ZUR 393k: Effects of Mass Media • key argument, responses to, and echoes of FS • key concepts: • authenticity / high, mid or mass, folk culture • branding • public sphere Outline for 7 September / Adorno & Frankfurt School “Updated” Concerned with media effects on two levels: • PRODUCTION TEXT • TEXT AUDIENCE Adorno’s analysis of popular culture PRODUCTION (music/entertainment industry) • monopolization • “Films, radio, television make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part. . . . . Under monopoly all mass culture is identical” (“The Culture Industry” 349). • structural standardization • repetition • pseudo-individualization • “glamor” • baby talk (Adorno, “OPM,” 21) CONSUMER (Audience) “structural standardization aims at standard reactions” work and leisure “Amusement under late capitalism is a prolongation of work. . . . [M]echanization has such a power over a man’s leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work process itself” (Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry,” p. 361). “The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery.” (“The Culture Industry,” p. 365) http://theculturefix.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_archive.html • explicitly critiques the rationale that media simply give the consumer what s/he wants • “The people clamor for what they are going to get anyhow” (OPM, 38). Entertainment and Pleasure “Pleasure hardens into boredom, because if it is to remain pleasurable it must not demand any effort" (“The Culture Industry,” p. 361) "Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness; it is flight; not--as it is asserted-- from a wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of resistance” (“The Culture Industry,” p. 367) “What is decisive today is . . . the necessity inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible.” (“The Culture Industry,” p. 365) “The most mortal of sins in this culture is to be an outsider.” (“The Culture Industry,” p. 371) Political potential for popular culture/popular music ? See Adorno on “social cement/psychic adjustment” “OPM,” pp. 39-42 “Theodor Adorno: Music and Protest” B. Ricardo Brown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-njxKF8CkoU&feature=related Political potential for popular culture/popular music ? surge of interest in late 1960s and 1970s • Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man surge of interest in late 1960s and 1970s • Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man Reception of FS Writings Two Primary Critiques of FS 1. viewed as conservative and elitist A. can be extended to critique high art B. resource: NPR story “From the Top” http:// www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=112525874 (Sept. 5, 2009) (“retreat to the Grand Hotel abyss”) Doug Anderson from Blues for Unemployed Secret Police (2000) Answering Adorno To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. - Theodor Adorno Since you doomed poetry nothing has changed. People are the same, maybe worse. In Bosnia they have raped by battalions, nailed children to doors, rubbled fine old Europe block by block, and the new evil pours into the deep cup with the evil I have already seen, overflowing. Convention demands that I mortify something. My flesh. My heart. Any joy I might have on this April day with forsythia suddenly everywhere and the willows aching green gold. Adorno, your words are like snow lingering where shade and wind hold out against the sun. Two Primary Critiques of FS critique of FS view -- total encapsulation of the audience / false consciousness “Spontaneity is consumed by the tremendous effort which each individual has to make in order to accept what is enforced upon him. . . . In order to become a jitterbug or simply to ‘like’ popular music, it does not by any means suffice to give oneself up and to fall in line passively. To become transformed into an insect, man needs that energy which might possibly achieve his transformation into a man” (OPM, 48) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake I shake it off, I shake it off "When philosophers, who are well known to have difficulty keeping silent, engage in conversation, they should always try to lose the argument, but in such a way as to convict their opponent of untruth." Adorno Adorno Changed My Life (2011) https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=culAyM0neMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ Frankfurt School “Updated” concerns with state of contemporary popular culture (in some cases esp. with popular music) Niedviecki • relationship between popular culture and individual identity • media narratives internalized • relationship between popular culture and individual identity • media narratives internalized Cisco: “Welcome to the Human Network” Merchants of Cool (2002) PBS: Frontline authenticity Dwight Macdonald “A Theory of Mass Culture” (1953) “For about a century,Western culture has really been two cultures: the traditional kind -- let us call it ‘High Culture’ -- that is chronicled in the textbooks, and a ‘Mass Culture’ manufactured wholesale for the market” (59). • high culture depends on exacting standards and discriminating judgments • mass culture is imposed from above, an instrument of political domination Lawrence Levine • Highbrow / Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988) • “The aficionados of any cultural genre can become stubbornly elitist and insular in their conviction that the sun shines brightest in their own cultural backyards” (255). http:// latimesblogs.latimes.com/ music_blog/2009/12/pop- music-notes-on-the- decade-authenticity-takes- a-holiday.html http://www.cnn.com/ 2014/09/08/showbiz/ music/rock-is-dead-gene- simmons-esquire/ http://www.psmag.com/ culture-society/lana-del-rey- hip-hop-grunge-rick-ross- authentic-music-50442/ “ambivalence, spite, fury” (OPM, 42) http:// www.rollingstone.com /music/lists/teardrops- on-her-guitar-taylor- swifts-10-countriest- songs-20140908 • folk culture is “genuine”; poor people participate in its production released 2000; 5 Grammies 2002 released 1997; Grammy 1998 (Forever) 27 Club DIY Culture (multiplicity) “Our argument is that in the system of bifurcated art worlds—self-production and traditional—the freedom allowed by self-production siphons off the most creative artists into a system of production that generates products that are unlikely to reach a mass audience, are unlikely to receive critical acclaim, and ultimately unlikely to be influential or to have lasting value. At the same time, less-creative artists, who are willing to submit to manipulation by the music industry, are left to produce a large body of popular music even more vacuous than has been the case in the past” (Ryan and Hughes 251). http:// www.huffingtonpo st.com/tag/ youtube- sensations/ http://www.bet.com/ shows/lets-stay- together/photos/famous- youtube- sensations.html#! 011912-shows-lets-stay- together-you-tube- randall-the-honey- badger http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/2013/10/top-10-youtube-sensations http://www.karminmusic.com/us/home http:// kiss951.cbslocal.com/ 2013/07/30/10-steps- to-becoming-a- youtube-sensation/ http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/oct/06/bo-burnhams-make-happy-review-youtube-sensations-growing-pains Miles concludes: “It is precisely because consumerism allows the individual to construct his or her own meanings, while constructing consumerism as the only legitimate way of life, that we need to look at the complex interrelationships involved in the music industry.” (p. 124) Branding Defined • more than a logo, a name, more than the sum of all all the advertising, marketing, & promotions presented by a corporation • “a person’s collected experiences of a company, product or service with a certain name” Jonas Bergvall Products are made and owned by companies. Brands are made and owned by people, by the public, by consumers. Jeremy Bullmore: Products are made and owned by companies. Brands are made and owned by people, by the public, by consumers. http://asianwiki.com/Rain http://www.gq.com.au/ life/gq+inc/galleries/ryan +goslings+personal +branding+tips,20305 http:// www.gq.com.au/ life/gq+inc/ galleries/ryan +goslings +personal +branding+tips, 20305 Christine Rosen, “The Age of Egocasting” • effects of media technology on media content • effects of media content • at the individual level (passive, inattentive) • at the cultural level (deadening taste) • at the societal level (polarization) PUBLIC SPHERE • Jurgen Habermas • a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space (1962) Ideal form of the public sphere • "made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state" (176) • acts of assembly and dialogue generate opinions which affirm or challenge--and thus guide--the affairs of the state • mis-use of publicity (advertising) undermines the public sphere • "Even arguments are translated into symbols to which again one can not respond by arguing but only by identifying with them" (206).