Adorno and Horkheimer 2

X Factor Machine

Adorno and Horkheimer linked the idea of the 'culture industry' to a model of 'mass culture' in which cultural production had become a routine, standardised repetitive operation that produced demanding cultural commodities which in turn resulted in a type of consumption that was also standardised, distracted and passive.

This theory was heavily criticised due to people claiming that the theorists were being 'snobby' and trying to take mass culture out of normal culture due to them not liming the culture. This was known as 'cultural elitism'.

The capitalist corporation seems to enjoy an almost omnipotent form of domination and both the consumers and the creative artists are not separate from but are directly connected to this system of production.

Adorno and Horkheimer stressed the structures of economic ownership and control of the means through which cultural products are produced and argued that this directly shapes the activities of creative artists and consumers.

Standardisation- the argument here is that there is nothing spontaneous about the process of cultural production: it has become a routine operation that can be carried out in an office by the application of specific formulae.