Theme 2: Critical media studies (Pre)

What is Enlightenment?

According to the authors, the Enlightenment could be seen as the liberation of thought from the superstitious and religious suppression of the dark middle ages. This is important because a world where myths and religion decides what is right and what is wrong does not encourage curiosity, progression or scientific development. The Enlightenment seeks to explain things from a logical point of view as seen by the following quote: “For the enlightenment, anything that cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion”.  

Something that is important to notice is that most people fear what they cannot understand. “The unknown” or the mysterious used to be something that ordinary people should stay away from, or something only to be addressed by priests and powerful religious people. In this sense the Enlightenment could also be seen as a democratic movement, since it seeks to get rid of the fear and replace it with knowledge. With knowledge and truth available in every part of society, power is moved from being held be a few to being held by the people. I believe that this is one of the main reasons why the Enlightenment was discouraged by the church.

What is the meaning and function of “myth” in Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument?

The way I see it, a myth is the complete opposite of what the Enlightenment stands for. This is seen in a quote from the Preface, stating that: “False clarity is only another name for myth. Myth was always obscure and luminous at once.” A myth tries to give a superstitious explanation to a phenomenon (luminous), but in reality it hides the real truth (obscure). 

I think a good example of a myth would be “Scylla and Charybdis” (from Greek mythology), where these sea monsters in reality are just whirlpools and rocks. Here we clearly see how obscure the myth is, since it hides something so ordinary as a rock or a whirlpool. In this case the function of a myth is quite obvious. As stated in the previous question most people fear what they cannot understand. A myth is a creation of our imagination that is trying to calm people with a “reasonable” explanation to a mysterious phenomenon.

What are the “old” and “new” media that are discussed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment?

Before answering this question, it is important to know that this book was written in the 1940’s. In some chapters it is very obvious that the authors do not have the same view of old and new media as people have today.

So, from what I understand the authors seem to think that the main driving forces of “old media” are creativity, joy and personal fulfillment. Examples of such media could be paintings, sculptures other “handmade” creations.

New media, on the other hand, have other motifs and incentives. This becomes very clear in the following quote by the authors, stating that “films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash the intentionally produce.” Here we see the main difference between old media and new media; old media is considered to be real art whereas new media is just pure capitalism and business.

What is meant by “culture industry”?

According to Adorno and Horkhemier, the culture industry is something that was created by the liberal industrial countries (most likely referring to the US and the UK). The main components of this industry are cinema, radio, jazz and magazines. It seems as if the authors are not very fond of the “standardized products” of the culture industry, since it could be used to manipulate and centralize power to a few.

What is the relationship between mass media and “mass deception”, according to Adorno and Horkheimer?

Mass deception could be seen as a product or a consequence of mass media. According to the authors most of the mass media is trash, and it is only produced to make money. Since mass media reaches millions of people, it could easily be used to deceive or trick consumers. I think this is very clear in some of today’s commercials, only produced to “fool” or trick consumers into buying a certain company’s products.

Please identify one or two concepts/terms that you find particularly interesting. Motivate your choice.

I have always like the Enlightenment, mainly because it seeks to produce reasonable answers to (sometimes) unreasonable events. I see myself as a person who trusts logic and science, and therefore I think the Enlightenment has been one of the most important events of the past thousand years. I am also impressed by the brilliant minds that were active during this period such as Newton, Voltaire and the Swedish scientist Swedenborg.