Fossilized middle-class morality becomes hollow and authoritarian when severed from its social basis.

Evidence

The accents on inwardness, inner conflicts, and psychological ambivalence (which plays so large a role in earlier popular novels and on which their originality rests) have given way to unproblematic, cliche-like characterization. Yet the code of decency that governed the inner conflicts of the Pamelas, Clarissas and Lovelaces remains almost literally intact. The middle-class ‘ontology’ is preserved in an almost fossilized way, but is severed from the mentality of the middle classes. By being superimposed on people with whose living conditions and mental make-up it is no longer in accord, this middle-class ‘ontology’ assumes an increasingly authoritarian and at the same time hollow character. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 217

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism here — a moral code surviving its economic base and turning authoritarian and hollow — is dense and paradigm-shifting, applicable well beyond television.
• QUESTION: Does this predict today’s nostalgia content, where pre-1960s suburban morality is replayed without its material basis?