The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (Routledge Classics)

What can you say about a guy who thought Walt Disney was the most dangerous man in the United States? Gotta love Theodor Adorno. As a philosophy major, I find his work fascinating. He's one of the reasons (just one) that I don't have a television and I can't stand network or cable television. There is a Culture Industry out there, and (if you've studied Karl Marx, as have I) you know that governments and power structures spawn their own ideologies, and they play 24/7 on television broadcasts. Seriously, one reason I hate going to the doctor's office (just one) is the television set mounted over the waiting room. Free yourself and free your minds. Read Adorno. And throw your television set out the window. (Or, I should say, recycle it responsibly).

In our banal age when sanctimonious platitude is often mistaken for wisdom or even ethical character, Adorno's mercilessly uncompromising analyses of the controlling nature of mass culture may initially strike some of us as exaggerated or hysterical initially. After all most of us now bear the consequence of lengthy habituation to our socio-economic situation: a chronic semi-conscious, autopilot behavioral and perceptive mode that can comprehend only the pre-digested, repetitive ideas or ways of thinking. However, once we start reading Adorno more attentively and thoughtfully we realize how prescient and perspicacious Adorno was as a critic of our modern society and culture. Many of his thoughts articulated in this volume anticipate the thoughts and writings of our leading contemporary thinkers, such as Jean Baudrillard, Frederic Jameson, and even Noam Chomsky (although he probably disagrees with Adorno's attitude toward culture, which may be construed as elitist).I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to escape the mass-culture induced stupor to become a more conscious human and citizen.

The essays vary in relevance and insight. While there are some brilliant remarks on the use of "free time" in capitalist economies, one cannot help but notice Adorno's overall snobbish tone. It speaks to what "Marxism" became in some intellectual circles after the war when its primary interest is in pointing out the vapidity of jazz and Toscanini fans.

The essay on Freetime is worth the price of the book alone. I loved this collection of essays at times it can drift into that French style of academic post modern writing , as in , this book is itself reflected unto its self look back at itself thinking about tomorrow , type thing , but not as intense. Great if your interested in the study of society glad I bought this book , due another read in fact . Enjoy.

After an introduction that is both stultifying and adds little to the content to come, the book settles into Adorno's prose. (Also annoying is that the dates of the essays' original publications are not given; only their printings in edited editions are offered.) It is this that makes the book so difficult to rate because, while Adorno's theories are at once based on hysterical, fever-swamp constructions and assumptions that he often states as facts (rather than fallible premises), his logic and writing is quite incisive and insightful, *were* one to accept the assumptions upon which they were based. From the perspective of formal logic, his conclusions (logically) follow from his premises, no matter how fanciful (or irresponsible) those premises may be.As such, one might even call his arguments "rational," after a fashion, though I am less certain of this because the endeavor seems, ultimately, to be an exercise in teleology. That is, it is (abundantly) clear that Adorno hates Western culture (the locus of the eponymous "culture industry"), capitalism (which he confusingly misidentifies as "monopoly" capitalism), anything that might make the prols more comfortable and, therefor, inconveniently less "revolutionary" and radical, and a whole litany of other things besides. So it seems he *chooses* his foundation assumptions with care, so that he can extend them to their ultimate telos: a trenchant critique on all things cultural and Western. He trusts, with good reason, that given the right fodder, his formidable intellect will transport him to his ends, so long as he's selected the right points of departure. And so he chooses his assumptions not so much because of their empirical validity (which he denigrates anyway), their objective Truth (per, say, Popper) or even their social validity, but rather as the fuel for his engine of hatred for what he sees about him (although he has a particular loathing for the fascists, notwithstanding his own totalitarian inclinations, they are by no means the sole or even primary target for this particular set of critiques).As such, as the source of so much pre-determined and thus unreasoning-reason, his perspectives provide great insight into the contemporary Progressive movement and the adherents hitherto. Educated, erudite, and (radically) unhinged not by madness but by choice. Given the Frankfurt School's ongoing (though often unacknowledged and/or unknown) influence on the latter's thoughts and perspectives, the book's essays are every bit as relevant as when they were written.But while reading this provides some great insight and, indeed, food for thought, one must ultimately wonder: given the outcome, is the effort really worth the candle?

Profoundly lucid, sometimes ascorbic and always thorough. I suggest anyone who is wondering whether the music industry is killing music must read Callahan's "The Trouble With Music" and "The Culture Industry"!

Amazing book. Prompt service.

A very important book.

Excellent on all counts!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0415253802/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_19still unread - I ordered the wrong text book!! cannot comment

Good book.

Unfortunately, Adorno's theories aged poorly, and he seems to be something of a rambling curmudgeon. His stance on culture is elitist to the point that I'm really not sure how he could have identified as Marxist. Other than that, you also have to drudge through his irritating style of writing. The book does have some redeeming values, but unless you know what you're up for, i wouldn't recommend it.

This is really just an unstructured collection of gripes from the author. There is little depth to his complaints about various "leisure activities" of his day, such as making home radios and playing and listening to jazz. He often comes across as bigoted.