From Mass Media to New Media: Theories, Approaches, Applications

Kingston University London

The Work and Leisure under the Shadow of the Executioner

20, January, 2018

MA Global Media and Communications

Tamar Chkheidze

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 Introduction

“I describe what is coming and what can no longer come differently: the emergence of nihilism.
Already now this story can be told, for its very necessity is at work here. This history speaks in
hundreds signs, this fate announces itself everywhere”

Nietzsche, the Will to Power

From television to social media and more, adults in Great Britain are spending 7 hours and 56 minutes
a day consuming media, up 9% from 2016 and 13% from 2005, according to IPA.

Statistic shows that modern society’s leisure time equals to their working time. People work as much
as they entertain themselves.

The industry, that produces working places for billions of people in the capitalist societies controls the
time that the working people spend out of their offices.

The culture industry is one of the biggest industries in the world. It shines so brightly that it is almost
impossible to avoid its beams. The industry produces needs for the society, and then fulfils those needs,
by producing the products. The culture industry can predict people’s desires, as it is the one which
creates them in the first place. The culture industry is a hegemonic culture, which does not allow
anyone to ignore it.

„The products of the culture industry are such that they can be alertly consumed even in a state of
distraction. But each one is a model of the gigantic economic machinery, which, from the first, keeps
everyone on their toes, both at work and in the leisure time which resembles it”, - write Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, first published in 1944.

What has changed in the culture industry and in the society itself since 1944? Modern society has the
internet, which has become the biggest part of the culture industry.

What internet brought to the culture industry and to the society is the main question, I will try to
answer in my essay.

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 Work

Google and Facebook are one of the biggest companies in the world and according to the webpage,
which calculates the web statistics, Alexa.com, they are currently the most popular websites, globally.

Google is no longer only a search engine, the owner of YouTube, Gmail, or other web related products,
it is also the producer of self-driving cars and smart contact lenses. Facebook can be viewed in the same
way. This social networking company owns oculus VR, Instagram, WhatsApp and 50 other companies.
The companies are getting bigger and stronger. And the main contribution to their rise and power are
the people, the society.

People from around the world spend time to search, upload photos, songs, share news and talk to friends
on the daily basis. In a way, each consumers of the products which these companies produce, works
for the company, without realizing it.

Without consumers it would be impossible for the giant American companies to make profit and gain
the power over people.

Google and Facebook and other user generated web pages create platforms, which are used by the
people. All of these platforms are free. Nobody has to pay for using the Google, Gmail, YouTube or
Facebook. At the first glance, everything is free. But is it?

In his book “Social media: critical introduction”, critical theorist of communication and society,
Christian Fuchs writes, that the concept of social media participation is an ideology. Fuchs, argues that
users are a completely free workforce for the user generated web pages.

„New media corporations do not (or hardly) pay the users for the production of content. One
accumulation strategy is to give them free access to services and platforms, let them produce content,
and to accumulate a large number of prosumers that are sold as a commodity to third-party advertisers.
No product is sold to the users, but the users are sold as a commodity to advertisers. The more users a
platform has, the higher advertising rates can be set”, - (Fuchs, 2014)

On internet, people, the free workforce, willingly share their data with the platform they use. Those
date currently is used for the advertisements. Advertisement is one of the biggest incomes for those
companies.

To recall Adorno and Horkheimer, advertisement is an elixir for the culture industry and as we see for
the internet it is the elixir that makes it alive, actual and powerful. Those companies know almost
everything about its consumers, their age, gender, nationality, places they visit, things they like etc.
These data is used for targeted advertisements.

“Targeted advertising allows internet companies to present not just one advertisement at one point in
time to users, but rather numerous advertisements so that there is the production of more total
advertising time that presents commodities to users. Relative surplus value production means that more

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surplus value is generated in the same time period as earlier. Targeted online advertising is more
productive than non-targeted online advertising because it allows presenting more ads in the same time
period. These ads contain more surplus value that the non-targeted ads. I.e. more unpaid labor time of
the advertising company’s paid employees and of users, who generated content and transaction data”.
(ibid)

Fuchs also argues, that targeted advertising’s aim is to control and manipulate human needs. Users are
not asked if they agree to the use of advertising on the internet, but have to agree to advertising, if they
want to use commercial platforms, like Facebook or Google.

“Surveillance on Facebook is not only an interpersonal process, where users view data about other
individuals that might benefit or harm the latter, it is primarily economic surveillance, i.e., the
collection, storage, assessment and commodification of personal data, usage behavior and user-
generated data for economic purposes“. (ibid)

Even before the internet era, Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the technology is gaining power
over the society and it is the power of those whose economic position in the society is the most
powerful. Decades after, their statement is even more relevant in the era of the internet. By the end of
2017, Google and Facebook had 63 percent of the U.S. digital ad market and 54 percent of digital ad
revenue worldwide, according to eMarketer.

In the beginning I have mentioned, that today the working hours are limited to 40 hours per week. But
those 40 hours are not enough for the people, who want to be successful in the companies like Google
or Facebook. Even 70 hours are not enough. Former Google Vice-President Marissa Mayer reported
about her time at google and said that it was 130 hours week.

Google’s management strategy is based on project-based work, social pressure between colleagues,
competition, performance-based promotion, a fun and play culture. At the end, people, who work at
google have blurred lines between their working and leisure time. They work long hours and their
work-life balance is damaged. Therefore Google promotes their workplace as a dream job and desirable
for every professional in the field.

Adorno and Horkheimer think, that in the capitalist society’s formal freedom is guaranteed for
everyone, however all find themselves enclosed from early on within a system of professional
associations or other relationships which amount to the most sensitive instrument of social control.

“The fact that in every career, and especially in the liberal professions, specialist knowledge as a rule
goes hand in hand with a prescribed set of attitudes easily gives the misleading impression that expert
knowledge is all that counts. In reality, it is a feature of the irrationally systematic nature of this society
that it reproduces, passably, only the lives of loyal members”. (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1997)

Leisure

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What is the entertainment? For Adorno and Horkheimer, entertainment is the prolongation of work
under late capitalism. And it is true, because today the entertainment occupies the biggest part of
people’s leisure time and what is more important it is linked to the products of the culture industry.

‘“The power of the culture industry lies in its unity with fabricated need and not in simple antithesis
to it-or even in the antithesis between omnipotence and powerlessness ... The only escape from the
work process in factory and office is through adaptation to it in leisure time. This is incurable sickness
of all entertainment”. (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997)

The tricky part is that the products which the society consumes during their leisure time, is considered
to be the choice of the society itself. As Adorno and Horkheimer write, consumers orient themselves
according to the unity of production.

In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception Adorno and Horkheimer discuss films, as
the product of the culture industry and also the tool that creates illusions for masses.

“The familiar experience of the moviegoer, who perceives the street outside as a continuation of the
film he has just left. Because the films seeks strictly to reproduce the world of everyday perception has
become the guideline of production.” (Ibid)

Let’s discuss the activities of a moviegoer today. What has changed? Of course, the illusion of the world,
filtered by the culture industry has not gone anywhere. As decades ago, today films, as the products of
the culture industry, are guidelines of our daily lives. Those guidelines include what to like, how to
dress or even how to speak. What has changed instead, is the number of products, which the culture
industry produces today. It is important, because the more products the culture industry produces, the
more time is potentially taken from people’s leisure activities.

If in the 60s, a moviegoer’s only way to see the movie was to buy a cinema ticket, today, a person, who
is in love with films, can watch them almost everywhere: at home on TV or cable TV, on the way back
home from work online in one’s gadget, or sometimes even at work, on the office laptop. And of course,
one can still go to the cinema, when a new movie is on.

If we take movies as an example, the number of produced movies has changed dramatically. According
to The Numbers in 2016 more than 700 feature films were released in The United States in cinemas.
Statistics show, that in 1980s’ only 120 feature films were screened in cinemas. The same goes for the
United Kingdom. Last year, a staggering of 821 movies released in UK cinemas, an average of almost
sixteen movies per week.

If decades ago, soap opera lovers had to wait for a week to see the next episode of their beloved show,
today, every episode is just one click away on Netflix. According to the IPA data, Netflix in UK is
viewed by 19% of all adults each week, up by 16% in 2016, and by 39% of millennials, up from 33% in
2016, each week for an average of about two hours per day.

Film productions are of course closely tied to other products of the culture industry. For example, the
publishing business. Film companies look to book publishers as sources of material and as outlets for

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novelization of their films. We can argue the same about the music business, as a lot of movie producers
use popular music as soundtrack material for the films. These tie-ins are profitable for all sides. Culture
products work hand in hand with one another serving one aim, to involve more and more people in
consuming the products which they produce.

The worthiness of a book, film or music, is still measured by its commercial success and also, by the
investment that the company makes in the product. “Triumph of invested capital”, - that’s how Adorno
and Horkheimer describe the process:

„This work process integrates all the elements of production from the original concept of the novel,
shaped by its side-long glance at film, to the last sound effect. It is the triumph of invested capital. To
impress the omnipotence of capital on the hearts of expropriated job candidates as the power of their
true master is the purpose of all films, regardless of the plot selected by the production directors.”
(Adorno, Horkheimer 1997).

The culture industry produces more and more products, it is getting bigger and richer, while the choice
of workers and employees is still limited to the options between buying and not to buying. Adorno and
Horkheimer think, that the capitalist production hems workers so tightly, in body and soul, that they
unresistingly succumb to whatever is offered to them.

Billions of people from around the world, spend a lot of time on the internet. The nature of the internet
is to make people consume more and more time on the net. Because, the time people spend on internet,
equals to the money that can be made by the internet companies. Big companies, like Facebook, are
trying to add additional features to their networks in order to keep audience on their web-pages. On
Facebook one can play games, take funny pictures or gifs, create groups, fun-pages etc.

Leisure time spent on the products of the culture industry does not make people happier. Adorno and
Horkheimer argue that the culture industry endlessly cheats its consumers out of what is endlessly
promises.

“The promissory note of pleasure issued by plot and packaging is indefinitely prolonged: the promise,
which actually comprises the entire show, disdainfully intimates that there is nothing more to come,
that the diner must be satisfied with reading the menu”. (ibid)

For Adorno and Horkheimer the culture industry is pornographic and prudish. Industry does not
sublimate: it suppresses. By constantly exhibiting the object of desire.

Throughout time, these desires became more and more visible and today it is transformed into the
pornification of the culture industry products. Let’s take music as an example. Modern pop artist’s
music videos, images and performances on stage is full of sexual associations. Dresses, song lyrics,
dancing moves – all is associated with the porn itself. Movies and books are part of the pornification
products. The Whole multimedia industry reflects these feature. Nowadays even the food industry is
infected with porn. The word food-porn is commonly used to describe the beauty of the food.

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Not to mention the Porn industry itself, which is one of the most popular and rapidly growing
industries in the world. As of 2016 data, 11,000 adult movie films are released every year. In 2016 alone,
Pornhub, one of the biggest porn site, got 23 billion visits. That’s 729 people a second, or 64 million a
day—nearly equal to the population of the United Kingdom.

The Shadow of the executioner

In the essay “Free Time”, Adorno argues, that the free time depends on the totality of social conditions,
which holds people under its spell. Because neither in their work nor in their consciousness do people
dispose of genuine freedom over themselves.

„Free time has already expanded enormously in our day and age. And this expansion should increase
still further, due to invention in the fields of automation and atomic power, which have not yet been
anywhere like fully exploited. If one were to try and answer the question without ideological
preconceptions, one could not avoid the suspicion that “free time” is tending toward its own opposite,
and is becoming a parody of itself. Thus unfreedom is gradually annexing “free time”, and the majority
of unfree people are as unaware of this process as they are of the unfreedom itself”, (Adorno, 2005)

The shadow of the capitalism transforms people’s leisure time into business. For example, travel is the
part of the industry, as well as sport or other activities. Everything is monopolized by the system.

Besides transforming people’s free time, into leisure industry, what concerns Adorno and Horkheimer
is the sameness of the products that the industry produces. For Adorno and Horkheimer, the industry
is infected with sameness.

“The standardized forms, it is claimed, were originally derived from the needs of the consumers: that
is why they are accepted with so little resistance. In reality, a cycle of manipulation and retroactive
need is unifying the system ever more tightly.” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1997)

Products related to the internet, are also infected with the sameness, therefor they are pseudo-
individualized.

In the beginning of the internet era, products, related to the industry were not as visible, as they are
today. Industry slowly created the needs for the products and then began to produce them.

After computers, came personal laptops, mobile smart phones, tablets and other sorts of gadgets. Every
year companies like Apple and Samsung and others present new, upgraded, versions of their products.
New gadgets are usually not affordable for the working-class people, but the older ones get cheaper.
The industry has created a pattern which dictates certain needs: It has become almost impossible, or
inconceivable to live in the capitalist society without a mobile phone or a computer. Scrolling the
internet is one output of owning these products today. While scrolling the internet, using mobile
phones or other gadgets, consumers automatically become the free workforce of the industry and also

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the consumer of any kind of advertisement, beginning with the shoe, that one saw while walking near
the shop, ending with the food delivery, new TV show trailer or other things.

Adorno and Horkheimer in the chapter The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception write:

“The ruler no longer says: either you think as I do or you die. He says: you are free not to thinks I do.
Your life, your property- all that you shall keep. But from this day on you will be the stranger among
us. Anyone who does not conform is condemned to an economic impotence which is prolonged in the
intellectual powerlessness of the eccentric loner”. (ibid)

The shadow of the executioner is not visible, because the system created something for everyone.
People have jobs, they can afford products for their leisure time.

The culture industry manages to produce products for everyone. The products that the industry
produces have different price ranges. There are certain kind of products that only rich people can
afford, while, there are other things for the middle/upper middle class and the working-class people as
well. The Industry itself makes a choice over people and filters what is right for certain groups of
consumers.

“The relentless unity of the culture industry bears witness to the emergent unity of politics. Sharp
distinction like those between A and B films, or between short stories published in different price
segments, do not so much reflect real difference as assist in the classification, organization and
identification of consumers. Something is provided for everyone so that no one can escape”. (Ibid)

As I have mentioned before, peoples worktime equals to their leisure time. On daily basis people spent
14 hours on working on the industries and consuming the products of the industry. That means that
people do not have time to think, what is really important for them, what their actual needs are and
how it is different to the false needs that the system produces for them.

Meanwhile the rise of the internet and the technology not only occupies people’s leisure and work
time, but also replace human labor force with the machines.

A study “Jobs lost, jobs gained: workforce transitions in a time of automation”, published in 2017, from
the global consultancy McKinsey, predicts that over the next 13 years, the rising tide of automation
will force as many as 70 million workers in the United States to find another way to make money, as
they will be replaced by the machines.

Douglas Kellner, in his book “Critical theory, Marxism and modernity” argues that the new
configuration of capitalism, which can now see as the early phase of techno capitalism, technology,
automation and information play increasingly important roles in the production process, and produce
new social and economic effects.

He thinks, that the Techno Culture represents a configuration of the mass culture and the consumer
society in which consumer goods, such as films, television, mass images and computerized information
become a dominant form of culture throughout the developed world, which increasingly
interpenetrates developing countries.

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“In this techno-culture, image, spectacle and aestheticized commodification, or commodity aesthetics,
come to constitute new forms of culture which colonize everyday life and transform politics, economics
and social relations”. (Kellner, 1989)

The new era of techno capitalism machines replaces human labor force, both manual and mental. This
transformation dramatically concerns the industrial working class. For now, it is not clear, how and
when the system will solve the problem of the growing technological unemployment.

References:

Fuchs, C. (2014) Social Media: a critical introduction, Sage, pg. 94, 152

Adorno, T.W, Horkheimer, M. (1997) first published in 1944, available at:

https://web.stanford.edu/dept/DLCL/files/pdf/adorno_culture_industry.pdf (accessed 10 January,
2018) pg. 95-105-106- 98 -99 -100-109-111-120

Kellner, D. (1989) Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity, Parallax, pg. 179

Adorno, T.W (2005) The Culture Industry, Selected essays on mass culture, Routledge, pg. 188