Culture Industry
1. Auflage Januar 2003
224 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
The term 'culture industry' has been a key reference
point in the critical literature on culture and the media ever
since the classic chapter in Horkheimer and Adorno's
Dialectic of Enlightenment, yet until now there has been little
attempt to update the analysis for the present day. In this
innovative new book, Heinz Steinert applies the concept of culture
industry to contemporary cultural forms and demonstrates its
relevance for the twenty-first century.
Unravelling Horkheimer and Adorno's complex prose,
Steinert sets out to explain precisely what is meant by the term
'culture industry'. Writing in a clear and engaging
style, he provides an accessible exposition of the key themes and
concepts. This close textual analysis is combined with wide-ranging
case studies showing how the concept of culture industry can be
used to approach more recent cultural phenomena. Examining
contemporary film, pop music and art, as well as dating agencies
and the paparazzi, Steinert reveals the ways in which culture is
commodified today.
This is an original book that provides a fresh critical
perspective on culture and the media. It will be essential reading
for students of media and cultural studies, sociology and of the
humanities in general.
Acknowledgements.
Introduction: the pleasures of criticism.
Chapter 1: Approaching culture industry: recommendedequipment.
Tools 1: The text: Horkheimer and Adorno's 'CultureIndustry' of 1944/1947.
Tools II: Cultural experience: analysing the products of cultureindustry.
Tools III: Reflexivity: writing field notes.
Field notes I: Why are you smiling, Leonardo?.
Autonomy and mass deception - a case of Dialectic ofEnlightenment.
Field notes II: The President as the bad guy - ClintEastwood's 'absolute power'.
The structure of the 'Culture Industry' essay.
Field notes III: Heartburn and Telephone Sex.
Chapter 2: On method: look carefully, think thoroughly, anddo not let yourself be taken in.
Skoteinos, or how to read Adorno.
Texts that do not need readers.
Authoritarian realism versus reflexive dialectics.
Field notes IV: Woody Allen, or the film critics'blindness to irony.
Countertransference and analysing the working alliance.
The everyday and the reflexive approach to texts.
Analysing the working alliance.
How to conduct a thorough and skilful interpretation.
Field notes V: Talk Radio - insulting theaudience.
Chapter 3: The production of cultural commodities.
Problems involved in producing cultural commodities.
Fordist standardization: 'Uniform as a whole and in everypart.
False identity.
Reality doubled.
Fordist cultural commodities.
Organized markets - organized production.
Developments in the mode of production.
Field notes VI: Exoticism and Music.
Working alliances in the cultural history of the twentiethcentury: bourgeois, modern, avant-garde and reflexive.
The development of reflexivity in the twentieth century.
Field notes VII: The obsolescence of high culture'scritique of society: the case of Carolee Schneemann.
Chapter 4: What is wrong with consensualentertainment?.
Amusement - 'released from every restraint' orthe 'prolongation of work'?.
Field notes VIII: Clowns, performers and shows - thenot quite so respectable arts.
Culture as advertising - advertising as potlatch.
Field Notes IX: Ahlers Collection on Tour: The ArtEvent.
Chapter 5: The conditions of belonging: the appropriation ofthe audience.
'Ironically, man as a member of a species has been made areality by the culture industry [monopoly capitalism]'.
Field notes X: Can we find Hitler funny?.
What can the public want?.
'It's good to see you here in such numberstonight!'.
Culture industry's impact on consumers.
Analysing 'the audience' from the audience'sperspective.
Field notes XI: Total control of your life.
Chapter 6: Culture industry politics.
Structural populism.
Field notes XII: Why Princess Diana's death was somoving.
Chapter 7: Intellectuals in the supermarket:perplexed.
Professional and lay critics of media and society.
Wrong television cannot be viewed rightly.
Social criticism and culture.
Critical theory in enhanced culture industry.
Field Notes XIII: Woody Allen's ManhattanOperettas.
Notes.
Select bibliography of works by Adorno and Horkheimer.
Index
remains an important model for understanding contemporary media
culture. Heinz Steinert provides an excellent presentation of
Adorno and Horkheimer's perspectives on media culture and
useful instructions on how to read their text and the products of
culture industry, helping to enable his readers to become cultural
critics of contemporary culture and theoretical discourse."
--Douglas Kellner, University of California at Los
Angeles
"Understanding "culture industry" is central to both critical
theory and contemporary public life. Heinz Steinert's account is
both the best introduction to the subject and an important update
for a new era. It should be read widely."
--Craig Calhoun, New York University
