Socio-critical works get absorbed into the entertainment they critique

Evidence

The difference between ‘serious’ and ‘light’ culture is either eroded or expressly organized and thus incorporated into the almighty totality. In the case of the socio-critical novels which are fed through the best-seller mechanism, we can no longer distinguish how far the horrors narrated in them serve the denunciation of society as opposed to the amusement of those who do not yet have the Roman circuses they are really waiting for. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 113

Categorization

• SEED: Direct test case for the reader: does a contemporary prestige-TV social critique (e.g. Succession) serve denunciation or the ‘Roman circuses’ function? The framework is turnkey.
• QUESTION: How does a reader decide, post-Adorno, which social critiques survive absorption? The passage gives no falsification criteria.
• XREF: connects to: Society neutralizes art’s subversive force by absorbing its antagonistic content. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 292