Reflection on Theme 2

Having a chance to understand, analyze and examine this weeks content which I found particularly interesting, both in lecture and seminar was very useful for me.

Firstly the term “culture industry” that Horkheimer & Adorno have brought forward is quiet absorbing in my opinion. After I read the article and become familiar with the “culture indusry” and mass media I wonder how could the concept they raised almost seventy years ago matches completely to todays cultural structure. How come they proposed such a strong definition within their time?

Writers were left-winged members of German elite, professors of Frankfurt University. Both had a high intellectual background which made them to question about “how Germany, land of Nietzsche, Kant, Marx, Gothe, land of modernism, land of philosophy had turned into a place of terror, brutality, ferocity and barbarity?” all the time. They lived in exile in U.S during World War II, where they had a strong cultural shock because of the corrupted system made by “mass media” in US, especially by Hollywood products which influenced them to write the book “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” and propose an intense term “culture industry”. In my opinion since those days American “culture” starts to spread all over the world parallel to the propagation of American policy throughout the world. What they saw as a threat to productive human mind, intellectuality, enlightenment in American media in those days and defined by them as “mass media”, manipulates people to convert them into passive, non-productive and ultimate consumers of capitalism. In our daily life affects of American culture can be seen in everywhere regardless of the country borders, especially in a field of media. Facebook, twitter, youtube, google and many other social media items are made by Americans. That platforms are based on their culture. As discussed in seminar, if we consider those highly used social media platforms like facebook as a road, that road was built by Americans. They put the signs indicate where to stop where to speed up where to turn, on that road, they are the policeman on that road and we as non-Americans are the travelers on that road some of us walk on that road some goes by car some walk step by step that can also be considered as our cultural differences. I think what Adorno and Horkheimer defines as “culture indusry” was directly related with American cultural structure and life-style manipulated by American media. Eventually when world starts to globalize and when American products start to diffuse all around the world, what we see in today's communities directly matches what Adorno and Horkheimer saw in 1940s American community. Its like an old wine in new bottles.

On the other hand, another interesting topic discussed in seminar was about the art. A question “what is high art?”was asked during the seminar. In my opinion when we consider about art firstly we have to answer the question “Is art made for people or is it made for just art?”. If the answer is for people than as mentioned in seminar nudity or a pissoir can not be seen as art because one can make people excited and could easily be turned into a pornography and the other one, pissoir, in my opinion, exactly be rejected by people. Whereas if the answer is “art is just for art, itself” than every single object, created by an intellectual mind for the sake of art has to be considered as art. As some other mind, at least one, could also see that obstacle from the same perspective and may call it art.