The Culture Industry

What is the 'Culture Industry'? 

Adorno and Horkheimer are two theorists that argued and adopted that the culture industry exhibits an 'assembly-line character'. They argued the way in which culture items were produced were analogous to how industries manufactured to what they think could be commodity. Both Adorno and Horkheimer linked the 'culture idustry' to the 'mass culture'; they said that that the production had become a routine, standardized repetitive operation in which the music industry often would portray as pessimistic lament of cultural elitists. The capitalist corporation seems to enjoy an almost, what they would call, omnipotent form of domination. Adorno and Horkheimer theorized the structure of economic ownership and control of the means  via cultural products. Audiences would be under the influence of the media's industry. The cultural industry associates standardization with how to produce the something similar, for example pop songs sounding similar so that the audience tend to b brainwashed into liking the songs, so from then the songs become hits.

Pseudo Individuality is the way that culture industry assembled products that made claims to 'originality' but which when examined more critically exhibited. Adorno and Horkmeimer evoked the image of lock and key; lock being the music industry and the artist being the key trying to fit perfectly to the music industries expectation. An item that is mass produced in million, whose uniqueness lies only very minor modification.