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According To Adorno's Pessimistic Critique Of Culture

998 Words4 Pages

The rise of big businesses is caused by the end of national leisure policy, which triggered that cultural products and symbols have become commodified. The big businesses are responsible for this development due to tight control of the production, distribution and marketing of cultural products for gaining profit. This need to create scarcity (semi-public goods) to acquire profit conflicts with the small businesses that strive for creativity and uniqueness. Creativity is essential for creating symbols and valuable products. This creativity is difficult to control and manage and contradicts with the effective strategies of big businesses. Before products can be commodified, the cultural products need to be made by the symbolic creators of small …show more content…

I want to highlight this by referring to Adorno’s pessimistic critique of the commodification of culture. Adorno states that culture has lost its meaning and value due to the marketization of culture. According to Adorno culture should broaden people’s knowledge and skills instead of focusing on relaxation and escapism produced by the worlds of entertainment. In Adorno’s perspective, the culture industries are empty and superficial. I agree that the cultural industry has made culture more accessible to people by commodification and indeed this represents a loss in cultural value. However, I believe that the cultural industry has also led to new ways of value. The cultural industries are not only about cultural value, but also symbolic, economic and social value. For instance, culture has become valuable for consumers and businesses as source for showing their identities and for creating connections with people all over the world. I mean it is not only a bad thing that culture is commodified. It has opened ways for new exciting directions and innovations of the capacity of culture. My first argument is related to the interplay of big and small businesses in the cultural industries. Adorno’s perspective indicates that the small businesses have lost the battle and that culture has been already subsumed by the big businesses. I do not agree that the battle is over. I believe that the value of culture is still visible in the small businesses and is the main reason they exist, although, the power of big businesses is increasing. In this perspective, his critique is still relevant for the tensions in the cultural industries today. A positive development of the tensions between big and small businesses is the inspiration for new business models, such as Airbnb and Couchsurfing. Those business models are

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