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Role of mass media in communication
Role of mass media in communication
Role of mass media in communication
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Matt Sciarrino ARTH287E Assignment 1 Professor Kirkwood 2/22/16 The author of passage 1 is Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. What they meant by “reproduction of sameness” is how consumers are constantly wronged by the culture industry by repeatedly releasing the same items. This is a constant cycle which has no end in sight. The main consequence of such actions by the culture industry is the abuse of the consumer, normally of the middle class or below, who become enraptured and fascinated by the material wealth which is constantly being offered to them. Culture has a very poor impact on society, even though it would appear to be democratic, due to the citizens actually having options that contain little to no variation from each other. Horkheimer and Adorno do support connoisseurship because connoisseurs promote competition and consumer …show more content…
The detachment of an object from its sphere of tradition, Benjamin states, causes a lack of the “here and now” of the work of art. Meaning that the only the true piece of art contains the true history (changes in ownership and changes in physical structure of the work). In many instances, with the spread through reproduction, art is designed to show evidence of specific events and get a rise of opinion from the masses. “This constitutes their hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of reception.” (Benjamin 27). The technologies of reproduction is directly related to the way people perceive. In fact, Benjamin states that fascist leaders attempt to organize and control the proletarian masses through the use of such technologies. This is a huge change in the value and significance of art works because now politics is heavily involved in aesthetic expression. It has an end result of the restoring of the cultic and aura values within politics (which eventually leads to war) while simultaneously fooling the proletarian masses with the supposed rights of
Modris Eksteins presented a tour-de-force interpretation of the political, social and cultural climate of the early twentieth century. His sources were not merely the more traditional sources of the historian: political, military and economic accounts; rather, he drew from the rich, heady brew of art, music, dance, literature and philosophy as well. Eksteins examined ways in which life influenced, imitated, and even became art. Eksteins argues that life and art, as well as death, became so intermeshed as to be indistinguishable from one another.
Products of the culture economy take on the appearance of artwork but are in fact dependant on industry and economy, meaning that they are subjected to the interests of money and power and producing a profit “The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry” . To Adorno the production of art and consumerism is driven and shaped by the logic of capitalist rationality, meaning consumer products are created on the basis of whatever will sell best.
It corresponded to the emulation, which emerged among the lower classes of the postindustrial era, to pretend to have a good taste of art like the upper class. After the Industrial Revolution, the underprivileged, who had previously produced things to fulfill their own daily needs, turned into the working class of the urbans, producing things whose value in daily usage they would never see . This shift from crafting to manufacturing, from formulating to fabricating, and from creative to repetitive triggered a new need among these people. Although they did not have the time or education to enjoy and appreciate fine arts when they were in the countryside, the lower classes felt a new inclination towards art in the factory towns where they had the opportunity to observe that taste in art provided social status. Their desire to own works of art was precluded by their incomes which were no match for the high prices of the art market. With the aid of the mass production technologies and the manufacturing-commercial culture that followed, it became possible to produce multiple copies of artistic works and reduce the prices. This situation not only expanded the scope of art market but also provided the lower class with what they desired –or at least what they thought they desired: affordable art
In existential thought it is often questioned who decides what is right and what is wrong. Our everyday beliefs based on the assumption that not everything we are told may be true. This questioning has given light to the subjective perspective. This means that there is a lack of a singular view that is entirely devoid of predetermined values. These predetermined values are instilled upon society by various sources such as family to the media. On a societal level this has given rise to the philosophy of social hype. The idea of hype lies in society as the valuation of something purely off someone or some group of people valuing it. Hype has become one of the main driving forces behind what society considers to be good art and how successful artists can become while being the main component that leads to a wide spread belief, followed by its integration into subjective views. Its presence in the art world propagates trends, fads, and limits what we find to be good art. Our subjective outlook on art is powered by society’s feedback upon itself. The art world, high and low, is exploited by this social construction. Even when objective critique is the goal subjective remnants can still seep through and influence an opinion. Subjective thought in the art world has been self perpetuated through regulated museums, idolization of the author, and general social construction because of hype.
This article will discuss the influence of visual art on politics from two parts of visual arts , which are political photography and poster propaganda, through the unique social and historical stage of Nazi Germany. Additionally, it emphasizes the ideology, Nazis in Nazi Germany inflamed the political sentiment of the masses and took the visual art as their important instrument of political propaganda, while Nazi party used visual art on anti-society and war which is worth warning and criticizing for later generation. Despite an emphasis on the ideology, this article will conclude with significant application for the long-term impact of Nazi
Benjamin stressed the Marxist democratization of art through digital reproduction, a media which allows for de-emphasizing the original work of art. Throughout the history of arts, particularly visual arts, we have revered the individual paintings created by artists, locating them in exclusive galleries and museums which are subject to the tastes and privilege of the upper class philanthropic elite. The value of a work is based in part by which wealthy patrons have owned or commissioned it, and the history of a canvas often becomes more important than the actual formal representation on it.
“Against a backdrop of political stability and growing prosperity, the development of new technologies- including the printing press, a new system of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents- was accomplished by a flowering of philosophy, literature, and especially art” (History). Beginning in the early 14th century, art began to drastically change and new ways of expression emerged (Sachs 7). “Three great masters- Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael- dominated the period of the Renaissance” (History). The legacy of these three great artists and their work has lasted hundreds of years and is bound to last for hundreds more
We’re all materialist to one extent or another. we all use and enjoy material goods in our daily lives, and most of us simply couldn't get by without them. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the desire for material goods doesn't control us and our actions”. In my opinion, some materialism is important in our daily lives as, long as it does not interfere with our
In the book “Ways of Seeing,” John Berger explains several essential aspects of art through influence of the Marxism and art history that relates to social history and the sense of sight. Berger examines the dominance of ideologies in the history of traditional art and reflects on the history, class, and ideology as a field of cultural discourse, cultural consumption and cultural practice. Berger argues, “Realism is a powerful link to ownership and money through the dominance of power.”(p.90)[1] The aesthetics of art and present historical methodology lack focus in comparison to the pictorial essay. In chapter six of the book, the pictorial imagery demonstrates a variety of art forms connoting its realism and diversity of the power of connecting to wealth in contradiction to the deprived in the western culture. The images used in this chapter relate to one another and state in the analogy the connection of realism that is depicted in social statues, landscapes, and portraiture, also present in the state of medium that was used to create this work of art.
“Philosophers, writers, and artists expressed disillusionment with the rational-humanist tradition of the Enlightenment. They no longer shared the Enlightenment's confidence in either reason's capabilities or human goodness.” (Perry, pg. 457) It is interesting to follow art through history and see how the general mood of society changed with various aspects of history, and how events have a strong connection to the art of the corresponding time.
Art is a constantly evolving process. The previous style of work serves as a roadmap for what will follow. As often is the case with any form of growth, there exists a transitional period. Because of this evolution, there are traces of a style’s illustrious history embedded in the adaptive art’s metaphorical DNA. The transition from early to late Renaissance established two styles of art known as Baroque and Rococo. While, on the surface, the Rococo style can appear to be very similar to the work produced by Baroque artists, the two also demonstrate distinct differences in their use of subject and theme, the manner in which they created the art, and how that art was perceived in their time. These factors establish both styles from one another, making them unique.
Adorno found this position to be naïve. As Richard Wolin describes, Adorno “criticizes Benjamin’s unqualified and uncritical acceptance of technically reproduced art as well as the essay’s complementary rejection of all autonomous art as being inherently ‘counterrevolutionary.’” Benjamin does not exactly ignore the control and manipulations of what Adorno and Max Horkheimer would later, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, call the “culture industry.” He argues, for instance, that there can be “no political advantage” from the mechanical reproduction of film “until film has liberated itself from the fetters of capitalist exploitation” (113). However, the space Benjamin devotes to this threat is much more modest than the space he gives to its revolutionary qualities, which he finds intrinsic in technology itself. An example of this faith in the intrinsic mechanisms of technologies of reproduction is his concept of “reception in distraction”: “A person who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it; he enters into the work, just as, according to legend, a Chinese painter entered his completed painting while beholding it. By contrast, the distracted masses absorb the work of art into themselves” (119). For Benjamin, film is like architecture: we come to understand it “not so much by way of attention as by way of habit” and “in the form of casual noticing, rather than attentive observation”
The mode of production that shaped the art and culture of the twentieth century is mechanical reproduction. Horkheimer, Adorno and Benjamin write about how this mode of production shapes the cultural identity of society. Benjamin argues that reproduction devalues art because it no longer has an aura. The aura of an art piece ties it to a specific location and time. He believes that only the original hold a history that cannot be reproduced:
Jurgen Habermas: The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-reading Dialectic of Enlightenment, in Jay Bernstein (ed.): The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments vol.3 (Routledge: London, 1994).
This is one of the main differences between Fiske’s and MacDonald’s theories, while Fiske believes in the power of the consumer to decide what is popular culture and to decide how to consume it, MacDonald asserts that popular culture and mass culture are something that is force-fed to consumers and forces mass conformity. Although mass culture and popular culture do breed conformity it is very important not to ignore the choice and the power of the consumer. Counter-cultures are great evidence to show that choice. The hippies of the 70’s and the hipsters of today are two well-known examples of counter-cultures formed by people who were exposed to mainstream popular culture and mass culture and chose to deviate from it. Although mass culture and the very peer pressure like influence it has can be very hard to deviate from, but the choice is still there and MacDonald ignores that choice. When faced with the commodity of popular culture we as consumers have the power to deny it as individuals and to change it as a society whether or not we chose to use that power or to even realize we have