The Culture Industry: Standardization or Diversification?

In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, written by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, discusses how popular culture is standardized. In their opinion different outlets of media contribute to the idea where standardization helps shape society. The culture industry provides a form of entertainment, usually containing what all of the people want. Today we are now being introduced to pop culture, which is enforced by radio, magazines, television and other popular media outlets. Because of this idea of mass media, people are being controlled by the capitalist society.

The radio is discussed as, “turn[ing] all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same.” Although this isn’t exactly the case anymore, there is still some form of standardization. There are numerous radio stations today, and some are independent or college radio stations. With these types of stations you can listen to an alternative type of music rather than pop stations. But, you aren’t the only one listening to these stations. You may feel like an individual but there are actually a lot of other people listening to the same radio station as you.

Blogs, forums, and other forms of interactive media are becoming a more popular way to communicate. With this form of communication you are allowed to post comments, perhaps after an article. You are able to talk to people all over the world, some you may not know, and voicing your opinion and any other input you would like to share. Some may think that with this new form of technology, our culture is no longer a form of standardization. On the contrary, I still believe it is. If you think about Facebook (almost everyone has one) and Twitter, we control what we want to say/post. But, we don’t actually control the website. We may think we are unique because we have our own Facebook, but everyone else out there has one too. It is hard to find someone who doesn’t have one. We can also create websites, but so can anyone else.

With this new form of communication, I think it is a step forward to individuality, but I don’t think we will ever be complete individuals on the internet. We can control the way our blogs, Facebook, and Twitter look like, but that is only a small piece where the standardization actually diversifies.

Adorno and Horkheimer state, “any trace of spontaneity from the public in official broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions and official programs of every kind selected by professionals.” So basically, when it came to broadcasting, people could not say whatever they wanted to. We still can’t say whatever we’d like to on film, but with blogs and forums, you have the option to say anything you would like, and people can actually read what you have to say. People are allowed to comment and respond to you with this form of interactive media. That was impossible with television and radio, you could try to reach out and state your opinion, but other people usually did not hear it.

So, with this new interactive way of communication on the internet, things have definitely changed since the past. Definitely for the better, in my opinion. Although we still are being looked at as just another person on Twitter, we can now say what we feel. The internet will always be controlling us with its standardized ways, but at least we can express the way we feel about it.