The culture industry does not fully determine what consumers think and feel.

Evidence

Nevertheless there is reason to believe that production regulates consumption in the process of mental life, just as it does in that of material life, especially where the former has so closely approximated the latter, as it has in the culture industry. … One would have thought the culture industry was perfectly adapted to its consumers. But since the culture industry has meanwhile become total - itself a phenomenon of the eversame, from which it promises temporarily to divert people - it is doubtful whether the culture industry and consumer-consciousness can be simply equated with one another. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 282

Categorization

• XREF: This is Adorno revising his own Frankfurt School orthodoxy — connects to the broader debate over the ‘one-dimensional man’ thesis and debates about audience agency (e.g. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding) — connects to: Audience taste is manufactured by the industry, not the reverse. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94; The culture industry’s products prescribe reactions through signals to forbid reflection — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 107; The culture industry’s deception is ruining genuine amusement, not supplying it — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 111 (+2 more)

Related

• The culture industry does the consumer’s cognitive schematizing for him (similarity 0.88)
• Consumers buy culture-industry products knowing they are being manipulated (similarity 0.85)
• The culture industry’s deception is ruining genuine amusement, not supplying it (similarity 0.85)
• The culture industry’s products prescribe reactions through signals to forbid reflection (similarity 0.85)
• Audience taste is manufactured by the industry, not the reverse. (similarity 0.83)
• Culture consumed as consumer goods manipulates people rather than liberating them. (similarity 0.82)
• The culture industry’s catalog of prohibitions governs the entire space of permitted expression (similarity 0.81)
• The culture industry rules by manufacturing the needs it satisfies (similarity 0.80)
• The culture industry sells a happiness surrogate it does not itself believe in. (similarity 0.80)
• The culture industry is production from above, not culture arising from the masses (similarity 0.80)
• Adorno’s theory denies audiences relative autonomy of consciousness (similarity 0.80)
• Consumer conformity in culture industry is exploitation dressed as humanitarianism (similarity 0.80)
• Mass consumers are calculated objects, not the subjects, of culture production (similarity 0.80)
• The culture industry offers only illusory promises of pleasure, never fulfillment (similarity 0.80)
• The culture industry offers evidence of destinations rather than genuine escape (similarity 0.80)