What a wonderful coincidence it is when a pair of critical works, without meaning to be intertextual, just happen to complement each other like the hooks and loops of Velcro. In The Culture Industry as Mass Deception, Horkheimer and Adorno argue that big business uses culture to exert an undue amount of control over our lives. They take a top-down approach to this, examining the social contract from ten thousand feet and swooping down upon their area of focus. In stark contrast to this, Barthes elects to attack the same topic by means of a bottom-up strategy in Mythologies. He entices the reader with concrete examples of cultural myths from everyday life and builds these up into an all-out expose of the invisible hand's chilling steely digits concealed within the disarming velvet glove of popular culture. Between the two of them, this pair of social critiques manage to debilitate the carefully constructed illusion of individual freedom, punching holes through its sheen to reveal the bitter truth of our technology-addicted society's hamstrung civil liberties: popular culture is a system of modern myths used by the culture industry as tools of convenience with which they shape our lives to the benefit of their corporate masters.
Horkheimer and Adorno launch their diatribe by stating that the popular culture propagated by mass media now plays the role that once belonged to organized religion, feudalism and other systems of social puppetry. They refute the claim that the specialization of individual roles resulting from the steady march of technological advancement has created a greater scope for individual expression, postulating that these alleged differences are artificial and merely mask the fact that the cancerous spread of capitalism has spawned a bland monocultural quagmire in which we are all trapped.
Their assault on the elaborate fantasy of distinct subcultures and transient countercultures that we entertain finds support in Barthes' analysis of the jet-man. Despite appearing largely outdated today, the space age dream of life among the stars was very much the dominant fuel for human imagination in the developed world during the sixties and seventies. The myth of the jetpack-equipped space dweller formed the basis of innumerable TV shows, magazine articles, science fiction novels, movies and toys. It powered the global economy for two entire decades before the public finally grew disenchanted with this carrot-on-a-stick and a new champion of consumer and organizational spending had to be found. During all that time there was no visible attempt to critically analyze the feasibility of life in outer space. Furthermore, because virtually the entire populace was so enthralled by the potential for leaving this planet behind and colonizing new worlds, scant little attention was given to the decay of our natural environment.
An interesting aspect of this phenomenon is the eagerness with which millions awaited the transition to a new lifestyle that promised to deliver an unending stream of new horizons to discover, explore and conquer in exchange for the loss of their access to nature and the freedom to eschew the restraints imposed by burgeoning technological progress. Thanks to the pervasive influence of mass media, the population at large was successfully manipulated into chomping at the bit to trade in their birthrights for a mirage that seemed to be backed up by a whole slew of incomprehensible whizbang technology by which they were conditioned to be impressed.
Horkheimer and Adorno follow this up with a critical examination of the claim that cultural homogeneity is a necessary prerequisite for mass production, to which we owe our high standard of living. They point out that this explanation neglects to mention that our current setup panders to the whims of those with economic clout at the expense of the everyone else, who get treated as drones. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of people consistently choose convenience over freedom. This tendency has led to the great suburban boom, as everybody and their subservient canine companions move in droves to the human farms being continuously erected.
It is telling that the grand prize of the rat race is an opportunity to be like everybody else. Those holding the reins are quite content to let the rabble compete against each other because as long as they continue to strive for a spot on top of the heap, they fail to realize the hopelessness of their situation. Barthes lends support to this train of thought in The World of Wrestling. He describes how professional wrestling, a theatrical spectacle in the guise of sport, manages to satisfy the public's innate craving for moral justice, placating the throbbing masses without providing them anything of substance.
Professional wrestling is popular because it takes very little thought to understand and enjoy, making it the junk food of the entertainment world. And like junk food it is targeted at the juvenile contingent of society, which is perfectly happy to engage in the relentless consumption of whatever the capitalist system deems them worthy of having. They do not realize that their lives are manufactured and thrust upon them from on high, content to remain in blissful ignorance as long as their base desires are satisfied on the surface.
In Wine and Milk, Barthes discusses the unquestioning faith with which the French accept their obligation to be fascinated by wine. In North America, this coveted position is held by beer, the consumption of which is promoted in every informal social setting. In fact, the enjoyment of beer is so ingrained into our culture that it is generally a social faux pas to admit a lack of appreciation for beer. The major breweries go to great lengths to sustain this image of beer as a social lubricant, ensuring that their logos adorn just about every major event that draws their target audience. To facilitate the illusion of choice, the breweries offer several variants of their flagship products, each one heavily marketed to a particular type of person. This allows people to keep on believing that they have the freedom to choose how they live, since it does not dawn upon them that, as long as they remain within the confines of cultural norms, all they really have is the heavily limited freedom to select from a given selection of lifestyles that have been pre-approved by the economic powers who mould our culture.
Indeed, this didactic piece by Barthes about French beverage customs is a fantastic example of the manner in which big business exercises the power afforded to it by its stranglehold over the culture industry. Wine is an important component of the French economic engine and certainly one of its flagship exports. As such, it is vital that the image of wine as the essence of French culture be maintained if French industry is to thrive. As can be expected therefore, the corporate powers of France spare no effort to keep up this image on the world stage. This analysis can easily be generalized to other industries in other countries. Wherever there is a profit to be made from the pervasiveness of a certain opinion, there is sure to be an economic power taking measures to uphold this opinion through systemic tweaking of the messages espoused by the mass media.
The next issue that Horkheimer and Adorno raise is the culture industry's growing tendency to emphasize technique and presentation details over content, largely because there is very little in the way of fresh content being produced anymore. They mention that this appalling lack of fresh content is not a natural problem but a synthetic one created by the refusal of the media tycoons to permit the expression of ideas of which they do not approve. Consequently, they attempt to make up for this shortcoming by distracting the masses with details of the techniques used in the production of the content. This gives the riffraff something to talk about so they rarely notice that they are being cyclically doled out the same material with a new face each time.
For instance, the allure of the jet-man was primarily a function of the glamourous techno-wizardry that would have been required to sustain such a lifestyle. An entire world of fantasy was constructed upon the basis of space travel eventually becoming a reality for the general public, which was wildly successful in snaring the minds of a generation. However, once ensnared, these fans of the space age hoopla had to be kept enamoured of the dream that rendered them politically impotent. The perpetrators of this socioeconomic juggernaut accomplished this by conjuring up endless reams of detail about the promised land, which kept the hopeful population enraptured by this intoxicating vision. Despite having been largely supplanted by the new pipe dream of cyberspace, the remnants of this effort continue to exist today, as evidenced by the resurgence of Star Wars and the stagnant popularity of Star Trek.
Alternately, consider the attraction of professional wrestling, which combines the plot sophistication of a football game with the dramatic flair of a cheap soap opera, yet enjoys tremendous popularity. The secret to its success lies is in the focus upon technique. As Barthes is quick to establish, the job of the wrestlers is to portray pure infiltrated human emotion, especially anguish and triumph. This they do with great finesse and aplomb, dutifully giving the audience what they seek: reassurance that moral justice lives on. Invariably, the most popular wrestlers are those who exhibit the sharpest technique, completely submerging the audience in an adrenaline soaked tale of betrayal, hardship, revenge and glory.
Apart from the examples supplied by Barthes, scores of others abound in pop culture. The movies churned out by Hollywood are now promoted chiefly for their special effects not the quality of the plot. Occasionally a film critic will make a halfhearted attempt to come down hard on Tinseltown for this but by and large the constituents of our consumerist society continue to lap up the recycled plots as long as they are disguised beneath sufficient layers of digital magic.
Having built up their case, Horkheimer and Adorno present the reader with an in-depth look at one of the tactics used by the culture industry to keep the masses in line. They outline how movies are designed to keep the viewers constantly engaged, thereby denying the hapless folks an opportunity to ponder the relevance of the sequence of events unfolding before them. And by the time the movie has ended, all the conflicts have been neatly resolved, leaving the viewers with a sense of satisfaction but often too emotionally drained to think about the movie's plot any more. Instead, some of the most visually impressive scenes are reminisced about, quite distinct from the message of the film, if there even was one.
This strategy of glossing over the realistic details is highlighted by Barthes in The Brain of Einstein, where he analyzes how cartoons inevitably sweep the messy mathematical details of Einstein's famous equation under the carpet, encouraging the belief that it was a sudden revelation that struck him out of the blue, not the culmination of years of mental labour that built upon centuries of groundwork laid by the giants upon whose shoulders he stood. Consistent exposure to the ideals emblazoned in the popular media gradually causes these ideals to seep into people's subconscious minds, where they begin to influence their behavior. This cunning and devious system of appropriating the minds of the media consuming public en masse via seemingly innocuous forms of entertainment is highly effective due to the fact that it camouflages the true motives of the culture industry.
While history has demonstrated that the oppressed masses will always revolt against tyranny, this has only happened when they were sufficiently disgruntled. By effectively incapacitating the ability of consumers to analyze their environment and general situation through the surreptitious stymying of any opportunities they might have to engage in such thought, the media mongols prevent feelings of ill-will from being built up toward themselves. Consequently, they can continue to conduct themselves with reckless abandon in the manner that so pleases them, secure in the knowledge that their misdeeds will be lost amidst the general discombobulation afflicted upon society by their weapons of mass zombification.
As they begin to wind up their discourse, Horkheimer and Adorno decry the deplorable lack of adventurous spirit in the artists of today. This part of their writing is actually significantly less clear than the preceding content. The ideas expressed within it do not flow well and they struggle to get their point across. Nevertheless, with some close reading it is still possible to glean the essence of the drivel that they produced whilst discussing the current predicament of artistic style.
They assert that the great artists of yore did not overly concern themselves with meeting the stylistic prescriptions of the day, electing instead to repudiate the rules of style where it conflicted with their artistic vision. They further argue that it is only by rebelling against the styles imposed by tradition that artists are able to find their true identity. Thanks to the determined efforts of corporate bigwigs, aspiring artists find themselves cramped into the rigid box that the entertainment industry enforces upon them as an interface to the audience that the distribution channels hold in prized captivity.
As Barthes explains in The Romans in Film, the filmmakers unimaginatively used the vapid signs of sweat and the fringe to represent the exertion of thought and the quality of being Roman respectively. Neither of these signs is particularly innovative or clever. Sweat has been used as a sign of mental exertion ever since the infancy of cinema, which almost certainly borrowed this trick from the annals of live theatre. Using physical characteristics like hair to demarcate an entire group of people is certainly not an epic breakthrough either.
This disdainful lack of a willingness to experiment can be found in the vast majority of products churned out by the content machines of the culture-defining entertainment industry. It is no longer the norm to try novel ideas in the composition of artistic works but rather the rare treasure, of which we are expected to be in complete awe when we are fortunate enough to be presented such a work by the powers that be. Of course, severely limiting the number of new approaches to artistic production serves to limit the opportunity for anything controversial to sneak past the idea filters of the executives at the helm of the culture industry.
Having delivered the salient points of their dissertation, Horkheimer and Adorno conclude with a backward glance at the heart of the matter, which was hinted at at various times during the course of the article: the culture industry is a powerful and deceptive tool used by the economically powerful members of society to subtly wield control over the rest of us. In The Matrix all the humans are used as fuel cells but their minds are fooled into thinking that life is progressing as normal. This was one of the few innovative plots to escape from Hollywood during the past decade and left viewers with the haunting spectre of a world overrun by robots. However, one has only to replace robots with greedy corporations and interpret the fuel cell cocoons figuratively rather than literally to realize that the movie was a glimpse into the stark reality of our own society.
The mass media hold our freedom of thought in stasis by forcing pre-chewed nuggets of cultural dictums down our throats and we happily proceed through the artificially constructed life that is offered to us from on high by those elements of society who have the world's strings wrapped around their pinky fingers. Of course, this truth is so bitter that we would rather go on believing the lie perpetuated to us by the corporate world's media stooges than face up to the grim state of affairs, especially when it is so easy to just switch on the idiot box and waste another evening staring into its hypnotic glow like perfect little automatons.