Theme 2: Critical media studies [post 1]

What is Enlightenment?

According to the authors, Enlightenment is in the sense of though that has

tried to make human beings not afraid of fear so that they can, as the authors

express, “install themselves as masters”. It also wants to make people

understand the untrue things about myth and make fantasy into knowledge. If

I understood it correctly we should not believe in myths and mythical things

because they are in fact untrue.

What is the meaning and function of “myth” in Adorno and

Horkheimer’s argument? 

Myth is here to make us believe in things that are not true. And we do this to

protect ourselves because we are sometimes afraid of ourselves and our

actions. And by believing in myth we put our consequences on our actions on

someone or something else than ourselves.  Enlightenment is trying to “get

rid of” myth, to make us understand that it is untrue.

What are the “old” and “new” media that are discussed in the Dialectic 

of Enlightenment?

Old and new media can almost be explained as convergence of media. That

the development of different media have made people use it differently. For

example, before you had conversations with, let say one person, but now you

can connect with more people trough internet the TV etc. reaching out not to

only one but hundreds.

What is meant by “culture industry”?

Culture industry can be thought of as the movie, radio industry etc. Everything 

that has something to do with what you today consume in your culture. 

Movies for example have a way of showing you a world where the hero 

makes something extraordinary, and when you walk out from the movie 

theater you probably have a feeling like, ‘it would be so cool to be that guy 

and those things’. And that will make you, let’s say for example buy a gun so 

you can try to see how it feels to fire one, so that you can connect with the 

movie even more. That makes us consume more because someone is 

“telling” us to do so.

What is the relationship between mass media and “mass deception”,

according to Adorno and Horkheimer?

For example in magazines like Elle, cosmopolitan etc, you can always see on 

the front cover a beautiful model or celebrity, but is that the true picture of

how they look? You can today se before and after images on models or

celebrities and it is amazing how much changes they make in Photoshop.

This depicts a very untrue picture of how models really look, because people

look up to celebrities and want to look like them. But since the picture of them 

are very “untrue” it will in fact be impossible to try to look like them. This is the 

kind of mass deception the authors talk about and it does not only apply for

the model industry, but all kinds of media, from news reporters, newspaper, ‘

TV shows to commercials. 

Please identify one or two concepts/terms that you find particularly

interesting. Motivate your choice.

The on thing that caught my eye when reading this was mana. Which if you 

look it up in the encyclopedia is a supernatural being which can be either 

good or evil. And I think it was a good way for the authors to expand the 

explanation of enlightenment and myth. It was something I thought was 

interesting so I started looking up the word myself to se how it is used in other 

ways. But to keep this about the text we read, I think this sentence made it 

very clear to me what mana and enlightenment had to do with each other.

“The priests have always avenged mana on any exponent of enlightenment 

who propitiated mana by showing fear before the frightening entity which bore 

that name, and in their hubris the augurs of enlightenment were at one with 

the priests.”

Reference:

Britannica, encyclopedia: http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/361194/mana

Horkheimer.M, Adorono.T.W, Dialectic of Enlightenment -Philosophical Fragments (2002) Stanford -

Stanford university press