Mass culture’s stultification has a preservative function locking victims in place

Evidence

The assent to hit songs and debased cultural goods belongs to the same complex of symptoms as do those faces of which one no longer knows whether the film has alienated them from reality or reality has alienated them from the film, as they wrench open a great formless mouth with shining teeth in a voracious smile, while the tired eyes are wretched and lost above. Together with sport and film, mass music and the new listening help to make escape from the whole infantile milieu impossible. The sickness has a preservative function. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 93

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The ‘sickness has a preservative function’ is the administered-life theme — free time as administered continuation of work — in coercive form. The before/after faces image is a striking emblem of the alienation loop between film and reality.

Related

• Mass culture trains viewers to behave as if misery did not exist (similarity 0.80)