Let's just say the readings from this week really gave me a run for my money. I found the ideas and thoughts to be a little difficult to wrap my mind around. If anything just the sheer volume of it all was overwhelming. One aspect that stood out to me though, was Frankfurt school's idea that 'work and leisure under capitalism form a compelling relationship". I would have never thought of the relationship between work and pop culture before, but they explain how, basically, the mundane, capitalistic work life leads us to want an escape from it all, and we find that escape in mundane, easy to digest, don't have to exercise the senses pop culture. Things that don't truly spark our senses or challenge us like authentic culture can. They view it as, we spend all day at work, acting and working like a drone, and as soon as we get home we just clock into a different type of activity (pop culture) to watch and absorb like a drone. They say, "The escape from everyday drudgery which the whole culture industry promises...[is a] paradise...[of] the same old drudgery...escape...[is] predesigned to lead back to the starting point. Pleasure promotes the resignation which it ought to help to forget." (Adorno and Horkheimer). Rather than our consumption of pop culture acting as an escape from the real world, it actually just acts as a bridge right back to the real world. With this cycle we're never really checking out of this cycle of drudgery, we're just going from one mundane to the next and back again. They go on to say that "only 'authentic' culture operating outside the confines of the culture industry could ever hope to break the cycle."
My question for the class is, if you felt like you were breaking away from the day to day mundane with pop culture 'escapes' before, what type of 'authentic' culture could you now partake in to truly get a break from this cycle?
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