Soviet propaganda cinema lost its radical edge when it embraced war subjects
Evidence
In the attempt to denounce class society in a non-psychological manner, the best Russian films, above all Battleship Potemkin, have not actually depicted the process of material production at all but the realities of war and of political-military oppression. They maintain aesthetic concreteness by showing what is immediately inflicted upon human beings rather than by depicting what takes place in the abstract order of property relations. But in so far as these films present men as objects of domination who become subjects in the struggle against such domination, they penetrate to what is essential. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 305
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Adorno’s broader claim across this collection that the culture industry neutralizes radical content, and to how revolutionary form ossifies into patriotic convention.