Adorno saw jitterbugging as a vestige of negation within standardized pop music

Evidence

Recognition of the familiar was the essence of mass listening, serving more as an end in itself than as a means to more intelligent appreciation. Once a certain formula was successful, the industry promoted and plugged the same thing over and over again. The result was to make music into a kind of social cement operating through distraction, displaced wish-fulfillment, and the intensification of passivity. However, as in the case of jazz, Adorno felt there might still be an isolated element of negation in popular music. Here he saw it potentially existing in the spiteful resentment of passivity that the pseudo-activity of jitterbugging implied. The energy thus expressed, he contended in a way reminiscent of Nietzsche’s analysis of the ascetic priest, at least expressed a vestige of unextinguished will. “To become transformed into an insect,” he wrote, playing on the name of the dance, “man needs that energy which might possibly achieve his transformation into a man.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 582

Categorization

• XREF: Adorno’s jitterbug-as-vestigial-will argument echoes Nietzsche’s ascetic priest analysis and parallels his earlier jazz critique — a recurring thread in his aesthetics. — connects to: Adorno held that popular music became a tool of ideological manipulation — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 563; Adorno’s central musical divide was market-oriented versus non-market music. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 554; Adorno read jazz syncopation as illusory individual breakout masking collective subjection — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 879 (+2 more)
• CANDY: The pun on jitterbug/insect — ‘man needs that energy which might possibly achieve his transformation into a man’ — is a striking, quotable Adorno quip.

Broader Connections

• Adorno held that popular music became a tool of ideological manipulation #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 563
• Adorno’s central musical divide was market-oriented versus non-market music. #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 554