Harry Frankfurt

The idea does portray the plausible capabilities of humans. Essentially what we are addressing here is social engineering. Throughout many civilizations in history we can see where this has happened for the good and for the bad. Mayagoitia Soria writes in American Social Engineering through children's educational films (1945-1953) that we utilized short films to deal with topics on ethics, character, home or family life, civil protection, and knowledge of celebrations our country celebrates. (…

Huge department stores such as Macy’s stand for almost everything that Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer despise. Arguably, department stores minimize a person’s capability to act and think in a logical and self-governing manner. Adorno argues that “standardization develops due to the ability of the ‘people in power’ to regulate the manufacturing of cultural goods in order to try and gage and control what people like and want to buy to increase how much profit they make. Furthermore, he states…

In Benjamin’s piece, I was reminded of many of the lectures we have had throughout the lecture. The apparatus mentioned throughout the piece, in both cultural and camera lense forms, reminds me of Leni Riefenstahl. Professor Beebout spoke about how her innovative techniques changed cinema, but her association with the Nazi party casts a large shadow over her contributions. She added to the machine of fascism by creating this larger than life image of Hitler and the “superior race” rather than…

This essay examines the historical development, political activism, and techniques of culture jamming, analysing how this movement generated a monumental change in advertising. Commercial branding has been embraced by conglomerate companies for over 50 years, saturating targeted milieu with obtrusive emotional messages designed to segment the public into certain groups, with the intention to market their products in a misleading way. The study behind psychographics and demographics aids…

Not many people can say that they’re adopted; but a small percentage is, and I’m lucky enough to be one of them. My mom and dad had split before I was born, leaving my mom to run to my divorced grandpa for help when she was expecting me. He took care of us, but despite these things, my mom never compared to the parent that my grandpa was for me. She struggled with drugs and alcohol, often taking her anger out on me physically when no one was around. After drifting in and out of my life for those…

share in their ideas and feelings, often times forming a subculture. The Frankfurt and Birmingham schools of thought analyze popular culture in an attempt to examine the formation and the purpose of subcultures in society. Through personal observation and interviews I was able to analyze the Gothic subculture. In my research I focus on the styles, the beliefs, and rules of the Gothic subculture while applying the Frankfurt school and Hebdige’s theories on subculture to determine whether they…

The title of this article is “Contraindications in a Hip-Hop World: An Ethnographic Study of Black Women Hip-Hop Fans in Washington, DC.,” written by Tia L. Smith-Cooper. This article was published with UMI Microform in June 2002. In this article, Tia L. Smith-Cooper is scrutinizing the current (in 2002) problem of male rappers objectifying females and women still being content with this fact and continuing to be hip-hop fans. Not only does she attack male rappers, she also attacks female…

Herbert Marcuse published An Essay on Liberation in 1969. Marcuse was a German-born Jewish philosopher and political theorist who fled Germany during World War II and relocated to America. Marcuse was one of the primary theorists of the Frankfurt School and is credited as being one of the founders of Critical Theory. In his essay Marcuse use critical theory to critique the capitalistic society in America and global dominion. The essay is portioned into four main areas which are A Biological…

Ideas and inspirations for kitchens Can you afford to design a stylish home without taking due care to design an equally sumptuous kitchen? Certainly not! Every home needs to have a comfortably designed kitchen which may also double up as a social hub in case you are following an open floor plan. Designing a functional yet chic space may turn out to be slightly trickier than you would like to think. But our ideas and inspirations about modern kitchens, shared regularly through the magazine…

Question 1: 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…