What is the Culture Industry?
The term ‘culture industry’ was first used by Frankfurt School researchers Theodor Adorno and Mark Horkheimer. It refers to the idea of all culture being manufactured just like a mass produced item on an assembly line. Adorno and Horkheimer wrote about culture industry in their bool. “…the spiritual enlightenment supposedly bestowed by the creative arts is reconceived as ‘mass deception’” (2017). They believed that, while consumers believe we are getting creative, diverse entertainment, we are actually getting entertainment that is heavily monitored and was modified in order to follow one big idea.
How Our Media Controls Us
Often enough, we answer the question: “What is your favorite movie?” We all have an answer, whether it is a cartoon, a drama, a romcom, or any other genre, we all have a favorite movie. Did we ever really choose it though? Because media is so controlled by higher powers, we actually do not get as many options as we may believe we do. The media we are shown has been through many stages of editing and consideration in which any big ideas that go against what higher powers want us to believe are cut. Today, this is less common. Media is more diverse now, but because of how long we have been exposed to one set of ideologies, the media that goes against that set does not get nearly as popular. We are automatically adverse to the piece as it does not agree with what we have been trained to want in media.
What is Mass Deception?
The phrase “mass deception” means that we as consumers and viewers are deceived on a large scale by the media gods, so to speak. When the majority of our mainstream media reflects conservative views, the audience is likely to attain and spread that attitude. Despite this, we think we are forming our own opinions and consuming media we personally enjoy and choose. This is the deception. We are never fully choosing what we like, as we are never given a large array of options in the first place.
How Does the Audience Reinforce Culture Industry?
Even if we as the consumers recognize the issue of mass deception and culture industry, we still support it without knowing that we are. Researchers of culture industry argue that consumers, in our insatiable hunger for more, demand producers to create content at a rate that forces them to use standardized practices. Consumers are inherently impatient. In our constant begging for new media, producers use one set of production processes, causing them to essentially reproduce the same few pieces millions of times over. If consumers were willing to be patient and stop consuming the media made this way, it would be possible to change this culture.
References
Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, and Douglas Kellner (2012) ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ in
Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Horkheimer, M. et al. (2020) ‘Mass culture’, in Media and Communication. Sage Publications.
Walton, Stuart (2017) Theory from the Ruins. Aeon.Co
