The culture industry sells a happiness surrogate it does not itself believe in.
Evidence
Inanycase,thecultureindustryappropriatesthenotionthatthingscouldbe different and creates a pale copy of it: if art is the ‘promise of happiness which gets broken’, then the culture industry provides its customers with a happiness surrogate – hence, the cynical running gag in the advertising industry of perpetual escape from perpetual routine. Yet this surrogate carries just as little credibility as a source of happiness for the culture industry itself as it does for its recipients. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 872
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘promise of happiness which gets broken’ connects directly to the Dialectic of Enlightenment’s account of culture industry as deception of masses. — connects to: The culture industry represses desire rather than sublimating it as art does — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 110; The culture industry’s deception is ruining genuine amusement, not supplying it — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 111; The culture industry offers only illusory promises of pleasure, never fulfillment — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 110 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Culture-industry products are consumed but not actually believed.
#corroborates(0.95) - Culture’s promise of happiness is equivocal because it exists only where freedom does not
#expands(0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 46 - Culture industry products stage false conflicts resolved by benevolent authority.
#expands(0.80) - Culture consumed as consumer goods manipulates people rather than liberating them.
#expands(0.78) - Mass culture’s predetermined happy endings reveal tension’s merely apparent character
#exemplifies(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 119 - The culture industry does not fully determine what consumers think and feel.
#qualifies(0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 282