Manuel
A. Beltran 11/3/12 Blog7 All of us (society) are influenced and affected by media. From the films we watch to the news we read in the papers, watch on television, listen to on the radio and even when simply browsing the internet. We are constantly being socialized or manipulated into thinking about different things in certain ways. Max Horkheimer defined this idea of analyzing the various aspects or events that occur every day in society. In the article The Culture Industry: Enlighten as Mass Deception the authors describe how media changes the way we think and even react to certain things – or do not react. After having read this article, I thought about some of the youth I have worked with over the past few months and to what extent they are influenced by the media. At times I think this can be used in a positive manner but I have realized that this is very limited. For instance, in school, we have been successful to get these high school kids to start thinking about the election and they in turn begin to talk to their parents about voting. However, this is very limited because this only works up until they turn on the television or go online on facebook and get bombarded by information that they are usually interested in like which rapper is going out with who or who has some ridiculous beef with some other, or what they wear. This latter aspect is very noticeable when these guys or girls get new shoes or talk about getting them. They suddenly “need” these cheap (quality-wise) $200 shoes instead of the regular say $50 shoes that would work just fine and do not really look all that different. This is not limited to teenagers however. Even when talking to friends my age or older, I often listen to stuff about the “need” to get a Coach purse or buying a pair of Ray bans. I have noticed that a lot of times people (including myself) limit themselves from having or doing certain things because of the great influence media and even many actors in society have on them to the point that we confuse want and need. One might stick it out with the pair of shoes we have until we can obtain a pair of brand name shoes. This consumerism tends to make people just go into a cycle where they tend to want money so that they may purchase whatever products they are promoting and once we have them, they are not enough. I think this is because the emphasis is placed on the obtaining of the objects while usually ignoring or minimizing their actual value in terms of use, quality and cost as well. This cycle continues and in addition to objects we would appreciate, they instead lose their value and at the same time isolate us from others. We have no real reason to try to have relationships with other people since we are obsessed with maintaining a relationship with products we continue to purchase, satisfying our “needs”temporarily. This may be compared to someone addicted to cocaine. Once he or she uses, they are satisfied for some time, until the effect goes away and then have to buy more. There is no end for this process unless one decides to break from their “need” or dependence of material objects pushed onto us by consumerism. Every moment of our lives we have constantly been bombarded with images in the media, billboards, posters, flyers and magazines. All mostly telling us the same thing; Sex sells. After reading Adorno and Hockneimer’s article The Culture Industry we begin to understand how we are influenced by the culture industry. The culture industry is the one that makes these images, films and products that are meant to meet consumer needs. The culture industry manipulates us the consumers into thinking we need the products that are being advertised and sold. In the article there is a sentence that says “The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce” (1) in other words we are being sold things we don’t need and the industry is constantly finding ways to justify our need to purchase these products. Adorno and Hockneimer mention that industries give the illusion that they are in control because there is no need for us, the consumer, to classify our products or our needs because the industry does it for us (3). What all this control does for the consumer is create a sense of obedience we are obliged to purchase and consume regardless of whether we need the product or not. The meaning behind our need is lost with the obedience for products we do not require. We use to feel joy in purchasing a product but now the homogeneity of production eradicates that sense altogether because there is no real joy in things we do not aspire. In the images above there is a consistency with every cover that cosmopolitan produces. Cosmopolitan is amongst the top selling fashion magazines they, like many others, are meant to provide women with insight on the latest fashion trends, provide some life advice and ideas. What the covers do for most issues is sell sex. If we notice the arrows they are all variations of the word sex some are providing tips that would improve our sex and how we can look sexier or how we can improve so that we meet or excel the standards of men. I used the issues above because most of the women in these covers are the girls my little sister would look up to. Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and Demi Lovato feature their songs on Radio Disney (information provided by my little sister), these are the girls that in these magazines are promoting their bodies in sexual ways. Sex in magazines becomes homogenous it is needed in order to sell if it is not provided then it will not sell and we obediently permit it. In class we read an article by Adorno and Horkheimer that focused
on the culture industry. Although this article was written in the 1940’s we see that it still relates to our popular culture today. Adorno and Horkheimer were well ahead of their time. I will be talking about this article as it relates to our society today and to rap music and music videos of today. Adorno and Horkheimer state that culture industry is the entertainment business. Indeed, it is. In the music industry, music is strictly for entertainment. The lyrics and music videos are made to entertain; mostly men. Culture industry produces highly standardized products. Each product is kind of like a product from before. Adorno and Horkheimer also state that the culture industry also manipulates the consumer. Culture industry creates a false need. Culture industry also creates a lack of choice. Since all the product is highly standardized there is really not much to choose from. Adorno and Horkheimer also explain that culture industry creates homogeneity because everyone Is just consuming the product because it is all the same. In this case, the product is the music or the song. I have picked four song lyrics to focus on. These four songs that I have chosen are also very highly standardized. They are all talking about money and women in very derogatory ways. They manipulate the consumer and create false need in the sense of making the consumer think that they need a lot of money to get beautiful women to do everything that they are doing for the rappers in the music videos. It also creates a lack of choice, since all the music is the same, you cannot escape listening to the things that they are rapping about and you have no choice but to listen to these lyrics. Which brings me to homogeneity; you only pick to listen to this type of music because there is nothing else to choose from. The first song is “No Lie” by 2 Chainz featuring Drake. It is standardized because it is talking about money and disrespecting women. Drake says “Aw that looks like what’s her name; Chances are it is what’s her name. Chances are if she was actin’ up then I fucked her once and never fucked her again. She could have a grammy and I’ll still treat her ass like a nominee. Just need to know what that pussy’s like so one time is fine with me.” 2 chainz says“I bought my boo bigger tits and a bigger ass.” And “got your car note in my cup and your rent in my swisher.” Both of these are talking about money and how he has so much of it he can modify his girlfriend. The next song is “I love Dem Strippers” by 2 Chainz featuring Nicki Minaj. 2 Chainz says “let’s play big bank take lil bank, you are looking at a shark in a fish tank. When I’m in my kitchen, I make plenty cash. Tell shawty come here, she got plenty ass.” This is the very first verse and he is talking about how he has money and about a girl and her body. The next song is “rack city” by Tyga. He says “rack city bitch rack, rack city bitch. Ten, ten, ten, twenties on your tities bitch.” In this line he does both talk about money and degrade women. The last song is called “Making love to the Money” by Gucci Mane. In this song he is actually talking about money as if it were a woman. He says “Making love to the money, I swear the sex’s great. I kick them hoes out, but let the money stay.” This song is yet again talking about money and disrespecting women. The homogeneity in rap music is obvious. The same things are rapped about over and over again just modified a little bit. The subjects of rap songs are almost always money, women, sex, cars, violence, and drugs. Armond Harold
Soc385 Blog 7 The culture industry is a concept created under two critical theorists, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Their concept suggests that popular culture, such as television, books, movies, music, and other forms of mass media have become standardized. So much, that it has created a large, passive society devoid of choice for consumers. Adorno and Horkheimer also infer that this standardized culture has other implications, including the elimination of consumer choice, the loss of innovation, easily manipulated consumers, and effortless mass production. On a more personal level, I feel the effects of Adorno and Horkheimer’s concept almost every day when I see myself being sucked into the culture industry even though I recognize what is going on. I often see myself buying products that I don’t need, even when I know that I have no need for them. I buy a cell phone every year, even though all of the previous phones have done more or less the same thing (maybe a second or two faster though). The only phones that I buy are Google’s “Nexus” phones. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, I have been manipulated by the culture industry into having a false need for this phone. Just last week, I was thinking about how much I love my Galaxy Nexus, (Google’s current version of the Nexus phone). I was so impressed at how quickly it completes every task that I need it to perform. This week, Google announced the “Nexus 4” which will be the company’s newer version of the Nexus phone. After hearing about this, I immediately knew that I didn’t need it. I already owned an awesome phone the Galaxy Nexus. My phone was not broken, and the Nexus 4 has no new functions that mine can’t perform. Still, I put my phone up for sale on ebay in order to make money to purchase the new Nexus 4. My motivation for buying this new phone relates back to Weber and status. Having a cutting edge device gives me the feeling that I am somehow a prestigious phone user (whatever that is). The phone is advertised as a sophisticated, simple device. Thus, having the newest version of the device obviously makes me a sophisticated, yet simple person. If there is a way combat behavior like mine, it would be to not tie personal traits to non-human objects. I shouldn’t define myself by the products I use to text my friends and check my email. I shouldn’t feel defined by an object that I have to define first. We should look into ourselves and at one another to place ourselves in the world. As noble as this idea is, it may not even be possible in today’s society. We always use symbols to define ourselves. Whether it is our library of books on the shelf in the living room that we’ve read or our educational background we use to show our intellectual prowess, or even using musical tastes and Art Institute receipts to convey our artistic side, we use these common objects to help define ourselves. Non-human symbols are what drive the definition of human in this society. Some (or maybe even all) of these symbols are exploited by the culture industry for profit. Maybe instead of changing the way we think, the culture industry shouldn’t prey on our means of definition for profit, and let me text and use Google Maps in peace. Many commercials have a subconscious sexual message that not a lot of people notice while others has a noticeable sexual meaning, especially if it sexualize women. “Women have been reduced to their body and the female body has been dismembered, commodified, and sexually objectified in the media for entertainment and marketing purposes (Bartky 1990; Basow 1992) (Jhally,745) One example I have in mind, is a commercial about a car called, “Fiat 500 Abarth” that is seen to be highly sexualized. In this advertisement, a man is walking down a street and sees a beautiful foreign woman in a sexy fitted dress. As the man stares, the woman notices and yells at him in her own foreign language. She gets angry but then seductively talks to him as she is getting closer to him. As he leans in for a kiss, he wakes up from his fantasy and sees a car. He once again fantasied having the car for himself, as he imagines himself driving the car in a high speed and taking full control of the car. These types of commercials are, “in Jhally’s words, to “see how our culture teaches us to be men and women” (Jhally, 745).
To start off, first of all, this commercial is mostly focus on males because it is a stereotype that cars love cars and women, but women don’t. Secondly, the woman in the commercial is seen as a sexualized female had no sexual control towards a male. Jhally has a quote from his article called, “The Critical Eye: Whose Fantasy is This? Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video” that says, “women as nymphomaniacs, desperately in need of a man, in the roles of cheerleaders, nurses, teachers, maids, librarians, and most notably strippers” (746). Thirdly, for commercial about cars and women, at first thought, it seems like women and cars do not have anything in common. Yet, there is a hidden cultural assumption that all men find women and cars the same. It seems like the television advertisement has taught men to perceive women as sexual objects rather than people. Men, when there are attracted to a woman, would look at their physical features. After they paid attention to their body, they then approach the woman to get to know them on a personal level. It is also the same when men look at cars. Men will first look at the beauty of a car and then looks at the parts of the car like the shape, the colors, the curves, and the way it moves or breaks. It excites men to find out what else the car has to offer which is why men looks inside the car, get comfortable with it, feel the interior, take control and drives the car for a test drive. All of this treatment was taught by society for men to know how to treat a woman. The advertisers knew what they were thinking in how to approach to the car commercial because they already knew the norm of how many people think and want us to think. The advertisers knew that sex sells if it were approached in the right way. The assumptions due to this commercial are that men think about sex and beautiful women most of the time and women, in this case, foreign women are sexy, confident, strong, nice figure and highly seductive. Yet, they are seen as objectives rather than a person with feelings and opinions. This commercial is a good representation on how society wants males to think. Overall, society has full control of people’s media, norms, rules and thoughts on sexuality, people cannot change because people know they are being manipulated into buying something you don’t want or need. Just like, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer said in their article, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them (24).
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April 2014
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