The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass CultureThe creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today's world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno's work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
On the Fetish Characters in Music and the Regression of Listening | 29 |
The Schema of Mass Culture | 61 |
Culture Industry Reconsidered | 98 |
Culture and Administration | 107 |
Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda | 132 |
How to Look at Television | 158 |
Transparencies on Film | 178 |
Free Time | 187 |
Resignation | 198 |
| 205 | |
| 209 | |
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Common terms and phrases
actually administration Adorno advertising aesthetic already appearance artistic astrology autonomous become behaviour bourgeois claim commodities concept conflict consciousness consumer contradiction critical critical theory critique culture industry demand Dialectic Dialectic of Enlightenment domination ego ideal Enlightenment Erich Fromm everything exchange value existence experience expression fact fascist fascist propaganda film freedom Freud function high art hit song human Ibid idea ideal ideology illusory immanent individual integration irrational jazz labour lbid leader light music longer mass culture mass media mass music material means mechanism modern negative object organization particular person play political popular culture possible postmodernism praxis precisely present production pseudo-activity psychoanalysis psychological question radio rationality reality reason regressive listening reified relation Simone Weil social society sphere spirit sport T. S. Eliot takes technique television tendency theory thing thought tion transformation truth unconscious unity