The Origin
Frankfurt School is a school of contemporary western social philosophy and also a school of “Western Marxism”. It is an academic community composed of a group of social science scholars, philosophers and cultural critics centered on the “Social Research Center” of the University of Frankfurt, Germany. The school was founded in 1923, and its main representatives are Benjamin, Adorno and others.
About “Culture Industry”
Horkheimer and Adorno, representatives of the Frankfurt School, put forward the concept of “culture industry” in the Dialectics of Enlightenment. Starting from the study of music, the two advocated the term “cultural industry” instead of “mass culture”. An entertainment industrial system that relies on modern science and technology to reproduce and disseminate cultural products on a large scale, including commercial radio, film, television, newspapers, magazines, pop music and other popular culture and mass media. The best-selling novels, commercial movies, popular TV dramas, popular songs, leisure newspapers and so on, which are popular in our daily life today, are all products of this cultural industry.
The Goal of “Culture Industry”
The goal of culture industry is economic and its essence is to make profits. Adorno said: “The whole practice of the cultural industry is to put the naked profit motive into various cultural forms.”
For example, in China, NetEase Cloud Music platform is a popular music software for contemporary young people, we can hear a variety of popular songs on NetEase Cloud Music. NetEase Cloud Music is a mainstream channel for singers to produce songs and release music. Consumers use NetEase Cloud Music platform to listen to music, purchase music albums, fill membership and a series of consumer behaviors, thus improving the profitability of the culture industry.
Although the cultural industry has made profits, it will lead to the homogenization of music tastes to some extent, that is to say, the more popular songs and singers will dominate the charts and increase the number of clicks, which will bury the minority music, make the cultural industry products form a deceptive ideology and stifle people’s independent thinking spirit.
The conclusion
Although the cultural industry uses advanced means of cultural production and communication brought by advanced communication technology to improve economic development to a certain extent, they ignore the subjectivity and selectivity of the masses and underestimate the complexity of the masses in choosing culture.
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetEase_Cloud_Music
- Horkheimer, Adorno. (1947). “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” shanghai: Horkheimer, Adorno, pp.20-25.
- Yi Junqing, Ding Liqun, Li Xiaojuan. (2001). Neo-marxism in the 20th century. Beijing: Central Compilation Publishing House, p.164.
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