The concoctions
of the culture industry are neither guides for a blissful life, nor a
new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line,
behind which stand the most powerful interests. The consensus which
it propagates strengthens blind, opaque authority. If the culture industry
is measured not by its own substance and logic, but by its efficacy,
by its position in reality and its explicit pretensions; if the focus of
serious concern is with the efficacy to which it always appeals, the
potential of its effect becomes twice as weighty. This potential, however,
lies in the promotion and exploitation of the ego-weakness to
which the powerless members of contemporary society, with its concentration
of power, are condemned. Their consciousness is further
developed retrogressively. It is no coincidence that cynical American
film producers are heard to say that their pictures must take into consideration
the level of eleven-year-olds. In doing so they would very
much like to make adults into eleven-year-olds.
It is true that thorough research has not, for the time being, produced
an airtight case proving the regressive effects of particular products
of the culture industry. No doubt an imaginatively designed
experiment could achieve this more successfully than the powerful
financial interests concerned would find comfortable. In any case, it can
be assumed without hesitation that steady drops hollow the stone,
especially since the system of the culture industry that surrounds the
masses tolerates hardly any deviation and incessantly drills the same
formulas on behaviour.
