Phil Thrash

From Swastika to A Nation of Sheep via the “Culture Industry.”

     This journal posting will show how some Jewish Immigrants during the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich analyzed and developed theories of some major influences on and characteristics of the U.S. Dominant Culture.  Horkheimer and Adorno were German Jewish professors of social anthropology who developed the idea that a “culture industry” exists in societies to create needs and wants in individuals. “Historicism is a type of literary criticism that examines literary works within their diverse and interrelated historical contexts.  In analyzing a text, the historicists consider the cultural and social forces that influenced and are revealed through the text.  Historicists may incorporate aesthetic perspectives, the metaphysical or Hegelian, the nationalist and the naturalistic representation.”   (Bedford p. 202)  This paper will view Horkheimer and Adorno’s notion through the historicism nationalistic perspective to; (from which it is seen as a cultural product influenced by nationally held norms and ideals), coupled with the naturalistic perspective; (from which it is viewed as a means of gaining insight into contemporary social values). Thesis development will include brief views of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 during the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist Party (Nazis) and will include some related Nietzschean references.  These historicism perspectives and brief view of Nazi Germany will support the “culture industry” notion of Horkheimer and Adorno.  I have come upon these ideas from graduate classes taken at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, Texas, specifically:  Literary Theory and Criticism, The Third Reich as viewed from Nazi Cinema, and now, Immigrant Literature.

     Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno were Jewish professors at the University of Frankfurt during the early 1920s, who embraced the works of Kant and studied under the noted German social theorist Siegfried Kracauer.  They pursued their specialties in what became the now famous interdisciplinary Institute for Social Research (the so called Frankfurt School).  They both focused on cultural studies and empirical social analyses of modern culture and were, in effect, social anthropologists.  Their methods of research are reflective of the nationalist and naturalistic perspectives of historicism literary theory.

     National Socialism (Nazism) became the official political party in Germany in 1933.  Hitler was made Fuehrer of this “legitimate” political party which existed until 1945.  During the early years of the Third Reich, marginalization and intense discrimination of the Jews in Europe began.  The German Jews were taken out of government positions and Horkheimer immigrated to the United States after the Nazis closed the institute in 1933.  Adorno was denied the opportunity to teach at the university because he was Jewish.  Adorno accepted Horkheimer’s invitation to join him in the U.S. and he came to America in 1938, before the German pogroms began in earnest and before the invasion of Poland.  They moved to Los Angeles and collaborated on Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), their major critique of modern culture.   “They came upon their major thesis and notion that the modern West had not fulfilled its utopian promise of Enlightenment, becoming instead a rationalized, administered world that dominates individuals through instrumental reason, monopoly capitalism, and political totalitarianism.”  (Norton, p. 1221)  Their intellectual backgrounds and theories went beyond theory evidenced by their experiences lived in Nazi Germany.  Nazi Germany exhibited extreme perspectives of the nationalistic perspective of historicism, which was corroborated and promulgated by Horkheimer and Adorno in their major argument about modern Western culture.   They would have opportunity to study the United States dominant culture in California to see the “culture industry” in action. 

     A portion of their work from Dialectic of Enlightenment was called; “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”   They observe the social-economic situation of the U.S. dominant culture’s consumption of goods and products, in which the individual thinks he is independent, yet, by consuming the mass produced, hysterically promoted goods and services, make the individual more subservient to the “culture industry,” the ones in power who manipulate wants and needs.  “The truth is they are just business made into ideology in order to justify the rubbish they produce.”  (Norton, p. 1224)  They indicate the whole world is made to go through the filter of the culture industry.  Movies become metaphors for real life as an illusion is presented to prevail that the outside world is a continuation of what was presented on the screen.  They tie this concept into advertising manipulation of the masses to the point is made that sustained thought is out of the question.  The spectator (consumer) does not have to think as through dint of repetition he does not want to miss the relentless flow of “facts” from the culture industry.   “Even the effort required for the consumer’s response is semi-automatic; no scope is left for the imagination.” (Norton, p.1226)  

      I thought of Vance Packard’s book A Nation of Sheep after digesting Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s theories of the Culture Industry.  Both books are incisive about the mindlessness of the dominant majority of the U.S. culture regarding values, just not as consumers, but as citizens of America. I live and vote in Lufkin, Texas, a small East-Texas town of about 35,000 persons.  In a recent mayoral election, 2,500 persons voted!  This is not remarkable if one looks at voting records across the nation.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw which reflected; “What do you think about ignorance and apathy,” with the response, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  I have to think if it were not for bumper stickers, many would not have opinions. The pleasure principle moves into the naturalist historicism perspective of the dominant culture through these analyses.  Pleasure, in my view, is that the dominant culture does not have to think about anything due to the successful efforts of the culture industry.  People, especially the dominant culture, want to have pleasure and forget suffering as flight from any reality requiring real thought.  Horkheimer and Adorno wrote their work in 1947.  It appears it was applicable then and prophetic now, as it appears this dominant culture is a nation of sheep waiting to be led, or being led by an “overman,” or “overmen” in the Nietzschean sense. Please prove my possible cynicism wrong and vote!  Kinky Friedman has made the “ticket,” and would at least provide some freshness to the staleness of the puppets the dominant culture chooses not to vote out.                    

                                             Bibliography: Works Cited

Leitch, Vincent B., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, London, 2001.

Murfin, Ross, Ray, Supryia, “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms,” Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, New York, 2003.