Week 3, Frankfurt School Flashcards
The Frankfurt School
A group of interdisciplinary Jewish, German intellectuals influenced by Marxist theory.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
Concerned about questions that emerged in interwar Germany:
- Why are people being drawn to fascism?
- Why hasn’t the working class revolution happened yet?
- Importance of economy in shaping social, cultural, and political life.
The Frankfurt school was interested in how
the mode of production shapes various cultural institutions and ideologies.
How does the Frankfurt school theorize culture?
Authentic Culture:European, intellectual, multi-dimensional, etc….
Mass Culture: American, passive consumption, repetition/sameness, etc…
What is a critique of how the Frankfurt school theorizes culture?
- Is all European media authentic?
- The people who produced this media were all white, cis gendered, males of the bourgeois class.
- What about other places in the world?
Culture Industry
Theorizes products and processes of mass culture.
System of economic and cultural practices and processes that produce mass culture, marked by homogeneity and predictability.
According to Frankfurt school mass culture maintains
social authority, including hegemonic ideologies. Mass culture stunts the political imagination and makes people complacent.
How did Horkheimer and Adorno characterize American audiences?
As passive consumers.
- Little resistance
- Depoliticized
- Brainwashed
- Consumers cannot talk back
What was the argument in the Ross piece?
The Frankfurt school was right, they have something to teach us about today’s context.
Mass distraction makes elite domination.
Traffic over ethical journalism.
Trump getting elected would have been exciting… $$$ for media.
How does the culture industry threaten authentic culture?
By making it too accessible, by turning it into just another sellable commodity.
What does Ross mean by mass distraction making elite domination?
We’re not seeing what’s below the surface.
What does Ross mean by Traffic Trumps Ethics?
Traffic was prioritized over ethical journalism during the 2016 US elections, algorythms generated revenues and that was more important than factually accurate stories.
What does Ross mean by Boredom?
Media wanted Trump to be elected on some level because it would be more exciting and would generate more revenue for the media because of the excitement.
