Adorno - The Culture Industry

Adorno proposes that within the culture industry there is an economic mechanism of selection. There is an agreement or determination between executive authorities to avoid producing or authorizing “...anything that in any way differd from their own rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all themselves” (Adorno 1944:1038). The ‘culture monopolies’ are weak in comparison to these economic giants (executive authorities) and so they must appease the overlords of industry so as not to lose their hold on the market by being ‘purged’. Adorono uses the examples “The dependence of the most powerful broadcasting company on the electrical industry, or the motion picture industry on the banks...” (1944:1038). Adorno further states that within this sphere of dependency the individual branches of the powerful executive authorities and culture monopolies become ‘economically interwoven’. According to Adorno the industry classifies consumers, it organizes and labels them so that something can be created for all with a “hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality” (1944:1038), for example supermarket value brands and their range of ‘best of’ or ‘finest’ products. Consumers then comply with this hierarchy by selecting the category of mass product produced for their ‘type’, we exist as data and statistics divided by income groups and subjected to advertising using the techniques of propaganda. This is especially prominent in today’s society because, as Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror illustrates sardonically but acutely, we are bombarded by advertisements every day, and are restricted to what we can buy by our income – a significant issue at this point in a recession. Adorno further states that these seemingly varied quality products are all the same in the end, which exemplifies the extent of how formalized the process is. Products consist of “...ready-made clichés to be slotted in anywhere; they never do anything more than fulfil the purpose allotted them in the overall plan” (1944:1039). Within the culture industry free expression as protest against organization is quashed and forced to submit to formula which replaces the work (akin to Baudrillard’s view that we’re only able to express ourselves via pre-determined codes). The mass media stunts consumers’ imaginations due to the objective nature of products such as films, you are subjected to an onslaught of relentless facts to such an extent you are unable to use your powers of observation and experience to comprehend them.