Originally scripted for video at PlasticPills | March 2, 2020
Delivered as a lecture at Monterrey Institute of Technology | March 3, 2020
Adapted into a chapter for Liberalism and Socialism | September 24, 2021
Misconceptions about Adorno
When one brings up Theodor Adorno’s name among the left, it often invokes some knee-jerk reactions, usually from people who have not sufficiently engaged with his ideas. For this reason, any discussion of Adorno’s thought must first address some common misconceptions:
Misconception: “Adorno is an elitist!”[1]
Reality: Elitism suggests that select individuals should be the gatekeepers of specialized knowledge, but this does not actually describe Adorno’s position. Rather, Adorno’s critiques are with the culture industry— not individuals’ tastes— and how it manipulates the masses from reaching a higher potential. Unlike the view of an elitist, Adorno does believe that the people have the capacity for aesthetic and intellectual refinement, but we are hindered by the various ways that capitalism manipulates us. His views are, in fact, the opposite of elitism.
Misconception: “Adorno hates jazz!”
Reality: Adorno’s critiques on jazz were informed by his training in music theory and were written before jazz developed into a more complex form in the postwar years. With some exceptions, most jazz from the 1920s through the 1940s was an amalgam of spirituals, blues, and swing that formed a popular style of dance music. The term “jazz” was used to denote a wide range of popular music during this period. While admired by people of all backgrounds, at this time, jazz still adhered to a formulaic structure that early record companies capitalized on. After the war, however, jazz evolved from swing music to more sophisticated forms known as bebop and cool jazz. At this point, jazz became something more complex and innovative, quite different from the standardized forms in which Adorno was referring.[2] To say, then, that Adorno’s dislike of jazz is evidence of his elitism is taking his judgments out of context, both musically and historically. It is important to keep in mind as well that Adorno originally wished to be a composer, not a theorist, so his dedication to high art was not rooted in snobbery but his own passions. He did not just preach about the importance of high art, but he practiced it as well by composing a series of avant-garde pieces himself and holding modernist art in the highest regard.[3]
Misconception: “Adorno hates all pop culture!”
Reality: Adorno’s critiques are not so much about the pop culture products themselves, or even our enjoyment of guilty pleasures, but his beef is with the industry that produces them and how their sole purpose is to be mass-manufactured and mass-marketed for profit. In this system, products are not created for artistic or intellectual development—they are only made for mass consumption. In other words, the products of “pop culture” are made for one reason: to make us buy them.[4]
Misconception: “Adorno doesn’t care about revolution!”
Reality: This misconception is arguably the most egregious and demonstrates a complete lack of engagement with his work. While Adorno was not an activist, he was indeed a Marxist, and his entire analysis of the culture industry is motivated by trying to figure out how the culture industry stifles revolution. It is exactly because of the nightmare of fascism that Adorno sought to understand how people can become dominated by capitalism, and what would be required to be liberated from it.[5] The reality is that, in Adorno’s time and through to today, revolutionary attempts have been hindered or shut down completely. Since the working class does hold the power to revolt, Adorno asked what was holding us back. These inquiries are not defeatist, but rather, they are vitally important questions that we must address. Radicals should not only look to successes of the left, but also to its failures, and must parse the reasons why the left has not yet abolished capitalism. Adorno sought to figure out this dilemma, and anyone who truly cares about revolution should heed his analyses.
The Culture Industry
So then, what were Adorno’s arguments about the culture industry and pop culture? To clarify, when we say “pop culture,” we do not simply mean practices that have been popularized from below by regular people— that is usually called “folk culture.” Rather, pop culture is the collection of cultural products that have been created by the culture industry and marketed by the mass media from the top down. In other words, the cultural products that are created, marketed, and distributed for mass consumption make up what we call “pop culture.”
In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and his colleague Max Horkheimer sought to explore why the oppressiveness of capitalism did not spur revolution as Marxists had hoped. A key cause, in their view, was the dominance of mass culture. Capitalist society produces cultural products like a factory: it pumps out cheap forms of entertainment intended to stimulate consumerism and produce profits.[6] It is not concerned with the creation of high art or intellectual development. Walter Benjamin, Adorno’s mentor, articulated this idea in his work The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which argued that the mechanical, factory-like reproduction of art diminishes its aesthetic value.[7] Public taste in this regard is not so much organic as it is cultivated by a profit-motivated industry. Actual art, according to Adorno, would challenge us and challenge the system. He notes that true art “respects the masses by confronting them as that which they could be rather than conforming to them in their degraded state.”[8]
Benjamin was a bit more hopeful than Adorno, though, thinking that popular culture, specifically film, had the potential for stimulating democratic action. Adorno, however, only saw the culture industry as maintaining and perpetuating capitalism. As of the twenty-first century, Adorno’s views have proven more accurate than Benjamin’s expectations.
For Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry creates false needs to keep us purchasing products we do not actually need by manipulating our psychological impulses and desires. Fellow Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse explores this phenomenon in his book Eros and Civilization, where he argues that freedom and creativity are stifled by having to sell one’s labor in mechanized fashion. His view, along with Adorno’s, is both a Marxist analysis of the alienation of labor and a Freudian analysis of how institutional repression affects our psychology.[9] Key to this notion is the way the culture industry creates simple and familiar pleasures that feed into our desire for instant and easy gratification. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the culture industry “is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together. Even the aesthetic manifestations of political opposites proclaim the same inflexible rhythm… All mass culture under monopoly is identical… Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce.”[10]
We can see examples of this phenomenon in practically all areas of pop culture: fashion, movies, music, and television. Take for instance the phenomenon of superhero movies. These tales are now remade over and over: prequels, sequels, reboots, spinoffs. In the 1980s, about half of the top grossing films were based on original stories. By 2020, only about five percent of the highest grossing films were based on original stories.[11] That these movies are called “franchises” should be a clue that they are a business, plain and simple.
These pitfalls of the culture industry extend past the realm of music and movies and into the wider world of consumer products. A perfect example of this is the toothpaste aisle. The main ingredient in all toothpaste brands is fluoride, and it is usually the same percentage too. Yet, companies create commercials advertising a wide range of false needs that require fixing, and then they produce an endless array of products advertised to fit those needs, giving us the illusion that we have freedom of choice. These needs and desires are then promoted through pop culture mediums: television, music, and movies all embed these products into their universe as a form of advertising. Additionally, the phenomenon creates a normalizing effect, giving us the illusion that being surrounded by consumer products is a natural way of life. Put simply, the products of consumer capitalism go hand-in-hand with the culture industry that promotes them. The culture industry is not concerned with making high art— it is concerned with selling products and making profits.
Adorno’s critiques do not end there, however. After a long day of having our labor exploited, we are tired— we are not looking for art that challenges us. Instead, we want art that is safe and comfortable— art that makes us passive enough to not rise up against the oppressive system. It would not be in the culture industry’s interest to make “art” that stimulates us to revolt against the system that supports it. Karl Marx discusses this concept in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, where he argues that, in the same way workers are estranged from the fruits of their labor, we are also separated from artistic production, and exploitation prevents us from having the freedom to organically create: “What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor? Just as in religion, the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him—that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity—so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions—eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc., and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.”[12]
Now, these critiques on pop culture have caused some to mislabel Adorno as elitist. But his critique is not with individual people’s tastes. Rather, Adorno’s argument is twofold: 1) that capitalist control of culture turns art into product, and that means pumping out cheaper, formulaic products intended to increase profit; and 2) that in order to do so, the culture industry specifically makes entertainment that plays to our psychological instinct to avoid rationality and lean toward that which is comfortable and familiar (thus not revolting against the system).
Why is this important? In other words, why should we care that the culture industry has so much influence on our lives? The answer is that the culture industry and the media— our main source of information about the political world— are intimately connected. Consider these important facts: One-sixth of all jobs in the U.S. are advertising-based. Ninety percent of U.S. media is owned by just six companies, all of which are entertainment companies, aka, the culture industry. It is through this media that the majority of people get their information about politics, everything from low-level new reporting to the actions of those in the highest positions in government.[13]
Here we see how politics and pop culture are intertwined: the culture industry not only needs to remain profitable, but they intentionally stifle revolution to keep us as passive consumers, which also means we are predominantly consuming carefully manufactured political information as well. Here is the most insidious part, though: The culture industry is aware that we are not stupid. We all know that working under capitalism is horrible and that we would like to rebel against the system. And we are not blind to the world’s injustices either. So, the culture industry actually uses this awareness to its own advantage by incorporating notions of rebellion or social justice in their pop culture products, which gives us the sense of mentally participating in anti-capitalist sentiments without actually acting on them in any way that would fundamentally undermine the system.
Mark Fisher explored this idea in his book Capitalist Realism, which argued that consumer capitalism has become so ubiquitous in modern society that even having explicitly anti-capitalist themes in pop culture does not affect the existence of capitalism in any meaningful way. In fact, it actually reinforces capitalism. He notes that “capitalist realism… is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.”[14]
In essence, the culture industry takes our legitimate sentiments regarding social justice causes or rebellion against the system and inserts them into the pop culture products it sells us. In turn, we continue to purchase these products because they feed our need to feel as if we are somehow making a difference. Examples of commodified rebellion in culture industry products are endless. Take for instance the way Beyoncé is labeled a “feminist” as a key part of the marketing of her “brand.” Beyoncé is one of the world’s richest celebrities, currently worth over $400 million.[15]
Or consider the recent movie Joker, which addressed the negative consequences of capitalism and even explicitly suggested rebellion against it. Joker has grossed over $1 billion, making it one of the most profitable films of all time.[16] So far, these revolutionary sentiments have yet to be carried out, despite the film’s reach and popularity.
Rather than suffering from bringing these ideas into music and film, the culture industry actually benefits from their inclusion. The rebellion trope is incredibly profitable for the culture industry. In the same way that “sex sells,” ideology also sells. The culture industry picks up on popular ideologies and sells them back to us. Cultural rebellion is used as a marketing gimmick to provide a safe way to capture our frustrations with capitalism but never actually lead us to challenge the system itself.[17]
Arguably one of the most devious ways the culture industry manipulates us is by convincing us that we can solve injustices through consumerism. This tactic uses legitimate social justice issues as a way to stimulate an emotional connection in order to sell products. Adorno explains that the “triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.”[18]
We know deep down that buying Pepsi or Nike will not solve the unjust and persistent problem of police violence, but that does not stop the culture industry from marketing them as such, nor does it stop us from buying them. As cultural critic Terry Eagleton put it: “Nothing is more generously inclusive than the commodity, which in its disdain for distinctions of rank, class, race, and gender will nestle up to anyone at all, provided they have the wherewithal to buy it.”[19]
These realities are daunting, hence why Adorno has gained the reputation for being pessimistic. But his ultimate goal was not simply to be a downer. Rather, Adorno wanted to understand how capitalism, especially through the culture industry, exploits us and pervades our everyday lives so that we could figure out how to liberate ourselves from it. Essentially, the underlying message is that liberation cannot happen if we remain blind and complacent to the system that oppresses us— it can only happen when the people rise up and revolt against it.
Footnotes:
[1] Corey Mohler, “Adorno Returns,” Existential Comics.
[2] For more information on the history of jazz, see generally: Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Scott Deveaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Lewis MacAdams, Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde (New York: The Free Press, 2001); Kenny Mathieson, Giant Steps: Bebop and the Creators of Modern Jazz, 1945–65 (London: Canongate, 1999); Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz (New York: Continuum Books, 2007).
[3] Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: A Biography (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 67–119.
[4] Owen Hulatt, “Against Guilty Pleasures: Adorno on the Crimes of Pop Culture,” Aeon, February 20, 2018. See also: Owen Hulatt, Adorno’s Theory of Philosophical and Aesthetic Truth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 161–174.
[5] For more on Adorno and the rise of fascism, see: Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (London: Verso, 2019).
[6] Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2007), 94–136.
[7] Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Somerset: Prism Key Press, 2010). See also: John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 32–34.
[8] Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Continuum Books, 1997), 313.
[9] Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 159–237.
[10] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94–95.
[11] Matthew Ball, “The Absurdities of Franchise Fatigue and Sequelitis; Or, What Is Happening to the Box Office? Redef, August 1, 2019; Stephen Follows, “How Original Are Hollywood Movies?” Film Data and Education, June 8, 2015.
[12] Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: Dover Books, 2007), 72–73.
[13] For more on media consolidation in the U.S., see generally: Ben Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New York: The New Press, 1999); Eli Noam, Media Ownership and Concentration in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[14] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (London: Zero Books, 2009), 16.
[15] Hillary Hoffower and Dominic-Madori Davis, “What Is Beyoncé’s Net Worth?” Business Insider, Dec 9, 2019.
[16] Scott Mendelson, “Box Office: ‘Joker’ Tops $1 Billion,” Forbes, November 15, 2019.
[17] For more on the notion of commodified rebellion, see: Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
[18] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 136.
[19] Terry Eagleton, Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 32.
By Shalon van Tine