“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”

     According to Adorno and Horkheimer, individuals are becoming subservient to the absolute power of capitalism in this age of mechanical reproduction. In this age, we are losing our subjectivity and we are all the time judged by the market value exchanged system which makes different between appearance and reality. Technology has acquired power in the society. Technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself.
From the enlightenment onwards, society has come up with newer attitude. Cultural industry has brought the concept of productin but now we are totally subjective to manufacturing machines. In the past, instead of film, dramas and narratives were there, instead of chief magazines books were there. Now, due to the cultural industry, our individual thinking is overshadowed and aesthetic reality of art has been suspended. The development of the cultural industry has led to the predominance of the effect, the obvious touch and technical details over the work itself-which once expressed on idea but was liquidated together with the idea. The period from romanticism to expressionism free expression and become a vehicle of protest against the organization. In music the single harmonic effect obliterate the awareness of form as a whole. In painting, the individual colour was stressed at the expense of pictorial composition and in the novel, psychology was more important than structure. But the cultural industry has put an end to this. New, culture, language, food item, behaviour are all affected by cultural industry. Technological produced art and music are just mediocre, and original subject matter is brought into fitting the industry. The deception is not that the culture industry supplies amusement but that it ruins the fun by allowing business consideration to involve it in the ideological cliché of a culture in the process of self-liquidation. Enlightenment brought the ideology of utility of art and encouraged mass production which eventually turned out to be a mass deception. In culture industry, there is no distinction between general and specific, only caricature style is developed unlike the genuine style of the past. Capitalistically produced art kills individuality of people. It creates uniform art which brings monetary. Mass culture excludes newness. It is the machine that continuously rotate the same point. Capitalists do not like new ness so they slightly change the product under the guise of same phenomenon. There are two motives of consumerist art
i) Entertainment to the public
ii) Business/money- they get money by chief art
     Culture industry creates erotic film so that public would be stimulated. By producing pornographic film, they bring masses together not by virtue of aesthetic display but simply by external display. Art is mechanized, technicalized and industrialized. Their sole purpose is getting money. An art, therefore, becomes incompatible to life in culture Industry. Industries have transformed mankind into formula, value judgements are taken as advertisement and empty talks. Advertisement is the life-blood of culture industry It uses very charismatic words so as to manipulate public. In the past, advertisement was meant to give information but new its sole aim is to block the right information. So, advertisement is blocking device. It prevents other’s product from circulating in the market. In the competitive free market only those business tycoon can succeed who can make greater amount of investment in advertisement.
     Kant says have a courage or dare to know and use reason, since all people are equally rational. But in culture industry only capitalists are reasoning. Now money determines rational faculty of human beings. What happens if general people start reasoning? It is undigestable for capitalist business tycoons. They say that life is yours, property is yours, you have your mind but your have nothing to do with us. In this way, general public become outcasted in culture industry. Everyone is treated as a stranger and an outsiders in CI. In CI, if one accepts the product he/she will be deceived because their art is cheap, money-based and duplicate. If one rejects again he/she will be deceived because they will take he/she as an outsider Adorno and Horkheimer, therefore, say that enlightenment is mass-deception.

Kant/Focault

• Positive towards enlightenment

• See free through enlightenment

• Do not mention about economic structure or the existing society

• Reason is device to bring freedom

Adomo and Horkheim

• Negative towards enlightenments
• Enlightenment deception
• Reason is capitalistic formula to deceive us.
• Reason is based one economic status

Language in culture Industry
     Langauge of Arts is debased in announcement and advertisement. Word have become commodities, surnames have become first name, words have became trademarks. In USA Fad has become fashion, and Bub and Harry have become the name of people, signification which is only function of a word, admitted by semantics, reaches perfection in the sign. Words have become simply trade mark. This is not other than violence done to the language.
     According to the writers, culture industry, film, TV, radio, photography and so on can not have a liberating function because their structure assumes complete control by the owner and a passive consume groups. Thus, they have become perfect instrument for facist propoganda which is unsuitable for democracy and its diffusion.