e" Photograph: EPA Quoting Hegel, Walter Benjamin reminds us that before all philosophy comes the struggle for material existence: "
Secure at first food and clothing, and the kingdom of God will come to you of itself – Hegel, 1807" , or as Brecht – Benjamin's greatest and closest friend – put it "first bread, then morality". But this precisely did not mean that abstraction, speculation and thought per se had to be reject
The Frankfurt school, part 5: Walter Benjamin, fascism and the future | Peter Thompson | Opinion | The Guardian
Secure at first food and clothing, and the kingdom of God will come to you of itself – Hegel, 1807" , or as Brecht – Benjamin's greatest and closest friend – put it "first bread, then morality". But this precisely did not mean that abstraction, speculation and thought per se had to be reject
The Frankfurt school, part 5: Walter Benjamin, fascism and the future | Peter Thompson | Opinion | The Guardian
7 years
n utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odour and emotions.The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.Further Reading: Theodor Adorno Archive |
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
man beings have been so thoroughly reified that the idea of anything specific to themselves now persists only as an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odour and emotions. The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
ve been free, since the historical neutralisation of religion, to join any of the innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or in the most intimate situati
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
ectual deviations was never very finely attuned. All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they have been free, since the historical neutralisation of religion, to join any of the innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keep
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
orting community and is a defence against the true kind of relationship. Signification, which is the only function of a word admitted by semantics, reaches perfection in the sign.
Whether folk-songs were rightly or wrongly called upper-class culture in decay, their elements have only acquired their popular form through a long process of repeated transmission. The spread of popular songs, on the other hand, takes place at lightning speed. The American
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Whether folk-songs were rightly or wrongly called upper-class culture in decay, their elements have only acquired their popular form through a long process of repeated transmission. The spread of popular songs, on the other hand, takes place at lightning speed. The American
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
or “intellectuals,” or because base practice uses the name of the country as a charm. In general, the name – to which magic most easily attaches – is undergoing a chemical change:
a metamorphosis into capricious, manipulable designations, whose effect is admittedly now calculable, but which for that very reason is just as despotic as that of the archaic name. First names, those archaic remnants, have been brought up to date either by stylisation as advertising trade-marks
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
a metamorphosis into capricious, manipulable designations, whose effect is admittedly now calculable, but which for that very reason is just as despotic as that of the archaic name. First names, those archaic remnants, have been brought up to date either by stylisation as advertising trade-marks
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
ology into psycho-technology, into a procedure for manipulating men. In both cases the standards are the striking yet familiar, the easy yet catchy, the skilful yet simple; the object is to overpower the customer, who is conceived as absent-minded or resistant.
By the language he speaks, he makes his own contribution to culture as publicity. The more completely language is lost in t
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
By the language he speaks, he makes his own contribution to culture as publicity. The more completely language is lost in t
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
ng: the important individual points, by becoming detachable, interchangeable, and even technically alienated from any connected meaning, lend themselves to ends external to the work. The effect, the trick, the isolated repeatable device, have always been used to exhibit goods for advertising purposes, and today every monster close-up of a star is an advertisement for her name, and every hit song a plug for its tune. Advertising and the culture industry merge technically as well as economically. In both cases the same thing can be seen in innumerable places, and the mechanical repetition of the same culture
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years
ns, while the advertisement pages use so many factual photographs and details that they represent the ideal of information which the editorial part has only begun to try to achieve. The assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synthetic, planned method of turning out its products (factory-like not only in the studio but, more or less, in the compilation of cheap biographies, pseudo-documentary novels, and hit songs) is very suited to advertising: the important individual points, by becoming detachable, interchangeable, and even technically alienated from any connected meaning, lend themselves to ends external to the work. The effect, the
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
7 years