Page 34 - Cultural Theory

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••• Cultural Analysis in Marxist Humanism •••

classification and labelling of consumers, with market research and advertising being
geared to ensuring that the consumers do actually buy them. Rationalized market
processes have ensured that the rise of the culture industry results in a cultural uni-
formity. Cultural commodities are shaped by a standardizing, commercial logic,
rather than by purely aesthetic considerations. Films, radio, magazines, and other
cultural forms are homogeneous, standardized, and uniform in all important
respects. The products of the culture industry are produced to standard formulas that
reflect the need to package them and to sell them in calculable ways. Mass-produced
soap operas, songs, films, and so on, as items of ‘entertainment’, are embedded in a
system of advertising that integrates mass cultural meanings with other commodities
such as cars, cigarettes, and food. One implication of this, Horkheimer and Adorno
argue, is that the boundaries between cultural representations and everyday life break
down: ‘Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies’ (Adorno and
Horkheimer, 1944: 126). The aim of film producers, for example, is to ensure that
people see the world outside the cinema as continuous with the film. It is what
Baudrillard (1981) would see as ‘hyperreal’.
Cultural products are geared to amusement and entertainment, but their claims to make
people happy rest on the fulfilment of false pleasures rather than real ones. This analysis
tends to conflate scientific description and aesthetic judgement, and Adorno’s distaste
for all popular culture is apparent in the tone and language of his writing. For Adorno, a
standardized and mass-produced culture is, inevitably, an inauthentic and second-rate one
that bears no comparison with ‘true’ artistic achievement. The culture of the masses
accords only with their alienated needs (Adorno, n.d.; see also Adorno, 1984).
One of Adorno’s earliest applications of his ideas was a study of jazz (Adorno, 1937)
in which he attempted to decompose and reconstruct this particular musical form.
In improvising, he argued, a jazz soloist appears to be departing from the established
pattern but is, in fact, conforming to a larger structure. The soloist follows rules that
are specific to the musical form of jazz. Adorno, however, was no aficionado of jazz,
as is apparent in his view that syncopation – anticipating the beat – is akin to pre-
mature ejaculation and so signifies not musical power but musical impotence. Such
negative aesthetic judgements on popular music remained an important part of
Adorno’s cultural analysis throughout his life.
Taking up some of the ideas from his discussion of jazz, Adorno sought to draw a
sharp distinction between the factors influencing the development of serious, art
music and the popular music produced by the culture industry. Popular music, he
argues, is characterized by standardization and pseudo-individualization. The basic
structural elements of popular songs are standardized and interchangeable, but they
are differentiated in minor and peripheral ways in order to enhance their market
appeal. This reflects trends in the mass production of all commodities. Henry Ford
had famously said of the first Ford cars that purchasers could have any colour they
liked, so long as it was black. By contrast, present-day Ford cars are built from stan-
dard components and to standard specifications but are differentiated by body
colour, internal fabrics, fascia design, wheel trims, and so on. Such variation gives the
consumer the illusion of real choice. Similarly, argues Adorno, the standardized

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