Apathy as Life: the Nullification of Culture - Essay Example

Apathy as Life: The Nullification of Culture Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, along with many other theoretical philosophers of the early to mid-twentieth century defined a new concept of looking at the culture that had developed on the wave of the industrial revolution. As opposed to humans being elevated by their increases in knowledge and through the disenchantment of their world, Adorno and Horkheimer, along with others who spoke on this topic, proclaimed that the corruption of the media with commodity fetishism had infected society with a ‘sameness’ in which true art could no longer be created (Horkheimer, Adorno, and Noerr 94). Since their time, the growth of the media has overwhelmed the world, the influences of film now specters of life creating needs within the public that are not truly relevant to the existence of life. Moreover, television has deteriorated in such a way that the boundaries between reality and fantasy are crossed injecting viewers with the belief that what they see is not a reflection through a medium of art, but the viewing of reality, the open door through which other lives can be lived vicariously. Reality television, a deception of the television media on the public, has now accomplished the fears that most plagued Adorno and his contemporaries - culture is fully infected with capitalism and the commoditized ideologies about life is not fully material. In a letter to Walter Benjamin on 3 March 1936, Theodor Adorno stated that both high art and the industrially produced consumer art are infused and burdened with the stigma of capitalism and as well are reflective of change. Adorno stated “Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up” (Adorno and Bernstein 2). The commoditized culture has usurped the needs of humans to look at their world in wonder, their need to create the mythologies of their universe displaced into the media feed where gratification is externalized, often vicarious. Adorno’s theory on the culture industry is founded in the idea that the high arts are no longer truly possible, that all of the culture is so infused that an equalization has occurred that should have brought about more challenges to beliefs and ideologies, but instead has shackled everyone under the obedience to the markets. The goal of human philosophical framework has traditionally been for humanity to reach a state of enlightenment, free of the untruths which burden mankind from reaching a state of mastery over the world. Through disenchantment of the universe, mankind asserts authority and utilizes knowledge over myth as a means to navigate life. However, according to Horkheimer, Adorno, and Noerr, enlightenment has been a calamity. In the search to be freed from enchantment, man has become apathetic towards life. Bacon, who put forth the concepts of experimental philosophy, saw the search for knowledge as an active element towards the search for mastery. In conquering knowledge of the natural world, human beings are looking for a way to master nature and to master other human beings The violence of shattering myths has been caused by thought that is powerful enough to break apart cultures and to destroy belief systems.(2). What is left after the disenchantment of the universe is the master on his throne, bored and waiting for something to make his blood boil with excitement once again. Gratification through consumerism has replaced the mythologies that once drove humans to seek answers. The culture industry creates false needs, replacing the true needs of the human spirit. Bougeois cultural production obliterates the possibility of art in either popular or autonomous creation (Thomson 79). The human mind has become so inundated with exterior stimulation that most people have become complacent, the space in between reality from which innovation and creativity emanates filled up with the insertions of the commodity fetishism from which the value of human interaction becomes seated within the objectification of things. Advertising has become the barometer through which the public now measures the resources that are necessary for happiness. It is not only objects, but specific objects with a certain price point that offer the highest level of happiness. The commodity fetishism of the culture has been created by the intensity of advertising, the framing of life through a conceptualized, idealized life that is facilitated by material objects that provide instant gratification by being named as their owner. In this world, it is money that is the core of life, the lubricant of culture which intermediates between reality and fantasy. Life is created on the supposition that what has been advertised exists and can be attained by having material connection to the emotional context of the acquisition. This comes, in great part, from the formation of a mass society. According to Hardt, the original concept of a mass society was to create a community in which people could live a collective life, protected from mass manipulation and a loss of liberty (77). Blumer theorized about collective life that in forming behaviors through collective existence, social order is created through “emergence and solidification of new behavior” (Hardt 78). However, media became a mobilizing force from which manipulation began to corrupt the ideological point of view of the collective. Where society was first heading towards a unification of liberalized and enlightened ideals, media communication that could have provided a greater expansion of the human experience instead turned towards exploitation of the resource of communication. The enslavement to the media has only increased since Adorno first postulated his theories. Dramatization manipulates history and forms belief systems that are based upon fallacies. Furthermore, the film industry has sought to duplicate the experience of life to such a point that it now becomes almost indistinguishable from life. Therefore, the postulated beliefs within films becomes imbedded into the culture, the fantasy world of film part of the reality of the culture. Horkheimer, Adorno and Noerr “The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry” (99). In film, the world is reflected in such a way as to make it difficult for the average viewer to be impressed with the false nature of the medium. Film is so real, that it is essentially real as it becomes a part of the cultural landscape. In expressing the creativity of the filmmakers, the masses are not given the opportunity to expand upon what they see through their own imaginations. Film “denies its audience any dimension in which they might roam freely in imagination - contained by the films framework but unsupervised by its precise actualities - without losing the thread; thus it trains those exposed to it to identify film directly with reality” (Horkheimer, Adorno and Noerr 100). In other words, it is believed that the media of film has created a space in which the totality of the imagination of the masses is held captive, unable to contribute and without the ability to move beyond its framework to cultivate beliefs that are beyond the scope of the reality that is created within the film work. Television is the next step in the melding of reality and fantasy, the continuing stories that are available as entertainment becoming so powerful within the lives of those who watch that they impose their cultural adaptations into the lives of the public. Characters become confused with actors, images of the actors becoming so important that media frenzies come to surround their personal lives without regard to the boundaries that should lie between the recognition of the fantasy that is created and the reality of living. Their art becomes corrupt with the confusion between fantasy and reality, the existence of an actor becoming the same as their art. The production of the art, though commercial and mundane, becomes so important that it can sell the public on ideological concepts about what life should represent. One of the most important periods of time, in terms of the way in which the American public came to view their idealized ‘dream’ of society, was the 1950’s. The rise of technology came in the aftermath of World War II and President Franklin Roosevelt had charged his science advisors to find ways in which to use technology in order to increase the comfort of the American public and to make their domestic life easier (Chesbrough 26). This created an upsurge in technological advancement, which in turn created an increase in jobs and a stabilization of the economy at a high level from which the ‘American dream’ was being realized. During this time, television programs such as Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Donna Reed Show became the encapsulated 30 minutes in which the American public was ‘informed’ about how they should behave and how they should aspire to live their lives. Women across the nation suddenly were put into the position to believe that they should be wearing a proper dress with an apron, vacuuming the carpet, all in heels and a strand of pearls. The American dream became epitomized by the masses through the crossing of the boundaries between television and the real world. Television has broken the barrier between identifying what is real and what is fantasy. There was one more step that would be taken in order to fully infuse the reality of film into the daily life of the masses. Reality television, by and large a scripted event in which conflict is more often contrived than it is observed, has become the cultural cues from which the masses are now assessing reality. Reality television began as a social experiment on MTV. The Real World was created as an experiment in which seven young adults were put together in a house in order to watch how they would relate to one another. However, the public was not in on the secret of reality television. Reality television does not record an event as it unfolds. The purpose of “reality television in general is not to film reality; it is to record raw reactions to novel or stressful situations” (Umble and Weaver-Zercher 136). The ‘real’ in reality television is in the reaction, not in the opportunity that creates the reaction. In truth, much of what is seen in the reaction is now the result of instructions from a director on how to react (Umble and Weaver-Zercher 137). The ‘real’ of reality television is constructed, thus essentially a lie that is told to the viewing pubic. In Britain, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding took the concept of a reality show and attempted to reveal the lives of Gypsies and Travellers, two groups who are nomadic in nature and with different originating cultures that the program had intended to reveal. While intended to have a documentary aesthetic, the show deteriorated into a narrative of over the top dresses and other excesses meant to titillate the audience rather than inform. Bindel criticizes the program for ignoring the social problems within the cultures and for not differentiating between the two. Travellers are of Irish origin while Gypsies, or the Roma, have histories that go back to northern India. While the program could have had benefit for the members of the communities, a set of communities with high levels of domestic abuse, illiteracy, and with little support in the political arenas. In reporting the ‘reality’ of the cultures, they made the social inclusion of members of those societies more difficult. Bindel reports that ostracizing social events are taking place against members of the Gypsies and the Travellers because of the differences that were shown on the program. One wedding showed a ritual the program called ‘grabbing’ where males forced women to kiss them, an event a newspaper referred to as a ‘mating ritual’. However, according to Bindel, this ‘ritual’ was fabricated around an event where one boy grabbed a girl who was reluctant and kissed her. The program is creating culture in order to create ratings - thus infecting the greater culture with prejudices through misinformation. As Adorno suggested and predicted, society has deteriorated to a place where it is no longer creating its own levels of culture, but it is being infused by a machinery of media that has a capitalistic agenda. The truth is commoditized to the point that it no longer matters whether or not there is validity within its framework. Television ‘documentary’ style programs are fabricated in order to create sensationalism to gratify a thrill hungry audience, diminishing true social importance, and designing an imagery about that which they report in order to create a ‘story’ about culture. The use of visual recording has the power to become a part of culture, bypassing even popular culture and reaching into all levels of society. In the equalization of society, the need to rebel, to create rhetoric about social injustice, and to create art that is elevated for its contribution to a social discourse is no longer mandated through the pressures of interrelation features. Society no longer looks to real people and to each other for social cues, but stares at a screen, a page, or an image up on a billboard in order to be informed on how to behave and how to interact. In demystifying the world, people should have found ways in which to eliminate prejudice, to cure social problems of hunger and poverty, and to engage each other in meaningful discourse through which an enriched and educated society was the result. Instead, expending money has become the core of the experience of society, feeding the need for gratification over the need for edification. The exploitation of the media for the purposes of commerce has created a society that does not know the difference between reality and fantasy, a cultural industry that nullifies culture by creating apathy and inaction. Works Cited Adorno, Theodor W. and J. M. Bernstein. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print. Bindel, Julie. The Big Fat Truth about Gypsy Life. The Guardian. 25 February 2011. Web. 14 March 2011. Chesbrough, H. W. Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2007. Pring. Hardt, Hanno. Critical Communication Studies: Communication , History, and Theory in America. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print. Horkheimer, Max, Theodor W. Adorno and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press, 2002. Print. Thomson, Alexander J. P. Adorno: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2006. Print. Umble, Diane Z, and David Weaver-Zercher. The Amish and the Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Print. Read More