Modern mass culture replaced suspense with the comfort of predetermined outcomes

Evidence

When the journalist Defoe and the printer Richardson calculated the effect of their wares upon the audience, they had to speculate, to follow hunches; and therewith, a certain latitude to develop deviations remained. Such deviations have nowadays been reduced to a kind of multiple choice between very few alternatives. The following may serve as an illustration. The popular or semi-popular novels of the first half of the nineteenth century, published in large quantities and serving mass consumption, were supposed to arouse tension in the reader. Although the victory of the good over the bad was generally provided for, the meandering and endless plots and subplots hardly allowed the readers of Sue and Dumas to be continuously aware of the moral. Readers could expect anything to happen. This no longer holds true. Every spectator of a television mystery knows with absolute certainty how it is going to end. Tension is but superficially maintained and is unlikely to have a serious effect any more. On the contrary, the spectator feels on safe ground all the time. This longing for ‘feeling on safe ground’ - reflecting an infantile need for protection, rather than the desire for a thrill - is catered to. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 228

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier work on the law merchant’s shift from open-ended private judgment to institutionalized, predictable resolution — both describe a ‘closed system’ replacing latitude with security. — connects to: Mass amusement functions as the modern catharsis that tragedy once provided
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: when did the infantile need for protection versus thrill-seeking actually emerge as the dominant audience motivation, and does modern streaming/prestige TV show a reversal back to open-ended suspense?