The Culture Industry:

Enlightenment as Mass Deception

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Editing and footnotes in process by Arun Chandra

HE sociological theory that the loss of the sup- The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm Tport of objectively established religion, the presents men with a model of their culture: the false dissolution of the last remnants of precapitalism, identity of the general and the particular. Under together with technological and social differentia- monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines tion or specialization, have led to cultural chaos is of its artificial framework begin to show through. disproved every day; for culture now impresses the The people at the top are no longer so interested same stamp on everything. Films, radio and maga- in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes zines make up a system which is uniform as a whole more open, so its power grows. Movies and radio and in every part. Even the aesthetic activities of need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obe- are just business is made into an ideology in order to dience to the rhythm of the iron system. The deco- justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They rative industrial management buildings and exhibi- call themselves industries; and when their directors’ tion centers in authoritarian countries are much the incomes are published, any doubt about the social same as anywhere else. The huge gleaming tow- utility of the finished products is removed. ers that shoot up everywhere are outward signs of Interested parties explain the culture industry in the ingenious planning of international concerns, to- technological terms. It is alleged that because mil- ward which the unleashed entrepreneurial system lions participate in it, certain reproduction processes (whose monuments are a mass of gloomy houses are necessary that inevitably require identical needs and business premises in grimy, spiritless cities) was in innumerable places to be satisfied with identi- already hastening. Even now the older houses just cal goods. The technical contrast between the few outside the concrete city centers look like slums, production centers and the large number of widely and the new bungalows on the outskirts are at one dispersed consumption points is said to demand or- with the flimsy structures of world fairs in their ganization and planning by management. Further- praise of technical progress and their built-in de- more, it is claimed that standards were based in the mand to be discarded after a short while like empty first place on consumers’ needs, and for that rea- food cans. Yet the city housing projects designed son were accepted with so little resistance. The to perpetuate the individual as a supposedly inde- result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive pendent unit in a small hygienic dwelling make him need in which the unity of the system grows ever all the more subservient to his adversary—the abso- stronger. No mention is made of the fact that the lute power of capitalism. Because the inhabitants, basis on which technology acquires power over so- as producers and as consumers, are drawn into the ciety is the power of those whose economic hold center in search of work and pleasure, all the liv- over society is greatest. A technological rationale is ing units crystallize into well-organized complexes. the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 1 The Culture Industry nature of society alienated from itself. Automo- these phenomena as inherent in the technical and biles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing to- personnel apparatus which, down to its last cog, it- gether until their leveling element shows its strength self forms part of the economic mechanism of se- in the very wrong which it furthered. It has made lection. In addition there is the agreement—or at the technology of the culture industry no more than least the determination—of all executive authorities the achievement of standardization and mass pro- not to produce or sanction anything that in any way duction, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction differs from their own rules,their own ideas about between the logic of the work and that of the so- consumers, or above all themselves. cial system. This is the result not of a law of move- In our age the objective social tendency is in- ment in technology as such but of its function in carnate in the hidden subjective purposes of com- today’s economy. The need which might resist cen- pany directors, the foremost among whom are tral control has already been suppressed by the con- in the most powerful sectors of industry—steel, trol of the individual consciousness. The step from petroleum, electricity, and chemicals. Culture mo- the telephone to the radio has clearly distinguished nopolies are weak and dependent in comparison. the roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to They cannot afford to neglect their appeasement of play the role of subject, and was liberal. The latter the real holders of power if their sphere of activity in is democratic: it turns all participants into listen- mass society (a sphere producing a specific type of ers and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast commodity which anyhow is still too closely bound programs which are all exactly the same. No ma- up with easygoing liberalism and Jewish intellectu- chinery of rejoinder has been devised, and private als) is not to undergo a series of purges. The de- broadcasters are denied any freedom. They are con- pendence of the most powerful broadcasting com- fined to the apocryphal1 field of the “amateur,” and pany on the electrical industry, or of the motion pic- also have to accept organization from above. But ture industry on the banks, is characteristic of the any trace of spontaneity from the public in official whole sphere, whose individual branches are them- broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent selves economically interwoven. All are in such scouts, studio competitions and official programs of close contact that the extreme concentration of men- every kind selected by professionals. Talented per- tal forces allows demarcation lines between differ- formers belong to the industry long before it dis- ent firms and technical branches to be ignored. The plays them; otherwise they would not be so eager to ruthless unity in the culture industry is evidence of fit in. The attitude of the public, which ostensibly what will happen in politics. Marked differentia- and actually favors the system of the culture indus- tions such as those of A and B films, or of stories in try, is a part of the system and not an excuse for magazines in different price ranges, depend not so it. If one branch of art follows the same formula as much on subject matter as on classifying, organiz- one with a very different medium and content; if the ing, and labeling consumers. Something is provided dramatic intrigue of broadcast soap operas becomes for all so that none may escape; the distinctions are no more than useful material for showing how to emphasized and extended. The public is catered for master technical problems at both ends of the scale with a hierarchical range of mass-produced prod- of musical experience—real jazz or a cheap imita- ucts of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of tion; or if a movement from a Beethoven symphony complete quantification. Everybody must behave is crudely “adapted” for a film sound-track in the (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previ- same way as a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a film ously determined and indexed level, and choose the script: then the claim that this is done to satisfy the category of mass product turned out for his type. spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than Consumers appear as statistics on research organi- hot air. We are closer to the facts if we explain zation charts, and are divided by income groups into

1Apocryphal: of doubtful authenticity: spurious

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 2 The Culture Industry red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used it is the meaningful content of every film, whatever for any type of propaganda. plot the production team may have selected. How formalized the procedure is can be seen when the mechanically differentiated products HE man with leisure has to accept what the prove to be all alike in the end. That the differ- Tculture manufacturers offer him. Kant’s for- ence between the Chrysler range and General Mo- malism still expected a contribution from the indi- tors products is basically illusory strikes every child vidual, who was thought to relate the varied experi- with a keen interest in varieties. What connoisseurs ences of the senses to fundamental concepts; but in- discuss as good or bad points serve only to per- dustry robs the individual of his function. Its prime petuate the semblance of competition and range of service to the customer is to do his schematizing for choice. The same applies to the Warner Brothers him. Kant said that there was a secret mechanism in and Metro Goldwyn Mayer productions. But even the soul which prepared direct intuitions in such a the differences between the more expensive and way that they could be fitted into the system of pure cheaper models put out by the same firm steadily reason. But today that secret has been deciphered. diminish: for automobiles, there are such differ- While the mechanism is to all appearances planned ences as the number of cylinders, cubic capacity, by those who serve up the data of experience, that details of patented gadgets; and for films there are is, by the culture industry, it is in fact forced upon the number of stars, the extravagant use of tech- the latter by the power of society, which remains ir- nology, labor, and equipment, and the introduction rational, however we may try to rationalize it; and of the latest psychological formulas. The univer- this inescapable force is processed by commercial sal criterion of merit is the amount of “conspicuous agencies so that they give an artificial impression production,” of blatant cash investment. The vary- of being in command. There is nothing left for the ing budgets in the culture industry do not bear the consumer to classify. Producers have done it for slightest relation to factual values, to the meaning him. Art for the masses has destroyed the dream of the products themselves. Even the technical me- but still conforms to the tenets of that dreaming ide- dia are relentlessly forced into uniformity. Televi- alism which critical idealism balked at. Everything sion aims at a synthesis of radio and film, and is derives from consciousness: for Malebranche and held up only because the interested parties have not Berkeley, from the consciousness of God; in mass yet reached agreement, but its consequences will be art, from the consciousness of the production team. quite enormous and promise to intensify the impov- Not only are the hit songs, stars, and soap operas erishment of aesthetic matter so drastically, that by cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but tomorrow the thinly veiled identity of all industrial the specific content of the entertainment itself is de- culture products can come triumphantly out into the rived from them and only appears to change. The open, derisively fulfilling the Wagnerian dream of details are interchangeable. The short interval se- the Gesamtkunstwerk—the fusion of all the arts in quence which was effective in a hit song, the hero’s one work. The alliance of word, image, and music momentary fall from grace (which he accepts as is all the more perfect than in Tristan because the good sport), the rough treatment which the beloved sensuous elements which all approvingly reflect the gets from the male star, the latter’s rugged defiance surface of social reality are in principle embodied of the spoilt heiress, are, like all the other details, in the same technical process, the unity of which ready-made cliches´ to be slotted in anywhere; they becomes its distinctive content. This process inte- never do anything more than fulfill the purpose al- grates all the elements of the production, from the lotted them in the overall plan. Their whole rai- novel (shaped with an eye to the film) to the last son d’etreˆ is to confirm it by being its constituent sound effect. It is the triumph of invested capital, parts. As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear whose title as absolute master is etched deep into the how it will end, and who will be rewarded, pun- hearts of the dispossessed in the employment line; ished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 3 The Culture Industry ear has heard the first notes of the hit song, it can straightforward continuation of that presented on guess what is coming and feel flattered when it does the screen. This purpose has been furthered by me- come. The average length of the short story has chanical reproduction since the lightning takeover to be rigidly adhered to. Even gags, effects, and by the sound film. jokes are calculated like the setting in which they Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the are placed. They are the responsibility of special ex- movies. The sound film, far surpassing the theater perts and their narrow range makes it easy for them of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflec- to be apportioned in the office. The development tion on the part of the audience, who is unable to of the culture industry has led to the predominance respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate of the effect, the obvious touch, and the technical from its precise detail without losing the thread of detail over the work itself—which once expressed the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate an idea, but was liquidated together with the idea. it directly with reality. The stunting of the mass- When the detail won its freedom, it became rebel- media consumer’s powers of imagination and spon- lious and, in the period from Romanticism to Ex- taneity does not have to be traced back to any psy- pressionism, asserted itself as free expression, as a chological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of vehicle of protest against the organization. In mu- those attributes to the objective nature of the prod- sic the single harmonic effect obliterated the aware- ucts themselves, especially to the most characteris- ness of form as a whole; in painting the individual tic of them, the sound film. They are so designed color was stressed at the expense of pictorial com- that quickness, powers of observation, and experi- position; and in the novel psychology became more ence are undeniably needed to apprehend them at important than structure. The totality of the culture all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if industry has put an end to this. Though concerned the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of exclusively with effects, it crushes their insubordi- facts. Even though the effort required for his re- nation and makes them subserve the formula, which sponse is semi-automatic, no scope is left for the replaces the work. The same fate is inflicted on imagination. Those who are so absorbed by the whole and parts alike. The whole inevitably bears world of the movie—by its images, gestures, and no relation to the details—just like the career of a words—that they are unable to supply what really successful man into which everything is made to fit makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particu- as an illustration or a proof, whereas it is nothing lar points of its mechanics during a screening. All more than the sum of all those idiotic events. The the other films and products of the entertainment in- so-called dominant idea is like a file which ensures dustry which they have seen have taught them what order but not coherence. The whole and the parts are to expect; they react automatically. The might of alike; there is no antithesis and no connection. Their industrial society is lodged in men’s minds. The prearranged harmony is a mockery of what had to be entertainment manufacturers know that their prod- striven after in the great bourgeois works of art. In ucts will be consumed with alertness even when Germany the graveyard stillness of the dictatorship the customer is distraught, for each of them is a already hung over the gayest films of the democratic model of the huge economic machinery which has era. The whole world is made to pass through the always sustained the masses, whether at work or at filter of the culture industry. The old experience of leisure—which is akin to work. From every sound the movie-goer, who sees the world outside as an film and every broadcast program the social effect extension of the film he has just left (because the can be inferred which is exclusive to none but is latter is intent upon reproducing the world of every- shared by all alike. The culture industry as a whole day perceptions), is now the producer’s guideline. has molded men as a type unfailingly reproduced in The more intensely and flawlessly his techniques every product. All the agents of this process, from duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is today for the producer to the women’s clubs, take good care the illusion to prevail that the outside world is the that the simple reproduction of this mental state is

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 4 The Culture Industry not nuanced or extended in any way. nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or The art historians and guardians of culture who does not meet with approval at first sight. And the complain of the extinction in the West of a basic star performers, whether they produce or reproduce, style-determining power are wrong. The stereo- use this jargon as freely and fluently and with as typed appropriation of everything, even the in- much gusto as if it were the very language which choate2, for the purposes of mechanical repro- it silenced long ago. Such is the ideal of what is duction surpasses the rigor and general currency natural in this field of activity, and its influence be- of any “real style,” in the sense in which cul- comes all the more powerful, the more technique tural cognoscenti3 celebrate the organic precapital- is perfected and diminishes the tension between the ist past. No Palestrina could be more of a purist finished product and everyday life. The paradox in eliminating every unprepared and unresolved dis- of this routine, which is essentially travesty, can cord than the jazz arranger in suppressing any de- be detected and is often predominant in everything velopment which does not conform to the jargon. that the culture industry turns out. A jazz musi- When jazzing up Mozart he changes him not only cian who is playing a piece of serious music, one of when he is too serious or too difficult but when he Beethoven’s simplest minuets, syncopates it invol- harmonizes the melody in a different way, perhaps untarily and will smile superciliously when asked more simply, than is customary now. No medieval to follow the normal divisions of the beat. This is builder can have scrutinized the subjects for church the “nature” which, complicated by the ever-present windows and sculptures more suspiciously than the and extravagant demands of the specific medium, studio hierarchy scrutinizes a work by Balzac or constitutes the new style and is a “system of non- Hugo before finally approving it. No medieval the- culture, to which one might even concede a certain ologian could have determined the degree of the tor- ’unity of style’ if it really made any sense to speak ment to be suffered by the damned in accordance of stylized barbarity.”7 with the ordo of divine love more meticulously than The universal imposition of this stylized mode the producers of shoddy epics calculate the torture can even go beyond what is quasi-officially sanc- to be undergone by the hero or the exact point to tioned or forbidden; today a hit song is more read- which the leading lady’s hemline shall be raised. ily forgiven for not observing the 32 beats or the The explicit and implicit, exoteric4 and esoteric5 compass of the ninth than for containing even the catalog of the forbidden and tolerated is so exten- most clandestine melodic or harmonic detail which sive that it not only defines the area of freedom but does not conform to the idiom. Whenever Orson is all-powerful inside it. Everything down to the Welles offends against the tricks of the trade, he is last detail is shaped accordingly. Like its counter- forgiven because his departures from the norm are part, avant-garde art, the entertainment industry de- regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the termines its own language, down to its very syntax more strongly to confirm the validity of the sys- and vocabulary, by the use of anathema6. The con- tem. The constraint of the technically-conditioned stant pressure to produce new effects (which must idiom which stars and directors have to produce as conform to the old pattern) serves merely as another “nature” so that the people can appropriate it, ex- rule to increase the power of the conventions when tends to such fine nuances that they almost attain any single effect threatens to slip through the net. the subtlety of the devices of an avant-garde work Every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness that as against those of truth. The rare capacity minutely

2Inchoate: being only partly in existence or operation; imperfectly formed or formulated 3Cognoscenti: People especially knowledgeable in a subject: connoisseurs. 4Exoteric: belonging to the outer or less initiate circle 5Esoteric: designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone. 6Anathema: someone or something intensely disliked or loathed 7Nietzsche, Unzeirgemfisse Betrachtungen, Werke, Vol. I (Leipzig, 1917), p. 187.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 5 The Culture Industry to fulfill the obligations of the natural idiom in all ularity is a romantic dream of the past. The unity of branches of the culture industry becomes the crite- style not only of the Christian Middle Ages but of rion of efficiency. What and how they say it must the Renaissance expresses in each case the different be measurable by everyday language, as in logical structure of social power, and not the obscure expe- positivism. The producers are experts. The idiom rience of the oppressed in which the general was en- demands an astounding productive power, which it closed. The great artists were never those who em- absorbs and squanders. In a diabolical way it has bodied a wholly flawless and perfect style, but those overreached the culturally conservative distinction who used style as a way of hardening themselves between genuine and artificial style. A style might against the chaotic expression of suffering, as a neg- be called artificial which is imposed from without ative truth. The style of their works gave what was on the refractory impulses of a form. But in the cul- expressed that force without which life flows away ture industry every element of the subject matter has unheard. Those very art forms which are known as its origin in the same apparatus as that jargon whose classical, such as Mozart’s music, contain objective stamp it bears. The quarrels in which the artistic trends which represent something different to the experts become involved with sponsor and censor style which they incarnate. As late as Schonberg¨ about a lie going beyond the bounds of credibility and Picasso, the great artists have retained a mistrust are evidence not so much of an inner aesthetic ten- of style, and at crucial points have subordinated it sion as of a divergence of interests. The reputation to the logic of the matter. What Dadaists and Ex- of the specialist, in which a last remnant of objec- pressionists called the untruth of style as such tri- tive independence sometimes finds refuge, conflicts umphs today in the sung jargon of a crooner, in with the business politics of the Church, or the con- the carefully contrived elegance of a film star, and cern which is manufacturing the cultural commod- even in the admirable expertise of a photograph of ity. But the thing itself has been essentially objecti- a peasant’s squalid hut. Style represents a promise fied and made viable before the established author- in every work of art. That which is expressed is ities began to argue about it. Even before Zanuck subsumed through style into the dominant forms of acquired her, Saint Bernadette was regarded by her generality, into the language of music, painting, or latter-day hagiographer8 as brilliant propaganda for words, in the hope that it will be reconciled thus all interested parties. That is what became of the with the idea of true generality. This promise held emotions of the character. Hence the style of the out by the work of art that it will create truth by culture industry, which no longer has to test itself lending new shape to the conventional social forms against any refractory material, is also the nega- is as necessary as it is hypocritical. It uncondition- tion of style. The reconciliation of the general and ally posits the real forms of life as it is by suggesting particular, of the rule and the specific demands of that fulfillment lies in their aesthetic derivatives. To the subject matter, the achievement of which alone this extent the claim of art is always ideology too. gives essential, meaningful content to style, is futile However, only in this confrontation with tradition because there has ceased to be the slightest tension of which style is the record can art express suffer- between opposite poles: these concordant extremes ing. That factor in a work of art which enables it to are dismally identical; the general can replace the transcend reality certainly cannot be detached from particular, and vice versa. style; but it does not consist of the harmony actually Nevertheless, this caricature of style does not realized, of any doubtful unity of form and content, amount to something beyond the genuine style of within and without, of individual and society; it is the past. In the culture industry the notion of gen- to be found in those features in which discrepancy uine style is seen to be the aesthetic equivalent of appears: in the necessary failure of the passionate domination. Style considered as mere aesthetic reg- striving for identity. Instead of exposing itself to

8Hagiographer: a writer of an idealizing or idolizing biography.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 6 The Culture Industry this failure in which the style of the great work of art land-reformer to capitalism. Realistic dissidence10 has always achieved self-negation, the inferior work is the trademark of anyone who has a new idea in has always relied on its similarity with others—on a business. In the public voice of modern society ac- surrogate identity. cusations are seldom audible; if they are, the per- In the culture industry this imitation finally be- ceptive can already detect signs that the dissident comes absolute. Having ceased to be anything but will soon be reconciled. The more immeasurable style, it reveals the latter’s secret: obedience to the the gap between chorus and leaders, the more cer- social hierarchy. Today aesthetic barbarity com- tainly there is room at the top for everybody who pletes what has threatened the creations of the spirit demonstrates his superiority by well-planned origi- since they were gathered together as culture and nality. Hence, in the culture industry, too, the lib- neutralized. To speak of culture was always con- eral tendency to give full scope to its able men sur- trary to culture. Culture as a common denominator vives. To do this for the efficient today is still the already contains in embryo that schematization and function of the market, which is otherwise profi- process of cataloging and classification which bring ciently controlled; as for the market’s freedom, in culture within the sphere of administration. And it the high period of art as elsewhere, it was freedom is precisely the industrialized, the consequent, sub- for the stupid to starve. Significantly, the system sumption9 which entirely accords with this notion of the culture industry comes from the more lib- of culture. By subordinating in the same way and to eral industrial nations, and all its characteristic me- the same end all areas of intellectual creation, by dia, such as movies, radio, jazz, and magazines, occupying men’s senses from the time they leave flourish there. Its progress, to be sure, had its ori- the factory in the evening to the time they clock gin in the general laws of capital. Gaumont and in again the next morning with matter that bears Pathe, Ullstein and Hugenberg followed the interna- the impress of the labor process they themselves tional trend with some success; Europe’s economic have to sustain throughout the day, this subsump- dependence on the United States after war and in- tion mockingly satisfies the concept of a unified flation was a contributory factor. The belief that culture which the philosophers of personality con- the barbarity of the culture industry is a result of trasted with mass culture. “cultural lag,” of the fact that the American con- sciousness did not keep up with the growth of tech- ND so the culture industry, the most rigid of nology, is quite wrong. It was pre-Fascist Europe Aall styles, proves to be the goal of liberalism, which did not keep up with the trend toward the which is reproached for its lack of style. Not only do culture monopoly. But it was this very lag which its categories and contents derive from liberalism— left intellect and creativity some degree of indepen- domesticated naturalism as well as operetta and dence and enabled its last representatives to exist— revue—but the modern culture monopolies form the however dismally. In Germany the failure of demo- economic area in which, together with the corre- cratic control to permeate life had led to a paradox- sponding entrepreneurial types, for the time being ical situation. Many things were exempt from the some part of its sphere of operation survives, de- market mechanism which had invaded the Western spite the process of disintegration elsewhere. It is countries. The German educational system, univer- still possible to make one’s way in entertainment, if sities, theaters with artistic standards, great orches- one is not too obstinate about one’s own concerns, tras, and museums enjoyed protection. The political and proves appropriately pliable. Anyone who re- powers, state and municipalities, which had inher- sists can only survive by fitting in. Once his par- ited such institutions from absolutism, had left them ticular brand of deviation from the norm has been with a measure of the freedom from the forces of noted by the industry, he belongs to it as does the 9Subsumption: the act or process of including or placing within something larger or more comprehensive. 10Dissidence: dissent

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 7 The Culture Industry power which dominates the market, just as princes placed love of the common people for the wrong and feudal lords had done up to the nineteenth cen- which is done them is a greater force than the cun- tury. This strengthened art in this late phase against ning of the authorities. It is stronger even than the the verdict of supply and demand, and increased its rigorism of the Hays Office, just as in certain great resistance far beyond the actual degree of protec- times in history it has inflamed greater forces that tion. In the market itself the tribute of a quality for were turned against it, namely, the terror of the tri- which no use had been found was turned into pur- bunals. It calls for Mickey Rooney in preference to chasing power; in this way, respectable literary and the tragic Garbo, for Donald Duck instead of Betty music publishers could help authors who yielded Boop. The industry submits to the vote which it has little more in the way of profit than the respect of itself inspired. What is a loss for the firm which can- the connoisseur. But what completely fettered the not fully exploit a contract with a declining star is a artist was the pressure (and the accompanying dras- legitimate expense for the system as a whole. By tic threats), always to fit into business life as an aes- craftily sanctioning the demand for rubbish it inau- thetic expert. Formerly, like Kant and Hume, they gurates total harmony. The connoisseur and the ex- signed their letters “Your most humble and obedient pert are despised for their pretentious claim to know servant,” and undermined the foundations of throne better than the others, even though culture is demo- and altar. Today they address heads of government cratic and distributes its privileges to all. In view of by their first names, yet in every artistic activity they the ideological truce, the conformism of the buyers are subject to their illiterate masters. The analysis and the effrontery of the producers who supply them Tocqueville offered a century ago has in the mean- prevail. The result is a constant reproduction of the time proved wholly accurate. Under the private cul- same thing. ture monopoly it is a fact that “tyranny leaves the A constant sameness governs the relationship to body free and directs its attack at the soul. The ruler the past as well. What is new about the phase of no longer says: You must think as I do or die. He mass culture compared with the late liberal stage is says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, the exclusion of the new. The machine rotates on your property, everything shall remain yours, but the same spot. While determining consumption it from this day on you are a stranger among us.”11 excludes the untried as a risk. The movie-makers Not to conform means to be rendered powerless, distrust any manuscript which is not reassuringly economically and therefore spiritually—to be “self- backed by a bestseller. Yet for this very reason there employed.” When the outsider is excluded from the is never-ending talk of ideas, novelty, and surprise, concern, he can only too easily be accused of in- of what is taken for granted but has never existed. competence. Whereas today in material production Tempo and dynamics serve this trend. Nothing re- the mechanism of supply and demand is disintegrat- mains as of old; everything has to run incessantly, to ing, in the superstructure it still operates as a check keep moving. For only the universal triumph of the in the rulers’ favor. The consumers are the workers rhythm of mechanical production and reproduction and employees, the farmers and lower middle class. promises that nothing changes, and nothing unsuit- Capitalist production so confines them, body and able will appear. Any additions to the well-proven soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered culture inventory are too much of a speculation. them. As naturally as the ruled always took the The ossified forms—such as the sketch, short story, morality imposed upon them more seriously than problem film, or hit song—are the standardized av- did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are erage of late liberal taste, dictated with threats from today captivated by the myth of success even more above. The people at the top in the culture agen- than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on cies, who work in harmony as only one manager can the very ideology which enslaves them. The mis- with another, whether he comes from the rag trade

11Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Democracie en Amerique, Vol. II (Paris, 1864), p. 151.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 8 The Culture Industry or from college, have long since reorganized and ra- culture which the different spheres constitute. Least tionalized the objective spirit. One might think that of all can the antithesis be reconciled by absorbing an omnipresent authority had sifted the material and light into serious art, or vice versa. But that is what drawn up an official catalog of cultural commodi- the culture industry attempts. The eccentricity of ties to provide a smooth supply of available mass- the circus, peepshow, and brothel is as embarrassing produced lines. The ideas are written in the cultural to it as that of Schonberg¨ and Karl Kraus. And so firmament where they had already been numbered the jazz musician Benny Goodman appears with the by Plato—and were indeed numbers, incapable of Budapest string quartet, more pedantic rhythmically increase and immutable. than any philharmonic clarinettist, while the style Amusement and all the elements of the culture of the Budapest players is as uniform and sugary as industry existed long before the latter came into ex- that of Guy Lombardo. But what is significant is istence. Now they are taken over from above and not vulgarity, stupidity, and lack of polish. The cul- brought up to date. The culture industry can pride it- ture industry did away with yesterday’s rubbish by self on having energetically executed the previously its own perfection, and by forbidding and domesti- clumsy transposition of art into the sphere of con- cating the amateurish, although it constantly allows sumption, on making this a principle, on divesting gross blunders without which the standard of the ex- amusement of its obtrusive naivetes and improving alted style cannot be perceived. But what is new is the type of commodities. The more absolute it be- that the irreconcilable elements of culture, art and came, the more ruthless it was in forcing every out- distraction, are subordinated to one end and sub- sider either into bankruptcy or into a syndicate, and sumed under one false formula: the totality of the became more refined and elevated—until it ended culture industry. It consists of repetition. That its up as a synthesis of Beethoven and the Casino de characteristic innovations are never anything more Paris. It enjoys a double victory: the truth it ex- than improvements of mass reproduction is not ex- tinguishes without it can reproduce at will as a lie ternal to the system. It is with good reason that within. “Light” art as such, distraction, is not a the interest of innumerable consumers is directed decadent form. Anyone who complains that it is to the technique, and not to the contents—which a betrayal of the ideal of pure expression is under are stubbornly repeated, outworn, and by now half- an illusion about society. The purity of bourgeois discredited. The social power which the specta- art, which hypostatized12 itself as a world of free- tors worship shows itself more effectively in the dom in contrast to what was happening in the mate- omnipresence of the stereotype imposed by techni- rial world, was from the beginning bought with the cal skill than in the stale ideologies for which the exclusion of the lower classes—with whose cause, ephemeral contents stand in. the real universality, art keeps faith precisely by its Nevertheless the culture industry remains the en- freedom from the ends of the false universality. Se- tertainment business. Its influence over the con- rious art has been withheld from those for whom sumers is established by entertainment; that will ul- the hardship and oppression of life make a mock- timately be broken not by an outright decree, but ery of seriousness, and who must be glad if they by the hostility inherent in the principle of enter- can use time not spent at the production line just tainment to what is greater than itself. Since all the to keep going. Light art has been the shadow of trends of the culture industry are profoundly embed- autonomous art. It is the social bad conscience of ded in the public by the whole social process, they serious art. The truth which the latter necessarily are encouraged by the survival of the market in this lacked because of its social premises gives the other area. Demand has not yet been replaced by simple the semblance of legitimacy. The division itself is obedience. As is well known, the major reorganiza- the truth: it does at least express the negativity of the tion of the film industry shortly before World War I,

12Hypostatized: attributed a real identity to (a concept)

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 9 The Culture Industry the material prerequisite of its expansion, was pre- next step is what the script writer takes to be the cisely its deliberate acceptance of the public’s needs most striking effect in the particular situation. Ba- as recorded at the box-office—a procedure which nal though elaborate surprise interrupts the story- was hardly thought necessary in the pioneering days line. The tendency mischievously to fall back on of the screen. The same opinion is held today by pure nonsense, which was a legitimate part of pop- the captains of the film industry, who take as their ular art, farce and clowning, right up to Chaplin and criterion the more or less phenomenal song hits but the Marx Brothers, is most obvious in the unpre- wisely never have recourse to the judgment of truth, tentious kinds. This tendency has completely as- the opposite criterion. Business is their ideology. serted itself in the text of the novelty song, in the It is quite correct that the power of the culture in- thriller movie, and in cartoons, although in films dustry resides in its identification with a manufac- starring Greer Garson and Bette Davis the unity of tured need, and not in simple contrast to it, even if the socio-psychological case study provides some- this contrast were one of complete power and com- thing approximating a claim to a consistent plot. plete powerlessness. Amusement under late cap- The idea itself, together with the objects of comedy italism is the prolongation of work. It is sought and terror, is massacred and fragmented. Novelty after as an escape from the mechanized work pro- songs have always existed on a contempt for mean- cess, and to recruit strength in order to be able to ing which, as predecessors and successors of psy- cope with it again. But at the same time mecha- choanalysis, they reduce to the monotony of sexual nization has such power over a man’s leisure and symbolism. Today detective and adventure films no happiness, and so profoundly determines the man- longer give the audience the opportunity to experi- ufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences ence the resolution. In the non-ironic varieties of are inevitably after-images of the work process it- the genre, it has also to rest content with the simple self. The ostensible content is merely a faded fore- horror of situations which have almost ceased to be ground; what sinks in is the automatic succession linked in any way. of standardized operations. What happens at work, Cartoons were once exponents of fantasy as op- in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped posed to rationalism. They ensured that justice was from by approximation to it in one’s leisure time. done to the creatures and objects they electrified, All amusement suffers from this incurable malady. by giving the maimed specimens a second life. All Pleasure hardens into boredom because, if it is to they do today is to confirm the victory of techno- remain pleasure, it must not demand any effort and logical reason over truth. A few years ago they had therefore moves rigorously in the worn grooves of a consistent plot which only broke up in the final association. No independent thinking must be ex- moments in a crazy chase, and thus resembled the pected from the audience: the product prescribes old slapstick comedy. Now, however, time relations every reaction: not by its natural structure (which have shifted. In the very first sequence a motive is collapses under reflection), but by signals. Any log- stated so that in the course of the action destruc- ical connection calling for mental effort is painstak- tion can get to work on it: with the audience in pur- ingly avoided. As far as possible, developments suit, the protagonist becomes the worthless object of must follow from the immediately preceding situ- general violence. The quantity of organized amuse- ation and never from the idea of the whole. For ment changes into the quality of organized cruelty. the attentive movie-goer any individual scene will The self-elected censors of the film industry (with give him the whole thing. Even the set pattern itself whom it enjoys a close relationship) watch over the still seems dangerous, offering some meaning— unfolding of the crime, which is as drawn-out as a wretched as it might be—where only meaningless- hunt. Fun replaces the pleasure which the sight of an ness is acceptable. Often the plot is maliciously de- embrace would allegedly afford, and postpones sat- prived of the development demanded by characters isfaction till the day of the pogrom. Insofar as car- and matter according to the old pattern. Instead, the toons do any more than accustom the senses to the

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 10 The Culture Industry new tempo, they hammer into every brain the old ing, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the lesson that continuous friction, the breaking down promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of all individual resistance, is the condition of life of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the in this society. Donald Duck in the cartoons and the real point will never be reached, that the diner must unfortunate in real life get their thrashing so that the be satisfied with the menu. In front of the appetite audience can learn to take their own punishment. stimulated by all those brilliant names and images The enjoyment of the violence suffered by the there is finally set no more than a commendation movie character turns into violence against the spec- of the depressing everyday world it sought to es- tator, and distraction into exertion. Nothing that the cape. Of course works of art were not sexual ex- experts have devised as a stimulant must escape the hibitions either. However, by representing depriva- weary eye; no stupidity is allowed in the face of tion as negative, they retracted, as it were, the pros- all the trickery; one has to follow everything and titution of the impulse and rescued by mediation even display the smart responses shown and recom- what was denied. The secret of aesthetic sublima- mended in the film. This raises the question whether tion is its representation of fulfillment as a broken the culture industry fulfills the function of diverting promise. The culture industry does not sublimate; minds which it boasts about so loudly. If most of it represses. By repeatedly exposing the objects of the radio stations and movie theaters were closed desire, breasts in a clinging sweater or the naked down, the consumers would probably not lose so torso of the athletic hero, it only stimulates the un- very much. To walk from the street into the movie sublimated forepleasure which habitual deprivation theater is no longer to enter a world of dream; as has long since reduced to a masochistic semblance. soon as the very existence of these institutions no There is no erotic situation which, while insinuating longer made it obligatory to use them, there would and exciting, does not fail to indicate unmistakably be no great urge to do so. Such closures would not that things can never go that far. The Hays Office be reactionary machine wrecking. The disappoint- merely confirms the ritual of Tantalus that the cul- ment would be felt not so much by the enthusiasts ture industry has established anyway. Works of art as by the slow-witted, who are the ones who suffer are ascetic and unashamed; the culture industry is for everything anyhow. In spite of the films which pornographic and prudish. Love is downgraded to are intended to complete her integration, the house- romance. And, after the descent, much is permitted; wife finds in the darkness of the movie theater a even license as a marketable speciality has its quota place of refuge where she can sit for a few hours bearing the trade description “daring.” The mass with nobody watching, just as she used to look out production of the sexual automatically achieves its of the window when there were still homes and rest repression. Because of his ubiquity, the film star in the evening. The unemployed in the great cities with whom one is meant to fall in love is from the find coolness in summer and warmth in winter in outset a copy of himself. Every tenor voice comes these temperature-controlled locations. Otherwise, to sound like a Caruso record, and the “natural” despite its size, this bloated pleasure apparatus adds faces of Texas girls are like the successful models no dignity to man’s lives. The idea of “fully exploit- by whom Hollywood has typecast them. The me- ing” available technical resources and the facilities chanical reproduction of beauty, which reactionary for aesthetic mass consumption is part of the eco- cultural fanaticism wholeheartedly serves in its me- nomic system which refuses to exploit resources to thodical idolization of individuality, leaves no room abolish hunger. for that unconscious idolatry which was once essen- The culture industry perpetually cheats its con- tial to beauty. The triumph over beauty is celebrated sumers of what it perpetually promises. The by humor—the Schadenfreude that every successful promissory note13 which, with its plots and stag- deprivation calls forth. There is laughter because

13Promissory Note: a written promise to pay at a fixed future time a sum of money to an individual

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 11 The Culture Industry there is nothing to laugh at. Laughter, whether con- it is more strictly forbidden for an illegitimate re- ciliatory or terrible, always occurs when some fear lationship to be admitted without the parties being passes. It indicates liberation either from physical punished than for a millionaire’s future son-in-law danger or from the grip of logic. Conciliatory laugh- to be active in the labor movement. In contrast to ter is heard as the echo of an escape from power; the liberal era, industrialized as well as popular cul- the wrong kind overcomes fear by capitulating to ture may wax indignant at capitalism, but it cannot the forces which are to be feared. It is the echo of renounce the threat of castration. This is fundamen- power as something inescapable. Fun is a medicinal tal. It outlasts the organized acceptance of the uni- bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe formed seen in the films which are produced to that it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud end, and in reality. What is decisive today is no practised on happiness. Moments of happiness are longer puritanism, although it still asserts itself in without laughter; only operettas and films portray the form of women’s organizations, but the neces- sex to the accompaniment of resounding laughter. sity inherent in the system not to leave the customer But Baudelaire is as devoid of humour as Holderlin. alone, not for a moment to allow him any suspi- In the false society laughter is a disease which has cion that resistance is possible. The principle dic- attacked happiness and is drawing it into its worth- tates that he should be shown all his needs as capa- less totality. To laugh at something is always to de- ble of-fulfillment, but that those needs should be so ride it, and the life which, according to Bergson, in predetermined that he feels himself to be the eter- laughter breaks through the barrier, is actually an nal consumer, the object of the culture industry. Not invading barbaric life, self-assertion prepared to pa- only does it make him believe that the deception it rade its liberation from any scruple when the social practices is satisfaction, but it goes further and im- occasion arises. Such a laughing audience is a par- plies that, whatever the state of affairs, he must put ody of humanity. Its members are monads, all ded- up with what is offered. The escape from everyday icated to the pleasure of being ready for anything at drudgery which the whole culture industry promises the expense of everyone else. Their harmony is a may be compared to the daughter’s abduction in the caricature of solidarity. What is fiendish about this cartoon: the father is holding the ladder in the dark. false laughter is that it is a compelling parody of The paradise offered by the culture industry is the the best, which is conciliatory. Delight is austere: same old drudgery. Both escape and elopement are res severa verum gaudium14. The monastic theory pre-designed to lead back to the starting point. Plea- that not asceticism but the sexual act denotes the re- sure promotes the resignation which it ought to help nunciation of attainable bliss receives negative con- to forget. firmation in the gravity of the lover who with fore- Amusement, if released from every restraint, boding commits his life to the fleeting moment. In would not only be the antithesis of art but its ex- the culture industry, jovial denial takes the place of treme role. The Mark Twain absurdity with which the pain found in ecstasy and in asceticism. The the American culture industry flirts at times might supreme law is that they shall not satisfy their de- be a corrective of art. The more seriously the lat- sires at any price; they must laugh and be content ter regards the incompatibility with life, the more it with laughter. In every product of the culture indus- resembles the seriousness of life, its antithesis; the try, the permanent denial imposed by civilization is more effort it devotes to developing wholly from its once again unmistakably demonstrated and inflicted own formal law, the more effort it demands from the on its victims. To offer and to deprive them of some- intelligence to neutralize its burden. In some revue thing is one and the same. This is what happens in films, and especially in the grotesque and the fun- erotic films. Precisely because it must never take nies, the possibility of this negation does glimmer place, everything centers upon copulation. In films for a few moments. But of course it cannot hap-

14Res severa verum gaudium: A harsh thing is a real joy.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 12 The Culture Industry pen. Pure amusement in its consequence, relaxed amusement. This is evident from the fact that only self-surrender to all kinds of associations and happy the copy appears: in the movie theater, the pho- nonsense, is cut short by the amusement on the mar- tograph; on the radio, the recording. In the age ket: instead, it is interrupted by a surrogate overall of liberal expansion, amusement lived on the un- meaning which the culture industry insists on giv- shaken belief in the future: things would remain as ing to its products, and yet misuses as a mere pre- they were and even improve. Today this belief is text for bringing in the stars. Biographies and other once more intellectualized; it becomes so faint that simple stories patch the fragments of nonsense into it loses sight of any goal and is little more than a an idiotic plot. We do not have the cap and bells magic-lantern show for those with their backs to re- of the jester but the bunch of keys of capitalist rea- ality. It consists of the meaningful emphases which, son, which even screens the pleasure of achieving parallel to life itself, the screen play puts on the success. Every kiss in the revue film has to con- smart fellow, the engineer, the capable girl, ruth- tribute to the career of the boxer, or some hit song lessness disguised as character, interest in sport, and expert or other whose rise to fame is being glori- finally automobiles and cigarettes, even where the fied. The deception is not that the culture industry entertainment is not put down to the advertising ac- supplies amusement but that it ruins the fun by al- count of the immediate producers but to that of the lowing business considerations to involve it in the system as a whole. Amusement itself becomes an ideological cliches of a culture in the process of ideal, taking the place of the higher things of which self-liquidation. Ethics and taste cut short unre- it completely deprives the masses by repeating them strained amusement as “na¨ıve”—na¨ıvete´ is thought in a manner even more stereotyped than the slo- to be as bad as intellectualism—and even restrict gans paid for by advertising interests. Inwardness, technical possibilities. The culture industry is cor- the subjectively restricted form of truth, was always rupt; not because it is a sinful Babylon but because more at the mercy of the outwardly powerful than it is a cathedral dedicated to elevated pleasure. On they imagined. The culture industry turns it into an all levels, from Hemingway to Emil Ludwig, from open lie. It has now become mere twaddle which Mrs. Miniver15 to The Lone Ranger, from Toscanini is acceptable in religious best-sellers, psychologi- to Guy Lombardo, there is untruth in the intellec- cal films, and women’s serials as an embarrassingly tual content taken ready-made from art and science. agreeable garnish, so that genuine personal emotion The culture industry does retain a trace of some- in real life can be all the more reliably controlled. thing better in those features which bring it close In this sense amusement carries out that purgation to the circus, in the self-justifying and nonsensical of the emotions which Aristotle once attributed to skill of riders, acrobats and clowns, in the “defense tragedy and Mortimer Adler now allows to movies. and justification of physical as against intellectual The culture industry reveals the truth about catharsis art.”16 But the refuges of a mindless artistry which as it did about style. represents what is human as opposed to the social mechanism are being relentlessly hunted down by HE stronger the positions of the culture indus- a schematic reason which compels everything to try become, the more summarily it can deal prove its significance and effect. The consequence T with consumers’ needs, producing them, control- is that the nonsensical at the bottom disappears as ling them, disciplining them, and even withdrawing utterly as the sense in works of art at the top. amusement: no limits are set to cultural progress The fusion of culture and entertainment that is of this kind. But the tendency is immanent in the taking place today leads not only to a depravation principle of amusement itself, which is enlightened of culture, but inevitably to an intellectualization of in a bourgeois sense. If the need for amusement

15Mrs. Miniver: A novel by Jan Struther (Joyce Maxtone Graham, 1901–1953), made into a film starring Greer Garson. 16Frank Wedekind, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. IX (Munich, 1921), p. 426.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 13 The Culture Industry was in large measure the creation of industry, which course, the starlet is meant to symbolize the typ- used the subject as a means of recommending the ist in such a way that the splendid evening dress work to the masses—the oleograph17 by the dainty seems meant for the actress as distinct from the real morsel it depicted, or the cake mix by a picture girl. The girls in the audience not only feel that they of a cake—amusement always reveals the influence could be on the screen, but realize the great gulf sep- of business, the sales talk, the quack’s spiel. But arating them from it. Only one girl can draw the the original affinity of business and amusement is lucky ticket, only one man can win the prize, and if, shown in the latter’s specific significance: to defend mathematically, all have the same chance, yet this society. To be pleased means to say Yes. It is possi- is so infinitesimal for each one that he or she will ble only by insulation from the totality of the social do best to write it off and rejoice in the other’s suc- process, by desensitization and, from the first, by cess, which might just as well have been his or hers, senselessly sacrificing the inescapable claim of ev- and somehow never is. Whenever the culture indus- ery work, however inane, within its limits to reflect try still issues an invitation naively to identify, it is the whole. Pleasure always means not to think about immediately withdrawn. No one can escape from anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. himself any more. Once a member of the audience Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is could see his own wedding in the one shown in the asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from film. Now the lucky actors on the screen are copies the last remaining thought of resistance. The liber- of the same category as every member of the public, ation which amusement promises is freedom from but such equality only demonstrates the insurmount- thought and from negation. The effrontery of the able separation of the human elements. The perfect rhetorical question, “What do people want?” lies similarity is the absolute difference. The identity in the fact that it is addressed—as if to reflective of the category forbids that of the individual cases. individuals—to those very people who are deliber- Ironically, man as a member of a species has been ately to be deprived of this individuality. Even when made a reality by the culture industry. Now any the public does—exceptionally—rebel against the person signifies only those attributes by which he pleasure industry, all it can muster is that feeble re- can replace everybody else: he is interchangeable, sistance which that very industry has inculcated in a copy. As an individual he is completely expend- it. Nevertheless, it has become increasingly diffi- able and utterly insignificant, and this is just what he cult to keep people in this condition. The rate at finds out when time deprives him of this similarity. which they are reduced to stupidity must not fall be- This changes the inner structure of the religion of hind the rate at which their intelligence is increas- success—otherwise strictly maintained. Increasing ing. In this age of statistics the masses are too sharp emphasis is laid not on the path per aspera ad as- to identify themselves with the millionaire on the tra18 (which presupposes hardship and effort), but screen, and too slow-witted to ignore the law of the on winning a prize. The element of blind chance largest number. Ideology conceals itself in the cal- in the routine decision about which song deserves culation of probabilities. Not everyone will be lucky to be a hit and which extra a heroine is stressed by one day—but the person who draws the winning the ideology. Movies emphasize chance. By stop- ticket, or rather the one who is marked out to do ping at nothing to ensure that all the characters are so by a higher power—usually by the pleasure in- essentially alike, with the exception of the villain, dustry itself, which is represented as unceasingly in and by excluding non-conforming faces (for exam- search of talent. Those discovered by talent scouts ple, those which, like Garbo’s, do not look as if you and then publicized on a vast scale by the studio could say “Hello sister!” to them), life is made eas- are ideal types of the new dependent average. Of ier for movie-goers at first. They are assured that

17Oleograph: a print on cloth to imitate an oil painting. 18Per aspera ad astra: From dust to the stars.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 14 The Culture Industry they are all right as they are, that they could do just objects. as well and that nothing beyond their powers will The less the culture industry has to promise, the be asked of them. But at the same time they are less it can offer a meaningful explanation of life, and given a hint that any effort would be useless be- the emptier is the ideology it disseminates. Even the cause even bourgeois luck no longer has any con- abstract ideals of the harmony and beneficence of nection with the calculable effect of their own work. society are too concrete in this age of universal pub- They take the hint. Fundamentally they all recog- licity. We have even learned how to identify abstract nize chance (by which one occasionally makes his concepts as sales propaganda. Language based en- fortune) as the other side of planning. Precisely be- tirely on truth simply arouses impatience to get on cause the forces of society are so deployed in the with the business deal it is probably advancing. The direction of rationality that anyone might become words that are not means appear senseless; the oth- an engineer or manager, it has ceased entirely to ers seem to be fiction, untrue. Value judgments are be a rational matter who the one will be in whom taken either as advertising or as empty talk. Accord- society will invest training or confidence for such ingly ideology has been made vague and noncom- functions. Chance and planning become one and the mittal, and thus neither clearer nor weaker. Its very same thing, because, given men’s equality, individ- vagueness, its almost scientific aversion from com- ual success and failure—right up to the top—lose mitting itself to anything which cannot be verified, any economic meaning. Chance itself is planned, acts as an instrument of domination. It becomes a not because it affects any particular individual but vigorous and prearranged promulgation of the sta- precisely because it is believed to play a vital part. tus quo. The culture industry tends to make itself It serves the planners as an alibi, and makes it seem the embodiment of authoritative pronouncements, that the complex of transactions and measures into and thus the irrefutable prophet of the prevailing or- which life has been transformed leaves scope for der. It skillfully steers a winding course between spontaneous and direct relations between man. This the cliffs of demonstrable misinformation and man- freedom is symbolized in the various media of the ifest truth, faithfully reproducing the phenomenon culture industry by the arbitrary selection of aver- whose opaqueness blocks any insight and installs age individuals. In a magazine’s detailed accounts the ubiquitous and intact phenomenon as ideal. Ide- of the modestly magnificent pleasure-trips it has ar- ology is split into the photograph of stubborn life ranged for the lucky person, preferably a stenotypist and the naked lie about its meaning—which is not (who has probably won the competition because of expressed but suggested and yet drummed in. To her contacts with local bigwigs), the powerlessness demonstrate its divine nature, reality is always re- of all is reflected. They are mere matter—so much peated in a purely cynical way. Such a photological so that those in control can take someone up into proof is of course not stringent, but it is overpower- their heaven and throw him out again: his rights and ing. Anyone who doubts the power of monotony his work count for nothing. Industry is interested is a fool. The culture industry refutes the objec- in people merely as customers and employees, and tion made against it just as well as that against the has in fact reduced mankind as a whole and each of world which it impartially duplicates. The only its elements to this all-embracing formula. Accord- choice is either to join in or to be left behind: those ing to the ruling aspect at the time, ideology empha- provincials who have recourse to eternal beauty and sizes plan or chance, technology or life, civilization the amateur stage in preference to the cinema and or nature. As employees, men are reminded of the the radio are already—politically—at the point to rational organization and urged to fit in like sensi- which mass culture drives its supporters. It is suf- ble people. As customers, the freedom of choice, ficiently hardened to deride as ideology, if need be, the charm of novelty, is demonstrated to them on the old wish-fulfillments, the father-ideal and abso- the screen or in the press by means of the human lute feeling. The new ideology has as its objects and personal anecdote. In either case they remain the world as such. It makes use of the worship

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 15 The Culture Industry of facts by no more than elevating a disagreeable of the spirit of trees and clouds. Nature and tech- existence into the world of facts in representing it nology are mobilized against all opposition; and we meticulously. This transference makes existence it- have a falsified memento of liberal society, in which self a substitute for meaning and right. Whatever people supposedly wallowed in erotic plush-lined the camera reproduces is beautiful. The disappoint- bedrooms instead of taking open-air baths as in the ment of the prospect that one might be the typist case today, or experiencing breakdowns in prehis- who wins the world trip is matched by the disap- toric Benz models instead of shooting off with the pointing appearance of the accurately photographed speed of a rocket from A (where one is anyhow) to areas which the voyage might include. Not Italy is B (where everything is just the same). The triumph offered, but evidence that it exists. A film can even of the gigantic concern over the initiative of the en- go so far as to show the Paris in which the American trepreneur is praised by the culture industry as the girl thinks she will still her desire as a hopelessly persistence of entrepreneurial initiative. The enemy desolate place, thus driving her the more inexorably who is already defeated, the thinking individual, is into the arms of the smart American boy she could the enemy fought. The resurrection in Germany of have met at home anyhow. That this goes on, that, the anti-bourgeois “Haus Sonnenstosser,”¨ and the in its most recent phase, the system itself reproduces pleasure felt when watching Life with Father, have the life of those of whom it consists instead of im- one and the same meaning. mediately doing away with them, is even put down to its credit as giving it meaning and worth. Contin- N one respect, admittedly, this hollow ideology uing and continuing to join in are given as justifica- is in deadly earnest: everyone is provided for. tion for the blind persistence of the system and even I “No one must go hungry or thirsty; if anyone does, for its immutability. What repeats itself is healthy, he’s for the concentration camp!” This joke from like the natural or industrial cycle. The same ba- Hitler’s Germany might shine forth as a maxim from bies grin eternally out of the magazines; the jazz above all the portals of the culture industry. With machine will pound away for ever. In spite of all sly naivete, it presupposes the most recent charac- the progress in reproduction techniques, in controls teristic of society: that it can easily find out who and the specialities, and in spite of all the restless its supporters are. Everybody is guaranteed formal industry, the bread which the culture industry of- freedom. No one is officially responsible for what fers man is the stone of the stereotype. It draws on he thinks. Instead everyone is enclosed at an early the life cycle, on the well-founded amazement that age in a system of churches, clubs, professional as- mothers, in spite of everything, still go on bearing sociations, and other such concerns, which consti- children and that the wheels still do not grind to a tute the most sensitive instrument of social control. halt. This serves to confirm the immutability of cir- Anyone who wants to avoid ruin must see that he cumstances. The ears of corn blowing in the wind is not found wanting when weighed in the scales of at the end of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator give the this apparatus. Otherwise he will lag behind in life, lie to the anti-Fascist plea for freedom. They are like and finally perish. In every career, and especially in the blond hair of the German girl whose camp life is the liberal professions, expert knowledge is linked photographed by the Nazi film company in the sum- with prescribed standards of conduct; this can eas- mer breeze. Nature is viewed by the mechanism of ily lead to the illusion that expert knowledge is the social domination as a healthy contrast to society, only thing that counts. In fact, it is part of the irra- and is therefore denatured. Pictures showing green tional planning of this society that it reproduces to trees, a blue sky, and moving clouds make these as- a certain degree only the lives of its faithful mem- pects of nature into so many cryptograms for factory bers. The standard of life enjoyed corresponds very chimneys and service stations. On the other hand, closely to the degree to which classes and individ- wheels and machine components must seem expres- uals are essentially bound up with the system. The sive, having been degraded to the status of agents

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 16 The Culture Industry manager can be relied upon, as can the lesser em- pathy to give them an artificial human interest, are ployee Dagwood—as he is in the comic pages or in substitutes for the national leaders, who finally de- real life. Anyone who goes cold and hungry, even if cree the abolition of sympathy and think they can his prospects were once good, is branded. He is an prevent any recurrence when the last invalid has outsider; and, apart from certain capital crimes, the been exterminated. most mortal of sins is to be an outsider. In films he By emphasizing the “heart of gold,” society ad- sometimes, and as an exception, becomes an origi- mits the suffering it has created: everyone knows nal, the object of maliciously indulgent humor; but that he is now helpless in the system, and ideol- usually he is the villain, and is identified as such at ogy has to take this into account. Far from con- first appearance, long before the action really gets cealing suffering under the cloak of improvised fel- going: hence avoiding any suspicion that society lowship, the culture industry takes pride in looking would turn on those of good will. Higher up the it in the face like a man, however great the strain scale, in fact, a kind of welfare state is coming into on self-control. The pathos of composure justifies being today. In order to keep their own positions, the world which makes it necessary. That is life— men in top posts maintain the economy in which a very hard, but just because of that so wonderful and highly-developed technology has in principle made so healthy. This lie does not shrink from tragedy. the masses redundant as producers. The workers, Mass culture deals with it, in the same way as cen- the real bread-winners, are fed (if we are to believe tralized society does not abolish the suffering of its the ideology) by the managers of the economy, the members but records and plans it. That it is why it fed. Hence the individual’s position becomes pre- borrows so persistently from art. This provides the carious. Under liberalism the poor were thought to tragic substance which pure amusement cannot it- be lazy; now they are automatically objects of sus- self supply, but which it needs if it is somehow to picion. Anybody who is not provided for outside remain faithful to the principle of the exact repro- should be in a concentration camp, or at any rate in duction of phenomena. Tragedy made into a care- the hell of the most degrading work and the slums. fully calculated and accepted aspect of the world is The culture industry, however, reflects positive and a blessing. It is a safeguard against the reproach negative welfare for those under the administrators’ that truth is not respected, whereas it is really be- control as direct human solidarity of men in a world ing adopted with cynical regret. To the consumer of the efficient. No one is forgotten; everywhere who—culturally—has seen better days it offers a there are neighbors and welfare workers, Dr. Gille- substitute for long-discarded profundities. It pro- spies and parlor philosophers whose hearts are in vides the regular movie-goer with the scraps of cul- the right place and who, by their kind intervention ture he must have for prestige. It comforts all with as of man to man, cure individual cases of socially- the thought that a tough, genuine human fate is still perpetuated distress—always provided that there is possible, and that it must at all costs be represented no obstacle in the personal depravity of the unfortu- uncompromisingly. Life in all the aspects which nate. The promotion of a friendly atmosphere as ad- ideology today sets out to duplicate shows up all vised by management experts and adopted by every the more gloriously, powerfully and magnificently, factory to increase output, brings even the last pri- the more it is redolent of necessary suffering. It be- vate impulse under social control precisely because gins to resemble fate. Tragedy is reduced to the it seems to relate men’s circumstances directly to threat to destroy anyone who does not cooperate, production, and to reprivatize them. Such spiritual whereas its paradoxical significance once lay in a charity casts a conciliatory shadow onto the prod- hopeless resistance to mythic destiny. Tragic fate ucts of the culture industry long before it emerges becomes just punishment, which is what bourgeois from the factory to invade society as a whole. Yet aesthetics always tried to turn it into. The moral- the great benefactors of mankind, whose scientific ity of mass culture is the cheap form of yesterday’s achievements have to be written up as acts of sym- children’s books. In a first-class production, for ex-

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 17 The Culture Industry ample, the villainous character appears as a hyster- ple and therefore prey to rackets. In some of the ical woman who (with presumed clinical accuracy) most significant German novels of the pre-Fascist tries to ruin the happiness of her opposite number, era such as Doblin’s¨ Berlin Alexanderplatz and Fal- who is truer to reality, and herself suffers a quite lada’s Kleiner Mann, Was Nun, this trend was as ob- untheatrical death. So much learning is of course vious as in the average film and in the devices of found only at the top. Lower down less trouble is jazz. What all these things have in common is the taken. Tragedy is made harmless without recourse self-derision of man. The possibility of becoming to social psychology. Just as every Viennese op- a subject in the economy, an entrepreneur or a pro- eretta worthy of the name had to have its tragic fi- prietor, has been completely liquidated. Right down nale in the second act, which left nothing for the to the humblest shop, the independent enterprise, on third except to clear up misunderstandings, the cul- the management and inheritance of which the bour- ture industry assigns tragedy a fixed place in the geois family and the position of its head had rested, routine. The well-known existence of the recipe is became hopelessly dependent. Everybody became enough to allay any fear that there is no restraint an employee; and in this civilization of employees on tragedy. The description of the dramatic formula the dignity of the father (questionable anyhow) van- by the housewife as “getting into trouble and out ishes. The attitude of the individual to the racket, again” embraces the whole of mass culture from the business, profession or party, before or after admis- idiotic women’s serial to the top production. Even sion, the Fuhrer’s¨ gesticulations before the masses, the worst ending which began with good intentions or the suitor’s before his sweetheart, assume specif- confirms the order of things and corrupts the tragic ically masochistic traits. The attitude into which ev- force, either because the woman whose love runs erybody is forced in order to give repeated proof of counter to the laws of the game plays with her death his moral suitability for this society reminds one of for a brief spell of happiness, or because the sad the boys who, during tribal initiation, go round in a ending in the film all the more clearly stresses the circle with a stereotyped smile on their faces while indestructibility of actual life. The tragic film be- the priest strikes them. Life in the late capitalist era comes an institution for moral improvement. The is a constant initiation rite. Everyone must show that masses, demoralized by their life under the pressure he wholly identifies himself with the power which is of the system, and who show signs of civilization belaboring him. This occurs in the principle of jazz only in modes of behavior which have been forced syncopation, which simultaneously derides stum- on them and through which fury and recalcitrance bling and makes it a rule. The eunuch-like voice show everywhere, are to be kept in order by the sight of the crooner on the radio, the heiress’s smooth of an inexorable life and exemplary behavior. Cul- suitor, who falls into the swimming pool in his din- ture has always played its part in taming revolution- ner jacket, are models for those who must become ary and barbaric instincts. Industrial culture adds whatever the system wants. Everyone can be like its contribution. It shows the condition under which this omnipotent society; everyone can be happy, if this merciless life can be lived at all. The individ- only he will capitulate fully and sacrifice his claim ual who is thoroughly weary must use his weariness to happiness. In his weakness society recognizes as energy for his surrender to the collective power its strength, and gives him some of it. His defense- which wears him out. In films, those permanently lessness makes him reliable. Hence tragedy is dis- desperate situations which crush the spectator in or- carded. Once the opposition of the individual to dinary life somehow become a promise that one can society was its substance. It glorified “the bravery go on living. One has only to become aware of one’s and freedom of emotion before a powerful enemy, own nothingness, only to recognize defeat and one an exalted affliction, a dreadful problem.”19 Today is one with it all. Society is full of desperate peo- tragedy has melted away into the nothingness of that

19Nietzsche, Gotzenddammerung¨ , Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 136.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 18 The Culture Industry false identity of society and individual, whose terror vidual” in the bourgeois era, and is merely unjust still shows for a moment in the empty semblance of in boasting on account of this dreary harmony of the tragic. But the miracle of integration, the per- general and particular. The principle of individual- manent act of grace by the authority who receives ity was always full of contradiction. Individuation the defenseless person—once he has swallowed his has never really been achieved. Self-preservation in rebelliousness—signifies Fascism. This can be seen the shape of class has kept everyone at the stage of in the humanitarianism which Doblin uses to let his a mere species being. Every bourgeois characteris- Biberkopf find refuge, and again in socially-slanted tic, in spite of its deviation and indeed because of films. The capacity to find refuge, to survive one’s it, expressed the same thing: the harshness of the own ruin, by which tragedy is defeated, is found in competitive society. The individual who supported the new generation; they can do any work because society bore its disfiguring mark; seemingly free, he the work process does not let them become attached was actually the product of its economic and social to any. This is reminiscent of the sad lack of con- apparatus. Power based itself on the prevailing con- viction of the homecoming soldier with no interest ditions of power when it sought the approval of per- in the war, or of the casual laborer who ends up by sons affected by it. As it progressed, bourgeois so- joining a paramilitary organization. This liquidation ciety did also develop the individual. Against the of tragedy confirms the abolition of the individual. will of its leaders, technology has changed human beings from children into persons. However, every N the culture industry the individual is an illusion advance in individuation of this kind took place at Inot merely because of the standardization of the the expense of the individuality in whose name it means of production. He is tolerated only so long occurred, so that nothing was left but the resolve as his complete identification with the generality is to pursue one’s own particular purpose. The bour- unquestioned. Pseudo individuality is rife: from the geois whose existence is split into a business and standardized jazz improvisation to the exceptional a private life, whose private life is split into keep- film star whose hair curls over her eye to demon- ing up his public image and intimacy, whose inti- strate her originality. What is individual is no more macy is split into the surly partnership of marriage than the generality’s power to stamp the accidental and the bitter comfort of being quite alone, at odds detail so firmly that it is accepted as such. The de- with himself and everybody else, is already virtu- fiant reserve or elegant appearance of the individual ally a Nazi, replete both with enthusiasm and abuse; on show is mass-produced like Yale locks, whose or a modern city-dweller who can now only imag- only difference can be measured in fractions of mil- ine friendship as a “social contact”: that is, as be- limeters. The peculiarity of the self is a monopoly ing in social contact with others with whom he has commodity determined by society; it is falsely rep- no inward contact. The only reason why the cul- resented as natural. It is no more than the mustache, ture industry can deal so successfully with individ- the French accent, the deep voice of the woman of uality is that the latter has always reproduced the the world, the Lubitsch touch: finger prints on iden- fragility of society. On the faces of private individ- tity cards which are otherwise exactly the same, and uals and movie heroes put together according to the into which the lives and faces of every single per- patterns on magazine covers vanishes a pretense in son are transformed by the power of the generality. which no one now believes; the popularity of the Pseudo individuality is the prerequisite for compre- hero models comes partly from a secret satisfac- hending tragedy and removing its poison: only be- tion that the effort to achieve individuation has at cause individuals have ceased to be themselves and last been replaced by the effort to imitate, which are now merely centers where the general tenden- is admittedly more breathless. It is idle to hope cies meet, is it possible to receive them again, whole that this self-contradictory, disintegrating “person” and entire, into the generality. In this way mass cul- will not last for generations, that the system must ture discloses the fictitious character of the “indi- collapse because of such a psychological split, or

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 19 The Culture Industry that the deceitful substitution of the stereotype for barkers overcame their disappointment in the booths the individual will of itself become unbearable for with a brave smile, because they really knew in ad- mankind. Since Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the unity vance what would happen, so the movie-goer sticks of the personality has been seen through as a pre- knowingly to the institution. With the cheapness of tense. Synthetically produced physiognomies show mass-produced luxury goods and its complement, that the people of today have already forgotten that the universal swindle, a change in the character of there was ever a notion of what human life was. For the art commodity itself is coming about. What is centuries society has been preparing for Victor Ma- new is not that it is a commodity, but that today it de- ture and Mickey Rooney. By destroying they come liberately admits it is one; that art renounces its own to fulfill. autonomy and proudly takes its place among con- The idolization of the cheap involves making the sumption goods constitutes the charm of novelty. average the heroic. The highest-paid stars resemble Art as a separate sphere was always possible only pictures advertising unspecified proprietary articles. in a bourgeois society. Even as a negation of that Not without good purpose are they often selected social purposiveness which is spreading through the from the host of commercial models. The prevail- market, its freedom remains essentially bound up ing taste takes its ideal from advertising, the beauty with the premise of a commodity economy. Pure in consumption. Hence the Socratic saying that works of art which deny the commodity society by the beautiful is the useful has now been fulfilled— the very fact that they obey their own law were al- ironically. The cinema makes propaganda for the ways wares all the same. In so far as, until the eigh- culture combine as a whole; on radio, goods for teenth century, the buyer’s patronage shielded the whose sake the cultural commodity exists are also artist from the market, they were dependent on the recommended individually. For a few coins one can buyer and his objectives. The purposelessness of the see the film which cost millions, for even less one great modern work of art depends on the anonymity can buy the chewing gum whose manufacture in- of the market. Its demands pass through so many in- volved immense riches—a hoard increased still fur- termediaries that the artist is exempt from any defi- ther by sales. In absentia, but by universal suffrage, nite requirements—though admittedly only to a cer- the treasure of armies is revealed, but prostitution tain degree, for throughout the whole history of the is not allowed inside the country. The best orches- bourgeoisie his autonomy was only tolerated, and tras in the world—clearly not so—are brought into thus contained an element of untruth which ulti- your living room free of charge. It is all a parody mately led to the social liquidation of art. When of the never-never land, just as the national society mortally sick, Beethoven hurled away a novel by Sir is a parody of the human society. You name it, we Walter Scott with the cry: “Why, the fellow writes supply it. A man up from the country remarked at for money,” and yet proved a most experienced and the old Berlin Metropol theater that it was astonish- stubborn businessman in disposing of the last quar- ing what they could do for the money; his comment tets, which were a most extreme renunciation of the has long since been adopted by the culture industry market; he is the most outstanding example of the and made the very substance of production. This unity of those opposites, market and independence, is always coupled with the triumph that it is possi- in bourgeois art. Those who succumb to the ide- ble; but this, in large measure, is the very triumph. ology are precisely those who cover up the contra- Putting on a show means showing everybody what diction instead of taking it into the consciousness of there is, and what can be achieved. Even today it is their own production as Beethoven did: he went on still a fair, but incurably sick with culture. Just as to express in music his anger at losing a few pence, the people who had been attracted by the fairground and derived the metaphysical Es Muss Sein20 (which

20Es Muss Sein: “It must be!” (A reference to Beethoven’s last string quartet, in which the last movement begins with the musical motto Es muss sein!.)

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 20 The Culture Industry attempts an aesthetic banishment of the pressure of ery sound of the symphony was accompanied, as it the world by taking it into itself) from the house- were, by the sublime puff that the symphony was keeper’s demand for her monthly wages. The prin- not interrupted by any advertising: “This concert is ciple of idealistic aesthetics—purposefulness with- brought to you as a public service.” The illusion out a purpose—reverses the scheme of things to was made possible by the profits of the united au- which bourgeois art conforms socially: purpose- tomobile and soap manufacturers, whose payments lessness for the purposes declared by the market. At keep the radio stations going—and, of course, by last, in the demand for entertainment and relaxation, the increased sales of the electrical industry, which purpose has absorbed the realm of purposelessness. manufactures the radio sets. Radio, the progres- But as the insistence that art should be disposable sive latecomer of mass culture, draws all the con- in terms of money becomes absolute, a shift in the sequences at present denied the film by its pseudo- internal structure of cultural commodities begins to market. The technical structure of the commercial show itself. The use which men in this antagonistic radio system makes it immune from liberal devia- society promise themselves from the work of art is tions such as those the movie industrialists can still itself, to a great extent, that very existence of the permit themselves in their own sphere. It is a private useless which is abolished by complete inclusion enterprise which really does represent the sovereign under use. The work of art, by completely assim- whole and is therefore some distance ahead of the ilating itself to need, deceitfully deprives men of other individual combines. Chesterfield is merely precisely that liberation from the principle of utility the nation’s cigarette, but the radio is the voice of which it should inaugurate. What might be called the nation. In bringing cultural products wholly into use value in the reception of cultural commodities the sphere of commodities, radio does not try to dis- is replaced by exchange value; in place of enjoy- pose of its culture goods themselves as commodities ment there are gallery-visiting and factual knowl- straight to the consumer. In America it collects no edge: the prestige seeker replaces the connoisseur. fees from the public, and so has acquired the illu- The consumer becomes the ideology of the pleasure sory form of disinterested, unbiased authority which industry, whose institutions he cannot escape. One suits Fascism admirably. The radio becomes the simply “has to” have seen Mrs. Miniver, just as one universal mouthpiece of the Fuhrer;¨ his voice rises “has to” subscribe to Life and Time. Everything is from street loud-speakers to resemble the howling looked at from only one aspect: that it can be used of sirens announcing panic—from which modern for something else, however vague the notion of this propaganda can scarcely be distinguished anyway. use may be. No object has an inherent value; it is The National Socialists knew that the wireless gave valuable only to the extent that it can be exchanged. shape to their cause just as the printing press did The use value of art, its mode of being, is treated to the Reformation. The metaphysical charisma of as a fetish; and the fetish, the work’s social rating the Fuhrer¨ invented by the sociology of religion has (misinterpreted as its artistic status) becomes its use finally turned out to be no more than the omnipres- value—the only quality which is enjoyed. The com- ence of his speeches on the radio, which are a de- modity function of art disappears only to be wholly moniacal parody of the omnipresence of the divine realized when art becomes a species of commodity spirit. The gigantic fact that the speech penetrates instead, marketable and interchangeable like an in- everywhere replaces its content, just as the benefac- dustrial product. But art as a type of product which tion of the Toscanini broadcast takes the place of the existed to be sold and yet to be unsaleable is wholly symphony. No listener can grasp its true meaning and hypocritically converted into “unsaleability” as any longer, while the Fuhrer’s¨ speech is lies any- soon as the transaction ceases to be the mere in- way. The inherent tendency of radio is to make the tention and becomes its sole principle. No tick- speaker’s word, the false commandment, absolute. ets could be bought when Toscanini conducted over A recommendation becomes an order. The recom- the radio; he was heard without charge, and ev- mendation of the same commodities under differ-

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 21 The Culture Industry ent proprietary names, the scientifically based praise cost money. That is now a thing of the past. Now of the laxative in the announcer’s smooth voice be- that it has lost every restraint and there is no need to tween the overture from La Traviata and that from pay any money, the proximity of art to those who are Rienzi21 is the only thing that no longer works, be- exposed to it completes the alienation and assimi- cause of its silliness. One day the edict of produc- lates one to the other under the banner of triumphant tion, the actual advertisement (whose actuality is at objectivity. Criticism and respect disappear in the present concealed by the pretense of a choice) can culture industry; the former becomes a mechanical turn into the open command of the Fuhrer.¨ In a expertise, the latter is succeeded by a shallow cult of society of huge Fascist rackets which agree among leading personalities. Consumers now find nothing themselves what part of the social product should expensive. Nevertheless, they suspect that the less be allotted to the nation’s needs, it would eventually anything costs, the less it is being given them. The seem anachronistic to recommend the use of a par- double mistrust of traditional culture as ideology is ticular soap powder. The Fuhrer¨ is more up-to-date combined with mistrust of industrialized culture as in unceremoniously giving direct orders for both the a swindle. When thrown in free, the now debased holocaust and the supply of rubbish. works of art, together with the rubbish to which the Even today the culture industry dresses works of medium assimilates them, are secretly rejected by art like political slogans and forces them upon a the fortunate recipients, who are supposed to be sat- resistant public at reduced prices; they are as ac- isfied by the mere fact that there is so much to be cessible for public enjoyment as a park. But the seen and heard. Everything can be obtained. The disappearance of their genuine commodity charac- screenos and vaudevilles in the movie theater, the ter does not mean that they have been abolished in competitions for guessing music, the free books, re- the life of a free society, but that the last defense wards and gifts offered on certain radio programs, against their reduction to culture goods has fallen. are not mere accidents but a continuation of the The abolition of educational privilege by the device practice obtaining with culture products. The sym- of clearance sales does not open for the masses the phony becomes a reward for listening to the radio, spheres from which they were formerly excluded, and—if technology had its way—the film would be but, given existing social conditions, contributes di- delivered to people’s homes as happens with the ra- rectly to the decay of education and the progress of dio. It is moving toward the commercial system. barbaric meaninglessness. Those who spent their Television points the way to a development which money in the nineteenth or the early twentieth cen- might easily enough force the Warner Brothers into tury to see a play or to go to a concert respected what would certainly be the unwelcome position of the performance as much as the money they spent. serious musicians and cultural conservatives. But The bourgeois who wanted to get something out of the gift system has already taken hold among con- it tried occasionally to establish some rapport with sumers. As culture is represented as a bonus with the work. Evidence for this is to be found in the undoubted private and social advantages, they have literary “introductions” to works, or in the com- to seize the chance. They rush in lest they miss mentaries on Faust. These were the first steps to- something. Exactly what, is not clear, but in any ward the biographical coating and other practices to case the only ones with a chance are the participants. which a work of art is subjected today. Even in the Fascism, however, hopes to use the training the cul- early, prosperous days of business, exchange-value ture industry has given these recipients of gifts, in did carry use value as a mere appendix but had de- order to organize them into its own forced battal- veloped it as a prerequisite for its own existence; ions. this was socially helpful for works of art. Art exer- cised some restraint on the bourgeois as long as it

21La Traviata and Rienzi: two 19th century operas by Giuseppi Verdi.

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 22 The Culture Industry ULTURE is a paradoxical commodity. So bers. In wartime, goods which are unobtainable are Ccompletely is it subject to the law of exchange still advertised, merely to keep industrial power in that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly view. Subsidizing ideological media is more impor- consumed in use that it can no longer be used. tant than the repetition of the name. Because the Therefore it amalgamates with advertising. The system obliges every product to use advertising, it more meaningless the latter seems to be under a has permeated the idiom—the “style”—of the cul- monopoly, the more omnipotent it becomes. The ture industry. Its victory is so complete that it is motives are markedly economic. One could cer- no longer evident in the key positions: the huge tainly live without the culture industry, therefore it buildings of the top men, floodlit stone advertise- necessarily creates too much satiation and apathy. ments, are free of advertising; at most they exhibit In itself, it has few resources itself to correct this. on the rooftops, in monumental brilliance and with- Advertising is its elixir of life. But as its product out any self-glorification, the firm’s initials. But, in never fails to reduce to a mere promise the enjoy- contrast, the nineteenth-century houses, whose ar- ment which it promises as a commodity, it eventu- chitecture still shamefully indicates that they can ally coincides with publicity, which it needs because be used as a consumption commodity and are in- it cannot be enjoyed. In a competitive society, ad- tended to be lived in, are covered with posters and vertising performed the social service of informing inscriptions from the ground right up to and beyond the buyer about the market; it made choice easier the roof: until they become no more than back- and helped the unknown but more efficient supplier grounds for bills and sign-boards. Advertising be- to dispose of his goods. Far from costing time, it comes art and nothing else, just as Goebbels—with saved it. Today, when the free market is coming to foresight—combines them: l’art pour l’art, adver- an end, those who control the system are entrench- tising for its own sake, a pure representation of so- ing themselves in it. It strengthens the firm bond cial power. In the most influential American mag- between the consumers and the big combines. Only azines, Life and Fortune, a quick glance can now those who can pay the exorbitant rates charged by scarcely distinguish advertising from editorial pic- the advertising agencies, chief of which are the ra- ture and text. The latter features an enthusiastic dio networks themselves; that is, only those who and gratuitous account of the great man (with il- are already in a position to do so, or are co-opted lustrations of his life and grooming habits) which by the decision of the banks and industrial capi- will bring him new fans, while the advertisement tal, can enter the pseudo-market as sellers. The pages use so many factual photographs and details costs of advertising, which finally flow back into that they represent the ideal of information which the pockets of the combines, make it unnecessary the editorial part has only begun to try to achieve. to defeat unwelcome outsiders by laborious com- The assembly-line character of the culture indus- petition. They guarantee that power will remain in try, the synthetic, planned method of turning out the same hands—not unlike those economic deci- its products (factory-like not only in the studio but, sions by which the establishment and running of un- more or less, in the compilation of cheap biogra- dertakings is controlled in a totalitarian state. Ad- phies, pseudo-documentary novels, and hit songs) vertising today is a negative principle, a blocking is very suited to advertising: the important individ- device: everything that does not bear its stamp is ual points, by becoming detachable, interchange- economically suspect. Universal publicity is in no able, and even technically alienated from any con- way necessary for people to get to know the kinds nected meaning, lend themselves to ends external to of goods—whose supply is restricted anyway. It the work. The effect, the trick, the isolated repeat- helps sales only indirectly. For a particular firm, able device, have always been used to exhibit goods to phase out a current advertising practice consti- for advertising purposes, and today every monster tutes a loss of prestige, and a breach of the disci- close-up of a star is an advertisement for her name, pline imposed by the influential clique on its mem- and every hit song a plug for its tune. Advertising

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 23 The Culture Industry and the culture industry merge technically as well tion, it is a straitjacket for longing more even than as economically. In both cases the same thing can for lies. The blindness and dumbness of the data to be seen in innumerable places, and the mechanical which positivism reduces the world pass over into repetition of the same culture product has come to language itself, which restricts itself to recording be the same as that of the propaganda slogan. In those data. Terms themselves become impenetra- both cases the insistent demand for effectiveness ble; they obtain a striking force, a power of ad- makes technology into psycho-technology, into a hesion and repulsion which makes them like their procedure for manipulating men. In both cases the extreme opposite, incantations. They come to be a standards are the striking yet familiar, the easy yet kind of trick, because the name of the prima donna catchy, the skillful yet simple; the object is to over- is cooked up in the studio on a statistical basis, or power the customer, who is conceived as absent- because a welfare state is anathematized by using minded or resistant. taboo terms such as “bureaucrats” or “intellectuals,” or because base practice uses the name of the coun- Y the language he speaks, he makes his own try as a charm. In general, the name—to which Bcontribution to culture as publicity. The more magic most easily attaches—is undergoing a chem- completely language is lost in the announcement, ical change: a metamorphosis into capricious, ma- the more words are debased as substantial vehicles nipulable designations, whose effect is admittedly of meaning and become signs devoid of quality; the now calculable, but which for that very reason is just more purely and transparently words communicate as despotic as that of the archaic name. First names, what is intended, the more impenetrable they be- those archaic remnants, have been brought up to come. The demythologization of language, taken date either by stylization as advertising trade-marks as an element of the whole process of enlighten- (film stars’ surnames have become first names), or ment, is a relapse into magic. Word and essential by collective standardization. In comparison, the content were distinct yet inseparable from one an- bourgeois family name which, instead of being a other. Concepts like melancholy and history, even trade-mark, once individualized its bearer by relat- life, were recognized in the word, which separated ing him to his own past history, seems antiquated. them out and preserved them. Its form simultane- It arouses a strange embarrassment in Americans. ously constituted and reflected them. The absolute In order to hide the awkward distance between in- separation, which makes the moving accidental and dividuals, they call one another “Bob” and “Harry,” its relation to the object arbitrary, puts an end to as interchangeable team members. This practice re- the superstitious fusion of word and thing. Any- duces relations between human beings to the good thing in a determined literal sequence which goes fellowship of the sporting community and is a de- beyond the correlation to the event is rejected as un- fense against the true kind of relationship. Signi- clear and as verbal metaphysics. But the result is fication, which is the only function of a word ad- that the word, which can now be only a sign with- mitted by semantics, reaches perfection in the sign. out any meaning, becomes so fixed to the thing that Whether folksongs were rightly or wrongly called it is just a petrified formula. This affects language upper-class culture in decay, their elements have and object alike. Instead of making the object ex- only acquired their popular form through a long pro- periential, the purified word treats it as an abstract cess of repeated transmission. The spread of popu- instance, and everything else (now excluded by the lar songs, on the other hand, takes place at light- demand for ruthless clarity from expression—itself ning speed. The American expression “fad,” used now banished) fades away in reality. A left-half for fashions which appear like epidemics—that is, at football, a black-shirt, a member of the Hitler inflamed by highly-concentrated economic forces— Youth, and so on, are no more than names. If be- designated this phenomenon long before totalitarian fore its rationalization the word had given rise to advertising bosses enforced the general lines of cul- lies as well as to longing, now, after its rationaliza- ture. When the German Fascists decide one day to

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 24 The Culture Industry launch a word—say, “intolerable”—over the loud- editor, the German words become petrified, alien speakers the next day the whole nation is saying “in- terms. Every word shows how far it has been de- tolerable.” By the same pattern, the nations against based by the Fascist pseudo-folk community. By whom the weight of the German “blitzkrieg” was now, of course, this kind of language is already uni- thrown took the word into their own jargon. The versal, totalitarian. All the violence done to words general repetition of names for measures to be taken is so vile that one can hardly bear to hear them by the authorities makes them, so to speak, familiar, any longer. The announcer does not need to speak just as the brand name on everybody’s lips increased pompously; he would indeed be impossible if his sales in the era of the free market. The blind and inflection were different from that of his particu- rapidly spreading repetition of words with special lar audience. But, as against that, the language and designations links advertising with the totalitarian gestures of the audience and spectators are colored watchword. The layer of experience which created more strongly than ever before by the culture in- the words for their speakers has been removed; in dustry, even in fine nuances which cannot yet be this swift appropriation language acquires the cold- explained experimentally. Today the culture indus- ness which until now it had only on billboards and try has taken over the civilizing inheritance of the in the advertisement columns of newspapers. In- entrepreneurial and frontier democracy—whose ap- numerable people use words and expressions which preciation of intellectual deviations was never very they have either ceased to understand or employ finely attuned. All are free to dance and enjoy them- only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes; selves, just as they have been free, since the histori- in this sense, words are trade-marks which are fi- cal neutralization of religion, to join any of the innu- nally all the more firmly linked to the things they merable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology— denote, the less their linguistic sense is grasped. since ideology always reflects economic coercion— The minister for mass education talks incompre- everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what hendingly of “dynamic forces,” and the hit songs is always the same. The way in which a girl ac- unceasingly celebrate “reverie” and “rhapsody,” yet cepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on base their popularity precisely on the magic of the the telephone or in the most intimate situation, the unintelligible as creating the thrill of a more exalted choice of words in conversation, and the whole in- life. Other stereo-types, such as memory, are still ner life as classified by the now somewhat devalued partly comprehended, but escape from the experi- depth psychology, bear witness to man’s attempt to ence which might allow them content. They appear make himself a proficient apparatus, similar (even like enclaves in the spoken language. On the radio in emotions) to the model served up by the culture of Flesch and Hitler they may be recognized from industry. The most intimate reactions of human be- the affected pronunciation of the announcer when ings have been so thoroughly reified that the idea of he says to the nation, “Good night, everybody!” or anything specific to themselves now persists only as “This is the Hitler Youth,” and even intones “the an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely sig- Fuhrer”¨ in a way imitated by millions. In such nifies anything more than shining white teeth and cliches the last bond between sedimentary experi- freedom from body odor and emotions. The tri- ence and language is severed which still had a rec- umph of advertising in the culture industry is that onciling effect in dialect in the nineteenth century. consumers feel compelled to buy and use its prod- But in the prose of the journalist whose adaptable ucts even though they see through them. attitude led to his appointment as an all-German

ADORNO/HORKNEIMER 25 The Culture Industry