17 thoughts on “Week 4 – Media, Culture and Ideology (T1)”
Elysia Lee
These 3 readings enabled me to have a more critical idea of media and the culture industry.
While the culture industry has great impacts over society, it is still controlled and regulated upon by power of the society (Adorno & Horkeimer). Even though people tend to work based on rationality, there is irrationality found within the power that controls the culture industry. The power that allows certain media messages to be sent out in the culture industry, for instance, in advertising, may be irrational in itself. While the media industry gives people more options and variety, it also restricts freedom such that people do less work. Undoubtedly, people take in what is given to them by the culture industry wholly. People see the images of different products they can consume through media and think that they have choice, when in fact they do not have more choices. They simply choose from what is shown to them in the culture industry. There is a problem of reduced idealism, and critical thinking is taken away. There is an inescapable force that limits the society.
One thing that also hit me in Adorno & Horkheimer’s reading was the example about how cartoons validate the victory of “technological reason over truth” (Adorno & Horkheimer). It shows the success of technology, which is surely inculcated in to our lives. On top of that, it also shows how people are not just motivated by economic interests like what Karl Marx would say, but there’s more than that. When consuming culture, it is out of pleasure. There are, nevertheless, people who try to resist pleasure from the culture industry but they are still strongly affected by the power of the culture industry today. I agree that we have to be conscious about how “the rate at which [we] are reduced to stupidity must not fall behind the rate at which [our] intelligence is increasing”.
The ones in power in culture production are generally the state, media related companies and organisations. For these institutions, they also run inevitably based on economic interests. Even if some of the consumption like amusement or comedies has no relations to economical interest, the production of these commodities are based on economic interests, which we cannot neglect. In our modern society today, the culture industry is so powerful that “it can deal with consumers’ needs, producing them, controlling them, discipling them, and even withdrawing amusement”.
Walter talks about the authenticity of art and there is a loss of authenticity when art is reproduced through media while Carey further explains the transmission view and ritual view of communication, which gives us a bigger picture of the media and culture industry.
There is an undeniable triumph of the culture industry, that people will consume from the industry even though they “see through them”.
Lim Feng, Kaede
Walter Benjamin writes that technology diminishes the ‘aura’ of an artwork. He enforces his point by giving examples such as how the distancing effect of film and the detachment of its audience from the ‘here and now’ rids it of its authenticity. He speaks of art in ‘its traditional form’, one of which has a history, its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. Although his point is a valid one, they are made under one assumption: that art is not art when it lacks historical testimony. Art, by his definition has to firstly have a historical testimony, which can be diminished reciprocally with substantive duration. Secondly, art should be viewed or consumed in a particular context. Hence, film then finds itself on the top of Benjamin’s list of inauthentic reproduction of the contemporary mass movements, having defied both of these assumptions. According to him, film seems to completely rid itself of artistic ‘aura’ and in turn takes on a more functional and political role, only presenting what it wants its audience to see.
Similarly, Adorno and Horkeimer are concerned with the culture industry is defined by a network of connections and is something that is difficult for the masses to escape from; the culture that stems from mass media and mass media itself is all around us and is inescapable. Their main concern is that people look to mass media as a distraction from reality. For example, Adorno and Horkheimer are especially critical of comedy because of the instant gratification the masses draw from it. This temporary pleasure makes them forget their harsh realities and essentially, blinds them to their reality. This blinding effect is why the elites can push their dominant ideologies onto the masses without much trouble.
This brings us to a rather cynical conclusion, that although we seem to have a choice in consumption, it is simply an illusion because we will always seek amusement and escape from harsh realities. This triggers a cycle of demand and supply, the media shapes the world and the world shapes media.
M Priyanka Nair
Adorno and Horkheimer write that the power of the mass media comes in its distribution, suggesting a one-way transmission of messages. This is precisely the current argument-that media merely poses a transmissive function, whereas Carey writes that the “the ritual definition” of communication, “exploits the ancient identity and common roots of the terms “commonness”, “communion,” “community”…[and that it] is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but towards the representation of shared beliefs.” The view that media merely transmits messages means that it may not matter who, why, where when, or how the recipients absorb it.
This also goes back to Walter Benjamin’s view on technological advancements causing art to lose its aura. Benjamin writes that the aura is lost because of the detachment that technology causes from the audience; a camera lens frames the object of the message and separates it from the audience quite literally with a monitor or screen when it is finally viewed. However, the idea of auras implies that the creator alone is trying to transmit a message and thus has the only say in its interpretation, but it cannot be denied that a recipient of the message is equally important. Not only is a recipient important, but a recipient who interprets and analyses the messages critically is needed. If the recipients don’t interpret the media, creators might as well throw culture at walls. Benjamin writes that the camera helps to show things in ways that people would not notice in real life-“The film has enriched our field of perception with methods which can be illustrated by Freudian theory.”; The lens does not necessarily form a barrier between the aura and the recipient. Take cinematography, for instance. “Cinematography” would be a technical version of “aura”, which is fundamentally more spiritual. Cinematography undoubtedly conveys the aura of a film and is a very essential part of contributing the acceptance and success of an individual film.
Adorno and Horkheimer argue that culture is completely reproductive of mainstream values and that it has come to an end of creative originality-that it has been completely mechanized and therefore, standardized. However, it brings up the realization that this view may be outdated. It seems natural to argue against this and say that people don’t just buy into everything that is produced on a mass scale; people don’t give credit to unoriginal ideas. Drawing example from the film industry again, though films may be the epitome of how people are just transmitting messages, the success of a film is partially dependent on people’s reception of it and there’s only so much influence that critics can have over making people believe that a film is good. The films that have “original screenplay” cause more impact on the masses; people are always looking for something new to be represented. This “something new” not only needs to be original. but also needs to be relatable. It thus becomes too simplistic to say that media is merely transmissive.
But then again, this might just be false consciousness after all, and we could just go in circles.
#GOH TIFFANY#
The common thread in Horkheimer & Adorno and Benjamin’s article is the debilitating effects of the Culture industry. Horkheimer and Adorno harboured negative attitudes towards the Enlightenment despite its shining promise of freeing us of ignorance and its strategic move towards “reason” and rationality. In an age where money determined the faculty of human beings, they believed that the Enlightenment was a “mass deception” because capitalistically produced art was commoditized for the sole purpose of generating wealth. In the process, art was mechanized, industrialized, resulting in disenchanted audiences who consume unthinkingly. To accept a piece of art, one is deceived because art is now cheap, money-based and duplicate.
This process of decay is echoed in Benjamin’s article. He charts a historical shift of the way art has been produced and consumed and observes that the authenticity and “aura” – the sensory experience of distance between the consumer and the work of art is lost when art is mechanically reproduced. Art previously originated from rituals and this is closely tied to ‘aura’. Central to this idea is the example given by Benjamin- a painting VS a photograph. While a painting is an original piece with “aura”- painstakingly put together by a painter, a photograph is but an image of an image. Sure, technology compresses time and space- now we have soft copies of the photo as well. But Benjamin criticizes this advancement as robbing art of its essence and originality. In modernity, we are merely consuming copies of more copies. In fact, the original could be very well be a duplicate and we may never know since technology is able to reproduce flawless copies of an artwork. In addressing the audience’s responses, he contrasts “cult value” with the existing “exhibition value”. Benjamin gives the example of a funeral portrait which celebrates the cult of remembrance in contrast with photography of the streets in Paris in art galleries. Perhaps what he is getting at here is the lack of a substantive purpose and meaning behind an artwork. The former commemorates the death of a person whose life made an impact on his/her loved ones and serves as a memory-jogger. However, more often than not, art gallery captions for artpieces are fictional stories woven into an artwork which is mostly a duplicate of an image. This stems from the fact that the “creation of demand” reigns supreme in the goals of culture industry producers. They are geared towards economical goals and cult value gets left behind.
Liang Shi Jie
Adorno and Horkheimer talks about mass culture. They believe modes of communication such as news and media are a standardization of culture. Culture to them has lost the purpose of revealing, which they define as a quality and ability to cause discomfort. Thus, culture becomes massified and loses the power to enlighten or subvert. This also implies that modes of communication becomes a way of reaffirming mass views. This coincides with what Carey describes as ritualistic study of communication. In his work, Carey describe this form of communication as one that emphasizes the medium’s ability to consolidate dominant views rather than to disseminate new information, which is the other aspect of communication he terms as the transmission model. Carey himself asserts that media not only represents reality, more specifically historic reality, it produces and reproduces it. This is because of the creation of symbolic links between the communication tools and the images it represents. One example of this is how the creation of maps actually gives rise to the concept of spatial representation rather than just representing space. Our knowledge of reality exist only within our immersion in communication as it presents us with the tools to decipher our links with the world, and this is another main function of communication; to pass on these knowledge to the younger generation. Benjamin on the other hand talks about communication’s link to reality in a more functional view, with his analysis of cinematic media and how the director can manipulate our experiences of reality through camera works. If we were to link this to Carey and Adorno & Horkheimer, we see how media and communication not only represents reality but is more often than not utilized as a tool to (re)create reality, whether on a personal level to consciousness or as a tool of the powerful to propagate and dominate ideologies in a certain era and society.
Lee Cheong Khi
Horkheimer and Adorno are members of the Frankfurt School who wrote extensively about the culture industry. They were very much influenced by Marx’s ideas of the capitalist society where the dominant institutions are constantly influencing and directing the culture production process. In their case, individuals have very limited agency and the production process is determined by the larger structures and institutions. Leisure activity is merely the “prolongation of work” where individuals engage in entertainment just to reenergize themselves and seek instant gratification. For instance, a simple and seemingly harmless leisure activity such as shopping would be problematic for the theorists. To them, shopping is repackaged by attractive advertisements along the streets, in magazines and even newspapers. These branding strategies shape the shopping experience to be a personal one, where consumers are made to believe they are the ones making the choice, and they have the right to beautify themselves. The theorists would be critical of such an experience because the consumers are bounded and subjected to the larger market forces at work. They are unaware of how shopping as a leisure activity is not a personal choice but instead a shopping experience created and directed by the larger forces.
However, I feel that the theorists might be too extreme because they did not consider the possibility of individuals having agency. Using Stuart Hall’s (1973) idea of encoding and decoding, this can be illustrated by the way movies are interpreted and received. The producers would want individuals to decode in the way it is encoded. However, this does not always happen as individuals would interpret in ways they deem fit. They do not always follow the expected dominant values as they all have different experiences which might determine the way in which movies are decoded. As such, the Frankfurt School theorists have not considered this aspect of decoding.
Vivienne Khoo
Adorno and Horkheimer addresses how the culture industry is controlled by a few big corporations which continues to grow in size due vertical and horizontal integration. This gives rise to mass standardization and mass production. In the news industry for example, news content is controlled by a handful of gatekeepers and dominated by conglomerates such as the Associated Press, CNN and BBC news. Through the consumption of homogenous content, the consumer can hardly be unique outside the capitalist society as they conform to the norms and fit in. Culture becomes mass-produced.
In Benjamin’s work on “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he questions the loss of a singular authority for a work of art. He argues that the authenticity and originality of art cannot be reproduced. A photograph of an art piece is thus just an image of an image. The cameraman intervenes with what we see as it directs the eye towards a specific place and tells a specific story. This is perhaps related to Carey’s notion of the ritual view of communication whereby “a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed”. It invites our participation on the basis of us assuming various social roles within it. Different feelings are invoked when we receive various forms of information depending on our relation to it. For example, news about Singaporeans’ outstanding performance in the Olympics might give us a sense of pride while news about the Haiyan typhoon will spike feelings of grief and fear. This is in contrast to the transmission view espoused by Carey that is about the dissemination of news and knowledge and its effect on audiences.
However, the authors portray individuals as passive beings, absorbing what media forms have put out there without exercising any form of discretion. I believe that subjective perspective can in fact be studied objectively. One who is aware of the functions behind these communication mediums has agency to decide what is credible and what is not.
Goh Xi Hsien
In the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Adorno and Horkheimer held the view that mass communication was ‘mass deception’, was used as a tool to make people subservient. “it turns all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same” – for example, in movies, where endings are usually predictable, the next movie does not seem entirely distinct from one. Adorno and Horkheimer also state that companies part of the production process are all “economically interwover” which is true in today’s media scene, where the success of movies are determined by their earnings, and companies pay a higher production cost for better screenplay, stars, effects etc to create a blockbuster with the aim of reaping profits.
Similar to Adrono and Horkheimer, in Walter Benjamin’s ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, the mechanical reproduction of media has led to a loss of aura, explained by Benjamin as the lack of originality and authenticity. Benjamin argued that without traditional, ritualistic value in art, art in the age of mechanical reproduction would inherently be based on the practice of politics. This is evident in the Singapore society today where television shows produced by mediacorp all align with the government’s values, (e.g. no homosexuality, procreation, nuclear families, meritocracy in workplace and schools,) leaving no room for originality.
Ong Yan Ting
Horkheimer and Adorno talked about the culture industry as a result of a very specific and uniformed system for the production of mass culture, transforming culture from a sacred object in the past to mass-produced economic goods. As most people have easy access to various types of media products, media producers have to remain competitive by producing songs/movies that are profitable, and one way to ensure success is to imitate current hits. In considering the reception of the product by the audience, it is risky for producers to try something new as its success cannot be predicted. Thus, through the consciousness of the media producers, it results in a situation whereby “the hit songs, stars, and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types”. In the case of dramas, popular choices for producers would be TimeTravel, RichGuy/PoorGirl and Spy/Action dramas, whereby the differences between dramas of the same types come from the minor plot details. In terms of stars, producers tend to make use of stars from hit dramas in an attempt to raise the chances of success for that particular product, thus there are examples of dramas with “star-studded cast”. Making use of what has been popular can also be seen in songs, whereby groups can insert a segment from their iconic song into their new song in hopes of achieving the same level of success for the follow up song. Example would be Crayon Pop who became famous in Korea for their song ‘Bar Bar Bar’ (God knows why…) and they incorporated their ‘iconic’ helmets, wiggly leg dance and some catchphrase into their next song. Thus, even though the audience has the agency to choose their cultural products, the culture industry has made it such that they have the “freedom to choose what is always the same”.
Annabel Su
Adorno and Horkheimer view the culture industry as a system in which the masses are manipulated. Previously, there was a distinction between high and low culture, and culture was not always accessible by everyone. However in contemporary times, when all aspects of culture were turned into mass culture, there was no longer a referendum to the dominant high culture. Hence, people no longer knew if what they like is truly that which adheres to their desires. Such a total synthesis of culture is problematic to Adorno and Horkheimer because culture is disguised as a pleasure principle when it is really a reality principle. Hence, this allows people to continue to let capitalism oppress and restrain them. Essentially, mass culture is guised under the illusion of choice and people no longer have a chance to be creative and separate themselves from dominant ideology.
Similarly, Benjamin’s article focuses on the shift in perception and the implications of such a shift especially when film and photography took off on a grand scale. He argues that there is a loss of aura as a result of modernity influencing art. Aura to him is about originality and authenticity but with mechanical reproduction comes mass consumption that washes out such aura. Therefore, like Adorno and Horkheimer, Benjamin posits that due to mass culture and consumption, people are alienated from their self and others.
Likewise, Carey maintains that communication is a systemic process that creates, reinforces and uses symbolic forms. As a result, communication is a total experience that shapes human’s mind, perception and knowledge. Carey dismisses the dichotomy between ritual and transmission perspectives of communication and argues that it is only through the analysis of both, that a more nuanced view of society can be established. Ultimately, communication is not an objective and rational process but rather, one that serves to manipulate and is in itself, manipulated by social forces.
Tham E-lyn
Of the 3 readings, I found Carey’s to be the most informative and illuminating. Therefore, I have chosen to center my blog entry on this particular reading: “A Cultural Approach to Communication”.
Carey outlined two alternative definitions of communication, namely the transmission view of communication and the ritual view of communication. The transmission view of communication is the one definition of communication that we are all accustomed to – communication being defined by terms such as “imparting”, “sending”, “transmitting”, or simply, “giving information to others”. Communication is perceived as the process by which information is conveyed to another party, through various (visual, oral etc) means. This can be done over distance, through the relaying of handwritten letters, or even within close proximity, when an individual relates information to the ears of another. This communication is communicated and transmitted over a space. The transmission view of communication has been found to have roots in religious attitudes.
The ritual view of communication, on the other hand, is one theory that I believe not many are familiar with. Unlike the transmission view, this view focuses not on the dissemination of information, but instead on this information being a “representation of shared beliefs”. It sees communication as a “construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world that can serve as a control and container for human action”.
To differentiate between these two views, an example has been given – under a transmission view of communication, a newspaper is seen as an instrument that distributes knowledge; under a ritual view of communication, a newspaper is seen as a medium whereby a “particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed”. Under the ritual view, news ceases to be information, and instead, constitutes drama.
Carey also acknowledges the power of communication, affirming that “society is (perhaps, only) possible because of the binding forces of shared information circulating in an organic system”. In addition, he alludes communication to be a symbolic process., and that man lives in a new dimension of “symbolic reality”. This further affirms how symbols only achieve significance when our actions attach meaning to it, and perhaps how it is influenced by their social environment.
“Space is understood and manageable when it is represented in symbolic form”, perhaps an example of how a place can be transformed to a space. Any given space can be mapped in a number of ways, each attaching a different meaning. This is further substantiated by my previous blog post, how a space at a particular place could be utilised for different reasons, attaching meaning to it.
Carey concludes by saying that to study communication is to examine the actual social process whereby significant symbolic forms are created, apprehended, and used – through our construction.
Khrisha Chatterji
Horkheimer and Adorno are mainly criticizing the culture industry as it has given rise to standardization and mass production. People no longer classify objects, they instead are being classified. What is gone and no longer valued is distinction as conformity is valued. If one does not conform, one becomes powerless. With the culture industry, the people holding power no longer have to be discreet about their motives as the mass are buying into their ideology without actually realizing that they are being caged up by the ideology. As a result, those holding power gain more power while the mass happily conforms.
Benjamin, like Horkheimer and Adorno, writes about the change in production process. He focuses on mechanical reproduction and the loss of an aura and a shift away from tradition. He used the painter and the cameraman as an example. Before the camera, there were paintings. In paintings, if one were to paint a landscape, one would see a landscape. But with the camera, there tends to be a focus on an area and the interpretation of the picture would be different from the interpretation one would get from a painting. Mechanical reproduction changes the way we see things because even though what comes out of it may be the same thing, it is actually a different perspective that is being produced, inviting a different reaction.
Carey discusses two views of communication – transmission and ritual. The transmission view of communication is about passing information and new knowledge which is a very common way of understanding communication. The ritual view of communication on the other hand is not about passing information. It is about the representation and maintenance of shared beliefs and how these beliefs serve to control people’s actions. Carey sees communication as being a symbolic process that is key for people’s existence as communication allows for representations of reality and for reality.
I think that the shared point of these authors is that communication serves to control how the mass reacts to culture and producers of culture produce culture in the way they want the mass to see it.
#MUHAMMAD RUSYDI BIN YA'AKUP#
Adorno and Horkheimer argue that mass culture is a form of standardization. Culture’s reproductive nature is no longer in opposition to reality as individuals accepts and is satisfied by the “reality principle”. Culture is supposed to discomfort us, in order to challenge reality, not to reproduce it. It is also arguable that mass culture has resulted in the end of individuality. There is a promotion of conformity through the commodification of culture; and individuals are conforming when they think they are not. This is similar to Carey’s idea that technological rationale is of domination itself.
Carey repeatedly emphasize that the purpose of communication is to control. Communication through culture can be argued to have such consequences of domination. However, Carey also highlights the individuals’ agency and it ties in with Hall’s idea of encoding and decoding. The use of symbol and meaning making illustrates such agency in disputing the “domination of communication”.
rebecca quek
While reading this week’s readings, what stood out for me the most was how reality is manipulated by the media.
Benjamin talks about this when he discusses the illusion of cinema. While on the one hand, film allows for scientific examination of movement for example, in slow-motion, technological advances in the cinema have allowed for a distortion of images, and “technologically-free” reality is now endlessly manipulated and cut, not just for art, but sometimes also for political agendas. What is scary to think about is how reality in film can now be used to manipulate the audience, much like the Kuleshov effect, in which film can be manipulated to allow audience to feel whatever the filmmaker wants to film, which allows for the propagation of ideology in a political environment.
Adorno and Horkheimer discuss exactly this, when they talk about how the capitalist reality is disguised and hidden by the media, and that exactly through mass media that the bourgeois ideology is transmitted, resulting in a uniform audience, a loss of meaning, a loss of hope, and the mass becomes a means for production, and are kept in that state through the ideas fed to them by the mass media. For Adorno and Horkheimer, everything is done in order to render the proletariate a powerless and uncritical mass, so that they are unknowing to their reality and true position in the capitalist society. Here again, we can see how communication and media is manipulated for political power. For Adorno and Horkheimer, media can be said to be the opiate of the masses.
In discussing communication, Carey also talks about symbolic reality, and how communication is used to maintain the symbolic reality in which we live in society. Thus for Carey, “to study communication is to examine the actual social processes wherein significant symbolic forms are created, apprehended and used”. Our reality is hence not objective, but rather, it is steeped in symbols and language, and we learn about these symbols and language through the passing of information — communication. As such, when we think about the mass media (i.e mass communication), there is the need to think about how it influences our reality, and the symbols and languages that we learn and pick up from the media. Again, we have to look at context and power hidden behind these seemingly objective messages that the media puts out, as this influences how we see our society, and ourselves.
Tan Yuan Ting
Happy CNY everyone, yayy.
Adorno & Horkheimer – The Culture Industry, Enlightenment as Mass Deception.
This reading proposes, well not exactly propose per se, but whatever, about a society that has lost its freedom and individuality, thanks to the standardisation brought about by media in its aspects like films, songs, TV shows, blablabla.
I quote, “Not only are the hit songs, stars and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them and only appears to change.” And then they go on to give examples of songs with the same kinds of tunes and genres, and movies, oh the movies, it’s like, you know it, you JUST know it, you just GOTTA know it, like, if you don’t, it’s like you’ve never watched a movie in your whole life. I mean like, c’mon, what’s with (and mind you, it’s not only limited to movies, like dramas too), the poor or clumsy or someone who always bungles stuff up, or a socially rejected person, oh yeah you know, those people (so we stereotype), and they will always, always, always, always meet some fancy rich guy (K-dramas you know I’m looking at you), and then he’ll fall for her, and she’ll have some spunk that he loves and he’ll woo her and they’ll have their hearts broken, and then there’ll be another girl and another guy and like come on guys, we KNOW you’re gonna get together at like the 49th – 50th episode (and yet people still watch it so diligently and eagerly, it boggles me), and the only different between one movie/drama with the other? You guessed it, the Title. It’s like you people have no imagination at all. It’s either love, or love. Like dammit, even in an action movie, there HAS to be some faithful girl waiting so longingly for the protagonist.
I’m not being resentful here, it’s just that really, every drama and movie kinda has that predictable ending to it.
However, there is one part where I stand to disagree. It went something like “Films are becoming so realistic; producer basically dictates what reality is.” Honestly, I think that’s a little far-fetched. Dictating what reality really is? I don’t think so. Rather than dictating what reality is, I think that they present an “ideal or rather what-people-want-but-can’t-have-so-120mins-of-screen-fantasy-would-do” but unrealistic presentation of what might be reality, but it’s a false sense of reality. Not everyone will fall in love with a rich guy and experience social mobility, not every rich guy will fall for the poor girl with spunk (like come on, guys and their ego.). Does it not present a modern fairy tale except that there’s no princess-y dresses and magical fairy godmothers that comes to you at midnight to cast a spell that literally turns you from rags to riches with a swoosh and a woosh? (Yeah, I’m talking Cinderella here). I mean, if we did all have magical fairy godmothers, we’d all be rich by now, know what I’m saying?
So I guess, instead of dictating what reality is, it just portrays the ideal reality that an average consumer might desire. Adventure, Romance, Money $$$ !!! We use the word “reality” so loosely here, that I guess some definition would be in order here, according to whatever I’m studying now, there’s Objective, Subjective and Intersubjective Reality. I’m just gonna take a leap here and say that it’s the intersubjective reality that we’re referring to, when we talk about film producers dictating reality. I mean, isn’t the word “dictating” a little to deterministic and i don’t know, authoritarian in a sense? Like, “I dictate that all girls who are on scholarships are girls from a lower class within the society, whose father is some unemployed or in manual labour work, and etc.”
That is really, not the case in our reality. And kinda stereotypical, no?
Yeow Xinyin Christy
Horkheimer & Adorno argued that “The basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is the greatest”. The different spheres are economically interwoven and that the culture monopolies (broadcasting stations) depend on the real holders of power (electrical industry & banks). Everything is shaped accordingly to what the system wants. Humans have the freedom of choice, but not conforming means that one is powerless, economically and spiritually. People can be happy, but only if one cease to resist and become whatever the system wants them to be. Hence, it is argued that there is no longer such a thing as an individual, where each and human have been standardized by the power of generality, as if they were objects.
Mankind is a result of the product of society’s economic and social apparatus. “The general can replace the particular, and vice versa”. The social effect of mass media on men is the uniformity of experiences, which in turn creates a mass culture, with the exclusion of the new.
The authors also mentioned that films are designed in such a way that the quickness makes it difficult for humans to apprehend them. This is somewhat similar to Benjamin’s article which stated that films were simultaneous collective experience and the constant, sudden change of places and focus disrupts the process of association of the spectator. The product of the culture industry is what prescribes every reaction from the recipient. There is no longer only the individual thinking but the masses. Films have the capacity to mobilize the masses.
Also what was interesting to me was Use value vs Exchange value. This meant that no object has an inherent value; it is only valuable when seen as a commodity that can be exchanged in the market. I think this is quite applicable to our society and the example that Horkheimer & Adorno gave was how people in modern society go to a concert respecting the performance as much as they money they spent. Benjamin’s article also analysed the transformation in the nature or functions of art, where in the past, the importance was placed on its cult value. Today, it was the exhibition value of the art work that mattered.
True to the title of “enlightenment as mass deception”, the culture industry embedded within the context of a capitalist society has created a mass culture that produces standardized cultural products that have the capacity to manipulate mankind who are unable to escape these institutions, into passive recipients.
Frances Tan Wei Ting
Carey uses Dewey as a starting point for understanding what is communication. There are two views of what communication is. The transmission view, mainly USA, states that communication is a “process whereby messages (e.g. knowledge, ideas and information) are transmitted and distributed in space for the control of distance and people. Here, emphasis is on power relations, and the ability to alter (social) reality. The ritual view, mainly Europe, states that communication is the representation of shared beliefs for the construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world (the ideals of a community), in turn helping to maintain society. These different views correspond to particular historical periods, technologies, forms of social order, and values, and thus the questions asked, as in the e.g. of newspapers, are different.
Carey purposely inverts the relationship between communication and reality, to render the former problematic, and to even begin thinking of it as something that is real and primary, beyond the everyday mundane activities that we tend to associate with communication. This inversion supposes that man lives in a new dimension of symbolic reality. Is this true? He talks about maps, models and symbols. Maps model the environment, reducing it to make it manageable, and this is possible because symbols can be arranged to provide infinite representations (depending on medium limitations) that are able to be presentations of and for reality. The nature of communication is the mapping out of public thought.
Models of communication are reflexive. In describing, they also circumscribe what communication can and should be. They are both representations of and for human interaction. Being of human production, this symbolic reality has to be repaired and maintained, or thrown away and rebuilt, to fit our circumstances, so that we “know” how to interact.
According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the culture industry creates uniformity and forces it upon everyone and everything. Whole and part, the general and the particular, even opposites, are all the same. There is no choice, no individuality and no hope for anything outside the system. And most insidious is the lack of realization that invested capital is the absolute master, the economic considerations and power influences which grew strong due to their interwoven nature borne from close contact and extreme concentration of people.
“Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended.” The culture industry promises the individual the fulfilment of his or her interests, but only after it has controlled for all the possible interests, and even then, never give what it promised. Instead of considering the variety of supply, it considers the variety of demand, and tries to control this demand by controlling the consciousness of people. Men becomes a type reproduced in every product. They become mere statistics. Their circumstances become clearly linked to production. ” Media in the culture industry is a means of ideological manipulation and domination. The promises are its only meaning.
Media contributes to the uniformity by integrating the features (e.g. word, image, and music). The rush of content by media makes it difficult for the spectator to apprehend, what more to attempt imagination and spontaneity of thought about the content. Stereotypes replace style. The same situation is exclusive to none but shared by all. The details become interchangeable as long as they fit in the overall pattern. Meaning is lost for both the detail and the whole. There is no more antithesis and no more connection. The “novel” and the “different” are in fact not so. And yet, everything is compelled to show its significance and effect. Words also become names, signs or symbols with floating signifiers that are arbitrarily fixed, such that meaning is lost.
“Not to conform is to be rendered powerless”. There is no use being a total outsider and thus even dissidence is realistic. Men will have to accept that they will never get what they truly want and be satisfied with what they can get (composure in face of calculated tragedy). Probabilities are manipulated, such that all have equal infinitesimal small chance. Even men are replaceable. Chance and planning become the same therefore rationality ceases.
Everything keeps moving, to exclude the new and keep nothing old. Originals are removed while reproductions are continually made. Commodities admit that they are commodities – everything becomes commodified, even if no fees are charged. The changing definition of what means pleasure changes it into boredom, partly due to the way the culture industry reproduces the labour process, such that the individual is always in the system, partly due to the promise that things can only improve (exactly how is unknown) if they changed at all. Catharsis so that genuine personal emotions in real life can be reliably controlled.
Benjamin looks at the development of art to understand the development of society. More than forgery, mechanical reproduction “captures images which escape natural vision” and “puts the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself”, at the same time “reactivating the object reproduced”. A “plurality of copies” substitutes a “unique existence”, resulting in the liquidation of cultural heritage. In spite of what it can do, the reproduction lacks the presence in time and space (the substantive duration or historical testimony) that the original has/had, that is, it would never be the original (and never have its authentic authority).
Human perception is organized and determined by nature, the medium and historical circumstances. The contemporary masses desire to bring things “closer” spatially and humanly, and to overcome the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its re-production. Uniqueness is linked with permanence as transitoriness with reproducibility. The sense of the universal equality of things reduces the aura of a unique object. Reality adjusts to the masses and vice versa.
“L’art pour l’art” refers to the idea of “pure” art which denies social function(s) of art and any categorizing by social matter. Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual (its original use). When authenticity ceases to be applicable, art becomes based on politics instead of ritual. Where once art contained cult value (intrinsic in existence), now art contains exhibition value (to be seen or not). Functions change e.g. photography challenges the viewer, and signals how to view occurrences (prescribed by preceding photos).
The film actor, unlike the stage actor, is estranged from himself and his performance by a layers. For instance, his performance is made up of separate acts (for logistical and technical adjustments). His performance is illusory but not easily revealed as such. Furthermore, his performance is presented by means of a camera, which identifies the actor as separate from his character played. What is on screen is his shadow and not his presence (nor the auras of the person and the role). The audience, separated from the actor, becomes a critic of the performance, while the actor tries to reach them in vain with his performance. Lines become blurred between the producer and the consumer, the author and the public, since there is increased access to media, which also extends their reach to others.
“The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion…the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide…individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce…[responses] control each other.” With mechanical reproducibility, it became possible for a simultaneous collective experience, to respond as a collective to publicly exhibited works.
Filmed behaviour, precise, lends itself to apperception, making things isolated, noticeable and analyzable. The close-up “extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action… space expands… movement is extended… reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.”
Creation of a demand that can only be fulfilled later, possibly with changed technical standards. Art is made to distract (absorbs) rather than to be concentrated upon (be absorbed by). “No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. The mass public critic pays no attention – they are absent-minded, going through their habits to “participate”. Facism gives the masses an expression to their right to change property relations, while preserving property e.g. through war, which mobilizes technical resources while maintaining the property system.
The three readings consider what reproduction due to new media may mean for men and society. They highlight that reproductions are not mere reflections, nor shaping of the world, but can cause more extensive effects.
These 3 readings enabled me to have a more critical idea of media and the culture industry.
While the culture industry has great impacts over society, it is still controlled and regulated upon by power of the society (Adorno & Horkeimer). Even though people tend to work based on rationality, there is irrationality found within the power that controls the culture industry. The power that allows certain media messages to be sent out in the culture industry, for instance, in advertising, may be irrational in itself. While the media industry gives people more options and variety, it also restricts freedom such that people do less work. Undoubtedly, people take in what is given to them by the culture industry wholly. People see the images of different products they can consume through media and think that they have choice, when in fact they do not have more choices. They simply choose from what is shown to them in the culture industry. There is a problem of reduced idealism, and critical thinking is taken away. There is an inescapable force that limits the society.
One thing that also hit me in Adorno & Horkheimer’s reading was the example about how cartoons validate the victory of “technological reason over truth” (Adorno & Horkheimer). It shows the success of technology, which is surely inculcated in to our lives. On top of that, it also shows how people are not just motivated by economic interests like what Karl Marx would say, but there’s more than that. When consuming culture, it is out of pleasure. There are, nevertheless, people who try to resist pleasure from the culture industry but they are still strongly affected by the power of the culture industry today. I agree that we have to be conscious about how “the rate at which [we] are reduced to stupidity must not fall behind the rate at which [our] intelligence is increasing”.
The ones in power in culture production are generally the state, media related companies and organisations. For these institutions, they also run inevitably based on economic interests. Even if some of the consumption like amusement or comedies has no relations to economical interest, the production of these commodities are based on economic interests, which we cannot neglect. In our modern society today, the culture industry is so powerful that “it can deal with consumers’ needs, producing them, controlling them, discipling them, and even withdrawing amusement”.
Walter talks about the authenticity of art and there is a loss of authenticity when art is reproduced through media while Carey further explains the transmission view and ritual view of communication, which gives us a bigger picture of the media and culture industry.
There is an undeniable triumph of the culture industry, that people will consume from the industry even though they “see through them”.
Walter Benjamin writes that technology diminishes the ‘aura’ of an artwork. He enforces his point by giving examples such as how the distancing effect of film and the detachment of its audience from the ‘here and now’ rids it of its authenticity. He speaks of art in ‘its traditional form’, one of which has a history, its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. Although his point is a valid one, they are made under one assumption: that art is not art when it lacks historical testimony. Art, by his definition has to firstly have a historical testimony, which can be diminished reciprocally with substantive duration. Secondly, art should be viewed or consumed in a particular context. Hence, film then finds itself on the top of Benjamin’s list of inauthentic reproduction of the contemporary mass movements, having defied both of these assumptions. According to him, film seems to completely rid itself of artistic ‘aura’ and in turn takes on a more functional and political role, only presenting what it wants its audience to see.
Similarly, Adorno and Horkeimer are concerned with the culture industry is defined by a network of connections and is something that is difficult for the masses to escape from; the culture that stems from mass media and mass media itself is all around us and is inescapable. Their main concern is that people look to mass media as a distraction from reality. For example, Adorno and Horkheimer are especially critical of comedy because of the instant gratification the masses draw from it. This temporary pleasure makes them forget their harsh realities and essentially, blinds them to their reality. This blinding effect is why the elites can push their dominant ideologies onto the masses without much trouble.
This brings us to a rather cynical conclusion, that although we seem to have a choice in consumption, it is simply an illusion because we will always seek amusement and escape from harsh realities. This triggers a cycle of demand and supply, the media shapes the world and the world shapes media.
Adorno and Horkheimer write that the power of the mass media comes in its distribution, suggesting a one-way transmission of messages. This is precisely the current argument-that media merely poses a transmissive function, whereas Carey writes that the “the ritual definition” of communication, “exploits the ancient identity and common roots of the terms “commonness”, “communion,” “community”…[and that it] is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but towards the representation of shared beliefs.” The view that media merely transmits messages means that it may not matter who, why, where when, or how the recipients absorb it.
This also goes back to Walter Benjamin’s view on technological advancements causing art to lose its aura. Benjamin writes that the aura is lost because of the detachment that technology causes from the audience; a camera lens frames the object of the message and separates it from the audience quite literally with a monitor or screen when it is finally viewed. However, the idea of auras implies that the creator alone is trying to transmit a message and thus has the only say in its interpretation, but it cannot be denied that a recipient of the message is equally important. Not only is a recipient important, but a recipient who interprets and analyses the messages critically is needed. If the recipients don’t interpret the media, creators might as well throw culture at walls. Benjamin writes that the camera helps to show things in ways that people would not notice in real life-“The film has enriched our field of perception with methods which can be illustrated by Freudian theory.”; The lens does not necessarily form a barrier between the aura and the recipient. Take cinematography, for instance. “Cinematography” would be a technical version of “aura”, which is fundamentally more spiritual. Cinematography undoubtedly conveys the aura of a film and is a very essential part of contributing the acceptance and success of an individual film.
Adorno and Horkheimer argue that culture is completely reproductive of mainstream values and that it has come to an end of creative originality-that it has been completely mechanized and therefore, standardized. However, it brings up the realization that this view may be outdated. It seems natural to argue against this and say that people don’t just buy into everything that is produced on a mass scale; people don’t give credit to unoriginal ideas. Drawing example from the film industry again, though films may be the epitome of how people are just transmitting messages, the success of a film is partially dependent on people’s reception of it and there’s only so much influence that critics can have over making people believe that a film is good. The films that have “original screenplay” cause more impact on the masses; people are always looking for something new to be represented. This “something new” not only needs to be original. but also needs to be relatable. It thus becomes too simplistic to say that media is merely transmissive.
But then again, this might just be false consciousness after all, and we could just go in circles.
The common thread in Horkheimer & Adorno and Benjamin’s article is the debilitating effects of the Culture industry. Horkheimer and Adorno harboured negative attitudes towards the Enlightenment despite its shining promise of freeing us of ignorance and its strategic move towards “reason” and rationality. In an age where money determined the faculty of human beings, they believed that the Enlightenment was a “mass deception” because capitalistically produced art was commoditized for the sole purpose of generating wealth. In the process, art was mechanized, industrialized, resulting in disenchanted audiences who consume unthinkingly. To accept a piece of art, one is deceived because art is now cheap, money-based and duplicate.
This process of decay is echoed in Benjamin’s article. He charts a historical shift of the way art has been produced and consumed and observes that the authenticity and “aura” – the sensory experience of distance between the consumer and the work of art is lost when art is mechanically reproduced. Art previously originated from rituals and this is closely tied to ‘aura’. Central to this idea is the example given by Benjamin- a painting VS a photograph. While a painting is an original piece with “aura”- painstakingly put together by a painter, a photograph is but an image of an image. Sure, technology compresses time and space- now we have soft copies of the photo as well. But Benjamin criticizes this advancement as robbing art of its essence and originality. In modernity, we are merely consuming copies of more copies. In fact, the original could be very well be a duplicate and we may never know since technology is able to reproduce flawless copies of an artwork. In addressing the audience’s responses, he contrasts “cult value” with the existing “exhibition value”. Benjamin gives the example of a funeral portrait which celebrates the cult of remembrance in contrast with photography of the streets in Paris in art galleries. Perhaps what he is getting at here is the lack of a substantive purpose and meaning behind an artwork. The former commemorates the death of a person whose life made an impact on his/her loved ones and serves as a memory-jogger. However, more often than not, art gallery captions for artpieces are fictional stories woven into an artwork which is mostly a duplicate of an image. This stems from the fact that the “creation of demand” reigns supreme in the goals of culture industry producers. They are geared towards economical goals and cult value gets left behind.
Adorno and Horkheimer talks about mass culture. They believe modes of communication such as news and media are a standardization of culture. Culture to them has lost the purpose of revealing, which they define as a quality and ability to cause discomfort. Thus, culture becomes massified and loses the power to enlighten or subvert. This also implies that modes of communication becomes a way of reaffirming mass views. This coincides with what Carey describes as ritualistic study of communication. In his work, Carey describe this form of communication as one that emphasizes the medium’s ability to consolidate dominant views rather than to disseminate new information, which is the other aspect of communication he terms as the transmission model. Carey himself asserts that media not only represents reality, more specifically historic reality, it produces and reproduces it. This is because of the creation of symbolic links between the communication tools and the images it represents. One example of this is how the creation of maps actually gives rise to the concept of spatial representation rather than just representing space. Our knowledge of reality exist only within our immersion in communication as it presents us with the tools to decipher our links with the world, and this is another main function of communication; to pass on these knowledge to the younger generation. Benjamin on the other hand talks about communication’s link to reality in a more functional view, with his analysis of cinematic media and how the director can manipulate our experiences of reality through camera works. If we were to link this to Carey and Adorno & Horkheimer, we see how media and communication not only represents reality but is more often than not utilized as a tool to (re)create reality, whether on a personal level to consciousness or as a tool of the powerful to propagate and dominate ideologies in a certain era and society.
Horkheimer and Adorno are members of the Frankfurt School who wrote extensively about the culture industry. They were very much influenced by Marx’s ideas of the capitalist society where the dominant institutions are constantly influencing and directing the culture production process. In their case, individuals have very limited agency and the production process is determined by the larger structures and institutions. Leisure activity is merely the “prolongation of work” where individuals engage in entertainment just to reenergize themselves and seek instant gratification. For instance, a simple and seemingly harmless leisure activity such as shopping would be problematic for the theorists. To them, shopping is repackaged by attractive advertisements along the streets, in magazines and even newspapers. These branding strategies shape the shopping experience to be a personal one, where consumers are made to believe they are the ones making the choice, and they have the right to beautify themselves. The theorists would be critical of such an experience because the consumers are bounded and subjected to the larger market forces at work. They are unaware of how shopping as a leisure activity is not a personal choice but instead a shopping experience created and directed by the larger forces.
However, I feel that the theorists might be too extreme because they did not consider the possibility of individuals having agency. Using Stuart Hall’s (1973) idea of encoding and decoding, this can be illustrated by the way movies are interpreted and received. The producers would want individuals to decode in the way it is encoded. However, this does not always happen as individuals would interpret in ways they deem fit. They do not always follow the expected dominant values as they all have different experiences which might determine the way in which movies are decoded. As such, the Frankfurt School theorists have not considered this aspect of decoding.
Adorno and Horkheimer addresses how the culture industry is controlled by a few big corporations which continues to grow in size due vertical and horizontal integration. This gives rise to mass standardization and mass production. In the news industry for example, news content is controlled by a handful of gatekeepers and dominated by conglomerates such as the Associated Press, CNN and BBC news. Through the consumption of homogenous content, the consumer can hardly be unique outside the capitalist society as they conform to the norms and fit in. Culture becomes mass-produced.
In Benjamin’s work on “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he questions the loss of a singular authority for a work of art. He argues that the authenticity and originality of art cannot be reproduced. A photograph of an art piece is thus just an image of an image. The cameraman intervenes with what we see as it directs the eye towards a specific place and tells a specific story. This is perhaps related to Carey’s notion of the ritual view of communication whereby “a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed”. It invites our participation on the basis of us assuming various social roles within it. Different feelings are invoked when we receive various forms of information depending on our relation to it. For example, news about Singaporeans’ outstanding performance in the Olympics might give us a sense of pride while news about the Haiyan typhoon will spike feelings of grief and fear. This is in contrast to the transmission view espoused by Carey that is about the dissemination of news and knowledge and its effect on audiences.
However, the authors portray individuals as passive beings, absorbing what media forms have put out there without exercising any form of discretion. I believe that subjective perspective can in fact be studied objectively. One who is aware of the functions behind these communication mediums has agency to decide what is credible and what is not.
In the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Adorno and Horkheimer held the view that mass communication was ‘mass deception’, was used as a tool to make people subservient. “it turns all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same” – for example, in movies, where endings are usually predictable, the next movie does not seem entirely distinct from one. Adorno and Horkheimer also state that companies part of the production process are all “economically interwover” which is true in today’s media scene, where the success of movies are determined by their earnings, and companies pay a higher production cost for better screenplay, stars, effects etc to create a blockbuster with the aim of reaping profits.
Similar to Adrono and Horkheimer, in Walter Benjamin’s ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, the mechanical reproduction of media has led to a loss of aura, explained by Benjamin as the lack of originality and authenticity. Benjamin argued that without traditional, ritualistic value in art, art in the age of mechanical reproduction would inherently be based on the practice of politics. This is evident in the Singapore society today where television shows produced by mediacorp all align with the government’s values, (e.g. no homosexuality, procreation, nuclear families, meritocracy in workplace and schools,) leaving no room for originality.
Horkheimer and Adorno talked about the culture industry as a result of a very specific and uniformed system for the production of mass culture, transforming culture from a sacred object in the past to mass-produced economic goods. As most people have easy access to various types of media products, media producers have to remain competitive by producing songs/movies that are profitable, and one way to ensure success is to imitate current hits. In considering the reception of the product by the audience, it is risky for producers to try something new as its success cannot be predicted. Thus, through the consciousness of the media producers, it results in a situation whereby “the hit songs, stars, and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types”. In the case of dramas, popular choices for producers would be TimeTravel, RichGuy/PoorGirl and Spy/Action dramas, whereby the differences between dramas of the same types come from the minor plot details. In terms of stars, producers tend to make use of stars from hit dramas in an attempt to raise the chances of success for that particular product, thus there are examples of dramas with “star-studded cast”. Making use of what has been popular can also be seen in songs, whereby groups can insert a segment from their iconic song into their new song in hopes of achieving the same level of success for the follow up song. Example would be Crayon Pop who became famous in Korea for their song ‘Bar Bar Bar’ (God knows why…) and they incorporated their ‘iconic’ helmets, wiggly leg dance and some catchphrase into their next song. Thus, even though the audience has the agency to choose their cultural products, the culture industry has made it such that they have the “freedom to choose what is always the same”.
Adorno and Horkheimer view the culture industry as a system in which the masses are manipulated. Previously, there was a distinction between high and low culture, and culture was not always accessible by everyone. However in contemporary times, when all aspects of culture were turned into mass culture, there was no longer a referendum to the dominant high culture. Hence, people no longer knew if what they like is truly that which adheres to their desires. Such a total synthesis of culture is problematic to Adorno and Horkheimer because culture is disguised as a pleasure principle when it is really a reality principle. Hence, this allows people to continue to let capitalism oppress and restrain them. Essentially, mass culture is guised under the illusion of choice and people no longer have a chance to be creative and separate themselves from dominant ideology.
Similarly, Benjamin’s article focuses on the shift in perception and the implications of such a shift especially when film and photography took off on a grand scale. He argues that there is a loss of aura as a result of modernity influencing art. Aura to him is about originality and authenticity but with mechanical reproduction comes mass consumption that washes out such aura. Therefore, like Adorno and Horkheimer, Benjamin posits that due to mass culture and consumption, people are alienated from their self and others.
Likewise, Carey maintains that communication is a systemic process that creates, reinforces and uses symbolic forms. As a result, communication is a total experience that shapes human’s mind, perception and knowledge. Carey dismisses the dichotomy between ritual and transmission perspectives of communication and argues that it is only through the analysis of both, that a more nuanced view of society can be established. Ultimately, communication is not an objective and rational process but rather, one that serves to manipulate and is in itself, manipulated by social forces.
Of the 3 readings, I found Carey’s to be the most informative and illuminating. Therefore, I have chosen to center my blog entry on this particular reading: “A Cultural Approach to Communication”.
Carey outlined two alternative definitions of communication, namely the transmission view of communication and the ritual view of communication. The transmission view of communication is the one definition of communication that we are all accustomed to – communication being defined by terms such as “imparting”, “sending”, “transmitting”, or simply, “giving information to others”. Communication is perceived as the process by which information is conveyed to another party, through various (visual, oral etc) means. This can be done over distance, through the relaying of handwritten letters, or even within close proximity, when an individual relates information to the ears of another. This communication is communicated and transmitted over a space. The transmission view of communication has been found to have roots in religious attitudes.
The ritual view of communication, on the other hand, is one theory that I believe not many are familiar with. Unlike the transmission view, this view focuses not on the dissemination of information, but instead on this information being a “representation of shared beliefs”. It sees communication as a “construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world that can serve as a control and container for human action”.
To differentiate between these two views, an example has been given – under a transmission view of communication, a newspaper is seen as an instrument that distributes knowledge; under a ritual view of communication, a newspaper is seen as a medium whereby a “particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed”. Under the ritual view, news ceases to be information, and instead, constitutes drama.
Carey also acknowledges the power of communication, affirming that “society is (perhaps, only) possible because of the binding forces of shared information circulating in an organic system”. In addition, he alludes communication to be a symbolic process., and that man lives in a new dimension of “symbolic reality”. This further affirms how symbols only achieve significance when our actions attach meaning to it, and perhaps how it is influenced by their social environment.
“Space is understood and manageable when it is represented in symbolic form”, perhaps an example of how a place can be transformed to a space. Any given space can be mapped in a number of ways, each attaching a different meaning. This is further substantiated by my previous blog post, how a space at a particular place could be utilised for different reasons, attaching meaning to it.
Carey concludes by saying that to study communication is to examine the actual social process whereby significant symbolic forms are created, apprehended, and used – through our construction.
Horkheimer and Adorno are mainly criticizing the culture industry as it has given rise to standardization and mass production. People no longer classify objects, they instead are being classified. What is gone and no longer valued is distinction as conformity is valued. If one does not conform, one becomes powerless. With the culture industry, the people holding power no longer have to be discreet about their motives as the mass are buying into their ideology without actually realizing that they are being caged up by the ideology. As a result, those holding power gain more power while the mass happily conforms.
Benjamin, like Horkheimer and Adorno, writes about the change in production process. He focuses on mechanical reproduction and the loss of an aura and a shift away from tradition. He used the painter and the cameraman as an example. Before the camera, there were paintings. In paintings, if one were to paint a landscape, one would see a landscape. But with the camera, there tends to be a focus on an area and the interpretation of the picture would be different from the interpretation one would get from a painting. Mechanical reproduction changes the way we see things because even though what comes out of it may be the same thing, it is actually a different perspective that is being produced, inviting a different reaction.
Carey discusses two views of communication – transmission and ritual. The transmission view of communication is about passing information and new knowledge which is a very common way of understanding communication. The ritual view of communication on the other hand is not about passing information. It is about the representation and maintenance of shared beliefs and how these beliefs serve to control people’s actions. Carey sees communication as being a symbolic process that is key for people’s existence as communication allows for representations of reality and for reality.
I think that the shared point of these authors is that communication serves to control how the mass reacts to culture and producers of culture produce culture in the way they want the mass to see it.
Adorno and Horkheimer argue that mass culture is a form of standardization. Culture’s reproductive nature is no longer in opposition to reality as individuals accepts and is satisfied by the “reality principle”. Culture is supposed to discomfort us, in order to challenge reality, not to reproduce it. It is also arguable that mass culture has resulted in the end of individuality. There is a promotion of conformity through the commodification of culture; and individuals are conforming when they think they are not. This is similar to Carey’s idea that technological rationale is of domination itself.
Carey repeatedly emphasize that the purpose of communication is to control. Communication through culture can be argued to have such consequences of domination. However, Carey also highlights the individuals’ agency and it ties in with Hall’s idea of encoding and decoding. The use of symbol and meaning making illustrates such agency in disputing the “domination of communication”.
While reading this week’s readings, what stood out for me the most was how reality is manipulated by the media.
Benjamin talks about this when he discusses the illusion of cinema. While on the one hand, film allows for scientific examination of movement for example, in slow-motion, technological advances in the cinema have allowed for a distortion of images, and “technologically-free” reality is now endlessly manipulated and cut, not just for art, but sometimes also for political agendas. What is scary to think about is how reality in film can now be used to manipulate the audience, much like the Kuleshov effect, in which film can be manipulated to allow audience to feel whatever the filmmaker wants to film, which allows for the propagation of ideology in a political environment.
Adorno and Horkheimer discuss exactly this, when they talk about how the capitalist reality is disguised and hidden by the media, and that exactly through mass media that the bourgeois ideology is transmitted, resulting in a uniform audience, a loss of meaning, a loss of hope, and the mass becomes a means for production, and are kept in that state through the ideas fed to them by the mass media. For Adorno and Horkheimer, everything is done in order to render the proletariate a powerless and uncritical mass, so that they are unknowing to their reality and true position in the capitalist society. Here again, we can see how communication and media is manipulated for political power. For Adorno and Horkheimer, media can be said to be the opiate of the masses.
In discussing communication, Carey also talks about symbolic reality, and how communication is used to maintain the symbolic reality in which we live in society. Thus for Carey, “to study communication is to examine the actual social processes wherein significant symbolic forms are created, apprehended and used”. Our reality is hence not objective, but rather, it is steeped in symbols and language, and we learn about these symbols and language through the passing of information — communication. As such, when we think about the mass media (i.e mass communication), there is the need to think about how it influences our reality, and the symbols and languages that we learn and pick up from the media. Again, we have to look at context and power hidden behind these seemingly objective messages that the media puts out, as this influences how we see our society, and ourselves.
Happy CNY everyone, yayy.
Adorno & Horkheimer – The Culture Industry, Enlightenment as Mass Deception.
This reading proposes, well not exactly propose per se, but whatever, about a society that has lost its freedom and individuality, thanks to the standardisation brought about by media in its aspects like films, songs, TV shows, blablabla.
I quote, “Not only are the hit songs, stars and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them and only appears to change.” And then they go on to give examples of songs with the same kinds of tunes and genres, and movies, oh the movies, it’s like, you know it, you JUST know it, you just GOTTA know it, like, if you don’t, it’s like you’ve never watched a movie in your whole life. I mean like, c’mon, what’s with (and mind you, it’s not only limited to movies, like dramas too), the poor or clumsy or someone who always bungles stuff up, or a socially rejected person, oh yeah you know, those people (so we stereotype), and they will always, always, always, always meet some fancy rich guy (K-dramas you know I’m looking at you), and then he’ll fall for her, and she’ll have some spunk that he loves and he’ll woo her and they’ll have their hearts broken, and then there’ll be another girl and another guy and like come on guys, we KNOW you’re gonna get together at like the 49th – 50th episode (and yet people still watch it so diligently and eagerly, it boggles me), and the only different between one movie/drama with the other? You guessed it, the Title. It’s like you people have no imagination at all. It’s either love, or love. Like dammit, even in an action movie, there HAS to be some faithful girl waiting so longingly for the protagonist.
I’m not being resentful here, it’s just that really, every drama and movie kinda has that predictable ending to it.
However, there is one part where I stand to disagree. It went something like “Films are becoming so realistic; producer basically dictates what reality is.” Honestly, I think that’s a little far-fetched. Dictating what reality really is? I don’t think so. Rather than dictating what reality is, I think that they present an “ideal or rather what-people-want-but-can’t-have-so-120mins-of-screen-fantasy-would-do” but unrealistic presentation of what might be reality, but it’s a false sense of reality. Not everyone will fall in love with a rich guy and experience social mobility, not every rich guy will fall for the poor girl with spunk (like come on, guys and their ego.). Does it not present a modern fairy tale except that there’s no princess-y dresses and magical fairy godmothers that comes to you at midnight to cast a spell that literally turns you from rags to riches with a swoosh and a woosh? (Yeah, I’m talking Cinderella here). I mean, if we did all have magical fairy godmothers, we’d all be rich by now, know what I’m saying?
So I guess, instead of dictating what reality is, it just portrays the ideal reality that an average consumer might desire. Adventure, Romance, Money $$$ !!! We use the word “reality” so loosely here, that I guess some definition would be in order here, according to whatever I’m studying now, there’s Objective, Subjective and Intersubjective Reality. I’m just gonna take a leap here and say that it’s the intersubjective reality that we’re referring to, when we talk about film producers dictating reality. I mean, isn’t the word “dictating” a little to deterministic and i don’t know, authoritarian in a sense? Like, “I dictate that all girls who are on scholarships are girls from a lower class within the society, whose father is some unemployed or in manual labour work, and etc.”
That is really, not the case in our reality. And kinda stereotypical, no?
Horkheimer & Adorno argued that “The basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is the greatest”. The different spheres are economically interwoven and that the culture monopolies (broadcasting stations) depend on the real holders of power (electrical industry & banks). Everything is shaped accordingly to what the system wants. Humans have the freedom of choice, but not conforming means that one is powerless, economically and spiritually. People can be happy, but only if one cease to resist and become whatever the system wants them to be. Hence, it is argued that there is no longer such a thing as an individual, where each and human have been standardized by the power of generality, as if they were objects.
Mankind is a result of the product of society’s economic and social apparatus. “The general can replace the particular, and vice versa”. The social effect of mass media on men is the uniformity of experiences, which in turn creates a mass culture, with the exclusion of the new.
The authors also mentioned that films are designed in such a way that the quickness makes it difficult for humans to apprehend them. This is somewhat similar to Benjamin’s article which stated that films were simultaneous collective experience and the constant, sudden change of places and focus disrupts the process of association of the spectator. The product of the culture industry is what prescribes every reaction from the recipient. There is no longer only the individual thinking but the masses. Films have the capacity to mobilize the masses.
Also what was interesting to me was Use value vs Exchange value. This meant that no object has an inherent value; it is only valuable when seen as a commodity that can be exchanged in the market. I think this is quite applicable to our society and the example that Horkheimer & Adorno gave was how people in modern society go to a concert respecting the performance as much as they money they spent. Benjamin’s article also analysed the transformation in the nature or functions of art, where in the past, the importance was placed on its cult value. Today, it was the exhibition value of the art work that mattered.
True to the title of “enlightenment as mass deception”, the culture industry embedded within the context of a capitalist society has created a mass culture that produces standardized cultural products that have the capacity to manipulate mankind who are unable to escape these institutions, into passive recipients.
Carey uses Dewey as a starting point for understanding what is communication. There are two views of what communication is. The transmission view, mainly USA, states that communication is a “process whereby messages (e.g. knowledge, ideas and information) are transmitted and distributed in space for the control of distance and people. Here, emphasis is on power relations, and the ability to alter (social) reality. The ritual view, mainly Europe, states that communication is the representation of shared beliefs for the construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world (the ideals of a community), in turn helping to maintain society. These different views correspond to particular historical periods, technologies, forms of social order, and values, and thus the questions asked, as in the e.g. of newspapers, are different.
Carey purposely inverts the relationship between communication and reality, to render the former problematic, and to even begin thinking of it as something that is real and primary, beyond the everyday mundane activities that we tend to associate with communication. This inversion supposes that man lives in a new dimension of symbolic reality. Is this true? He talks about maps, models and symbols. Maps model the environment, reducing it to make it manageable, and this is possible because symbols can be arranged to provide infinite representations (depending on medium limitations) that are able to be presentations of and for reality. The nature of communication is the mapping out of public thought.
Models of communication are reflexive. In describing, they also circumscribe what communication can and should be. They are both representations of and for human interaction. Being of human production, this symbolic reality has to be repaired and maintained, or thrown away and rebuilt, to fit our circumstances, so that we “know” how to interact.
According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the culture industry creates uniformity and forces it upon everyone and everything. Whole and part, the general and the particular, even opposites, are all the same. There is no choice, no individuality and no hope for anything outside the system. And most insidious is the lack of realization that invested capital is the absolute master, the economic considerations and power influences which grew strong due to their interwoven nature borne from close contact and extreme concentration of people.
“Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended.” The culture industry promises the individual the fulfilment of his or her interests, but only after it has controlled for all the possible interests, and even then, never give what it promised. Instead of considering the variety of supply, it considers the variety of demand, and tries to control this demand by controlling the consciousness of people. Men becomes a type reproduced in every product. They become mere statistics. Their circumstances become clearly linked to production. ” Media in the culture industry is a means of ideological manipulation and domination. The promises are its only meaning.
Media contributes to the uniformity by integrating the features (e.g. word, image, and music). The rush of content by media makes it difficult for the spectator to apprehend, what more to attempt imagination and spontaneity of thought about the content. Stereotypes replace style. The same situation is exclusive to none but shared by all. The details become interchangeable as long as they fit in the overall pattern. Meaning is lost for both the detail and the whole. There is no more antithesis and no more connection. The “novel” and the “different” are in fact not so. And yet, everything is compelled to show its significance and effect. Words also become names, signs or symbols with floating signifiers that are arbitrarily fixed, such that meaning is lost.
“Not to conform is to be rendered powerless”. There is no use being a total outsider and thus even dissidence is realistic. Men will have to accept that they will never get what they truly want and be satisfied with what they can get (composure in face of calculated tragedy). Probabilities are manipulated, such that all have equal infinitesimal small chance. Even men are replaceable. Chance and planning become the same therefore rationality ceases.
Everything keeps moving, to exclude the new and keep nothing old. Originals are removed while reproductions are continually made. Commodities admit that they are commodities – everything becomes commodified, even if no fees are charged. The changing definition of what means pleasure changes it into boredom, partly due to the way the culture industry reproduces the labour process, such that the individual is always in the system, partly due to the promise that things can only improve (exactly how is unknown) if they changed at all. Catharsis so that genuine personal emotions in real life can be reliably controlled.
Benjamin looks at the development of art to understand the development of society. More than forgery, mechanical reproduction “captures images which escape natural vision” and “puts the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself”, at the same time “reactivating the object reproduced”. A “plurality of copies” substitutes a “unique existence”, resulting in the liquidation of cultural heritage. In spite of what it can do, the reproduction lacks the presence in time and space (the substantive duration or historical testimony) that the original has/had, that is, it would never be the original (and never have its authentic authority).
Human perception is organized and determined by nature, the medium and historical circumstances. The contemporary masses desire to bring things “closer” spatially and humanly, and to overcome the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its re-production. Uniqueness is linked with permanence as transitoriness with reproducibility. The sense of the universal equality of things reduces the aura of a unique object. Reality adjusts to the masses and vice versa.
“L’art pour l’art” refers to the idea of “pure” art which denies social function(s) of art and any categorizing by social matter. Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual (its original use). When authenticity ceases to be applicable, art becomes based on politics instead of ritual. Where once art contained cult value (intrinsic in existence), now art contains exhibition value (to be seen or not). Functions change e.g. photography challenges the viewer, and signals how to view occurrences (prescribed by preceding photos).
The film actor, unlike the stage actor, is estranged from himself and his performance by a layers. For instance, his performance is made up of separate acts (for logistical and technical adjustments). His performance is illusory but not easily revealed as such. Furthermore, his performance is presented by means of a camera, which identifies the actor as separate from his character played. What is on screen is his shadow and not his presence (nor the auras of the person and the role). The audience, separated from the actor, becomes a critic of the performance, while the actor tries to reach them in vain with his performance. Lines become blurred between the producer and the consumer, the author and the public, since there is increased access to media, which also extends their reach to others.
“The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion…the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide…individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce…[responses] control each other.” With mechanical reproducibility, it became possible for a simultaneous collective experience, to respond as a collective to publicly exhibited works.
Filmed behaviour, precise, lends itself to apperception, making things isolated, noticeable and analyzable. The close-up “extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action… space expands… movement is extended… reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.”
Creation of a demand that can only be fulfilled later, possibly with changed technical standards. Art is made to distract (absorbs) rather than to be concentrated upon (be absorbed by). “No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. The mass public critic pays no attention – they are absent-minded, going through their habits to “participate”. Facism gives the masses an expression to their right to change property relations, while preserving property e.g. through war, which mobilizes technical resources while maintaining the property system.
The three readings consider what reproduction due to new media may mean for men and society. They highlight that reproductions are not mere reflections, nor shaping of the world, but can cause more extensive effects.