Culture Industry, Adorno, Horkheimer & Superheroes

I'm writing a short piece about a recent Hollywood blockbuster that draws on Adorno and Horkheimer’s ideas about the culture industry.

For this task, I have chosen the film ‘Justice League’, 2017, recently released by Warner Bros. The main reason for such choice is due to the fact that as a child, I personally always had an interest in comic magazines, especially the ones which were based on a character who possessed superpowers. A major point of my interest was the fact that it was an industry not vastly known by the community where I grow up. Furthermore, it gave the comic fan community a sense of belonging where we could relate to each other and discuss stories and superpowers which at the time was considered childish by adults.

Nonetheless, Adorno and Horkheimer were most concerned about the idea of bringing culture to the marketplace, turning it into another way for corporations to make a profit out of an ideology which according to them meant to be pure and uncompromised. ‘Media text, context, and consumers are organised so to maximize attention and engagement (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1993, p37)’. In another word, taking a cultural concept and transform it in a way to be able to easily commercialise, hence maximise sales regardless of its history or community. Moreover, the culture was considered by Adorno and Horkheimer an achievement only granted throughout the hard study by intellectual individuals, most importantly, it had no connection with marketing or profit.

The line which this report is drawing is the connection between the community of the comic magazines in which its audience was perhaps proud not to be compromised and its transformation during recent years when sales started to be prioritised. In addition to that, according to IMBD, one of the biggest film’s database online, 8 out of the 10 most anticipated films of 2017, are based on comic books, producing huge profits and reaching a much greater audience (Imbd, 2017). In contrast, it had also standardising the way comic books and superheroes are portrayed in order to reach more broadly consumers.

Although the source is certainly not academic; it shows how much in demand this kind of films is currently. ‘This helps to explain how Adorno and Horkheimer neglect what was to become central to cultural studies’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1993, p33). Critically analysing Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s concerns mentioned at the beginning of this reports, it perhaps reaches a conclusion that both authors nearly predicted how culture would be shaped in the future. Although one must take into consideration how our society has changed ever since such mention was made, and other events also influenced those changes, it is also important not to ignore those predictions.

Bibliography:

Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1993). The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception. In: During, S. (ed.) The cultural studies reader, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 31-41.

IMDB (2017). Top 100 Most Anticipated Movies of 2017. IMDB.com. Available from http://www.imdb.com/list/ls058409670/ [Accessed 11 December 2017].