Theme 2: Critical media studies - prior

Enlightenment can be understood as the advance of thought and has the goal of freeing human beings from fear and inaugurate them as masters. That means the job of thinking for oneself and employing and relying on one’s own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act. Therefore Enlightenment scrutinizes previously accepted doctrines and traditions because in order to use your own understanding without the guidance of others you generally need to oppose to the established beliefs.

The term myth in the meaning of Adorno and Horkeimer’s argument can be seen as all forms of knowledge that existed before enlightenment. It is superstitious, subjective and emphasizes distinct individual experience over reproducible scientific observation. The ability to represent but not embody is essential to mythic practice. Although something like older rituals, religions and philosophies, which are acknowledged as mythical and outdated by the forces of secularization, Adorno and Horkheimer argues that they may still have contributed to the process of enlightenment.

Adorno and Horkheimer mentions some different media such as radio, film, magazines and television but my interpretation is that the “old” and “new” media is referring to the change in culture that has happened due to the introduction of the culture industry. The authors talks much about art and to me it seems as if Adorno and Horkheimer tries to argument that art is a contrast to what the culture industry stands for. An interesting quote is “Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce”. My take on this is that before the culture industry, art was the popular media but now through the standardization of culture, mass culture is the “new” admired media.

The culture industry is the factory of mass cultural institutions which produces standardized cultural goods for the masses. This culture industry involves standardization, repetition and efficiency and manipulates the society into passivity. According to Adorno and Horkheimer the productions made by the culture industry robs people of their imagination and takes over their thinking. The products are designed to deny imagination, spontaneity, fantasy and any active thinking of the spectators. The culture industry creates a mass production where everything is homogenized and diversity only consists of small trivialities. A good quote from the text that describes this is “every film is a preview of the next”. Here you can see the authors clear opinion of standardization in the culture industry.

According to Adorno and Horkheimer the mass media, or culture industry, gives the illusion of being informed and involved, but in reality the consumer is being reduced to minding himself with his own unimportant troubles. The consumer of mass media is certain that the media is adapted to his needs while in fact the culture industry produces this sentiment in order to strengthen its influence. Thus the consumers of mass media are being deceived and a “mass deception” is taking place.

In the fourth chapter Adorno and Horkheimer are talking a lot about the term amusement in relation to the culture industry. Amusement existed long before the industry itself. An interesting thing they say about amusement is that according to them, amusement means putting things out of mind and forgetting suffering. The escape is not from bad reality though, but from the last thought of resisting that reality. The liberation which amusement promises is from thinking as negation. I thought this description of amusement was appealing because this is in some way how I look at amusement, especially when it comes to film. For me, I think it’s a difference between watching films on the television or going to the cinema though. If you go to the cinema this description of amusement is more correct in my opinion that when you watch on the television, because when you go to the cinema it is more of a special occasion and because of the environment of the darkness and sharing of experience with the rest of the audience you can just forget about your life outside the cinema.