Page 61 - Cultural Theory

Edwards-3516-Ch-03.qxd 5/9/2007 6:08 PM Page 50

••• Douglas Kellner •••

most marked in the United States where there was little state support of film or television
industries, and where a highly commercial mass culture emerged that came to be a dis-
tinctive feature of capitalist societies and a focus of critical cultural studies.
During the 1930s, the Frankfurt School developed a critical and transdisciplinary
approach to cultural and communications studies, combining political economy, textual
analysis, and analysis of social and ideological effects of the media. They coined the term
‘culture industry’ to signify the process of the industrialization of mass-produced culture
and the commercial imperatives that drove the system. The critical theorists analyzed all
mass-mediated cultural artefacts within the context of industrial production, in which
the artefacts of the culture industries exhibited the same features as other products of
mass production: commodification, standardization, and massification. The culture
industries had the specific function, however, of providing ideological legitimation of the
existing capitalist societies and of integrating individuals into its way of life.
Adorno’s analyses of popular music, television, and other phenomena ranging from
astrology columns to fascist speeches (1991; 1994), Löwenthal’s studies of popular litera-
ture and magazines (1961), Hertzog’s studies of radio soap operas (1941), and the per-
spectives and critiques of mass culture developed in Horkheimer and Adorno’s famous
study of the culture industries (1972; Adorno, 1991) provide many examples of the
Frankfurt School approach. Moreover, in their theories of the culture industries and cri-
tiques of mass culture, they were among the first social theorists to realize its importance
in the reproduction of contemporary societies. In their view, mass culture and commu-
nications stand at the centre of leisure activity, are important agents of socialization,
mediators of political reality, and should thus be seen as major institutions of contem-
porary societies with a variety of economic, political, cultural and social effects.
Furthermore, the critical theorists investigated the cultural industries in a political
context as a form of the integration of the working class into capitalist societies. The
Frankfurt School theorists were among the first neo-Marxian groups to examine the
effects of mass culture and the rise of the consumer society on the working classes,
who were to be the instrument of revolution in the classical Marxian scenario. They
also analyzed the ways that the culture industries and consumer society were stabi-
lizing contemporary capitalism and accordingly sought new strategies for political
change, agencies of political transformation, and models for political emancipation
that could serve as norms of social critique and goals for political struggle. This pro-
ject required rethinking Marxian theory and produced many important contribu-
tions – as well as some problematical positions.
The Frankfurt School focused intently on technology and culture, indicating how
technology was becoming both a major force of production and formative mode of
social organization and control. In a 1941 article, ‘Some social implications of mod-
ern technology’, Herbert Marcuse argued that technology in the contemporary era
constitutes an entire ‘mode of organizing and perpetuating (or changing) social
relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and behavior patterns, an instru-
ment for control and domination’ (ibid.: 414). In the realm of culture, technology
produced mass culture that habituated individuals to conform to the dominant

• 50 •