To be honest I find the literature for this week quite heavy and difficult
to understand, however the lecture and especially seminar make things much
clearer. I think we have a good seminar, with a lot of good discussions and interesting
ideas.
By only reading the text it was hard to understand where all the negativity
and the anger come from. That was almost nothing that was good in “new” media,
according to the text. But with more knowledge about the author’s background it
become somehow easer to understand the anger, and therefore the text.
I find the part where Adorno and Horkheimer discuss the concept culture
industry and criticize the “new” media very interesting. How media being
criticized for being an industrial that only manipulates people and only care
about how to make money. How it is seen as a threat to the culture and the
statement of art. I must agree that media was and still is owned by big
companies that somehow decide what newspapers, TV’s, films and radios shall
contain. But today we have many more media platforms and the media consumer
have in a way become a producer as well, and it’s possible for any person to spread
messages. In that way, it’s not always the big companies that decide what the
medias shall contain. We also had a quick discussion about that we don’t know
for sure that the information that media tells people always is true. Even if
it is true, it could be that is just a part of the story, and the medias
exclude some information in order to save the interest of the owners to the
media companies, by just saying a part of the truth.
I also don’t agree with Adornos and Horkheimer sight that mass media is a
threat to the statement of art. That probably because I don’t define the
concept “art” as same way they do. In our seminar we find out that it’s pretty
hard to define what art is, because meaning of art is different for different people.
So while someone could say that standardized movies from today could be
consider as art, and other claim that is just a product. For me is art some
artifact that somehow affects my feeling, and make me feel exited, glad, sad,
happy or afraid. So in my opinion, media could be consider as art.
Something that is discussed in the book, that I feel that I want to discuss
little more about, to understand it properly, is the concept of “myth”. We discussed it quickly in our seminar,
and if we had more time, it was something that we could discuss more about.
I also had a hard time understanding all the negativity from Adorno and Horkeimer about the culture industry and the "new" media. I thought that the lecture brought light upon the situation at that time and the Frankfurt school of thought. Also in our seminar we talked about the second world war and that germans were using media to share propaganda and that it could have been a underlying reason why Adorno and Horkheimer was so critical. If they had written the book today maybe they might have been of a different opinion.
SvaraRaderaI agree with you that the preconditions have changed for the culture industry because of the internet and social media, where everyone can share information or culture. This means as you say, that the media consumer in some ways have become or atleast ar able to be a producer. Another interesting thought about the control of content by the big companies is that it's them who decide in the end what they will produce but they take note of what the masses wants. Because if there is something that won't generate consumers then it won't be produced. So if the masses want light entertainment then the big media companies will produce it.