In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass deception, Adorno and Horkheimer are observing the culture industry. The culture industry is the entire system of production and circulation that establishes mass, mainstream, and popular culture.
In this essay, the authors illustrate more precisely the relationship between culture industry and reality by explaining that “[r]eal life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound film, […], leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who are unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story” (Adorno and Horkheimer 35). Therefore, they argue that there is no distinction …show more content…
Prolonged promises are considered in the sense that the consumer will never need anything more than what is already offered to him, thus what is offered can serve the consumer forever.
In Simulacra and Simulations, Baudrillard criticizes reality by explaining that the real has been completely replaced by simulation, ergo society can no longer make any distinction between simulation and reality. He distinguishes four “phases of the image”: “It is the reflection of a basic reality.” ; “It masks and perverts a basic reality.” ; “It masks the absence of a basic reality.” , and “It bears no relation to any reality whatever.” (Baudrillard …show more content…
Without it we would not see and therefore would understand nothing at all of a time which may physically be 50,000 times more rapid or four times slower than the one in which we live. It is a physical implement, certainly, whose functioning, however, provides an illusion so fully elaborated and ready for the mind's use that it can be considered as already half-thought.” (16). With this quote, the author, connects to Kracauer’s idea of phenomenology, because he explains that cinema gives us the opportunity to see what we usually would not be able to see and thus connects us to the world. “Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view” (Smith), or in other words, phenomenology is the way we as individuals perceive the