The analysis of the cultural industry as presented in the works of Adorno and Horkheimer, Eco, and Borges provide much interesting insight into the modes and laws of its functioning. Following Adorno’s notion of negative dialectics, it is useful though to ‘criticize the critiques’ in order to reveal whether those theoretical assumptions provided by the abovementioned authors are effective in describing cultural industry and mass culture. Hence the purpose of the current essay is premised on the notion of critique as one of the most crucial ways for finding the truth.
At the beginning of their joint work Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer claim that ‘Myth was already the Enlightenment and Enlightenment tends to become a myth’ (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1972). This metaphor is used to describe the modern dominance of rationality which penetrates every sphere of social life and leads to the alienation of people from the conditions of their living. This alienation may be found in the form of rational organization of mass culture, which increasingly becomes subjugated to the monopoly standardization and instrumentalization used not to reveal aesthetic truths but to generate profit. Authors claim that the structure of cultural production is isomorphic to the structure of capitalist production with its emphasis on unification and homogeneity. Notwithstanding the fact that this critique is effective and helps us understand the reality of mass culture, it is premised on the absolutist debunking of reason and rationality as the main source of totalitarianism, be it democratic or authoritarian. As we know, Adorno and Horkheimer claim that every identity means violence, and thus every mode of rationalization is totalitarian. In fact, it leads to some baseless critique of reason. The way in which rationality is used depends on social conditions. If rational methods are properly used in favor of ordinary people, they become the source of progress. Furthermore, it seems to be a complete reductionism to say that the structure of mass culture is isomorphic to the structure of the capitalist enterprise: it is unjustified to analyze the discursive sphere through the prism of the economy. Sometimes it seems that these theoreticians are too radical in their critiques of rationality in mass media. For instance, they claim that radio and television are totalitarian since the voice that people hear can be disputed by them, and they can express their point of view, and thus radio and TV become a means for translation of the dominant ideology. But we must understand that under other conditions radio and television are quite useful for people. Our critique of Adorno and Horkheimer shows that notwithstanding the positive characteristics of their approach to cultural industry, some significant limitations are embedded in it that should be overcome.
Umberto Eco ‘postmodernism’ and the theory of ‘intertextuality’ in application to mass culture is another example of a one-sided approach. He claims that all films, notwithstanding their structure, are not the product of a director but of a fluid and flexible universe of meaning and texts. According to Eco, films can be good or bad depending on their intertextual openness; hence he discerns ‘consciously’ postmodern and ‘unconsciously’ postmodern movies. For instance, in his notes about Casablanca, he says that “by any strict critical standards… Casablanca is a very mediocre film” (Eco, 1994, p.45). He then follows that “it is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects” (Eco, 1994, p.67). What allows this film to be popular is its ‘unconscious’ intertextuality that includes various themes and meanings such as flight, passage, unhappy love, desire, waiting, faithful servant, beauty and beast, mystic woman, purity, adventurer, etc. It seems to us that by universalizing the notion of intertextuality, Eco reduces the abundance of existing literary and art techniques to the short-term dominance of postmodern orthodoxy. Neglecting the historical specifics of cultural production and its functioning as a commodity form leads to postmodern essentialism so much criticized by postmodern theoreticians. Besides this, it is problematic to view the cultural industry as the product of mere intertextuality devoid of any subjective attitudes and approaches of writers, producers, or directors. Though they are strongly dependent on existing ideological and cultural meaning and patterns, it is baseless to claim that they are no more than functions of the existing textual universe. They are subjects as well but deeply influenced by social conditions peculiar to cultural products production. Hence, the notion of Death of the Author developed by Foucault and Barthes and followed by Eco seems to be significantly limited and ungrounded.
Borges’s work represents a profound critique of the vulgarization of history peculiar to modern cultural industry as it can be observed in the dominant technique of installing historical characters in contemporary urban and technologist settings, which leads to abandoning the spirit of history. In Pierre Menard Borges seems to follow the traditional postmodernist scheme claiming that any text bears all textuality and cultural connotation which were produced after its creation. This leads him to the conclusion that Menard’s fragmentary Quixote is much richer in content than Cervantes’s famous work. Hence, Borges states that a text should be considered from the point of view of the reader’s interpretation but not the social conditions of its production. Cervantes “…indulges in a rather coarse opposition between tales of knighthood and the meager, provincial reality of his country.” Menard writes about “the land of Carmen during the century of Lepanto and Lope,” but “in his work, there are neither bands of Gypsies, conquistadors,… nor autos de fe” (Borges, 1999, p.187). In fact, this leads to a significant limitation to literary analysis since the original purpose of a cultural object is neglected and replaced by intertextuality, which substitutes its real essence. This, of course, can help but lead to the strange conclusion that Menard’s Don Quixote is ‘richer’ than Servantes’ novel.
Our analysis showed that there are some major faults and shortcomings presented in the texts of Adorno, Horkheimer, Borges, and Eco that should be tackled by utilizing a comprehensive approach to cultural industry as both discursive and social phenomenon.
References
Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected fictions. Tr. A. Hurley. Penguin Books: London, 1999.
Eco, Umberto. Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, eds. Bedford Books, 1994.
Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder,1972.