Theory’s link with real world: linked to a troubled period in European affairs.
Most textbooks that address theory relating to media, culture and communication, where the names of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, two key members of the Frankfurt school, are likely to appear.
The ‘creative industries’ as a new industrial sector (see Chapter 21), universities establishing faculties with the same name, and increasing numbers of jobs for ‘creative professionals’, knowledge of the Frankfurt school’s theorisation of the ‘culture industry’ is helpful.
Frankfurt School of Social Research: A response to “the failure and fragmentation of socialism in Germany, the quiescence of workers in response to the Weimar republic’s reformism, and the growth of anti-semitism”
Max Horkheimer (philosopher, sociologist, social psychologist), Theodor Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Herbert Marcuse (philosopher), Leo Löwenthal (student of popular culture and literature) and Friedrich Pollock (economist and specialist on problems of national planning) constituted the Frankfurt school, Habermas as the “second generation”
While the Institute’s programme was inspired by Marxist thinking, it had no party affiliations, and it welcomed scholars of differing political persuasions
Movingto States and coming back: a theoretical rupture.
Having made clear that any study of social phenomena could not be studied in isolation from the economy, Horkheimer argued for a programme of interdisciplinary study
Horkheimer: both qualitative and quantitative techniques, but insisted that empirical work should not be seen as a substitute for theoretical analysis, because ‘concepts like society, culture and class, indispensable to all enquiry, cannot be simply transcribed into empirical terms’
Critical theory is famously associated with the Frankfurt school, but in particular with Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas, who are seen as its ’four central figures
Frankfurt school’s critical theorists rejected ‘both the economic determinism of Soviet Marxism and the American tradition of mass communications research’
Their ‘departure from Marxism’ was due to a belief that capitalism had found ways of overcoming its contradictions and developed strategies which had enabled the working class to become ‘incorporated into the system’
‘through an examination of contemporary social and political issues they could contribute to a critique of ideology and to the development of a non-authoritarian and non-bureaucratic politics’
‘The mediation of cultural meanings’, “cultural pessimism”, “how mass culture has become an organ of soft domination”
For both authors, ‘culture’ was equated with art, and a belief that it should – ideally – ‘act as a form of critique of the rest of life, and could provide a utopian vision of how a better life might be possible’
Pessimism and suspicion about the culture industry
One sector of cultural production: in the 1940s, Hollywood produced 95 per cent of all films on general exhibition in America
Similarities between Nazi Germany and States:experience of American cinema and commercial radio confirmed Horkheimer and Adorno’s view that “enlightenment” had turned into “mass deception” through the machinations of “the culture industry”
Culture industry: ‘mass culture’ to understand
Since culture had actually been commodified; it was something that was bought and sold, mass culture out “culture industry” in
‘Where is the evidence for that assertion, or what evidence could they provide?’
Focus on macro, not micro
In what ways do Horkheimer and Adorno use this concept, and where – or with whom – do they suggest the power lies?
Industry building analysis: the extent to which their theorising could be relevant beyond these contexts: what do you think?
Who is it that Horkheimer and Adorno believe to have power, why do they have it, and how do they use it? Also, who doesn’t have power?
there are references to consumers, listeners and, although not named as such, media texts.
the cultural industry’s reproductive capacity and its distribution networks are considered here in a national or transnational sense, whereas today we would refer to an international, or even, global market for such goods
The notion of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ listeners
Relatively limited power of the culture industry and its need to stay onside with ’the true wielders of power
Of the industry is to maximise consumption, this requires the identification, classification and organisation of consumers in order to ensure that they can be effectively targeted
This account of the culture industry was first published over sixty years ago, are they still valid?
Horkheimer and Adorno use goods produced by the motor industry to illustrate how expert commentators, reviewers and analysts ‘talk up’ the advantages and disadvantages of one product over another when they are essentially the same. Do you watch the series that your parents watch?
Invoking notions of high culture and low culture – to predict that once there is a synthesis between images, words and music, television will act as a catalyst for a further reduction in the range and diversity of materials being produced.
Evokes a monochrome image of zombified images presided over by an unholy alliance of Hitler and Hollywood’ (2003: 59).
How does ‘enlightenment’ become ‘mass deception’, and what in this context is meant by ‘mass deception’?
conceiving of American culture as an industry with an assembly line for the manufacture of messages of false consciousness
effectiveness of the culture industry was not secured through a deceptive ideology, but by the removal from the consciousness of the masses of any alternative to capitalism
The first phase of media research and theory, one in which the media was suggested as an all-powerful and generally unmediated force that impacted negatively on mass culture (Turner 1996: 184).
The second phase of media research is associated with the emergence of mass communication research in America during the 1960s, when the media was seen as reflecting the plurality of society. How would Adorno and Horkheimer respond?
Relevance today: the trend towards ‘massive concentration’ within the industry; ‘the packaging of resistance’, and the practice of incorporating ‘audience preferences into the products themselves’
‘[e]ndless propaganda concerning individualism and choice’ which, it is argued, ‘vastly exaggerates the power that “consumers” exercise over their daily lives’
To describe and support cultural products – through policy – what has become a significant and growing generator of gross domestic product (Hesmondhalgh 2002: 14).
a policy proposal first developed in 1983 for the Labour Party administered Greater London Council (GLC) by Nicholas Garnham (1990: 154–68). Essentially, Garnham’s analysis in London found that the cultural industries dominated the city’s economy, and that there was a tendency for public funding to ‘subsidize the existing tastes and habits of the better off’ (1990: 164).
Tony Blair’s ‘New’ Labour: a tool for economic growth and community regeneration, but renamed the sector the ‘creative industries’. In addition to music, film, television, radio and publishing, the sector would now comprise ‘fashion, art, theatre, architecture, crafts, graphics, advertising, software, and journalism’ (Smith 1998: 15).
Emre Toros - Media Theory & Methods - Week 3