In the eyes of Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry is simply a large machine bent on creating a sort of social norm by subtly assigning values to "art" that surrounds us. My confusion remains simple. Why do they do this? They mention that the "culture" is influenced in accordance to the governing body at the present time but what if the heads of the culture industry disapprove of the political heads? What do the cultural puppet-masters have to gain by this sort of mass hypnosis taking place? They gain a level of subconscious control over the individual yet that control is purely subconscious, holding no control over peoples ability to rationalize. Not to mention, what of those that fall out of the "system" established here?
Personally I feel as though the power of an individual mind is consistently underestimated by most sociologists. There always seems to be the general assumption that we are under a level of control at all times by a corporation or governing body. The idea always seems to be that we as people are simply products to be swayed in one direction or another but how can any industry attempting mass control predict how people will react to a certain stimuli?
Each mind is unique unto itself. Each reaction is unique unto the person. Though theoretically it seems feasible to control a large number of people on the assumption that they all think alike, yet the practical applications are extremely limited. No company no matter how great can predict the reaction of each individual to an individual stimuli. Of course this is personal speculation but the idea that mass influence is so simple does not seem plausible.
No comments:
Post a Comment