Reflecting back onto Horkheimer and Adorno, there is much that I can see in my day to day life. Something that stuck with me was the quote "To be entertained is to be in agreement". I found this fascinated because I can see it happening all around me, even I do it. The idea behind this is that one individual can find something interesting and entertaining if a group of people do. We are followers, we will find excitement or entertainment in things if others do themselves Relating back to my last post, we can see that this agreement leads to sameness. If we are blindly following the group, we will become that group of sheep; not asking questions nor thinking for ourselves. This only encourages the lack of originality and authenticity.
Leading this in another direction, we could say that this would make us powerless. It gives us a lack of a voice, a lack of our own individual opinions, and a lack of personal power. This powerlessness can be seen, in an obvious way, in our media. Amusement makes its way to the front of powerlessness. We joke at what we cannot change, because we feel helpless in such a way that we must find something to follow, some group that will make it better, because it will numb the horrors of the world. Not only do we become numb to the tragedies, but they also become routinized. Tragedies become statistics we hear in the background of the news. We stop imagining the lives of people we are bombing, we stop picturing the children of the dying soldiers, we only see them as meaningless numbers fixed into the pixels on our screens. We hear them only as soundbites on the radio, as we go about on our day-to-day lives.
Although we live in a world where tragedies surround us in everything we do, we can not see them all. We cannot live our lives in constant fear, sadness and anger at the unforgiving world. Yet we should not escape from the horrors, through the horrors. We cannot make fun the starving children, to help us forget that our lives, and others lives are filled with tragedies.
"Today my body was a TV'd massacre, made to fit into soundbites and word limits."
The video above expresses many very important things, yet relating to Horkheimer and Adorno, I want to express the importance of the quote above. I want us to realize how the deaths of hundreds, thousands of people becomes soundbites and word limits.
"Even the aesthetic manifestations of polictical opposites proclaim the same inflexible rhythm" (53).
I really liked the example that Ivan gave about the toothpaste. It is crazy how many products in this world are the same essentially. I also think the introduction of newer products of those products are kind of stupid. The iPhone 6 is the same thing as the iPhone 5 but bigger and it has a better camera and probably faster maybe. Having a smart phone is really nice and I like it better than the razor or another flip phone but I don't need the iPhone 6 because it is essentially the same.
The sameness problem is a problem in America. Television shows are affected by this. Shows that do really well are sometimes against the culturally norm of TV shows. On main network TV usually there is a certain plot or structure within the family that creates this sameness. Which is a problem in it self because this reinforces constant ideologies. How a family is supposed to act or how people look. I am fan of the show "New Girl" because it is different than most shows. Now it is a comedy so it does not really challenge the mind but the characters are very different than most characters on TV shows, but the writers seem to write in problems they face that every character in TV shows face. Sometimes they do not though and that's when I love it. Another show that I liked was called "Raising Hope." It showed this average American family but there was no picket fence and the parents did make much money but they all loved each other and it was a funny show. The show supported the ideology of marriage because the mom and dad had been married since they were 18 and their son gets married in the show as if that is the ultimate goal. "Raising Hope" was fun to watch because the family did not fit the sameness as most families on TV are portrayed. The show has been cancelled this past year but they are showing re-runs on FX.
“The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture
industry. The familiar experience of the moviegoer, who perceives the street
outside as a continuation of the film he has just left, because the film seeks
strictly to reproduce the world of everyday perception, has become the
guideline of production.” (56)
In this
quote, Max Horkenheimer and Theodor W. Adorno are assessing the complications
of capitalism’s hyper-commodification of reality and how the blending of
fiction with reality poses significant consequences. The text uses the example
of the moviegoer and I would like to piggy-back off of this example to further
discern the omnipresence the filter of the cultural industry has over our
society. Blending reality and fiction is incredibly dangerous because as
previous theorists Pierre Macherey and Walter Benjamin have noted, reproduction
of the image without a fixed referent produces a distinct entity. This distinct
entity and its lost referent create a disjuncture between true knowledge and knowledge
equivalent to simple hot-air.
Moreover,
once the filter of the culture industry is applied, the referent is further
convoluted. To express just how extensive the filter of the culture industry
can be, I will re-examine Adorno and Horkenheimer’s moviegoer. The moviegoer
sees reality and fiction blurred so masterfully that they become one and the
same. Thus, blockbusters like Marvel’s The
Avengers (2012) can subtly yet repeatedly reproduce commodities within the
film and outward to affect reality. For instance, the use of Acura as the only
distinct vehicle in the film creates an impression of Acura that has no credible
value to its actual cars, however it is depicted as heroic and ideal in the
film.
In
addition, the filter of the culture industry is evident in working outward from
the film. In particular, the food industry adopts fictional characters to sell
their products in a way that paints them as necessity. Considering their global
scale, McDonald’s may be the most dangerous of the restaurants to exercise this
practice. Not only do they offer toys from films within the kid’s meals,
McDonald’s also implements commercials insinuating powerful protagonists from
the latest film and superstar athletes alike are fueled by their food. When in
actuality, neither the real heroes of sports or the fictional heroes of film
partake exclusively in McDonald’s meals. In summation, my analysis shows the
extent to which reality and fiction are conflated, as well as the effectiveness
and universality of the filter of the culture industry.
Schools are institutionalized and thus must all agree to teach in similar fashions, however, during one of our previous discussions one of our classmates brought up the point that their history professor refused to tell the one sided story presented in the common textbook. Many of us need a small push before we can think for ourselves but once those doors are open, it is difficult to believe any one thing that is taught. Thom others can be a bad thing. Because of our nature, it is difficult for any person to present an unbiased version of any story.
A personal example I can think of occurred after my transition from General Chemistry to Organic Chemistry. We were taught, in general chemistry and in high school chemistry, that electrons circled the proton/neutron in very definite circles, however one of the first things we learned in organic chemistry is that those circles were actually clouds. Those clouds *could* contain an electron but there was no guarantee. That one change made it difficult for many of us to grasp the new concept. My takeaway was that sometimes it can be beneficial to "simplify" explanations rather than attempt to teach an overly complicated topic in an introductory course.
There is a thin line that people must tread between gullibility and skepticism. In theory, thinking for oneself is a great idea but like most things, if taken to an extreme, forcing oneself to avoid learning from others can be a bad thing. Because of our nature, it is difficult for any person to present an unbiased version of any story.
After discussing Horkheimer and Adorno in class on Thursday, I kept thinking about the concept of sameness in our society. I started to think about all the ways that sameness is perpetuated, both directly and indirectly in my life and in those I observe around me.
For a media text, I remembered the song Ordinary Human by One Republic that is featured in the new film, The Giver. See music video inserted above.
Throughout the lyrics, the idea of sameness is perpetuated. At one point it is sung that "And in the daylight I could swear, we're the same". When the song talks about how they're all the same, it further goes on to say "But I'm just an ordinary human". In the movie the citizens are all medicated so that they don't feel emotions or have memories. Because of this, society regulates the individual, perpetuating essentially the same "picture perfect human" that is sung about in the song.
This goes along with a lot of what Horkheimer and Adorno have to say. We are made aware that culture today is infected with sameness and that is it really hard to get outside of that. Without being medicated like the individuals in The Giver, we are perhaps "conditioned" or medicated in our own way. With consumerism and capitalism especially we have come to believe we all need the best items and society clings to the ideas of power and dominance.
It's really interesting in my opinion to think about all of this, and especially throughout the Halloween weekend, I definitely saw lots of this perpetuated. One quote that we talked about in class, "The dominant taste derives its ideal from the advertisement from commodified beauty" was really in play over the weekend. We can think about the cookie-cutter type ideologies that exist in our culture and about how they extend into our social spheres. Over the weekend I saw sexy nurse costumes, sexy animals, sexy maids, sexy school girls and many more. On the other hand, I didn't see any women reflected in roles of power such as CEO's or doctors or lawyers. I mentioned this to one of my best friends, in which she replied, "well no one is going to pay attention to me, or even know what I'm trying to be if I dress up as a CEO". So our culture has perpetuated these ideas of patriarchy and gender roles as normative, all the while furthering these ideas of sameness that make all women dress up in these roles. I don't believe I saw one college girl, or woman my age, dressed up in something NOT in attempt to appearing sexy and more often than not submissive.
Just a little something I observed over the weekend that I thought could relate to our discussion on Thursday. See each woman picks their costume believing in their individuality, however, pseudo individuality is clearly at play. Which is really perpetuated by the reproduction of such costumes and ideologies by consumerism. I guess women believe that if they buy the sexy french maid costume, men will notice them and they'll finally stand out. Thus giving them the power that the quote above talks about. But really, they are participating in the ideology of patriarchy and further participating in mass consumerism culture.
The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
As stated in class, Adorno and Horkheimer have pointed out that as one product or subject advances, several successors arise all promoting their differences while hiding their similarities. During class, I used toothpaste as an example of how the new products all stem from the same basic need and upon more reflection, I came to understand that the desire for the faster and stronger product would not be possible without the consumer backing. As a product continues to expand, there is little room to make bigger changes so in order to counteract the slow progress, the smaller new traits are magnified and presented as revolutionary. Every new product must be flashy and must give off the illusion of happiness. The mass population must be deceived into believing that the only path to happiness is through this new product. If a product can convince an individual that the majority of the population believes in that particular subject, the individual will feel pressured to conform, "entertained means to be in agreement" (64). An individual will stand in line more times than they will risk standing out because society tends to punish those who stir up too much change.
When we were discussing Horkheimer and Adorno in class on Thursday, we looked at many quotes from the reading that made me think about how culture is created. The quote at the beginning, “culture today is infecting everything with sameness,” made me think about how much we try to stand out and be individual in an increasingly conformity-based society. A lot of us like to think we’re individual and special. We like to tell ourselves “everyone is special” and “everyone is different.” But isn’t saying “everyone is special” essentially the same thing as saying no one is? None of us are really individuals because we are all the products of our culture. We all do things we think will make us stand out, but we’re really just following what the culture tells us to. This whole thought process makes me think of the scene in The Incredibles where Syndrome is divulging his plan to be super to a captured Mr. Incredible and his family.
He tells them, “when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can be super... And when everyone is super, no one will be.” Syndrome grew up in a culture that made him believe that being super will make him special and individual, and he spends most of his life chasing this unachievable dream. This leads him to want to “infect... everything with sameness” as Horkheimer and Adorno put it. He decides that if he can’t be special, no one should be.
