Blog Post 4: Media Industries (Ho Roanne)
The article by Adorno and Horkheimer provides a critical view about culture industries, reflecting the commodification and homogenisation of culture today as a form of rational domination in a capitalist society (with Marxist underpinnings to it). Using the ‘lack of style’ in modern culture industries and the corporatization of media companies / cultural makers to illustrate the effects of economic coercion on a field that was previously separated from the market, Adorno and Horkheimer provoke us to think about how art and creativity have been reduced to mere objects that are subjected to logic of the market.
While I agree with how culture is increasingly being commodified, with price tags and values put on various types of cultural goods/services (and creativity tailored accordingly to suit the mass audience), I feel that Adorno and Horkheimer are too dismissive about describing how consumers are simply being passively controlled and manipulated by the market - in which culture industries are in turn dependent on. In my opinion, the increasing media literacy of the mass audience today has been undermined and underestimated in this reading. Besides the fact that not all cultural producers have economic affiliations or are incentivised to produce for money, the distinctions between ’consumers’ and ‘producers’ are also blurring. With the affordances of new media and the internet, consumers are now both producers and consumers. Exemplified in the case of ‘citizen journalism’, consumers (or the so-called ‘proletariats’ who do not own any means of production) also have the agency to collaboratively create content and influence public opinion. It is hard to ignore citizens who upload news/content with the intention of benefiting the public with their information and bringing about positive changes in society.
Hence, this goes to show that power relations are dynamic and not simply a one-direct flow from producers (those who own means of production in the capitalistic society) to consumers as Adorno and Horkheimer make it appear to be. It is definitely a more complex issue that could possibly evolve over time.