Page 212 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Innovat on and Im tat on n Commerc al Med a | 1 1

the Critique oF the Culture industry
The most profound and influential critique of the imitative nature of popular culture can be
attributed to a group of mid-twentieth-century critics typically labeled the Frankfurt School,
especially in the work of Theodor Adorno. For Adorno and his colleagues, all of American
popular culture—which at the time referred to commercial radio, early Hollywood film, and
jazz and popular music as components of a total “culture industry”—was not only perceived
as low in aesthetic value, but also contributed to social control and oppression. They be-
lieved that popular culture had a numbing, pacifying effect upon its consumers, dulling their
critical abilities and potentially enabling the rise of a fascist regime or the continued exploi-
tation of the working class. Adorno offered still-relevant critiques of the standardization of
cultural forms, the impact of “pre-digested” media requiring no mental or emotional en-
gagement for consumers, and the “pseudo-individuality” of popular culture that appeared
to offer something new. While it is easy to dismiss their broad generalizations as extremely
elitist and lacking an understanding of the diversity of popular culture, the Frankfurt School’s
critical impulse to view popular media as part of a politically dominating culture industry
remains powerful and prevalent for media critics decades after their initial writings.

sTraTEgiEs oF CommErCiaL CrEaTiviTy
For many critics of mass culture, there is an inherent conflict between com-
mercial goals and creativity. Within commercial mass media, all decisions are
driven, at least in part, by financial and profit motivations. Television networks,
film studios, music labels, or other parts of the media industry will rarely invest
in creating and distributing a cultural product that they believe will lose money,
as such companies must ultimately turn a profit to remain in business. Media
industries always consider how a new product fits into established trends, taps
into well-known traditions, or offers something familiar to an audience. How-
ever, they also realize that merely offering an identical product will not meet
consumer demands—people do not want to buy a CD, watch a show, or go see
a film that is an exact copy of what they already know. Creating commercially
successful mass media involves a delicate balance of offering something familiar
along with something new, an alchemy of innovation and imitation.
Cultural industries and the creators working in commercial media rely on
many strategies for blending innovation and imitation. Formula is a broad and
disparaging term, but every medium establishes standards and norms that audi-
ences come to expect. For instance, most media have standard lengths, as pop
songs are a few minutes long, television episodes fit 30- and 60-minute timeslots,
and feature films run for around two hours. Genres are crucial categories that
offer assumed structures, themes, styles, imagery, and desired reactions—audi-
ences know what to expect when they watch a sitcom or listen to a country song,
and industries try to meet those expectations by adhering to genre conventions.
Formulas and genres not only guide the creation of commercial culture, but are
used to promote and market new works, reaching out to established audiences