Adorno doubted popular art’s revolutionary potential and feared its repressed anger turning destructive.

Evidence

The regressed listener, Adorno argued, was not confined to any one class. If there was a social moment expressed in his condition, it was that of the meaningless leisure of the unemployed. Although at present depoliticized and passive, his masochistic self-abnegation might develop into destructive rage turned outwards. The frustrated sexuality of the frantic jitterbugger expressed this pent-up hostility. Adorno was not optimistic however, about the constructive purposes to which this repressed anger might be put. He was also far less sanguine than Benjamin about the revolutionary potential of popular art, at least in its present affirmative form. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 579

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contrasts with Benjamin’s optimism about mass art’s revolutionary potential, a known Frankfurt School split worth tracking. — connects to: Adorno held that popular music became a tool of ideological manipulation — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 563
• SEED: Angle for an essay: Adorno vs. Benjamin on mass culture — how each read the political valence of the same phenomenon.

Broader Connections

• Adorno held that popular music became a tool of ideological manipulation #expands (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 563