David Brown's Questions for Week 4

1) In Horkheimer and Adorno (D&K p. 42), the authors make the case for
a 'culture industry', which utilizes entertainment (and the technologies of media) as an extension of classical repression ("the prolongation of work under late capitalism"..."withering imagination and spontaneity" in its consumers). Further, they suggest that even the creative space unoccupied by commercial media is corrupted because big media draws the line, which makes non-conformists virtual outsiders (the Tocquevillian analysis on pp. 49-50). What do you think Horkheimer and Adorno imagine to be art free from these corrupting forces? Is there historic precedence? What would they regard as a more wholesome, organic culture (from the standpoint of
media and art)?

2) Horkhemer and Adorno refer to the 'heroizing of the average' forming a 'cult of cheapness' (p.44) that further legitimizes the crassness of commercial media. If most people are, indeed, of average tastes (unless, of course, we assume that we're all above average), then aren't the authors glorifying an elite standard? What sort of art do the authors think worthy of heroization and why? Does that undercut their claim?

3) In Douglas Kellner's excellent short summary of the Frankfurt School, he characterizes Benjamin's more optimistic view that "the culture industry also produces rational and critical consumers able to dissect and discriminate among cultural texts and performances, much as sports fans learn to analyze and criticize sports events" (p. 4 of download). Though we haven't read Benjamin yet (and I'm looking forward to it), I wonder if Benjamin's perspective legitimates the very thing that it also criticizes. Put another way: the culture industry as Benjamin sees it, need not bludgeon the consumer with a message, instead, it can be coded into mass content and read by discriminating consumers. But since we know that not every consumer is a 'discriminating consumer', then doesn't the progressive artist or journalist merely use media for his own agenda (rather than someone
else's?) What makes this surreptitious use of media any more valid? (Do the ends justify the means?)

4) In this updated critique of George Will, Brian Goss, on p. 418, summarizes that "Will's commentary has succumbed to the habits of constructing the world within the template of a conservative, Republican Party meta-ideology...rather than as a commentator assaying to unpack and explain Truth." He seems to make a compelling case, so much so, that I couldn't help but wonder how his methods might be applied to de-construct other commentators of similar status. Can Goss' scholarly dissent apply to other commentators 'assaying to unpack and explain Truth' such as Nobel-winning economist and NYT commentator Paul Krugman? Is it valid cultural criticism to pick apart, say, a decade of Krugman's writing to attempt to show an underlying neo-Marxist meta-ideology? Let's step back: Will and Krugman are easy marks for, as Goss admits, both are commentators liberated from the posture of detachment demanded of mere reporters. But what if one could make a compelling case for a 'neo-Marxist' meta-ideology in the media at large: is deconstruction of the media a constructive pursuit if it exposes only intellectually disfavored commercial or 'oppressive' "discursive manifestations" of ideology?

5) In the revealing, honest and utterly fascinating critique of the state of critical studies, Shugart concedes (on p. 276) that the critical endeavor is compromised ...by features indigenous to the scholarly format itself. That is, by the aesthetic conventions of scholarship." In general, she seems to be calling for a "loosening of aesthetic mores" so that the imitation of scientistic, rigid self- denying patterns be abandoned in the scholarly work of cultural critics. But in order to be successful--in order to transcend the
"inbred" insularity of the cultural critical school, wouldn't this loosening require assent by the whole media studies endeavor? Otherwise, won't it remain marginalized?
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David D. Brown