Have you ever watched a film and felt like you already knew how it would end? A looming sense of familiarity washing over you a, the characters might be different, but the story feels familiar. There is a problem, a dramatic setback, and eventually a victory! This familiarity offers a starting point for understanding the culture industry: a theory that questions what happens when culture is organised around making money.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, (associated with the Frankfurt School) argued that entertainment under capitalism increasingly followed the logic of industrial production. Movies, radio programmes and magazines became commercial products created solely for mass consumption. Their concern was that profit and repetition could take priority over creativity and independent thought (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002).
A central feature of this argument is standardisation. Cultural products may look different while following similar formulas. Let’s take a Marvel and DC movie. Two different main characters, two different superheroes, two different costumes, powers, and settings yet their journey often involves discovering their main ability, facing an enemy that opposes their ideaology and then saving the day. Both can be enjoyable, yet their differences might conceal how much of their structure remains the same.
From my perspective, it becomes interesting to think about sequels. If audiences reconginze a character, care about their story, another instalment can seem appealing before anyone’s watched it. For a studio deciding where to invest, that familiarity tends to become commercially attractive. An unfamiliar story, however, is scary to them. It doesn’t prove a sequel lacks creativity but can raise questions in regards to which ideas receive support.
However, Adorno and Horkheimer were concerned with more than predictable stories. They argued that entertainment could offer temporary relief while encouraging acceptance of existing social conditions. Someone exhausted by work might escape into a film, feel better and return to the same routine. From this perspective, leisure can help sustain the system that makes escape attractive in the first place.
I find this argument useful, although it risks underestimating audiences. Enjoying a superhero film does not mean accepting every message it contains. Viewers can question its politics, challenge its representation of different groups or disagree about its ending. Familiar stories can also inspire discussion and creativity. Commercial production does not determine what a cultural product means to the people encountering it.
Walter Benjamin offered a different perspective on mass media. He recognised that reproduction weakened an artwork’s unique presence, which he described through the concept of aura. However, he also explored how photography and cinema could expand access and create possibilities for collective, critical engagement (Benjamin, 1936). His perspective suggests that mass communication can support change as well as conformity.
For me, the culture industry encourages a thoughtful relationship with entertainment. Instead of only asking whether a film is enjoyable, we can ask who produced it, why it received funding and whose perspectives it makes visible. We can appreciate familiar characters while remaining curious about stories outside established formulas. The next time a film feels predictable, consider what that familiarity offers audiences and what it offers the company selling it. Those interests may overlap, but they are worth examining separately.
References
Benjamin, W. (1936) ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’. Translated by H. Zohn. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm (Accessed: 19 October 2026).
Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T.W. (2002) ‘The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception’, in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Translated by E. Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 94–136. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804788090-007.
