Adorno

From MarxWiki

Theodore Adorno (1903-69) was a member of the Frankfurt School and a co-author of "The Culture Industry: Englightenment as Mass Deception" with Max Horkheimer. At the University of Frankfurt he studied philosophy and music in particular, as well as sociology and psychology.

Adorno consciously attempted to write in a style that would be difficult to consume or understand as a testament to his esteem for difficult works of art and philosophy as well as the value of understanding achieved through struggle.

He and Horkheimer started the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, in 1931. Adorno went into exile in Oxford, England in 1934 during Hitler's rule. The Institute moved to Zürich and then New York, and Adorno was able to rejoin it in 1938 in America. From the Institute he lead the attack on the `culture industry` of advanced capitalism in society.

Living in Hollywood, he was able to observe closely the culture industry that was the subject of much of his work. He argued that popular media was merely a product of the culture industry and the opposite of `true art.` Its only aim to preserve capitalism and pacify the populace. Pleasure taken from these mass media forms is the aesthetic counterpart to Marx's concept of false consciousness, it is illusory and comes from needs artificially created by commercial culture. Adorno linked passive satisfaction with popular culture to political apathy.