Pre-Class "The Culture Industry"

I think Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s argument throughout “The Culture Industry” is one that I have also often find myself too proposing and is surely something that should be seen as worrisome for the future of mankind: the fact that modern capitalism has ultimately resulted in the dumbing down of our society. Much of their argument reminded me of Marx’s idea of a “false consciousness” in which people are ignorantly, not only participating in, but perpetuating an ideology that they have no idea is in existence and they have no idea they are playing a role which is aligned within a certain ideological framework. In order to conceptualize this idea, I often think of the individual constantly having to put on a sort of “performance” for both himself as well as others, a performance that is strategically planned out and executed flawlessly as promoted by the rest of society’s ideals. The consumer culture that has in recent times taken over, endlessly serves to position the individual as consumer, employing such tools as the media and advertising to manipulate this consumer into buying an endless array of things that are by no means necessary. It is this ultimate cycle of propaganda that occurs so inconspicuously that we do not even realize how we have been, for the most part, brainwashed. The notion of consumerism has become so engrained in the subject’s mind that it is now difficult for this individual, or subject, to distinguish between “reality” and an “illusory reality” created by this market-based ideology. It is stated that, “but freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or in the most intimate situation, the choice of words in conversation, and the whole inner life as classified by the now somewhat devalued depth psychology, bear witness to man’s attempt to make himself a proficient apparatus, similar (even in emotions) to the model served up by the culture industry” (71). And in the end, we are just that, all the same. We follow the same rules, align ourselves with the same expectations, perform in the same ways in order to “fit in” as “accepted societal members”. There is no longer a freedom of choice because all choices are the same. And there’s no escaping it. So, now the question is, how are we to make intellectual progress with these standing conditions?