Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment
Any reader stepping away from Adorno and Horkheimer’s The Culture Industry must be instantly affected by the crushing cynicism in the author’s revelation that human acts of perception and creativity are merely the result of thousands of years of progressive, self-inflicted captivity. As a direct result of the industrialization of the creative process, culture — that is art, music, film, and all shared creative endeavors humans use to attach meaning to existence — has been boiled down into a finite number of socially acceptable art forms. This process of cultural industrialization is inescapable, as each new generation is born into the confines of the existing and preformed media paradigm. The true cynic reads into this, coming to the realization that no matter how ground-breaking, indispensable or avant-garde a work of art is, it is little more than the practice of collecting false notions of a false reality and attempting to pass them off as truth. (Good thing I’m not a complete cynic, as that framework is crushing on the soul.)
One is left wondering how we can escape this bleak condemnation of creativity. Adorno and Horkheimer offer little comfort, explaining that our only victory is our ability to operate with a working understanding of our own false reality. And this, honestly, is hardly triumph.
If this victory is so singular and limited to understanding, then our pitfalls are numerous and forever growing. Every act of creation becomes the culmination of our false reality. Adorno and Horkheimer were lucky, for as crushing and artistically destructive as the early film, radio and television industries were; in terms of cultural degradation, modern media trumps anything that came before.
Adorno and Horkheimer explain the world, in entirety, passes through the filter of the culture industry, creating a downward spiral that limits how we perceive to those options offered to us by the industry. This has become exponentially more disruptive and destructive in the last two decades, as reality TV has taken hold of television markets and the spread of the Internet has allowed for the simultaneous, instantaneous, amateur creation of reality by the masses.
This movement could not have been foreseen, as the authors argue the true power holders are those fluent in the jargon of the industry. However the industry has been spread so thin, its methods so universally adopted, that the power to create reality, to change our total perception of the universe and existence, is available to anyone and everyone. It would be hard to fathom in 1947 that only 50 years later, a vast information network would connect the entire world, allowing for a near-socialist ideal of shared power. Moreover, one wonders if this utopia of dispersed power could have been predicted, would they have also foreseen the popularization and acceptance of gutter media (unsourced, purely capitol-driven spam crafted as dressing for Google ads and product placements)?
It becomes clearer with each new television season, as reality TV contestants assume roles without direction and expect fabricated storylines, as viewers continue to believe, against their better judgment, that this programming says something deeper about human existence; that we are only continuing down the spiral of false reality. But now, instead of jogging, we are sprinting. Somewhere, the culture industry went meta — it was decided it was more cost-effective to directly warp reality than try to focus it through a creative lens. Clearly, this moves us further and further away from reality, further from truth.
I’m unsure whether or not Adorno believes there is any escape. And I’m unsure myself if there is either. Because we are born into captivity, we are forever shackled by our own culture. We are never given the chance to search for Truth, because we are already drowning in a sea of false truth, which too many accept as reality. So what can be done?
Try and try again, I assume. For the natural flaw of the culture industry is that all its strength is based on the same creations that can ultimately destroy it. And while humanity will never tire of the lowest common denominator entertainment, we will also forever crave progression. So there is hope in progression. Because not everything falls into the traps of the culture industry, we can slowly escape — or at least continue to stay informed and attempt to dig out. This ultimately comes down to individual progression away form the industry of culture. It demands artists take steps to free themselves, and hope others choose to do the same. There is no collective salvation, only individual salvation. So, as Adorno and Horkheimer point out, the first step is knowing. The second step, then, must be to choose creative isolation. But even then, there are no guarantees.