Mass-produced culture standardises experience and dulls critique. Serious art resists by refusing to be easily consumed.
- +Fits Critical Realist Epistemology, Standpoint Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology
The longer story
Adorno was pessimistic about modern culture and had good reasons. The 'culture industry' doesn't give people what they want; it produces wants that serve capitalism. Mass culture substitutes pseudo-individuality for genuine freedom. Even resistant art gets commodified. His essays with Horkheimer on the Enlightenment's dark side remain devastating. For research on creative industries, Adorno is the voice insisting: wait, is this liberation or is this just capitalism finding new ways to colonise desire? He can seem elitist—his dismissal of jazz was wrong—but his questions about autonomy and manipulation remain urgent.