Professional Documents
Culture Documents
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1088521/b
reakin_turbos_broom_dance/
Critics of Frankfurt School
Critics of the Frankfurt School analysis of
popular culture have argued that it is just
too negative and too sweeping in its
characterisation of cultural products and
cultural practices as tools of capitalism.
It is difficult to find evidence amongst
todays consumers of popular culture of
the unqualified conformity that Adorno
and Horkheimer argued was responsible
for adjusting us to the norms and values
of the social system.
Critics of Frankfurt School
It would be just as easy to find evidence of
diversity, creativity and, even, resistance to
dominant ideology in contemporary popular
cultural pursuits. This is not to say that cultural
practices have no ideological significance far
from it.
Rather, the critics of the Frankfurt School, still
working in a broadly Marxist tradition, have
suggested a more subtle relationship between
culture and ideology; one which recognises the
active role of consumers and users of cultural
products in creating meanings.
Industrial Chic