Venting a discontent with pop-culture
I’m glad I came across this passage in Adorno. The more I’ve heard recently about The X Factor, American Idol, Jersey Shore, Ellen, or any number of other pop-culture phenomenon, the more I’ve searched for an avenue in which to express my discontent. Whenever I criticize a show on tv today, I’m met with the response, “it’s fun and it makes people happy.” But this is not good enough for me. So as I was sitting here at my kitchen table waiting for a pizza to come out of the oven while reading Adorno’s collection of essays entitled Prisms, I came across this; a way of explaining how pop culture is merely a reflection of economics and not a creation of true culture or pleasure for people to spend their time with.
In the name of the consumer, the manipulators suppress everything in culture which enables it to go beyond the total immanence in the existing society and allow only that to remain which serves society’s unequivocal purpose. Hence, ‘consumer culture’ can boast of being not a luxury but rather the simple extension of production.
