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Adorno and Horkheimers Culture Industry

Culture industries according to Adorno and Horkheimer, are all about fooling people

and making them lose their uniqueness. It is an industry because constantly a trend starts and

makes people think that they really need what that trend serves. Some brands appear and

everyone wants to own a piece of it. Nobody is interested in the materialistic value; the

important part is the brands value. Adorno and Horkheimer give the idea that all of this is the

proof that everybodys minds can be controlled by some virtual world. This world also

diminishes everyones originality which creates monotypic people who are following each other

like a huge flock.

The introduction that made by a producer of Matador Records which is regarding an old

band and their new song is a good example of how people are manipulated: Weve not had a

record in our recent history thats been the subject of nearly as much speculation and

anticipation. Suffice to say were pretty amazed at the way the band delivered something this

neoteric while still sounding like, well, themselves. This quote is a proof that everybody is

becoming the same. Everybodys passions are the same and according to this industry their

needs are the same. The band is an old band, their type of music is the same, but it is new.

And everybody wants that new thing in order to fit in.

As we look to the quote on another hand, the quote itself is manipulating. The producer

of Matador Records claims that the record made a great speculation and that everybody is

waiting for it. Maybe this is not the fact. Maybe the producer is trying to bring a new trend by

using these sentences. Because the fact is getting, owning what everybody wants and talking

about how everybody wants it and how everybody is waiting for it makes that brand or product

even more hot. People will rush to get that new product that everybody likes so that they do

not feel left out.

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All of these marketing principles are actually directly controlling peoples minds. One

of the biggest fears that people have is being left out and this virtual world gives an opportunity

of being a part of the society. People believe that owning something; a brand, a product which

is popular in the society will make them accepted by that society. Unfortunately, in a lot of

cases this is true and according to Adorno and Horkheimer even the things that are considered

as art are not art anymore and everything has become a part of materialism.

Asli Zeren

10/21/2009

Works Cited

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Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass

Deception from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944; trans. 1972; rpt. New York: Continuum

Publishing, 1989), pp. 120-167.