2. Critical Media Studies pre-reflection

When I first read the term ‘Enlightenment’ it was for me immediately linked to the era of Western philosophy – a philosophical, cultural and scientific movement that questioned traditional authority and determined reason as the only source for legitimacy and authority during the 18th century.

In ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Adorno and Horkheimer disconnect their understanding of Enlightenment in many ways from what I thought it was, regarding the Age of Enlightenment. For Adorno and Horkheimer Enlightenment emerged earlier in history, during the transition from the prehistorical age to the historical age. The exact location of the creation of Enlightenment can be found in Greek mythology, in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 2002: xviii) which had “the first traces […] of myth and enlightenment” (ibid.). Before there was Enlightenment, human beings were dominated by the nature, because fear resulted from the unknown (ibid.: 11). Due to understanding by reason and rationality, human beings conquered superstition and were liberated from fear. The liberation from mythology and blind belief installed humans as ‘masters,’ and can be understood as Enlightenment in the widest sense (ibid.: 1).

In Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s understanding ‘myth’ is every form of knowledge that existed before Enlightenment. It contains magical elements and is to a high degree superstitious and subjective. In its core myth refers to ritual and the ability to represent how things happen (ibid.: 5). Myth is already Enlightenment and Enlightenment reverse to myth (ibid.: 218). While myth deals with fear and problems of unknown things, such as ‘God’, Enlightenment “is mythical fear radicalized” (ibid.: 11).

The authors don’t state that myth is the primary source of Enlightenment, but its function could mainly be described as a way for us to explain and understand nature or the unknown.

When Adorno and Horkheimer speak of old media types they mention feature films, radio and magazines. These old media types can by definition only become ‘new media’, when they contain technologies which enable digital interactivity. But so far there is no broad hint in the book that the authors mentioned any forms of new media. Considering the time when the book was written, the term ‘new media’ could be referred to television, which is described by the authors as the merge of feature films and radio, which of course was growing in the early 1940s (ibid.: 97).

By introducing the term cultural industry, Adorno and Horkheimer are defining an industry that emphasizes on the marketability of culture. They claim that culture is used, rationalized and commercialized by capitalism in order to manipulate the mass society into passivity. In that way, every cultural good have become commodities with no or just little meaning to people. With no reflection on economic processes and with extensive use of mass production and standardization, the cultural industry tailors “films, radio and magazines” into a uniform system (ibid.: 94). Cultural goods can easily be replaced or reproduced, so that each one declines in significance. Creators therefore more and more strive for profit instead for a way of their artistic expression. The consequences for this process lies within the loss of individuality and the commodification of ourselves. What we see as individuality becomes in the cultural industry an illusion. The title of the chapter makes it even more clear how to understand cultural industry: as the “Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (ibid.: 94).

The concept behind the culture industry is to totalize the audiences by exposing them to a steadily repeated promise that is never fulfilled. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the products of cultural industry are in a way created that they deny and prevent any active thinking of the recipients. In that way the mass media are subtly taking dominance over the masses, turning them into marionettes of the capitalistic culture industry. Instead of serving the masses and initiating a process of Enlightenment, mass media only deceive and enslave their recipients with their commodified cultural products.

An interesting term that the authors mentioned in the beginning of the 4th Chapter is “technical rationality”. I found it interesting how the term was used in the particularly context and I had to look it up to fully grasp what it means. The term refers to Herbert Marcuse, who was like Adorno and Horkheimer a theorist of the Frankfurt School. By technical rationality Marcuse described a system that operates on the basis of creating false need (Marcuse 1941). According to Adorno and Horkheimer, technology is gaining power over society because those with the strongest economic position in society are powerful (ibid.: 95). They further formulate the equation that technical rationality is the rationality of domination (ibid.). Putting this together, it means to me that advances in technology had led to a lack of reflection or sensitivity. For what reason are humans producing bombs? For what reason is Apple releasing every year a new version of the iPhone? Because they hold the strongest economic position in society and therefore possess the power to dominate society. They are capable of creating false need in order to keep their superior position.

References:

Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, Max (2002): The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Philosophical Fragments. Standford: Standford University Press.

Marcuse, Herbert (1941): “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology”. In: The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 138-162.