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Part I
Everyday Life and Social Theory
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ONE The Mass Culture Debate
Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by technicians hired by businessmen; its audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not buying. The Lords of kitsch, in short, exploit the cultural needs of the masses in order to make a profit and/or to maintain their class rule. (Macdonald, 1953: 60)
The arguments and debates around which this book is written are rooted in the growth of leisure and consumerism in the developing capitalist societies of the early twentieth century. As workers gained more rights, wages increased and the working day became shorter, the demand for leisure and entertainment grew. At the same time, breakthroughs in media and technology gave rise to new forms of mass communication and the mass production of leisure goods. By the middle of the twentieth century, the importance of leisure had grown to the extent that it had become a dominant aspect of everyday activity in late capitalist society. Work, which had once been a means to survival, now became a means to an altogether different end. Wages were no longer used simply to acquire the necessities of life, such as food and clothing, but also became a means through which to acquire goods and services associated with the new leisure markets (Bocock, 1993). Consumer and media products were now considered as important to the quality of life as those goods directly necessary for the sustenance of life. In other words, everyday life in late capitalism no longer turned around the value of ‘utility’ items alone, but also around more aesthetically valued objects and accessories – music, fashion, films and television programmes, sport, tourism and so on.
The shift from work to leisure-centred capitalist societies gave rise to a new phase in the sociological debate concerning the nature of social order under capitalism. Central to this debate were arguments concerning the relationship between new forms of leisure and consumption and the capitalist industries that facilitated these. While certain theorists, notably Weber (1978 [1919]), Benjamin (Buck-Morss, 1989), Simmel (Frisby and Featherstone, 1997) and Veblen (1994 [1924]), argued that leisure and consumption opened up spaces for new forms of collective expression and creativity (see Chapter 3), this was countered by a rather more pessimistic interpretation which suggested that the apparently more ‘civilised’ spaces of late capitalist society merely served to veil an advanced, and in many ways more brutal, form of capitalist oppression which exploited new forms of mass leisure and consumption to its own ends. This chapter considers a number of critical responses by twentieth century social theorists to the increasing centrality of mass culture in capitalist society, its relationship to capitalist ideology and power, and its ultimate role in the reproduction of culture.
Feeding a fickle culture?
Critical theories of mass culture were greatly inspired by the work of Marx, and in particular Marx’s explication of the systematic and highly complex processes of ideological and social control necessary for the maintenance of the capitalist system. According to Marx, the significant social upheavals brought about by industrial revolution of the mid-eighteenth century – the rapid shift from rural to urban living and a new form of cash nexus relationship in which workers were forced to sell their labour to capitalist entrepreneurs – altered the nature of social relations significantly. The survival of industrial capitalism, Marx argued, relied upon the establishment of a ‘natural order’ of things, the latter being achieved through the imposition of a social hierarchy which prevented the working classes from perceiving and understanding the true nature of their socioeconomic exploitation by the bourgeoisie. Thus, as Löwith observes:
Because the producers of commodities (i.e. the producers of objects of every kind with the form or structure of commodities) enter into human-social relationships only through the exchange of commodities as commodities – hence as ‘things’ – the social relations which underlie commodities do not appear to the producers themselves as social relations of the human social labour process. On the contrary, these real underlying social relations seem to be purely ‘objective’ relations among themselves as producers, while conversely, the ‘objective’ relations between commodities assume a character of quasi-personal relations which act independently in a commodity market which has its own laws. (1993: 101)
By dent of their socio-economic subordination, argued Marx, the working class were also subject to a form of ideological domination which turned upon the bourgeoisie’s ability to construct a particular form of social reality in which workers were deemed, and deemed themselves, subservient to the needs of capitalism. As Morrison observes, ‘individuals bec[a]me outcomes of capitalist social functions and appear[ed] to enter into economic activity as if it were their nature’ (1995: 77). The everyday cultural experience of the working class was, therefore, held to be little more than a by-product of their economic exploitation, the economic core or ‘base’ of society, according to Marx, being mirrored in the cultural institutions or ‘superstructure’. From a Marxist perspective:
A culture is organized in relation to sets of interests within society and dominant interests are the articulation of power. Power, in turn, is … mediated through the existing systems of stratification in society (in relation to class, gender, race, ability, age and so on) which are, in general, taken for granted by most of the people, most of the time. (Jenks, 1993: 72)
For Marx then, the ‘everyday culture’ of capitalist society is little more than an elaborate trick of illusion, a vehicle for the ruling class’s economic and ideological exploitation of the working class. Such is the force of the illusion held in place by the combined economic and ideological power of the ruling class, according to Marx, that the working class are effectively prevented from collectively comprehending the true conditions of their socio-economic existence, such comprehension being a necessary element in the process of social change.
The increasing technological sophistication of capitalist societies during the twentieth century was argued by many theorists to add weight to Marx’s arguments concerning the nature and ownership of power and control under capitalism. In particular, it was suggested that the increasing prevalence of mass communications technologies in advanced capitalist societies was resulting in the exercise of ever more pervasive forms of social control from above due to the more ready manipulation of the ideas and beliefs of the working classes facilitated by such technologies. Key theorists in this debate were German neo-Marxist thinkers Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, leading writers within a group collectively known as the Frankfurt School. According to the Frankfurt School, ‘the possibilities of manipulation of mass opinion through the media [were] particularly threatening’ (Holton and Turner, 1989: 22). The mass cultural critique formulated by the Frankfurt School theorists was influenced considerably by events in Germany during the 1930s when Hitler’s Nazi Party made extensive and highly effective use of the mass media in its national propaganda campaign (see Bottomore, 1984).
During a period of exile in the US between 1933 and 1950, Adorno and Horkheimer developed their ideas into a more sophisticated critique of mass culture through a series of observations on the centrality of the media and other forms of mass entertainment in American life (see Bottomore, 1984; Stevenson, 1995). Mass culture, it was claimed, represented a new, technologically enhanced form of social control, surpassing Marx’s notion of the ruling ideology as the instrument of social control through its ability to manipulate leisure as a form of mass distraction. Ironically, argued Adorno and Horkheimer, despite their apparent everyday significance as spaces of freedom from work and avenues for relaxation, leisure and entertainment actually served the capitalist process in a very effective way by preserving the routinised pattern of working life outside of the workplace:
Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is sought after as an escape from the mechanized work process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the same time mechanization has such power over a man’s leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably afterimages of the work process itself. (1969: 137)
A particularly good example of this, according to Horkheimer and Adorno, was the Hollywood film industry, the formatted nature of Hollywood films underpinning the regulated nature of the work experience.1 The predictability of films, whatever their genre – romance, thriller, horror or comedy – mirrors the mundane predictability of working life with the result that the individual cannot escape this routine even when supposedly engaged in the leisure pursuit of going to the cinema. This rationalisation of the cinematic experience, it was argued, also extended to children’s cartoon films, the animated characters of such films portraying acceptable social roles or, alternatively, acting as examples of what young viewers could expect when the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour was crossed:
In so far as cartoons do any more than accustom the senses to the new tempo, they hammer into the brain the old lesson that continuous friction, the breaking down of all individual resistance, is the condition of life in this society. Donald Duck in the cartoons and the unfortunate in real life get their thrashing so that the audience can learn to take their own punishment. (ibid.: 138)
Adorno was also highly critical of mass produced popular music which, he argued, constituted one of the worst examples of capitalism’s intrusion into the world of art (Jay, 1973). A musician himself, Adorno was repulsed by what he regarded as the standardisation of music when reduced to a commodity form. In an essay entitled ‘On Popular Music’, Adorno makes a distinction between serious, or ‘art’, music and ‘popular’ music, the key difference in these musical forms, according to Adorno, being the contrasting demands they make of the listener. In the case of art music, suggests Adorno, its key purpose is to convey a specific meaning, as intended by the composer, to the listener in much the same way that a painting is supposed to convey the intended meaning of the artist to the viewer. Moreover, according to Adorno, the intended meaning becomes apparent only after a considerable degree of listening skill has been learned and applied. Listening to art music is, therefore, an educational experience; ‘correct’ listening becomes an exercise in grasping the ‘concrete totality’ of a musical piece (Adorno, 1990 [1941]: 303). Once this totality has been understood, a door is opened on a new inner world of heightened experience which allows the listener to transcend the mundane world of everyday experience (Paddison, 1996).
In the case of mass produced popular music, argues Adorno, no such individual meaning is conveyed by the music, and thus no listening skill is necessary. For Adorno, the essence of popular music is its standardised format. This in turn ensures that the social reception of popular music is pre-programmed, that musical composition and production follow exacting guidelines which are calculated to produce a specific and uniformed response among listeners:
The composition hears for the listener … Not only does it not require effort to follow its concrete stream; it actually gives him models under which anything concrete still remaining may be subsumed. The schematic build up dictates the way in which he must listen while, at the same time, it makes any effort in listening unnecessary. Popular music is ‘pre-digested’ in a way strongly resembling the fad of ‘digests’ of printed material. (Adorno, 1990 [1941]: 306)
As with the Frankfurt School’s critique of Hollywood films and other mass cultural forms, Adorno suggests that the formulaic nature of popular music, and its dumbing down effect on the listener, contributes to the patterning and regulation of leisure time in capitalist society. According to Adorno, the ‘patterned and pre-digested’ nature of popular music offers relief ‘from both boredom and effort simultaneously’ with the result that periods of leisure can be tailored to provide maximum relaxation and refreshment (ibid.).
For Adorno and Horkeimer then, such was the level of technocratisiation and rationalisation inherent in the production and dissemination of mass culture that it effectively constituted a ‘culture industry’, infiltrating in ever more seductive ways the spaces of everyday life in late capitalist society (Kellner, 1995). The seductive power of the culture industry, they argued, was illustrated perfectly in the context of American society. Thus, by means of the newly developed mass media communication technologies a nation the size of the United States could be force-fed a uniform diet of images, information and consumer products on a daily basis with the result that the pursuit of leisure and entertainment became standardised, with individuals choosing from a proscribed range of leisure and entertainment activities tightly controlled by the media and cultural industries. As the media and producers of consumer goods worked increasingly together, it was argued, the result was a ruthless and systematic flooding of everyday life with a never ending flow of advertisements for products, thus ensuring a complete fetishisation of leisure and entertainment. In this way, argued Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry acquired control over the desires and, ultimately, the destinies, of its increasingly ‘captive audience’. As Inglis and Hughson observe with reference to Adorno and Horkheimer’s reading of mass culture:
Large media corporations’ monopoly on cultural life was made possible through bureaucratically organised means of distribution, which ensured that the products on sale reached everyone in a given population … Just as in Hitler’s Germany all means of communication had been under the control of certain powerful interest groups, so too were the airwaves and film-houses of democratic America under the rule of the powerful. (2003: 49)
As a result the logic of capitalism became an all pervasive form of control, central not only to the workplace but also to the domestic sphere of family life and leisure. Just as Marx had argued that the power of the bourgeoisie during the period of industrial capitalism turned on their ability to impose a particular version of reality upon the everyday lives of the working class, so the Frankfurt School suggested that late capitalism refined this system of control using the seductive pleasures of mass cultural products to dupe the masses into blithe acceptance of the capitalist consumer system. As Stevenson notes:
The effectiveness of the culture industry was not secured through a deceptive ideology, but by the removal from the consciousness of the masses of any alternative to capitalism. The dominant culture of late capitalism served to promote the repression of all forms of conflict, heterogeneity and particularity from the cultural sphere. This form of ‘affirmative culture’ both fetishises exchange over the use value (where the value of a concert is secured through the cost of the ticket rather then the quality of the performance) and produces in the audience the desire for the ever same over and over again. (1995: 53)
Of the original Frankfurt School theorists, only Marcuse, displays any degree of optimism regarding the centrality of mass culture to everyday life in late capitalist society. Having originally subscribed to the same critical views as Adorno and Horkheimer (see Marcuse, 1964), Marcuse subsequently witnessed the rise of the hippie counter-culture during the late 1960s and reviewed his interpretation of mass culture (see Bottomore, 1984). In particular, Marcuse was struck by the way the counter-culture appeared to use the very products of the late capitalist leisure and consumer industries, notably mass produced music and fashion, in a direct revolt against dominant capitalist institutions, such as work, education, the family and mainstream politics. Marcuse’s views were echoed in the work of Theodore Roszak who additionally suggested that the fact that the counter-cultural ‘revolution’ appeared to be driven by middle-class youth suggested that a radical deconstruction was taking place within the very ideological power base that neo-Marxist theorists had identified as key to the continuing domination of capitalism in technologically advanced consumer-based societies. Thus, observed Roszak:
… by way of a dialectic Marx could never have imagined, technocratic America produces a potentially revolutionary element among its own youth. The bourgeoisie, instead of discovering the class enemy in its factories, finds it across the breakfast table in the person of its own pampered children. (1969: 34)
Nevertheless, the relatively short-lived era of the counter-culture, and also subsequent music and style-driven youth cultural movements such as punk rock (see Hebdige, 1979), served to confirm for many the fundamental accuracy of the Frankfurt School’s mass cultural critique. Thus, according to Bottomore, ‘the limited scope and the rapid disappearance, or assimilation, of the counter-culture [could] in fact [be taken to] reveal the strength of the culture industry’ (1984: 46).
For the Frankfurt School, the rise of the mass media and ‘culture industry’ and their steady infiltration of everyday life during the twentieth century signalled a shift from the ‘self-regulating liberal capitalism of the nineteenth century [to a] planned and totally administered “organised capitalism”’ (Swingewood, 1977: 77). According to fellow Frankfurt School theorist Habermas, this shift in the nature and function of capitalism would forever seal the fate of the masses. Thus, the everyday lives of the masses, or the ‘lifeworld’ as Habermas terms this, becomes fundamentally shaped by the mediatisation processes that act upon it to the extent that mediated information becomes the very basis of everyday knowledge. Due to ubiquitous and all-embracing nature of the media, no avenue exists for the forming and articulation of critical thought or action on the part of individuals themselves. All forms of everyday knowledge, understanding and communication are effectively controlled by the over-arching system of bureaucratic and administrative control through which organised capitalism is managed and ...
