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                             84   Then
                             within the ongoing evolution of human rationality and development
                             of capitalism. In addition, it has highlighted the various points of
                             contact between this work and Kracauer and Benjamin’s body of
                             thought, and noted the key issues on which these various accounts
                             differ. It has been pointed out that while certain elements of the
                             culture industry thesis are now primarily only of historical signifi-
                             cance, other aspects are remarkably prescient. For example, the
                             thesis anticipates Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality, Debord’s con-
                             cept of the society of the spectacle, as well as the emergence of Reality
                             TV and new, democratized forms of celebrity culture. It would
                             appear, therefore, that rather than being a reactionary elitist,
                             Adorno articulated with great foresight and in a manner cultural
                             populism could still learn much from, the underlying logic of the
                             culture industry, its conservative attitudes. He vividly described a
                             colonizing commodifying logic whose grip on the individual and
                             collective has grown ever more firm in the intervening decades.




















































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