How to Build a Better Monster

The Culture Industry

This week, I waded through Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Like Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer and Adorno are critical of the mass reproduction of art because under the circumstances of mechanical reproduction, art ceases to be art. When readily available and easily produced, art becomes commodity.

Horkheimer and Adorno claim that “culture now impresses the same stamp on everything” (71). Although first published in 1948, their critiques of film, music, and print materials seem to hold true for today’s “art.” The most obvious example of the sameness of art that occurs to me is in the film industry. First, notice that I used the word “industry” to describe filmmaking. It is rarely art, creation, or original craft. It is more like a business or factory that churns out one product after another. Regardless of how major filmmakers defend their works, films are ultimately one in the same. It is rare that a person can go to a theater, watch a movie, and leave feeling surprised, moved, or inspired. That is because each movie does nothing unique; they are merely new spins on old, proven formulas. In an Art of Film class I took last year, we discussed that at its simplest form, the general Hollywood movie follows the basic plot of: man desires X, man establishes plan to achieve X, man executes plan, man nearly fails in his attempt to reach X, man finally achieves X. X can be represented by a variety of fillers – the woman the man loves, the victory on the battlefield, recognition from his boss, acceptance from his parents – but it always exists as something to fill a lack in the man’s life.

These familiar plots fail to move us, but to worsen the movie experience is the fact that characters do not exist – only celebrities persevere. When we go to a movie, we fail to identify with the character; instead, we see Tom Cruise, Ashton Kutcher, or Robert DeNiro. Or Glenn Close, Nicole Kidman, Jessica Alba. While some of these actors have been honored for their acting ability, one should be careful in proclaiming their true talent. Usually, actors are cast because they have a look and reputation that will draw people to see the film. Forget about their ability to act. All that matters is their ability to attract large numbers of viewers, which means they can bring in money.

The audience is unaware that they’re flocking to cheap, thoughtless films without reason. People are probably drawn to these films because they fail to see them AS films. “Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies,” and “the film forces its victims to equate it with reality” (Horkheimer and Adorno 75). Film conventions and camera technique have advanced to the point that people no longer understand how to critique film as a work of film. Instead, they perceive what they see to be truth or real on some level. Although they recognize that it’s a work of film, they do not consciously register how the film functions. Because they cannot recognize its weaknesses and strengths as a work of art, viewers blindly follow the plot. They overlook the fact that the film’s been “done” countless times before under different titles.

Filmgoers praise a film for innovation when the film’s packaging deceives them. Repetition remains the building block of film (or popular music, or visual art, or whatever genre you care to analyze), regardless of how it’s packaged. Within any genre, “its characteristic innovations are never anything more than improvements of mass reproduction,” and the viewers/consumers are “directed to the technique, and not to the contents – which are stubbornly repeated, outworn, and by now half-discredited” (Horkheimer and Adorno 81). Remakes and sequels are filmmakers’ scams to play on the feeble-minded audience that is incapable of realizing when they’re being played. Why did anyone bother to see the Godzilla remake that was released in the mid-90s? The plot was well known, and the monster was familiar. Effects and flashy images drew audiences, however. People like to gawk in amazement at the packaging. People want to be thrilled or amazed by visuals. A film is “good” by the majority’s standards if it succeeds in entertaining; never mind that it can have other (more challenging) purposes.

After reading Horkheimer and Adorno’s essay, I still can’t understand HOW the culture industry maintains its grip on consumers. How could people not be bored to tears with the readily accessible products in film, music, and print? When I turn to MTV, I see the same video for the same rap song that I heard the month before, and the year before, and the year before that. And then, there’s a new pop singer, but she looks exactly like one who came and went three years before. There’s no point in going to the theater, because one already knows the plot. And with popular magazines, one never receives news; it’s always the same structure that teases with a juicy story and then leaves the reader hanging. Since there is nothing exciting or interesting to be found in the culture industry’s products, why don’t more people seek independent works or venues? Or why don’t more people protest these products in hope of encouraging change? It kills me to think that the masses have truly acclimated to the mediocre products peddled by the Industry.