[p2p-research] Theodore Adorno's work (open thread)

[marc fawzi]

"The ruthless unity in the culture industry is evidence of what will happen
in politics. Marked differentiations such as those of A and B films, or of
stories in magazines in different price ranges, depend not so much on
subject matter as on classifying, organising, and labelling consumers.
Something is provided for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are
emphasised and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range
of mass-produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of
complete quantification. Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in
accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the
category of mass product turned out for his type. Consumers appear as
statistics on research organisation charts, and are divided by income groups
into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of
propaganda."


On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 12:26 AM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> This is a thread where I'll post excerpts from Adorno's Culture Industry, a
> book which I had read about 5 years ago and was mesmerized by the rhythm
> implicit in his writing, and shocked by how extreme his views were, and
> still not comfortable with his over abundance of precision.
>
> Feel free to ignore, reply to, or just glance thru.
>
> Here is the first excerpt:
>
> "
>
> This is the result not of a law of movement in technology as such but of
> its function in today’s economy. The need which might resist central control
> has already been suppressed by the control of the individual consciousness.
> The step from the telephone to the radio has clearly distinguished the
> roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to play the role of subject,
> and was liberal. The latter is democratic: it turns all participants into
> listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are
> all exactly the same. No machinery of rejoinder has been devised, and
> private broadcasters are denied any freedom. They are confined to the
> apocryphal field of the “amateur,” and also have to accept organisation from
> above.
>
> But any trace of spontaneity from the public in official broadcasting is
> controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions and official
> programs of every kind selected by professionals. Talented performers belong
> to the industry long before it displays them; otherwise they would not be so
> eager to fit in. The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually
> favours the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not
> an excuse for it. If one branch of art follows the same formula as one with
> a very different medium and content; if the dramatic intrigue of broadcast
> soap operas becomes no more than useful material for showing how to master
> technical problems at both ends of the scale of musical experience – real
> jazz or a cheap imitation; or if a movement from a Beethoven symphony is
> crudely “adapted” for a film sound-track in the same way as a Tolstoy novel
> is garbled in a film script: then the claim that this is done to satisfy the
> spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than hot air.
>
> We are closer to the facts if we explain these phenomena as inherent in the
> technical and personnel apparatus which, down to its last cog, itself forms
> part of the economic mechanism of selection. In addition there is the
> agreement – or at least the determination – of all executive authorities not
> to produce or sanction anything that in any way differs from their own
> rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all themselves.
>
> "
>
>
> --
>
> Marc Fawzi
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Fawzi/605919256
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcfawzi
>



-- 

Marc Fawzi
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Fawzi/605919256
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcfawzi
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