The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (Routledge Classics) [Hardcover]

Theodor W Adorno (Author), J. M. Bernstein (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0415255341 | ISBN-13: 978-0415255349 | Edition: 2

The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today's world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno's work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'A volume of Adorno's essays is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature.' - Susan Sontag

'Adorno expounds what may be called a new philosophy of consciousness. His philosophy lives, dangerously but also fruitfully, in proximity to an ascetic puritanical moral rage, an attachment to some items in the structure and vocabulary of Marxism, and a feeling that human suffering is the only important thing and makes nonsense of everything else ... Adorno is a political thinker who wishes to bring about radical change. He is also a philosopher, with a zest for metaphysics, who is at home in the western philosophical tradition.' - Iris Murdoch

About the Author

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69). One of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century, and a leading member of the influential group of theorists known as the Frankfurt School. His works include Aesthetic Theory, Mahler, The Jargon of Authenticity and Negative Dialectics.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (June 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415255341
• ISBN-13: 978-0415255349
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,427,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Critique of Mass-Culture Par Excellence August 25, 2007

By Harumi O. Moruzzi

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

In our banal age when sanctimonious platitude is often mistaken for wisdom or even ethical character, Adorno's mercilessly uncompromising analyses of the controlling nature of mass culture may initially strike some of us as exaggerated or hysterical initially. After all most of us now bear the consequence of lengthy habituation to our socio-economic situation: a chronic semi-conscious, autopilot behavioral and perceptive mode that can comprehend only the pre-digested, repetitive ideas or ways of thinking. However, once we start reading Adorno more attentively and thoughtfully we realize how prescient and perspicacious Adorno was as a critic of our modern society and culture. Many of his thoughts articulated in this volume anticipate the thoughts and writings of our leading contemporary thinkers, such as Jean Baudrillard, Frederic Jameson, and even Noam Chomsky (although he probably disagrees with Adorno's attitude toward culture, which may be construed as elitist).

I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to escape the mass-culture induced stupor to become a more conscious human and citizen.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Variety of Frankfurt School Criticism March 5, 2012

By A Certain Bibliophile

Format:Hardcover

More a collection of related essays and less a book with a coherent, unified message, this is a set of nine essays on a variety of topics. I'll list them here just to give the reader some idea of the vast area these essays cover. They are "On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," "The Schema of Mass Culture," "Culture Industry Reconsidered," "Culture and Administration," "Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda," "How to Look at Television," "Transparencies on Film," "Free Time," and "Resignation."

Like much of the writing that comes out of the Frankfurt School, this is heavily influenced by Marxism, especially their idea (Horkheimer collaborated with Adorno in writing some of the more important essays in this collection) that mass consumer culture has become commodified, reified, and fetishized. The "culture industry" refers to the processes of standardization, marketing, and distribution which become a part of objects themselves, and therefore indistinguishable from them. Everything has been subsumed under the logic of the mass market, which creates what Adorno and Horkheimer term "false needs" - those needs that capitalism invents, and that capitalism can uniquely satisfy.

What I found of particular interest with the idea of the culture industry was the resonance that it has with so many other critical thinkers like Baudrillard, Debord, Lyotard, and Marcuse, yet being written several years before the most important work of these thinkers (Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" didn't come out until 1981, Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" until 1967, and Lyotard's "The Postmodern Condition" until 1979). Some of the essays in the second half of the book - "How to Look at Television" and "Transparencies on Film," especially - reminded me explicitly of the best writing on media of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Raymond Williams.

While I credit Adorno for being an innovative, insightful social critic, the orthodox Marxism can become a little laborious and grating after a few essays. The best of his thought isn't a result of his Marxism at all, but rather his sociological and psychological observations, as is the case with most of the media criticism here. Whether it is the translation or the original writing, the style is at its worst overly turgid and obfuscating, which makes it only digestible in small doses, but Adorno seems like he is always worth the effort. I will probably come back to this again and again in an attempt to inform my readings of later Frankfurt School members, especially Fromm, Lowenthal, and Habermas.

10 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Challenging November 2, 2007

By Lenard Denes

Format:Paperback

This collection of essays is very interesting. They all cover a critique of mass culture with quite original and interesting points made.

Sometimes it is bit difficult to read, this might be due to the translation; for this reason it gets only 4 stars. However, if you think you are ok with a moderately complicated text, the book is really great. I am glad I have read it.