Page 48 - Culture Society and the Media

38 THEORIES OF THE MEDIA AND SOCIETY

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND THE CRITIQUE OF
THE ‘CULTURE INDUSTRY’

Although predominantly a conservative tradition, the mass society outlook has
also influenced the development of Marxist theories of the media. Nor is this
surprising. Marx and Engels wrote suggestively on questions of the media and
ideology, but they did not offer an elaborated body of theory with which to deal
with such questions. Given this absence, early attempts to construct a Marxist
critique of the media were virtually obliged to submit to the ‘field of force’
exerted by the mass society outlook. In doing so, however, they inflected its
criticisms leftward, reworking them by putting them to use within the context of
a critique of the media’s impact in impeding the formation of a socialist political
consciousness amongst members of the working class. The critique of the
‘culture industry’ constructed by the Frankfurt School was undoubtedly the most
interesting of the attempts to fuse Marxist and mass society categories in this
way.
The label of ‘the Frankfurt School’ is usually applied to the collective thought
of those theorists—most notably, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max
Horkheimer—associated with the Institute for Social Research founded in
Frankfurt in 1923. Recruiting largely from the cream of the young radical
intellectuals of Weimar Germany, some of them disillusioned ex-Communist
Party members, the Institute set itself the task of keeping the critical light of
Marxism burning during the ‘dark years’ which its members saw ahead. Owing
to this radical orientation, and to the predominantly Jewish background of its
members, the accession of Hitler to the German chancellorship in 1933 forced
the removal of the Institute to New York where, until 1942, it was affiliated to
the Sociology Department of the University of Columbia. In 1949, Max
Horkheimer, who had succeeded Carl Grunberg as director of the Institute in
1930, led the Institute back to Frankfurt—although Marcuse chose to remain in
California. Horkheimer was succeeded as head of the Institute by Adorno who
remained in that position until his death in 1968.
Applying the brush with broad strokes, the intellectual perspectives of the
Frankfurt theorists were shaped by three major historical experiences. First, they
shared a sense of monumental disappointment that the revolution of 1917 had
not spread to western Europe. They were dismayed by the downturn in the
revolutionary tide which resulted from this failure and by the fatal direction
which, in their view, the dominance of Stalinism subsequently gave to working-
class politics. Second, a deep and lasting impression was made on them by the
experience of fascism which continued to haunt their works until well into the
post-war epoch. Finally, they were deeply concerned by the apparent political
stability which had been achieved in the post-war western world and attempted
to describe and account for the ideological transformations by which this stability
had been produced.