THEODOR ADORNO

Adorno was a member of the Frankfurt School in interwar Germany. He followed a neo Marxian belief that modern art, media, etc. were controlled by the ruling elites. Any dissenting views articulated in art would be co-opted by the all-encompassing culture industry, which would always prevail.

 I.

Adorno`s specific beliefs:

1)                            All the forces of production are intertwined; a system.

2)                            Out of capitalism comes the concept of the culture industry, which it self grew out of capitalism – a mass culture industry which is non-critical and debasing.

3)                            Adorno (being negative) thought that the masses were systematically manipulated and progressively unable to criticize their society effectively; the culture industry is central.

4)                            To Adorono, the only people left how can still critique Enlightenment ideas, capitalism and the culture industry are the avant-gardes.

5)                            Imminent Critique (Frankfurt School)

a) Contrast the best concept of thing  (e.g., capitalism) with its reality.

b) This is negative dialectics; future reality cannot be better than its concept. In the early 1940s, Adorno and Max Horkheimer elaborated on these principles in Dialectic of Enlightenment.

II.

Adorno was more negative, yet elitist, than Benjamin about the implications of the culture industry and commodity fetishism. The confrontation between Adorno and Horkheimer on the one hand, and Benjamin on the other, “centered not on modernism as such, but the historical meanings to be attached to avant-garde and commercialized “mass” art in capitalist society.” (Lunn, p. 150

Adorno (and Horkheimer) on the culture industry:

1)    Adorno argues the culture industry commodifies and  standardizes all art (music, fashion, etc.) then fools you into thinking it`s “original” (“pseudo-individuality”) in order to sell it.

2)    This prompts change in reception ; in music the calls it “regressive  listening”. This turns down the intellectual response to bourgeois art and regresses the response to that of child because the form of the composition forces you to think this way.

3)    This is a machine culture which mutates and dampens conciousness, destroying critical thinking.

 III

Adorno on the music industry (part of the culture industry) :

1)    Authentic art (as defined by bourgeoisie) has difficulty surviving against capitalism; avant-gardes are chewed up by society and become commodities themselves.

2)    The bourgeoisie constructs a dichotomy of classical, “serious” music vs. light, popular music. Thus, there develops a “flight from banality” (e.g., Schoenberg`s atonal music vs. ever more standardized, imitative forms.)

3)    The “incomprehensibility of the serious form” (e.g., Joyce Lawrence) is in part a reaction by the avant-gardes to the “inescapability of fashion”.

IV.

Criticisms of Adorno:

1)    He concentrates on the educated elite.

2)    He allows some elements of nostalgia to creep into his work.

3)    He gets the relationship between high/mass culture wrong, because pre-capitalist popular culture (e.g., the oral tradition of story telling) was also repetitive in nature.

4)    He concentrates  on cultivating particular emotions on the part of these educated elites. (e.g., does Beethoven fall in love better than the average man on the street? Adorno seems to think so.)

5)    High culture does more than react against mass culture; it draws from it more than Adorno admits.

6)    He`s pretty negative about our chances of breaking out of this hegemonic culture industry. Besides, if hegemony is so all-encompassing, how can he recognize it and outside of it.

Written by Dr Shokrkhah

 In persian     

A faire pâlir tous les Marquis de Sade
A faire rougir les putains de la rade
A faire crier grâce à tous les échos
A faire trembler les murs de Jéricho
Je vais t’aimer

A faire flamber des enfers dans tes yeux
A faire jurer tous les tonnerres de Dieu
A faire dresser tes seins et tous les Saints
A faire prier et supplier nos mains
Je vais t’aimer

Je vais t’aimer
Comme on ne t’a jamais aimée
Je vais t’aimer
Plus loin que tes rêves ont imaginé
Je vais t’aimer je vais t’aimer

Je vais t’aimer
Comme personne n’a osé t’aimer
Je vais t’aimer
Comme j’aurais tellement aimé être aimé
Je vais t’aimer je vais t’aimer

A faire vieillir à faire blanchir la nuit
A faire brûler la lumière jusqu’au jour
A la passion et jusqu’a la folie
Je vais t’aimer je vais t’aimer d’amour

A faire cerner à faire fermer nos yeux
A faire souffrir à faire mourir nos corps
A faire voler nos âmes aux septièmes cieux
A se croire morts et faire l’amour encore
Je vais t’aimer

Je vais t’aimer
Comme on ne t’a jamais aimée
Je vais t’aimer
Plus loin que tes rêves ont imaginé
Je vais t’aimer je vais t’aimer

Je vais t’aimer
Comme personne n’a osé t’aimer
Je vais t’aimer
Comme j’aurais tellement aimé être aimé
Je vais t’aimer je vais t’aimer

Paroles: Michel Sardou, Gilles Thibaut. Musique: Jacques Revaux
autres interprètes: Star Academy 4 (2004), Ève Angeli (2005)

Pour ma femme (Niloufar)

بخشی از آن به پارسی

دوستت خواهم داشت
آن طور که هیچ‌وقت دوست داشته نشدی
دوستت خواهم داشت
دورتر از جایی که تصورش کرده‌ای
دوستت خواهم داشت، دوستت خواهم داشت

…

دوستت خواهم داشت
طوری که هیچ‌کس جسارت دوست ‌داشتنت را نکرده است
دوستت خواهم داشت
طوری که خودم دوست داشته شدن را دوست دارم
دوستت خواهم داشت، دوستت خواهم داشت

…

شعر و آواز از میشل ساردو