Mass media’s audience demands undermines their own ideological work

Evidence

For the sake of gaining an audience and possessing credibility, mass media must reproduce social reality; the consequence of this is that they ‘may deflate or undermine the ideological illusions of their own products and however unwittingly engage in social critique and ideological subversion’. Analogously, the requirements of pleasing a mass audience, of providing something for everyone, may have the unintended consequence of revealing social alternatives and hence splintering ‘the ideological hegemony which was once the fragile accomplishment of the culture industry’. The culture industry is no longer the purveyor of a monolithic ideology but, however unwittingly or unintentionally, includes moments of conflict, rebellion, opposition and the drive for emancipation and utopia. While pop music, for example, may exhibit the features of commodification, reification and standardization, it can equally ‘express emotions of pain, rage, joy, rebellion, sexuality, etc.’. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 55

Categorization

• XREF: This is the strongest internal critique of Adorno — the built-in reason his totalizing account may fail on post-death culture. The reader needs both sides. — connects to: Marcuse saw mass media as absorbing individual thought into indoctrination — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 542; Mandatory-jokey political TV actively deters the politically engaged audience — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 739