Mass culture’s predetermined happy endings reveal tension’s merely apparent character
Evidence
The viewer is supposed to be as incapable of looking suffering in the eye as he is of exercising thought. However, even more essential than transparent affirmation is the predetermined resolution in the ‘happy ending’ of every tension whose purely apparent character is revealed by the ritual conclusion. Every specimen of mass culture in its very structure is as historical as the perfectly organized world of the future could wish it to be. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 119
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the earlier discourse on sentimentality robbed of its ‘touching but impotent Utopian moment’ in paragraph 117; the ritual happy ending forecloses the moment when feeling might soften hardened hearts. — connects to: Mass amusement functions as the modern catharsis that tragedy once provided; The culture industry sells a happiness surrogate it does not itself believe in. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 872
Related
- Mass amusement functions as the modern catharsis that tragedy once provided (similarity 0.82)
- Mass culture trains viewers to behave as if misery did not exist (similarity 0.80)
- The culture industry sells a happiness surrogate it does not itself believe in. (similarity 0.80)
- Culture industry entertainment is engineered to return subjects to resigned drudgery (similarity 0.79)