What condemns mass culture is its false reconciliation, not its contradictions

Evidence

Mass culture is not to be reproached for contradiction, any more than for its objective or non-objective character, but rather on account of the reconciliation which bars it from unfolding the contradiction into its truth. Its objectivity is not that which belongs to the immanent necessity of all the moments in a work but is merely the reflection of an objective style of life and perception. Its non-objective character on the other hand does not declare war upon the world of business but merely exploits its worn out expressive schemata - the myth of personification and platitudes about ‘humanity’ as a crude material resource. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 123

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the standard of judgment: mass culture fails by barring contradiction from developing into truth, not by contradicting itself.
• DEEPTHINKING: Reconciliation-not-contradiction as the indictment is a nuanced inversion worth sitting with; the criticism is of harmonizing, not of failing.
• XREF: connects to: The culture industry’s false harmony is more sinister than open contradiction — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 650; Culture must be negated determinately as reconciliation with nature — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 983