Page Against The (Culture) Machine

So I guess we have to start somewhere. Theodore Adorno's idea of the culture industry ever since i studied A level Media Studies back in the 1990s. He always seemed a little bit angry about things which i guess i loved at the time. However i think his arguments still stand up to a point and Media industries aren't getting any smaller and the products they largely produce still seem to be as consistently poor as ever. He seems a good a start as any !

Great intro video here I often show my A2 level Media students to kick things off:





He is really talking about the Media landscape many years ago and this sort of Marxist approach does have many critics for not talking about and acknowledging Audience differences and abilities to negotiate their own understanding from the Media. Nevertheless the Media is still powerful and Adorno's work is hugely relevant. Specifically the things he writes about culture as distraction and how audiences often don't question the ideological prison created for us by these media corporations.