Even modernist art becomes infected by the schema of mass culture.

Evidence

So, we find discussions of: the fate of conflict in works of art, how variety-hall turns reveal the structure of temporality in mass culture, the significance of virtuosity in the art of the culture industry, the status of information, the likeness of culture to sport (sport as a schema for culture), and so forth. This is the darkest and most prescient of Adorno’s writings on culture since in it even modernist art is shown to be infected by the schema of mass culture; here cultural negativity, what resists universality, is even more severely marginalized than it would be if it were merely a product of autonomous ‘high’ culture. At the end of the essay Adorno shows how the forms of behaviour the culture industry offers to people have the perverse character of making them practice on themselves the ‘magic’ that is already worked upon them. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 30

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels ‘Grafting & Growth’ — here the commodification/schematization works on the ‘resistant’ object, like grafting onto wild stock. The infection of the resistant is a parallel mechanism. — connects to: The masses’ enthusiastic participation destroys the cultural apparatus that courted them. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 220; Art loses its critical friction when it becomes purely self-referential. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2731
• SEED: Article angle: running the ‘myth of the mainstream co-opting the alternative’ claim against actual data on indie film/music — where it holds and where ‘infection’ is real collapse.