Theme 2: Ctritical media studies POST

I’ve learnt how Horkheimer, Adorno and Benjamin thinks technology, enlightenment and technological development, can deceive people. How it can change the way we perceive things such as culture for example. How people can become passive and unable to think by it. How culture affects people’s ideologies. How it can make people think myth is enlightenment, and not what it really is.

The two texts for this weeks theme ”Critical media studies” was very related to each other. I’ll try to make a short summary & reflection on each of them as well as the connection to demonstrate some of what I’ve learnt after the lecture and the seminar. Dialectic of Enlightenment describes how standardization of culture, related to capitalism, has allowed for a kind of mass culture or rather the culture industry. The culture industry is used to describe its wide scope; it affects all who depend on capitalism. The culture industry also makes people dependent on capitalism. The products of the culture industry is created with the purpose of satisfying as many needs as possible, in order make as much profit as possible and affects as many people as possible. They mean it’s kind of a loop of always wanting more and satisfaction of created need, not real happiness. What follows from this is that the culture produced is similar and based on the same things, even if it seems different.  The commodification of culture results in the gravitation towards capitalism.  According to the text, this is when people stop thinking and submit to the culture. This is when enlightenment becomes myth in that people see the success presented to them through culture as their own success. ”There is no gap between what exists and the possible”. Here is the relation to nominalism, unable to identify this gap. Their answer to identifying this gap is conceptual thinking, new ways of seeing the world, don’t see things as they seem/are (nominalism) but criticize, explore and search.

The other text describes reproduction and standardization of art and culture as well. Benjamin also thinks that the things related to the production of culture decide the culture that forms and affects our ideology. He describes historical technological inventions lead to mass distribution of culture, arts loss of authenticity (aura), changes in perception that leads to art/culture which have the same affect given above. That is, leaving the audience passive and seeing the art/film as reality.

It feels like Horkheimer and Adorno see people becoming unable to think and submitting to the culture industry and therefor thinks there’s no revolutionary potential of the people, the gravity to capitalism is to strong. In contrast however, Benjamin noticed the critical view of the audience to film, and predicts that they will act as judges while viewing, which means more critics towards culture and therefor a more revolutionary potential, both culturally and the things culture affects.

Other than that the Lecture was very interesting and informative, with lots of examples, and recommendations on how to see things regarding the theme. During the seminar we discussed the seminar questions in addition to some others given by Håkan. I felt a bit lost and tired, but some fell into place after the seminar. After the seminar I read some more as well as went through my notes from the lecture in order to get some other pieces into place.