The term culture industry designates the industrialized production of culture, thus from "“cultural properties"”. It is a core range of the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. Its term of the culture industry arises for the first time in the publication "“dialectic of the clearing-up"” (Adorno/Horkheimer 1948): Culture industry is the "“willentliche integration of their customers from above"”. With this the early period of the "“critical theory"” is terminated.

With culture industry Adorno means later the social implication of cultural events and products. Adorno expected to find from the theses to the culture industry an answer to the question why the antagonistic, capitalistic society contradictory from culture-Marxist view in itself is stable. This social cement, how Erich pious called it, should be the culture industry, which acts as means of rule and integration. This integration by the culture industry is based also on the statement that production adjusts always also the consumption. He sees this in the mental one as in the material one, particularly since the culture industry actually points already strong material tendencies out.

A goods character of culture products

Adorno essentially refers with the analysis of culture products to two fundamental methods of the view of goods:

1. The goods character definition after Marx, with the distinction between value in use and exchange value
2. On the other hand it confronts culture commodity to authentic works of art

To the first point the following is described: In the usefulness of an article, the value in use is certain a human need to quiet according to Marx: "“The usefulness of a thing makes it the value in use"”. The value in use is thus the article immanent, while the exchange value results only from the exchange of the product among the persons: In this moment the product became the commodity. Marx says also, the exchange - and so the exchange value - is konstitutiv for the fact that an article is a "“commodity"”. Capitalism, after Marx, puts on it on "“exchange value production"”, its products in addition will be essentially produced nevertheless from the beginning, exchanged. The "“authentic work of art"”, which was designated in the second point, is considered to the culture commodity as contrast. With these two methods Adorno submits the culture industry of a critical analysis. Adorno predivide the analysis into two sections, in order to represent the difference of the culture and during the using culture industry. Adorno did this as follows:

• civil liberal age
• Late capitalism
  • Art and culture stand for emancipation
  • From art and culture a critical impulse proceeded
    • Art and culture were against constant in its attitudes opposite powerful opponents
  • Art and culture were relatively autonomous
  • Art and culture were able to develop it beyond the social reality and develop change ideas in such a way
• By the culture industry the content of culture changed
  • The autonomous character of the culture dissolved mostly
• The culture world divides into 2 parts:
  • Large range of culture kulturindustrieller goods
  • Small range of authentic, remaining civil art
• Culture kulturindustrielle of works step therefore as inheriting the civil culture to the place of these as now "“true"” art

In the civil liberal age had to be regarded according to Adorno art as a always - in the dialectic of the clearing-up Adorno speaks of the civil art, which was bought by beginning with the exclusion of the subclass. It however always oriented itself at the collective public interest, and was beneficial for this. Their impulses were it, which made a development for the society possible. Starting from the age of late capitalism this task changed as engine of the society. Of an art, those according to Adorno their value particularly in itself - a value in use in the regard that the need after social justice is fulfilled - to a product of the market, whose value results from how frequently it is exchanged. This art lost its autonomous character, by being able to be stamped as means for the purpose (the generation of capital). For reaching evenly this purpose the culture industry, to which the autonomy of the art was lost, created a meanwhile global network. This consists in its essential structure of the culture production, which produces culture goods: evenly the culture goods, which are distributed everywhere on the world. Secondly it creates the culture market, which acts as binding member between the goods and the consumers, which finally represent the fourth link of this structure network:

With the arising of the industrialization, the extending of the communication possibilities and the occurrence of first supraregional newspapers the situation of the culture enterprise was a new. Without this situation a culture industry would not have been possible. Each culture product, under it the mass media in the special, turned around according to Adorno of the culture industry delivered - and. Industry and product are always in a such measure linked with one another, so that it as one to be seen to be able. Media, like all culture products, are also a product of the culture industrial culture products of the culture industry depend thus, so Adorno, not after the own content and on stimmiger organization, but rather after the utilization. The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the motive for profit brightly to the mental thing. [...] Mental things culture kulturindustriellen of style are, so summarizing Adorno, not longer also goods, but they are thoroughly it.

The public

From the goods existence described in preceded the chapter it results that the commodity culture must find their consumers also as such. Goods find their consumers if this sees or believes a use in them - to see in them a use. Striving from the situation of the artist or the apparatus, who surrounds it, out, to reach a customer leads to an adjustment to this customer. Thus again the culture loses the function of the critical moment of the society and becomes a Integrativen. The public acted however during this exchange process not demanding, but can be served as it were by the culture. Culture, so Adorno, falls into the area of life of the spare time. Spare time however is only the regenerativ phase, which is the operating phase subject. As regenerativ phase it is to take up thus if possible to little energy. But the culture tries to train itself.

Reciprocal effect: Subject <-> mass consumption goods

A manipulation, was certain for Adorno, proceeds from the culture industry. This however is not by any means an intended, still another controlled and into a direction striving; rather this manipulation creeps quietly in front. Nothing the defiance scoops out this dripping water on the stone of the society this with security. Adorno states this manipulativen effect on two moments:

1. The individual is reduced by the culture industry to the consumer role
2. The culture industry feeds the consumers with trivial, superficial futilenesses

In addition, thus becomes clear: It concerns at the culture industry around a culture coinage led by elite and not what the predecessor term mass culture can state, it concerns not a culture of the masses, not around a people culture. Adorno writes this also in "“culture criticism and society"”:

"“We (it refers to itself and Horkheimer, NSM) replace the expression (mass culture, NSM) through "“to culture industry"”, in order from the beginning to switch the interpretation off, which the lawyers of the thing genehm is: that it concerns something like spontaneously out of the masses themselves ascending culture, around the present shape of people art"”.

The "“elite"” in the sense Adorno is however no participants of a conspiracy. They are not gesinnt going by, the culture, their critical influence because of of controlling and of driving them into the but they are "“tried participants of capitalism, by the structure its"” to make everything the commodity.

On the fact that to the commodity one degenerated to culture, must count that, which wants to take the culture in its spare time in requirement, thus consumer. The consumer again must be served about the industry with, which it wants, the what it understands, what does not confuse it, also, with those one knows in-usual melodies, simply knitted crime films and films from the outset, who will laugh at the end. Exactly this is now the reciprocal effect between the subject and the culture industry. This cycle, above already frequently and again and again described, is the vicious circle, from which the way out was not found, and from that a way out does not exist possibly at all.

Articles in category "Culture industry"

We found here 63 articles.

Related Websites

We found here 6 related websites.

• Adorno's Culture Industry
  Excerpts from 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment' and Other Essays by Theodor Adorno.


• Culture Industry
  Culture Industry. A weblog attending to contemporary culture, with special reference to poetry, music, criticism, and theory. ...


• Culture industry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The culture industry claims to serve the consumers' needs for entertainment, but conceals the way that it standardises these needs, manipulating the ...


• PopPolitics.com - The Culture Industry Has You
  Although it provides pleasures for consumers, the culture industry ultimately ... For the Frankfurt School, the culture industry is just as much a system of ...


• The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
  A chapter from Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment on mass-production of culture.


• THEODOR ADORNO: Culture industry reconsidered (from "The Culture ...
  Thus, although the culture industry undeniably speculates on the conscious ... New on the part of the culture industry is the direct and undisguised primacy ...