Mass culture trains viewers to behave as if misery did not exist

Evidence

Anyone who fails openly to parade their freedom, their courtesy, their sense of security, who fails to observe and propagate the established guidelines, is forced to remain outside the pale. It is not so much that misery is concealed in the medium of film for example, indeed it is often enough depicted with some relish, but that the viewer is taught to behave everywhere as if there really were no such thing. In spite of all sententious humanitarianism the obedient adept becomes ever colder, harder and more pitiless. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 131

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how mass culture’s ‘schema’ operates not by hiding misery but by scripting behavior that denies it.
• XREF: connects to: Cartoons train audiences to accept punishment as the condition of life. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 108; Mass amusement functions as the modern catharsis that tragedy once provided; Culture industry entertainment is engineered to return subjects to resigned drudgery — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1414 (+1 more)