Adorno and Horkheimer Pre Class

While reading Horkheimer and Adorno's essay, "The Culture Industry," a quote that really resonated with me is, "The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry. The familiar experience of the moviegoer, who perceives the street outside as a continuation of the film he has just left, because the film seeks strictly to reproduce the world of everyday perception" (45). I think that everyone could say that this quote could relate to an experience they have had after seeing a movie. There are many times that I catch myself related aspects of a film back to aspects of my own life or to aspects of people's lives that I am close to. In a way this comparison is inevitable. If a film is presented that encompasses many real life scenarios that someone can relate to, it would be impossible to not recognize that similarity. What is also difficult is to then not take the ideas and actions away from the film after it has ended. Those relatable situations could then serve as guidance to the real life situation. This is where who is in power of production becomes very important because they have to power to decide how those situations play out. So many films are created in this way that at a certain point viewers are able to fill in the plot even if distracted. When reading furhter in the same paragraph Horkheimer and Adorno explain, "Far more strongly than the theatre of illusion, film denies its audience any dimension in which they might roam freely in imagination - contained by the film's framework but unsupervised by its precise actualities - without losing the thread; thus it trains those exposed to it to identify film directly with reality" (45). By film denying any imagination, the viewers will not be able to think beyond the framework and ideology that is presented in the film. This training to identify with film can sometimes pose a threat to the viewers as seen by the stories shown in the media about the individuals who became depressed after viewing the film Avatar. The viewers felt this way because of the tendency to compare film to real life.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-11/entertainment/avatar.movie.blues_1_pandora-depressed-posts?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ