Tag Archives: Theodor Adorno

One of those Matadors of the Culture Industry When Theodor Adorno referred to “one of those matadors of the culture industry,” in his “Free Time” radio lecture, he was presumably referring to the idols of stage, screen, television, or recording studio who are the staples of the supermarket tabloid personality cult. Oddly, though, his construction of the paragraph leaves open the interpretation that Adorno himself is “one of those  matadors” and...

The Frankfurt school argued that reason is dangerous, mass culture deadening, and the Enlightenment a disaster. Were they right?... ... there is something that still resonates about the work of the Frankfurt School. The insight to which it called its readers to awaken was that human consciousness in the age of mass society was becoming wholly enclosed within the walls of an ideological fortress, caught in the endless circulations of capitalist exchange and those repetitive entertainments...