SOC 103 Lecture Notes - Marshall Mcluhan, Culture Industry, Max Horkheimer

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 103
• Professor: Tonya Davidson

Document Summary

Any medium designed to communicate messages to a mass audience (ravelli, webber &patterson, 444) Cultural productions things that we enjoy music and art we don"t enjoy is because of their aesthetics, its more because of industries. Culture packaged in small number of predictable forms and genres. Produced by small number of large corporations. There is simultaneously nothing new and always something new (media monopoliesbig film company maximizes profit by telling same stories in different ways and its a form of risk reduction) The capitalism system works because they switch it up a little but and they still love: pseudo-individualization. The audience response is built into the product. Choice is an illusion: maintenance of status quo. Distracts from big social issues e. g. american idol. Maintains social class ideas reproduce: race, gender, class. E. g. the film class dismissed and disney films: absorption of dissent.