Re: writ large

Cecilia -- It's funny reading something like this alongside the book I quoted in an earlier reply to Robbie -- _Dialectic of Enlightenment_.

The authors (Max Horkheimer and Theordor Adorno) were central figures in The Frankfurt School, also known as the Institute for Social Research, which comprised of Jewish intellectuals who left Germany when Hitler ascended to power. The Frankfurt School emigrated, eventually, to Columbia University in NYC. They coined the phrase "Critical Theory" and were largely responsible for its initial dissemination in the United States, especially via figures such as Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, probably better known members of the Frankfurt School.

In their commentary on "the culture industry" in an essay entitled "Enlightenment as Mass Deception," Horkheimer and Adorno describe how mass culture has become an instrument of social control. The film industry propogates the "myth of success," according to the authors, through starlets that resemble the secretary, do the secretary's job, but wind up in the evening gown with the millionaire, the aristocrat, or the nobility. You saw this in films made decades ago like "My Fair Lady" and you saw it againm, just recently, in "Maid in Manhattan."

These films cause "the masses to cling to the myth of success still more ardently than the successful," therefore demanding more of these films so that their myths can be re-valdiated to them over and over and over again. This creates a situation in which, "By artfully sanctioning the demand for trash, the system inaugurates total harmony. Connoisseurship and expertise and proscribed as the arrogance of those who think themselves superior, wheras culture distributes its privileges democratically to all." (106)

So of course the intellectual is considered marginal in today's society. There's nothing more undemocratic than thinking that, perhaps, someone -- anyone -- may think more deeply than you about some things or that success isn't really available to all. But, unfortunately, this very attitude only validates the observations of these "irrelevant" theorists writing over 60 years ago.

Next time you're wondering why our country enters war after war after war, tell yourself -- it's silenced its voices of dissent. Not so much by mass censorship (but don't think this doesn't exist), but by telling people what they want to hear so often they refuse to hear anything else.

It used to be that there was nothing worse than being a smart ass.

Now, there's simply nothing worse than being smart.

Jim

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Received on Wed Apr 23 17:40:24 2003