Culture Industry

The term culture industry (German: Kulturindustrie) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), wherein they proposed that popular cultureis akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity.^[1] Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.^[1]The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer especially perceived mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more technically and intellectually difficult high arts. In contrast, true psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by Herbert Marcuse. (See Eros and Civilization, 1955).

The Frankfurt School

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason Escape from Freedom Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action Dialectic of Enlightenment
Notable theorists
Herbert Marcuse · Theodor Adorno Max Horkheimer · Walter Benjamin Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas Alfred Schmidt · Axel HonnethSiegfried Kracauer · Otto Kirchheimer
Important concepts
Critical theory · Dialectic · Praxis Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism Popular culture · Culture industry Advanced capitalism Privatism · Non-identity Communicative rationality Legitimation crisis
v t e

Members of The Frankfurt School were much influenced by the dialectical materialism and historical materialism of Karl Marx, as well as the revisitation of the dialectical idealism of Hegel; both events are studied not in isolation, but as part of the process of change. As a group later joined by Jürgen Habermas, they were responsible for the formulation of critical theory. In works such as Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics, Adorno and Horkheimer theorized that the phenomenon of mass culture has a political implication, namely that all the many forms of popular culture are parts of a single culture industry whose purpose is to ensure the continued obedience of the masses to market interests.

The theory

The essay is concerned with the production of cultural content in capitalist societies. It critiques the supply-driven nature of cultural economies as well as the apparently inferior products of the system.^[3] Horkheimer and Adorno argue that mass-produced entertainment aims, by its very nature, to appeal to vast audiences and therefore both the intellectual stimulation of high art and the basic release of low art.^[4] The essay does not suggest that all products of this system are inherently inferior, simply that they have replaced other forms of entertainment without properly fulfilling the important roles played by the now defunct sources of culture.^[5]

Horkheimer and Adorno make consistent comparisons between Fascist Germany and the American film industry. They highlight the presence of mass-produced culture, created and disseminated by exclusive institutions and consumed by a passive, homogenised audience in both systems.^[6] This illustrates the logic of domination in post-enlightenment modern society, by monopoly capitalism or the nation state.^[7] Horkheimer and Adorno draw attention to the problems associated with a system that 'integrates its consumers from above', arguing that in attempting to realise enlightenment values of reason and order, the holistic power of the individual is undermined.^[8]

Influences

Adorno and Horkheimer's work was influenced by both the broader socio-political environment in which it was written and by other major theorists. Written in California in the early 1940s in an era which characterized them as two ethnically Jewish, German émigrés, The Culture Industry is influenced by European politics and the war by which the continent was consumed.^[9] Simultaneously, the American film industry was characterised by an unprecedented level of studio monopolisation,^[3] it was "Hollywood at its most classical, American mass culture at its most Fordist".^[10]

Horkheimer and Adorno were influenced heavily by major developers of social, political and economic theory,^[11] most notably:

• Karl Marx's theories of alienation and commodity fetishism,
• Max Weber's instrumental reason, and
• Georg Lukacs' concept of the reification of consciousness.