Talk:Culture industry

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This is a collision of the contents of this original page and a page entitled "Cultural industry" which addressed the same topic. As a first step towards producing a merged page, I have completely recast the opening material and segued into a moderately coherent rump of the original material. Feel free to pitch in and both simply the concepts and distill down the length.

For the record, the old page "Cultural industry" now has a proposed different use and could also use your TLC. -David91 19:06, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have now completed a review of the material relevant to Culture Industry. I have moved the residual rump to "Reverse Psychology" as a first step in redistributing the overlong and mixed topic material to more suitable venues. -David91 11:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have moved the element on astrology to the Astrology pages. -David91 05:42, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Enjoyment

Critics of the theory say that the products of mass culture would not be popular if people did not enjoy them

Why is this a critique of the theory of the culture industry? Who has denied that people enjoy pop music or Hollywood movies? Adorno might call this enjoyment superficial or escapist, but he would not deny the obvious fact that it can only be succesful by enjoying its audience. I suggest a reformulation or removal of that "critique" --Sangild 15:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

If the function of the culture industry is to produce popular content, this raises the issue of cause and effect. Adorno posits that the popularity of the content is exploited to achieve the effect of passivity in the audience for political purposes. But an equally valid explanation is that, in a capitalist system, the drive to produce popular material satisfies purely commercial aims. As it stands, I see no problem with the spirit of the wording. David91 16:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Misunderstanding Historical Materialism

Under "Elements" in the this explanation of Adorno's Culture Industry Marx's theory of Historical Materialism is described as teleological. This is wrong: understanding Marx's theory as teleological or eschatalogical completely neglects the historical specificity of Marx's critique. Pace those who have read the Communist Manifesto, and possibly the German Ideology, Marx denies the existence of a History (capital H) providing us with a historically specific critique of the capitalist mode of production. The idea of a Hegelian identical subject-object (the proletariat according to Lukacs) unfolding throughout history and realizing itself in a Communist society is incorrect. In fact, this identical subject-object that unfolds, not throughout History, but rather, throughout capitalism, is capital. The explanation of Marxian theory as teleological perpetuates the traditional understanding of Marx's theory and robs it of the insight that it provides us with. Please remove this section of the description of the Culture Industry. 128.135.96.210 22:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)Van Kluytenaar