[FRA:] Marcuse question

[simon smith]

In message <200602232351.k1NNpIxT011666 at electra.cc.umanitoba.ca>, 
Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca> writes

  ... so many ellipses... a sweep of the hand...

>Check the essay on the culture industry in DofE. While insightful in many
>ways it will not meet up with critical scrutiny. "Amusement and all the
>other elements of the culture industry existed long before the industry
>itself" (p. 107). Really? So the difference between medieval Europe and 20th
>century Europe is basically... what... a telephoto lens?

No, the culture industry has _taken away_ the "obtrusive naiveties"  of 
amusement, it has become "all-embracing", and has forced the outsider 
into "either bankruptcy or a syndicate" i.e. into an illicit sphere. " 
"Light" art, as such, entertainment, is not a form of decadence" but its 
integration into the immiseration of life on the production line means 
that it has lost its unruly elements and is there to carry the workers 
on in their (no longer) 'free time'.

>"The culture
>industry endlessly cheats its consumers out of what it endlessly promises."
>(p. 111). What does Benny Goodman promise?

Satisfying pleasure that isn't endlessly postponed. An appearance of 
cheerfulness that leaves one feeling empty afterwards?

> Who exactly is deceived? Was Oca
>Tatham fooled? Does anyone really expect that when they purchase a Coke they
>will get "it."

They may not have it on their minds, but they will get membership of a 
false community of other consumers of the same drink, the drink that 
defines what it is to be an American. The first drink, like the first 
immersion into the world of popular music, says 'I belong', I'm one of 
us.

> Adorno and Horkheimer cast the culture industry as a
>monolithic enterprise, it is not. Nor are consumers dupes.

The essay is hyperbolic in that regard, but the element of simple 
coercion is always emphasised: if you don't join in, you will be an 
outsider. This is emphatically true today, in my British experience 
anyway. Conversation revolves around certain inescapably popular soap 
operas, 'Big Brother', 'celebrities' who are again inescapable, and the 
tiny details of whose lives are endlessly propagated in mass selling 
newspapers and magazines. If you work, if you 'take part' in society, 
there is no escape - you are implicated. Universities have become just 
another step along the career ladder - undergraduate conversation 
concentrates on trash, consumed with a knowing smile, the latest film, 
the latest hip rock/pop group and the merits thereof. Essay writing is 
accompanied by pop music blaring in the background, functioning to make 
sure the student never gets really involved in their work... one could 
go on for pages, _obviously_.
It's no longer a 'Culture Industry' any more, it it's the air we 
breathe. Take Adorno's account, hyperbolise it some more, and you've got 
culture now, puritan and puritanical.

Adorno provided a corrective to the 'dupes' notion in later essays, like 
"The Schema of Mass Culture".

> "Fun is a
>medicinal bath which the entertainment industry never ceases to prescribe"
>(p. 112). How is this to be understood alongside the unprecedented growth of
>charismatic religious movements in the 20th century? How successful is the
>culture industry, with its grandiose promises, that 400 million people opted
>to speak in tongues rather than go to the movies?

Where is this? If you're talking about the Southern States of the US, do 
you mean this sort of thing?
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1714
Given the form charismatic religion takes today, which seems deeply 
infected with the spirit of the entertainment industry, is it really a 
deviation? Do members of charismatic religion really stop watching tv?. 
Charismatic religion seems to rely on a single leader who orchestrates 
the whole process, often televised.
Adorno was writing about the Western industrialised counties, and I 
don't think charismatic religion has taken hold in anywhere in Europe.

> If anything the culture
>industry is a massive failure rather than success.

Certainly not where I live!

>.. and with that kind of
>conclusion one has to wonder whether the thesis was on track or not... it is
>complicated. And issues of recognition and identity and social formation are
>involved... theoretical concepts not yet well developed in 1944.

?


-- 
Simon Smith




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