Tiffany readjusted herself in her chair, with no idea of what her cultures professor was talking about. Bored, she reapplied her Chanel 009 lip gloss, which was the same exact color Blake Lively wore on episode six of Gossip Girls. Instead of taking notes, she used her computer screen as a diversion to employ adequate facebook stalking for the day. She occasionally texted her best friend, Laura, a petite redhead who sat right next to her, with any interesting tidbits she stumbled across.
“The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of the general and the particular,” said Professor Adorno, as he circled his desk in the front of the room. He glanced up at his students. A hand elevated, stood perfectly erect. “Yes, Max?”
“Yeah, what’s microcosm?” asked Max, chewing a rather large bit of a turkey club sandwich.
The professor sighed, irritated. “A smaller model of something. The human being as an exact miniature version of the larger universe or macrocosm.”
Tiffany sat quietly wondering what macrocosm was.
“Under monopoly, all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through. The people at the top are no longer so interested in concealing monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce,” continued the professor. His speech was monotonous, but his eyebrows flared in a way that invoked both passion and fury. It was only when he paused to catch his breath that he noticed Teddy’s hand was now raised. “Teddy, thoughts?”
“I would have to say I disagree. While certainly both film and radio need to produce a level of entertainment in order to hold an audience and gain a profit, it is overly critical to say that they are not an art,” said Teddy, his voice careful. “Take film for example. If done right, the originality of the writer, the precision of angles of the director, the dramatic tension between the actors…sure it’s a process, but it’s certainly an art. It takes a certain degree of talent. Not to mention, if every film was overtly the same thing reproduced with different packaging then people wouldn’t attend them. There would be no emotion, which is arguably what film is supposed to spark.”
The professor ruled his eyes. Every year someone objected. He marginalized it down to the student being an over-exposed media junkie, tainted by the industry’s power of persuasion. “Furthermore," the professor stated, ignoring Teddy’s argument. “It is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result of the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows even stronger. He smiled smugly at Teddy.
Teddy leaned back in his seat. He knew better than to try and argue with the professor. Adorno was stuck in this 1940s mentality, where the threat of a new, rebellious generation and counter culture seemed to somehow lead to the Armageddon of both intelligence and class.
“The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favours the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it,” said Adorno. “Yes, Max?”
Professor Adorno was vivid, both at the fact that his class again this year seemed to possess no degree of aptitude, and also that the constant interruptions were a vile distraction from his elegantly-crafted theories.
This was not a discussion class.
“It is something that is represented as such, but not the real purpose,” He snapped, then added, “Buy a dictionary.”
The professor went to his desk and swallowed four aspirins before continuing. In the third row a student was ferociously scribbling, new media is death, with all the proper illustrations.
Now composed, Professor Adorno continued. “If one branch of art follows the same formula one with a very different medium and content; if the dramatic intrigue of broadcast soap operas becomes no more than useful material for showing how to master technical problems at both ends of the scale of musical experience—a jazz or a cheap imitation; of if a movement from a Beethoven symphony is crudely “adapted” for a film sound-track in the same way as a Tolstoy novel is garbled into a film script: then the claim that this is done to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than hot air.”
Tiffany was struck by his words, not because they ignited some passionate counterargument or that she realized the depth of which his intentions, but because it just reminded her that Sex and the City was out on DVD today. She immediately texted Laura, who replied that they should have a theme party where they only drink Cosmopolitans, dress like their favorite character, play the film’s soundtrack, the movie itself, and read passages from the original Candace Bushnell novel. Tiffany nodded rapidly in agreement.
“How formalised the procedure is can be seen when the mechanically differentiated products prove to be all alike in the end,” said the professor.
Teddy raised his hand, though he knew the professor would not call on him again. He decided to interject anyway, “Well, isn’t the elaborate collaboration of art, film, and music a phenomenon on their own? How people can puzzle together pieces that do not even remotely match and create a whole new meaning for something? Kind of like contemporary poetry does?”
Of course, he would like contemporary poetry, Professor Adorno mused, and irritated with anything that strayed from the likes of Robert Frost. “Only if you consider clumsily compiled pieces of nonsense to be a prophetic work of art.”
Before Teddy could form a rebuttal, he, along with the rest of the class, realized it was ten till and their class session was concluded.
The class exited the building. Tiffany and Laura climbed in Tiffany’s car, each spoke separately into their cell phones, in attempt to organize their party. Max decided he should bookmark dictionary.com in his favorites, but lost the urge as soon as he started listening to Limp Bizkit on his I-pod. Teddy was determined to go home and blog about new media, and his particular disgust for tyrant professors.
This was a response written from Adorno's theories published in "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
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