delusion context that Adorno repeatedly states, and which for him is undemocratic in the highest sense. In addition to the element that stabilizes rule, the culture industry is also immanent with something else: the distraction of people from the essential (the cultural object) to the secondary. Adorno / Horkheimer state that “instead of enjoyment, there is a presence and knowledge”. Thomas Gebur gives the following example:

“Attending the opera degenerates into a social event; the exchange value of a premiere consists in seeing and being seen. [...] It [the work, the opera] is only the occasion of an event. "

So it's not the content of an opera that counts, but the presence and the "chatter" along the way. It is thought how this piece affects the public , how knowledge of this piece influences subjective social position; it is thought what the use of appearing, participating in this event could be; what the other thinks is thought. This is also a sign that autonomy has been lost. Adorno exaggerates this by writing that once one could not dare to think freely; Now this would be possible, but one could no longer because one only wanted to think what one should want, and that would be felt as freedom.

Culture industry and mass culture

A key point of the dialectic of the Enlightenment is the "Enlightenment as mass fraud". The culture industry means the commercial marketing of culture; the branch of industry that specifically deals with the production of culture. In contrast to this is the authentic culture.

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, industrially produced culture robs people of their imagination and takes over the thinking for them. The culture industry delivers the “ goods ” in such a way that humans only have the task of the consumer. Due to mass production, everything is the same and only differs in small details. Everything is pressed into a scheme and it is desirable to imitate the real world as well as possible. Urges are fueled to such an extent (e.g. by erotic representations) that sublimation is no longer possible.

The cinema film can be cited as an example . In principle, all films are similar. They are designed to reflect reality as well as possible. Even fantasy movies, who claim not to be realistic, do not meet the requirements. No matter how extraordinary they want to be, the end can usually be foreseen quickly, as the basic scheme of action is hardly varied.

The goal of the culture industry is - as in every branch of industry - economic. All efforts are aimed at economic success.

The authentic culture, on the other hand, is not goal-oriented, but an end in itself . It encourages people's imagination by giving them suggestions, but unlike the culture industry, it leaves room for independent human thinking. Authentic culture does not want to reproduce reality, but rather go far beyond it. It is individual and cannot be pressed into a scheme.

Horkheimer and Adorno cite the reasons for the emergence of the culture industry that companies can be found that market culture and thereby pursue the economic goal of profit maximization . Because of this, culture does not remain what it is or should be, but becomes a commodity like any other.

The culture industry thesis is often assumed to be pessimistic of culture , since it apparently condemns “ mass media ” and their consumers. For Adorno / Horkheimer, however, the culture industry is not a mass culture as the culture of the masses, produced by them and representing them, but the seemingly democratic participation of the masses in culture is “mass fraud”. Horkheimer and Adorno chose the term culture industry in contrast to mass culture or media. " The culture industry constantly cheats its consumers about what it constantly promises " The culture industry does not even allow diversion at the end of the day: " Amusement is the prolongation of work under late capitalism " Horkheimer and Adorno were primarily concerned with the fraying of the arts in their criticism and the defaming of art , a defusing of art by the culture industry. Works of art become goods: Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner are only known as set pieces from advertising . For critical theory, the decisive factor is not the sale of art , but the way in which art and culture change as goods-shaped products and how this also changes the way we treat culture.

“ Today culture beats everything with similarity ” - subversion is no longer possible for Adorno and Horkheimer.

reception

Some pop theorists and, above all, cultural studies criticize the culture industry thesis of neglecting the subversive element of popular culture . Sometimes Walter Benjamin's reflections on the possibility of mass media are made strong.

The criticism is mostly in the direction that subcultures that have formed within pop culture, such as rock'n'roll, beat music, punk, post-punk / new wave, techno and hip-hop, have subversive potential and resistance can evoke. The supposed incompatibility of mass culture and the individual appropriation of a cultural product is denied. Much more radical is Michel de Certeau , who, building on Michel Foucault and Ludwig Wittgenstein , refuses to condescently imagine consumers as passive in cultural theory. His focus is on the free spaces that any control system, no matter how tightly meshed, must leave, and thus on the active, creative users of given (cultural) structures, i.e. the consumers of pop culture, with their stubborn appropriation of given everyday structures, which are everyday and diverse Inconspicuousness are withdrawn from the view of the inspectors and thus also from the view of sociologists and cultural theorists.

Adorno's aversion to jazz , for him a product of the culture industry, is also frequently up for debate: for example, the role of jazz in and for the Afro-American movement, which Adorno overlooked, is cited. On this subject, the journalist Joachim-Ernst Behrendt published a reply to Adorno's jazz criticism in the Merkur magazine in 1953 , in which he advocated jazz's claim to be counted among the serious art movements. As a result, an open correspondence developed between Adorno and Behrendt, but Behrendt did not succeed in convincing Adorno. The sociologist Heinz Steinert sees the reason for this in Behrendt's willingness to recognize Adorno's pair of terms “cultural industry” and “autonomous work of art” in principle, and in 1992 tried to refute Adorno's jazz criticism by stating that this thought pattern was not applicable to jazz.

See also

• Cultural management
• Cultural criticism
• The society of the spectacle
• Amos bird

literature

• Roger Behrens : The dictatorship of the conformist. Texts on the critical theory of pop culture . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2003.
• Roger Behrens: Culture Industry . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2004.
• Martin Büsser , Johannes Ullmaier, Roger Behrens (eds.): Testcard . Contributions to pop history No. 5: Culture industry - compact knowledge for the dance floor . Ventil Verlag, Mainz 1998.
• Jörn Glasenapp : Culture industry as status quo industry: Adorno and the popular . In: Werner Faulstich, Karin Knop (Hrsg.): Entertainment culture . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2006, pp. 167–178.
• Michael Kausch: Culture Industry and Popular Culture: Critical Theory of the Mass Media . Fischer paperback, Frankfurt 1988
• Martin Niederauer, Gerhard Schweppenhäuser (Ed.): "Culture Industry": Theoretical and empirical approaches to a popular term . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-658-15759-3 .
• Dieter Prokop : Aesthetics of the Culture Industry . Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2009.
• Dieter Prokop: History of the Culture Industry. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg 2017.
• Dieter Prokop: Theory of the culture industry. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg 2017.
• Dieter Prokop: 2017: Lexicon of the Culture Industry. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg 3027
• Heinz Steinert : Culture Industry . Westphalian steam boat, Münster 1998.
• Heinz Steinert: The discovery of the culture industry. Or: Why Professor Adorno couldn't stand jazz music . Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2003.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Behrens, Roger: Critical Theory. Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt 2002. P. 68.
2. ↑ Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W .: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. Frankfurt aM: Fischer Verlag 16th edition 2006. P. 148.
3. ↑ Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W .: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. Frankfurt aM: Fischer Verlag 16th edition 2006. P. 145.
4. ↑ cf. Behrens, Roger: Critical Theory. Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt 2002. P. 66.
5. ↑ Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W .: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. Frankfurt aM: Fischer Verlag 16th edition 2006. P. 129.
6. ↑ cf. for example Gabriele Klein: Electronic Vibration - Pop Kultur Theory , Wiesbaden (2004), p. 26 ff.
7. ↑ cf. Michel De Certeau: The Art Of Action . Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1988.
8. ↑ Heinz Steinert: The Discovery of the Culture Industry (Publishing House for Social Criticism, 1992)