The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture

by Theodor W. Adorno, Theodor W. Adornoj M. Bernstein, J.M. Bernstein

Book Overview

The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415253802
• ISBN13: 9780415253802
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Challenging

This collection of essays is very interesting. They all cover a critique of mass culture with quite original and interesting points made. Sometimes it is bit difficult to read, this might be due to the translation; for this reason it gets only 4 stars. However, if you think you are ok with a moderately complicated text, the book is really great. I am glad I have read it.

The Critique of Mass-Culture Par Excellence

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.

Remarkably insightful, yet a little too big on modern art ...

The title of this review says much of it. Several essays in this book are dated in their literal forms, but your mind will take the ideas Adorno gives and apply them to your own experience. I don't know about ya'll, but I've found many of my new sensibilities about one thing while reading or otherwise interacting about something I would have considered entirely separated from the other. My advice: read the intro twice: once through quickly and a second slowly and thoroughly; though I give that advice about many books, the intro to this book is vital to having a context to put the essays into.