7 Theodor Adorno Quotes on Media

Theodor Adorno quotes on media

1. 'In general they are intoxicated by the fame of mass culture, a fame which the latter knows how to manipulate; they could just as well get together in clubs for worshipping film stars or for collecting autographs. What is important to them is the sense of belonging as such, identification, without paying particular attention to its content. As girls, they have trained themselves to faint upon hearing the voice of a 'crooner'. Their applause, cued in by a light-signal, is transmitted directly on the popular radio programmes they are permitted to attend. They call themselves 'jitter-bugs', bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized.'

10. 'All satire is blind to the forces liberated by decay. Which is why total decay has absorbed the forces of satire.'

49. 'In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.'

85. 'The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.'

89. 'The film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, enjoy their own dehumanization as something human, as the joy of warmth. The total interconnectedness of the culture industry, omitting nothing, is one with total social delusion.'

98. 'The intellectuals themselves are already so heavily committed to what is endorsed in their isolated sphere, that they no longer desire anything that does not carry the highbrow tag.'

108. 'The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.'