RANDOM
NOTES (Adorno and Horkheimer)
“The culture industry as mass deception. “IN: The Dialetic of Enlightenment (1944).
Adorno and Horkheimer.
è After examining US popular culture, Adorno and Horkheimer’s
pessimistic conclusion was that it consists of routinized forms that diminish
human experience and its complexities in favour of the interests of powerful
corporations.
è The classical denunciation of “culture industry” loss
of capacity to nourish freedom and individuality. Move from artisanal to
industrial stage and presentation of life as pure entertainment (they see high
culture as a vehicle of civic /moral values). The other side is to see cultural
industry as a service of organized capital which provides opportunities for
collective creativity and decoding.
RANDOM
NOTES (James Clifford)
“On collecting art and culture”. James Clifford
Describes an art/culture system in which art
(collectable) is the pivot around which culture (communal tradition) turns.
This system is open and fluid, bringing in objects from distant cultures as
well as exorcizing home ones, this which is crucial to the formation of
“western subjectivity”. Although, he comes up with a more optimistic view then
Adorno and Barthes, Clifford overlooks categories of exploitation and power.
RANDOM
NOTES (Stuart Hall)
“Encoding, decading”. Stuart Hall
Account on how messages are produced and disseminated.
Four stage theor (production, circulation, consummation and reproduction). Each
stage in the circuit limits the possibilities in the next.
RANDOM
NOTES (Raymond Williams)
“Advertising: the Magic System” Raymond Williams
Dated essay which belongs to a former kind of cultural
studies when it was unproblematically
linked to cultural history in the same line as Marx (who believed
capitalism transformed commodities into fetiches), for Williams advertising is
magic because it transforms commodities into glamorous signifiers(car=
masculinity) provoking a sense of unreal , imaginary world. Most of all makes
us forget the suffering in the production of commodities.
It might be argued the use value of many commodities
is their signifying function.
