COMM 2500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Neil Postman, Frankfurt School, Culture Industry
20 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Commodities of culture industries same in all industries: standardised and mass. Culture now encompasses the same stamp on everything". Freedom to choose what is always the same" produced. Technical skill becomes more important than content. Consumers work for capitalism amusement is the prolongation of work" (adorno and horkheimer, 1972) Culture industry is singular mass culture is identical mass culture reproduces sameness, itself and its interests. Audience accepts what industry offers no space for imagination. You are free not to think as i do. Artists are subject to their illiterate masters. Masses are captivated by the myth of success. Neil postman: amusing ourselves to death, 1984, media (tv) changed epistemology, everything amusing, nothing serious, media can only sustain a particular level of ideas, the medium is the metaphor. Cultural studies: marxist tradition, hegemony and ideological apparatus (gramsci): the role of mass culture, inequalities associated with class, race, gender reproduced in systems of representation
