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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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