Adorno and Horkeimer's Culture Industry Theory

Adorno and Horkeimer's Culture Industry Theory

The culture industry:

Adorno and Horkeimer adopted the term 'culture industry' to argue that the way in which cultural items were being produced was analogous to how the industries manufactured vast quantities of consumer goods.
Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the culture industry exhibited an 'assembly line' character which could be observed in the synthetic planned method of turning out its products.

- Adorno and Horkeimer's view of cultural production has often been portrayed as the pessimistic lament of 'cultural' lists who were dismayed at what they perceived to be the homogeneity and vulgarity of 'mass' taste, and who were concerned that the potential for artistic creativity in music literature and painting had been co-opted and corrupted by the production methods and administrative regimes of the industrial capitalism.

-The capitalist corporation seems to enjoy an almost omnipotent form of domination and both the consumers and the creative artists are not separate from but are directly connected to this system of production.
-Adorno and Horkheimer stressed the structures of economic ownership and control of the means through which cultural products are produced and argued that this directly shapes the activities of creative artists and consumers.

-They argued that the 'culture industry' operated in the same way as other manufacturing industries.
The metaphor of the 'assembly line; was used to stress the repetitive and routine character of cultural production. All work had become formalised and products were made according to rationalised organisational procedures that were established for the sole purpose of making money.


Pseudo individuality-

Adorno and Horkheimer were also critical of what they referred to as pseudo individuality. By this they meant the way that the culture industry assembled products that made claims to 'originality' but which when examined more critically exhibited little more than superficial differences.
- Adorno and Horkeimer evoked the image of the lock and key - an item that is mass produced in millions, whose uniqueness lies in only very minor modification.


The X-Factor machine:

-Adorno and Horkeimer linked the idea of the 'culture industry' to a model of 'mass culture' in which cultural production had become a routine , standardised repetitive operation that produced undemanding cultural commodities which in turn resulted in a type of consumption that was also standardised, distracted and passive.