Week 9: B & B, McLuhan, A & H, and Benjamin
So a great deal of this blog will address Adorno and Horkheimer (2006): have to be upfront about that.
Before even diving into the argument itself, something needs to be said about their writing. I mean, seriously, did they have editors for this article? I think A & H could benefit from ENG 101. A conference with me would go something like this: "Well guys, this paper is coming along very well. The content of the argument is great: there's plenty of room for disagreement, but the ideas are interesting, and you explore the culture industry in depth. However, I feel we could organize the essay much better to make these great ideas that you have clearer for your readers. Headings, for instance, could really help readers sift through the 30 single-spaced pages we have before us. Also, paragraphs ramble on without any clear direction for 2 pages or so. Let's break those paragraphs up, A & H! This will help your readers keep track of your train of thought. And within the paragraphs, it is difficult to discern at times if you are simply adding examples to support your overall point of the paragraph or if the paragraph is making a linear argument. In other words, could I read the first couple of sentences (point A) and the last couple of sentences (point B) of each paragraph and still get the point without the rest of of the paragraph, or is there a logical, necessary progression that takes me from point A to point B? I'm asking this rhetorically, of course, but you catch my drift: right now, each paragraph is a mess (well, maybe I wouldn't use the word "mess" during the conference, but something more euphemistic). Every sentence in a paragraph reads like a "topic sentence" that could stand alone by itself. Let's see what we can do with this draft: revision could really help here...."
But I digress. Let's talk about the point of the chapter. I must admit that I, like many other culture snobs, sympathize with a lot of their discussion. I spend ample time railing against mainstream Hollywood for continuing to shovel "trash" down our throats, often using the words "trash" or "garbage." With new technology, reproduce works of dubious artistic quality (Benjamin (2006) giving much more attention the new replicability, given to us by technology, that enable the situation A & H rail against). Cliches abound, and we can often tell exactly what cliches to expect or what direction the plot will go within the first couple of minutes in a film, as A & H complain about. I pretty much know that any summer film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Michael Bay is a must-miss formulaic train-wreck. It may be interesting to keep count of how many action/drama cliches they rack up per film. What perturbs me more, though, is that people/the masses/whatever are either complicit in or not even aware of the redundancy Hollywood thrives on. I distinctly recall my disgust after watching "Armegeddon" on video (no, I did not go to the theater to see it), then expressing this disgust with my co-workers the next day, remarking about how cliched and absurd the movie was. They, on the other hand, all thought it was great: they agreed there may be cliches in the film, but did not find these to be a problem. It was what they came to expect in a summer blockbuster, and they looked forward to going through these motions over and over again. I, like many others of us I'm sure, have had similar experiences with music. It has always amazed how some of my good friends over the years, who are all intelligent people, can listen to bands like Nickelback (see wiki) that epitomize over-produced, over-commercial, cookie-cutter rock. Many, however, either do not even notice how unoriginal the music or are aware of it and appreciate the formula. For instance, when I worked with a bunch of high school/early college age kids at a plant nursery in Dayton for several summers, I tried to bring in non-commercial rock for us to listen to. They would hear the first track, however, and immediately protest, preferring to listen to the same cycle of 10 songs played on the local "modern rock" station 8 hours straight....
At the same time, a question I have regarding A & H's argument is to what extent do we put the blame for the proliferation of trash on "capital" or the cultural industry and not the masses themselves, a question I think Jordan addresses. Is the culture industry merely giving people what they intrinsically want, or is this an artificial need that the industry trys to place inside the masses? If commercial radio/MTV/etc. gave equal playtime to creative musicians as well as formulaic ones, would everyone have better tastes, or would most people still gravitate toward the trash? I guess the other question this brings to mind is how subjective are our definitions of what is good, what is "original," etc? A & H talk about music that is pseudo-individualistic, which appeals to our longing to feel original and individualistic despite being the robots controlled by the powers that be. But individualistic or original does a work have to be to be considered outside of the corporate industry? Does Radiohead do enough to distance themselves from formulaic rock? How about a band like the Fleet Foxes? How distant from the norm does a work have to be to transcend the label of "trash"? Is it always clear exactly when someone is selling out and when they are raging against the machine?
McLuhan (2003) tries to understand the shifts that television and electronic technology will bring about in our culture. One idea that stuck out to me was his remark that we cannot really understand the impact of a new technology when it arises: we can also see how revolutionary it is in retrospect many years later. This connects with Marvin's statements last week about how we perceive the future: its merely a more advanced version of the current world. It's quantitatively, not qualitatively, different. However, is it completely true that we can't see the qualitatively different future ahead of us at the time a new technology arises? I guess it depends on which people you are referring to. In the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn argues that many researchers understand the revolutionary nature of their discovery immediately and actually begin to see the world in a qualitatively different way than other scientists. Their worldview undergoes a gestalt shift, like a light switch flipping from off to on. They may try to assimilate this new finding into the existing paradigm at at first, but these efforts end quickly and they recognize the impact their work has. . It is simply the old guard, on the other hand, that persists in either discredited the new discovery or tries to assimilate it into the existing worldview/paradigm. Maybe it is true that we can only empirically determine the impact a new technology has on us after the fact, but I'm not sure that "it is futile to discuss it [the effects of a new technolgy at all" when the technology surfaces (cited in McLuhan, p.199).