Page 84 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Theodor Adorno and the culture industry 69
despite this appearance it is entirely of our own making. It is an
ideological construction which has the ability to make alternatives
appear either unrealistic or undesirable. The culture industry is thus
a crucial component of the world born from the dialectic of
enlightenment; it consists of an abstract but powerful system that
appears to implacably direct the affairs of men on the basis of those
things that can be calculated while stubbornly neglecting to include
within these calculations an assessment of the negative cultural
impact of that same system. It reiterates through entertainment and
information the message that this powerfully enframing situation is
the ultimate embodiment of freedom and cannot be changed
without a corresponding loss of what is actually only the appearance
of freedom.

The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception
From the above discussion we can see how Adorno and Horkheimer
regard the culture industry as the heir of the dialectic of Enlighten-
ment, as a system that partakes and extends the false totality of
instrumental reason. Enlightenment is totalitarian because it sub-
sumes all particularity under the rubric of identity. In this manner it
exhibits those very aspects of mythic thought that it was formulated
against; it becomes a panoptic system that deprives the individual of
autonomy, and thought and culture of their freedom of expression.
While these are dramatic and powerful claims, we shall see in later
chapters how, if anything, the historical period in which the Frank-
furt School wrote meant that their assessment did not go far enough
in their exploration of the culture industry’s reach. In Part 2,
identity thinking now manifests itself more invasively and pervasively
than critical theorists foresaw. We thus explore the spread of the
panoptic system in terms of ‘democratized’ celebrity, Reality TV, and
the formerly ‘serious’ news reporting of world events that now tends
to be increasingly informed by the standards of the entertainment
industry.
Adorno and Horkheimer argue that ‘a technological rationale is
the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive nature of society
alienated from itself’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997: 120). Put
another way, society has become blinded to its cultural ends through
excessive attention to the technological means it has at its disposal.
Thus, the output of the culture industry must adapt to the con-
straints of its means of distribution. In this regard the culture
industry is fundamentally subordinate to the demands of industry
and government, culture must assume its place within a pre-
established technological order of things. The consequence for the
output of the culture industry is clear – a movement towards ever

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