American Culture: An Industry

“The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry…the more completely its (films) techniques duplicate empirical objects, the more easily it creates the illusion that the world outside is a seamless extension of the one which has been reveled in the cinema”(45) - Adorno and Horkhemier

Culture can be defined as the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement, human tradition, and in biological terms, the cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc., in an artificial medium containing nutrients. There are specific formations within every culture. This year we have discussed  how these different forms of culture and media shape identify and heavily effect us as human beings. 

What is American culture and how does it affect us? 

Adorno and Horkheimer are concerned about the deception involved within a culture industry. The most frightening part about this is that their work foreshadowed what we have today: an American Culture Industry. What we watch, read, and hear today change how we view the world and alters the way in which we live. 

We all know how heavily the Kardashians influence social media and reality television. In 2015 the youngest, Kylie, was ambushed by the media over her shockingly excessive augmentation surgeries. I mean, her lips are just HUGE. A year and a half later she created a "Lip Kit Empire". She earned 28 million dollars on lip merchandise and broke Google when she released her first kits. How? Everyone knows the severity of how fake her lips are? The constant photos shedding light on her "amazing" lips via social media, and being told that "you too could have lips like these" caused millions of young girls and women to fight online in the hopes of purchasing a kit and getting those lips. The truth is that you too would have to get surgery to make your lips appear the same way. Yet our consumer driven culture led people around the globe to pay Kylie $28 million dollars merely because she had multiple lip surgeries and convinced the world that they didn't have to get surgery to look like her....just buy her kit! How could that possibly happen? Well.....“The defrauded masses today cling to the myth of success still more ardently than the successful”(50)