Horkheimer and Adorno Post-Class

Even though I was not in class Thursday due to being sick, I still read “Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno and found it very interesting. They deal with a lot of what the other theorists we have looked at deal with as well: the idea that we live in consumer based society. They talk a lot about consumerism and capitalist society, which is something that Marx has talked about with his idea of commodity fetishism, which I learned about in CMC 100. Our society, especially nowadays, is capable of turning practically anything into a commodity and becoming obsessed with it. Look at popular culture and fashion: so many people will look at a celebrity… lets say Lady Gaga, and try and buy something even somewhat close to the outrageous pieces of clothing she wears. Horkheimer and Adorno also talk about how people are easily manipulated by the consumption of popular culture, which is very dangerous. The culture industries tend to create false needs for the consumer to make them buy their products. Many advertisements make you feel like you need to buy what is new, which relates back to when Habermans talks about “the cult of the new” and the idea that we live in a society that is constantly looking at what is bigger, better, and faster. We are always going to want to try the new invention and that is why we are a consumer based society-everything is aimed at the consumer in order to sell products. Horkheimer and Adorno say that we live in this type of mass produced culture even though many are in economic crisis’s, but do not even care because of how manipulated they are. This relates back to Marx when he talks about the binary oppositions of the American ruling class and how the idea that if people did not desire goods it does not function, so basically people want what they can’t have. Even though many people are in economic crisis’s, they still buy the products because they want what they cannot have.

“on my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this work”