Page 49 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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34 Then
reproduction does not so much destroy tradition as ossify it in the
constant repetition of the individualized commodity form aimed at
the socially alienated consumer:

The culture industry consists of repetition. That its characteris-
tic innovations are never anything more than the improvements
of mass reproduction is not external to the system. It is with
good reason that the interest of innumerable consumers is
directed to the technique, and not to the contents – which are
stubbornly repeated, outworn, and by now half-discredited. The
social power which the spectators worship shows itself more
effectively in the omnipresence of the stereotype imposed by
technical skill than in the stale ideologies for which the
ephemeral contents stand in.
(Adorno, in Duttmann 2000: 40)
Repetition for the purposes of consumption becomes its own raison
d’être. This may seem quite an abstract issue at this early point in
the book but the remaining chapters explore the various forms such
repetition takes and the profound cultural harm it causes. In Part 2,
for example, we see how Adorno’s blanket statement ‘the culture
industry consists of repetition’ can be seen at both a micro and
macro level. From the former perspective, the increasing prevalence
of pseudo-pornographic modes of representation is shown to utilize
the innately repetitive voyeuristic tendencies of the camera (see
Chapter 7’s analysis of the gastroporn of the US television’s Food
Network). At a macro level, Chapter 8 shows how the media’s
coverage of global politics has become fatally infected by repetitive
and uncritical modes of expression and representation (for example,
the endlessly repetitious showing of the 9/11 plane crash and the
toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad in the second Gulf
conflict).

Benjamin and distraction
While Benjamin’s Essay is perhaps the most significant early state-
ment on the emancipatory potential of modern media, it suffers
from a dearth of evidence as to how such emancipation might occur
in practice. For example, towards the end of the Essay, Benjamin
presents the concept of distraction as positive force that emerges in
the wake of the liquidation of aura that he has detailed, however he
remains reticent as to the precise relation between distraction and
emancipation. Gilloch has argued that Benjamin’s identification of
film as an intrinsically emancipatory medium, resides in the medi-
um’s instantiation of two closely related aspects of distraction – habit
and non-contemplation:

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