Exam (elaborations)
COMM 206 Exam Questions for Success
- Course
- COMM 206
- Institution
- University Of Southern California
COMM 206 Exam Questions for Success
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COMM 206 Exam Questions for SuccessWhat is the culture industry? (Adorno and Horkheimer) -ANS>Culture industry -
the standardization and mass reproduction of media content that generate and
pacify a mass audience under capitalism
Mass media - radio/music, television, film, magazines, advertisement, newspapers
and broadcast
New media - internet, social media, Al, augmented and virtual realities\
Simply explained, culture industry is a term used by social thinkers Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer to describe how popular culture in capitalist society
functions like an industry in producing standardized products which produce
standardized people.
A cultural industry (sometimes used synonymously with creative industries) is an
economic field concerned with producing, reproducing, storing, and distributing
cultural goods and services on industrial and commercial terms
EASY TO CONTROL PEOPLE THROUGH CULTURE INDUSTRY
Terms; control, hegemony, mass media
How does capitalism shape the media? (Question from lecture) -ANS>Attacking
mass media, media under capitalism is trash and produces trash
Media is trash because it is all the same with only minor modification and
replaceable
Because it is repetitive just like things made on an assembly line
Example: talent shows, real housewives, music
"Culture today is infecting everything with sameness"
,"It's element is repetition"
Repetitiveness that pacifices the masses
How does the culture industry (media created under it) shape how people spend
their time? What does the culture industry do to people and how they think? -
ANS>(Go to work and come home contranty consuming products of the culture
industry. A lot of the content we watch is reproducing capitalism. Tell you what
your family should look like → issues of representation. Shapes what you think
pleasure and happiness is → False sense of fulfillment, Mass media tells us what
we can think and can't think)
Adorno and Horkheimer assert that the culture industry eradicates autonomous
thinking and criticism, serving to preserve the reigning order
Teaching people what they want, they consume it, become accustomed to it, see it
as choice, making people believe that they have a choice even though its
automated
It provides easy entertainment which distracts masses from the wrongs and
sickness of the ruling order
They argue that the culture industry has taken over reality as the prism through
which people experience reality, thus completely shaping and conditioning their
experience of life
In addition, the culture industry serves to keep workers busy, as expressed by the
famous quote from "Dialectic of Enlightenment": "Amusement has become an
extension of labor under late capitalism"
Keeps you busy which then pacifies you and makes you unaware. Shapes your
mind and what you think is normal
Popular culture appears to be offering a refuge and distraction for work, but in fact
it causes the worker to further dwell into a world of products and consumerism.
, FACISM AND THE HOLOCAUST -ANS>Fascism is a movement that promotes the
idea of a forcibly monolithic, regimented nation under the control of an autocratic
ruler
Adorno and Horkheimer negatively view mass media
They were german jews escaping the nazis
Came to the US and realized technological advances like films and radio and were
struck by this. Wanted to ring the alarm of the possible dangers of being pacified
by this entertainment.
We think that we are thinking for ourselves but the media standardizes us and
does not let us think critically. When people have standardized thoughts it's easier
to embed facist messaging and to control us.
Witnessed the rise of fascism in germany and how german propaganda/ideology
was willingly accepted by germans
Rise of Nazi Germany the context of works by Adorno, Horkheimer, and Benjamin
People are accustomed to what they want, which is repetition
Totalitarian government emerged alongside mass media and an uncritical mass
audience. Even when people know they are being marketed and marketed to even
when they see through the machination of mass media
See no difference between fascist propaganda and how capitalism is influencing
mass media
Why do Adorno and Horkheimer think that enlightenment is mass deception under
capitalism and the culture industry? -ANS>YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED AND
CONTROLLED
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