Mass Culture Analysis

“Freedom to choose what is always the same.” Mass Culture, according to the Frankfurt School, is premised on a hegemonic ideology. The theorists, among them eminent scholars including Adorno, believed thatthe genesis of the culture industry was based upon evolution of technology that included mass communication technology, among others. This growth fueled an increased realisation of the capability to produce commodities which would in return allow increased consumption of goods. The primary contention of this school of thought was that the consumption of mechanically produced cultural products, mainly radio and film, propagated newfound notions of developing them for the purpose of entertainment. This played a dual role; providing entertainment,

While it provides an important corrective to more populist approaches to media culture that downplay the way the media industries exert power over audiences and help produce thought and behavior that conforms to the existing society, it overlooks free will in society. Mass culture for the Frankfurt School produced desires, dreams, hopes, fears, and longings, as well as unending desire for consumer products. The culture industry produced cultural consumers who would consume its products and conform to the dictates and the behaviors of the existing society, bound to maintaining a stagnant status quo. However, this theory then fails to explain important social movements as it depicts culture as a projection of the bourgeoisie ideology. The theory presupposes a good vs evil dynamic in society. It ignores the fact that the curse of ‘enlightenment’ is that it is inevitably subjective. It depicts society in a perpetual state of oblivion at the hands of the ‘evil’ bourgeoisie

Frankfurt school described it as "the end of the individual". Creativity and individuality gave way to the greater need of maintaining uniformity. This in turn, halted progress culturally and socially. The era was characterized by huge organizations and institutions that dominated individuals. During this period, mass culture and communication were instrumental in generating the modes of thought and behavior appropriate to a highly organized and massified social order. Thus, the Frankfurt school theory of the culture industry articulates a major historical shift to an era in which mass consumption and culture was indispensable to producing a consumer society based on homogeneous needs and desires for mass-produced products and a mass society based on social organization and homogeneity. The theory must be understood in its historical context therefore, to be an effective depiction of