In today’s society, it is not unreasonable to say that many (perhaps most) people feel rather powerless. When everything from politics to education seems overwhelming and inaccessible to the average person, we might feel inclined to turn toward something we think we do control: pop culture. However, philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno would argue in The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception that it is no different, that mass culture is simply another means of social control and capitalism.
Despite its publication nearly two decades ago, Horkheimer and Adorno’s work is increasingly relevant today. They discuss how each branch of culture, like film, music, magazines, and now social media, is a monopoly and business intended to benefit only the most powerful within the industry and in society. The idea that pop culture is swayed by or ‘for the people’ is not even an intentional (or particularly sly) facade by the culture industry, but rather a notion we voluntarily buy into.
Horkheimer and Adorno write, “Something is provided for everyone so that no one can escape; differences are hammered home and propagated. The hierarchy of serial qualities purveyed to the public serves only to quantify it more completely… The advantages and disadvantages debated by enthusiasts serve only to perpetuate the appearance of competition and choice.” This brings a somewhat recent cultural phenomenon to mind – ‘Barbenheimer.’ The simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer in the summer of 2023 sent people to theaters in hordes and stirred both the film industry and box offices in the wake of the pandemic. Together, the seemingly clashing movies grossed “the fourth-largest weekend in box office history,” according to Wikipedia, largely due to their pop cultural significance and virality on social media. These two films created the illusion of a cultural competition, when in reality, the winner would not be one movie or another as decided by the people. The real winner is the studio head, the producer, the industry; the cultural ‘moment’ is merely a gimmick.
The philosophers also touched on an adjacent issue plaguing contemporary culture, writing that “the technology of the culture industry confines itself to standardization and mass production and sacrifices what once distinguished the logic of the work from that of society.” Again using the film industry as a model, it’s becoming increasingly rare for movie studios to greenlight any project that does not have preexisting intellectual property (IP). At the expense of creative evolution, companies invest in reboots, prequels and sequels, as the IP has already proven profitable. Barbie is an example, as well as a number of major films from this year alone (Superman, Jurassic World Rebirth, Wicked: For Good, Downtown Abbey, etc). These works are not made for the people, as Horkheimer and Adorno theorize, but as long as consumers blindly comply, the culture industry will remain a deceptive game for only the powerful to play.
Adorno, Th. & Horkheimer, M. (2006). ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’. in: Durham, M.G. & D. Kellner (2006), Media and Cultural Studies: Key Work, Malden, MA: Blackwell, [pp. 41-72]
