One of the first things that struck me while reading this piece was the very first opening lines, explaining or pointing out rather the shift from religion to culture! Which I find scarily relevant to today. Neo-Conservatives argue that we have strayed away from morals, but our entire culture is a policing mechanism of “morality”. As they say it on the streets, everyone is put on “Full Blast”. It was so erie to read this and know that this is happening right now in our own very country. I grip and moan to my friends all the time about the lack of soul and talent in the music industry today and Horkheimer has been writing about this many years before. Therefore is this a continual process and does it take each individual country by storm?
Culture as the Mass Producer: Althussure talked about how Society and in the particular capatalist societies have been able to gain control of the masses by separating the labor from the person (mass production). And I think the Horkheimer would agree “the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of work and that of the social system.” I find it interesting that he used the word the logic of work rather than some other word, alluding to our more zombie like nature, in which we do not really think or analyze what it is that we are doing. In a way sleepwalking is the normal way for American’s to live. But to think that we are singular in this “progression” towards masked totalitarianism we are absolutely mistaken.
Horkheimer really delves into and uses the technological and architectural advances as a tool to illuminate this artificial framework. Which is interesting because in fact we are the result of the industrial revolution and the thought that continual modernization must occur in order to civilize the world.
to be continued…
Wow, reading your blog, I had a total deja-vu moment…when you say, “Neo-Conservatives argue that we have strayed away from morals, but our entire culture is a policing mechanism of “morality”” it sounds like Foucault-meets-entertainment industry and has twins-Adorno & Horkheimer. I’m not sure that Horkheimer & Adorno as are concerned with morality as you suggest. Rather, they seem to suggest that religion is just another institution. I’m totally going RSA & ISA here.
I’m glad it’s not just me, but I feel as if the industry of entertainment has far more power than should ever be allotted to it. I was trying to apply the idea that the worker leaves work & goes home to further the motions of the employee, and it was a bit difficult, since I leave class and just do homework. But, anywho, I can abstractly imagine a life in which I have free time and would ‘choose’ to do things that are ultimately work in my ‘free’ time.