Page 89 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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74 Then
art only exists on the basis of the exploitation and exclusion of the
masses upon whose material productivity high art relies. Low art’s
accessibility to the masses (the crux of Benjamin’s positive interpre-
tation) is then presented as a compensatory alternative solution – a
social bad conscience. This is a false solution, however, because low
art’s accessibility is in turn based upon a devalued, ersatz form of art
rather than truly compensating for the masses’ lack of access to the
original, authentic high art: the masses have access, but it is far from
clear that they have access to the precise thing that was previously
denied to them. Adorno is clear in his account of the devalued
nature of mass-produced low art, but even Benjamin, as previously
seen, is also clear that instead of debating the new status of art in
the age of mechanical reproduction, critics should be coming to
terms with the fact that the very notion of art itself is altered by the
new mass media. In the second part of the above statement, integral
freedom is the phrase used to describe the condition enjoyed by
someone who had access to a high art un-impugned by exploitation
or exclusion. Such an ideal condition is not possible in either the
current form of high art or low art – the torn halves do not add up
to a complete freedom – they are both now devalued.
In so far as high art once had value, it maintained this value
despite high art’s exclusionary and elite nature. The common
critique of Adorno as an elitist thus rather misses the point because,
for him, the fact that high art is based upon exploitation is part of
its social truth. The ability of Beethoven, Mozart, or Michelangelo to
produce beautiful artworks served to bring into sharp relief the less
than beautiful or ideal social reality encountered immediately after
experiencing those works (another form of high art’s tension and
conflict). Additionally, although high art strives within the particu-
larity of its forms to represent an ideal, perfect whole (the artwork
as an expressive totality) it will never succeed in successfully creating
such a whole; there will always be something lacking in any such
artistic creation – it can only ever produce an imperfect attempt.
The combined effect of both these factors is that high art is
inextricably linked to non-identity. To use a specific example, within a
painting or a piece of music, Adorno points out that individual
brush strokes or notes are used to create a tension with the work as
a whole. The viewer or listener is made to think of the problematic
relationship between the brush stroke or note and the bigger picture
(both literally and metaphorically). In this manner, the high artwork
does not and cannot ultimately reconcile the particular and the
general, the whole and the part, or its depictions of the individual
subject and the object world s/he finds themself in. This paradoxi-
cally is the truth and value of high art – its preordained glorious
failure. Hence, the key distinguishing feature between high art and

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