AD603 Critical Theory

Here’s the slide show of the presentation on Nov.24th 

regarding Eurocentrism and problems occurred by that hegemony.

watch?v=YkIw3I2qeyU

Consumer of the spectacle

When I was asked to think of something related to ‘spectacle’, I thought of Mother Nature. For instance, the feeling when I am surrounded by great scenery at the top of a mountain. At the same time, the movie ‘Out of Africa’ by Sydney Pollack reminded me of the word.’ Yes, it is a movie with spectacular scenes of Africa that I could experience in my place . This movie was based on a real story of Danish noblewoman with her struggles in Kenya from 1913 to 1931. It was so impressive with great scenes and music. Furthermore, the fact that it had a sort of ‘reality’ in its background made me have a fantasy with life in Africa. It surely is tough to survive in Africa - wild nature but I wanted to travel around Africa no matter what actually it is like.

During reading Debord, the meaning of spectacle was almost manipulated ‘pseudo-something.’ This seems quite different from the word of reality. But what is reality in this society? Can I believe everything on TV news?

Nowadays many TV channels have ‘reality’ show, which means it shows a real life of someone. I think it is because people are bored with programs that seemed ‘made by script writers’ and it is far from the commons’ life and thought.  TV Producers moved its way from well-arranged show to reality show, a pseudo-reality. For example, celebrity A visits celebrity B’s house and have casual talk and ask questions about things around them. In this situation, A pretends to be a normal person in public and wants to know about B. Programs like this create certain characters with celebrities in a certain situation for reality and it is also made and arranged by someone for reality.

The spectacle is sold to the mass, which is re-named as precious ‘consumer’ of the commodity, under the name of leisure and entertainment for the rest of time after working. The mass spend their time and money to enjoy provided cultural contents just like spectators purchase tickets, popcorn, and other service in a movie theater. People feel isolated and retarded if they do not have today’s updated information to share with others. They get such a peer pressure, for face-saving ways.

TV dramas and shows contain everyday life of various characters. Starring celebrities show their clothes, handbags, and streamlined cars under the sponsorship of certain brands fit to their characters. This visual situation affects people to have desire to get the same things of a certain character, usually who in a nice and high society or peculiar or pretty and so on. By bearing resemblance to such characters with brand bags and clothes, the mass feel that they become the same character which they just watched. 

The same shoes and accessories… the day after the drama is broadcasted, the department store is busy with stocking this cash-cow goods. They struggles again to sponsor another productive dramas in a particular time.

Though it is rare and expensive, people want to achieve the goal of getting that bag and be proud of being the first to know how to get these products quickly. Through this, people on the street want to become the only one to have that special thing but soon almost everybody has that bag. 

“The spectacle is the modern complement of money: a representation o the commodity world as a whole which serves as a general equivalent for what the entire society can be and can do.” (p.24)

Street ads, department stores,cafes… all of these use visuals to make culture of consumers or festivals of consumption. People experience countless images and color on the street which all related to symbolic codes altogether. 

When one’s ostentation meets media that provides spectacles, it generates trend followed by consumers. Again, these media can be a weapon to control the mass which is unpleasant.

Benjamin regards mass-culture as progressive while Adorno criticizes it. To flip a mass culture was a challenge after reading Adorno. I felt that Benjamin was like less-critical thinker or positive critical thinker as his writing was descriptive and comparative rather than offensive to certain theory or opinion.Though there were many sections to define and analyze, my eyes focused on  “aura-uniqueness” and “destruction of aura.” 

In the ancient days, art served a crucial role as means of religion and also it signified creativity, genius, eternity, and secret and so on. Art was an object of worship or adoration. After Renaissance, art involved in human and secular beauty but it still was an object of admiration. Only at “the place” where art work exist, to be specific, in a cathedral and a museum or in a nobleman’s living room, its quality was valued high. The artwork was talked with the authority and tradition of its owner, too. It was valid only when the time and the place fitted.That is, art was limited by time and place as well as their social level. For the masses, art was just far from themselves and out of sight.

Benjamin says, photograph liberated  art from its limited function with a certain social levels. Differently from the first stage of photograph as portrait, the aura-unique existence in particular place(p.21)- was destructed by its Technological Reproducibility. 

Then, what did the work of art which escaped from aura do for the masses? It gave them democratic opportunities which enables them to approach, own, talk, and share. So the destruction of aura brought pop art. The reproducibility changed the function of art, that means, art became an object of entertainment and no longer an object of worship.

In this sense, Benjamin also mentioned film that could accommodate the masses at the same time. Basically it was a social function of film. The masses could enjoy this entertainment which films gave through mobilizing tactile and auditory sense as well as optical sense. 

Benjamin pointed that politics is the fundamental of the practice of art. He strongly insisted the forfeit of aura with regarding the films of Nazism and fascism because those films agitated and restricted the masses. He opposed to the politicized art that hid political violence and did not solve the core problems of conflict and possession and uncritically mobilized and agitated. Simply he wanted art to be familiar to the masses.

Besides Benjamin’s notion, here I want to add more about aura. I think that the aura also comes from the copies of the original, for example, some people could decide to be a painter after they were inspired by printed pictures of Van Gogh. Also Benjamin can say that not all original art works always have aura with them. Aesthetic composition takes an crucial role though he said concentration of mind is important. I guess that is why Greeks applied the golden rule to Venus. All in all, it is difficult to carry out   cognition very well.

Also I think aura is something that is positive, not-broken and should not be broken. The mystic side of aura could be used for politics, or fascism, it was exactly applied to Germany, but it is not always like that situation. In addition, I think art cannot be completely combined with politics though art had political power.

Here are 2 photograph-like works of Hyunggu Kang in the exhibition titled “Gaze”

Experience the aura!

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The term “Culture Industry” was so strong and I was confused with the definition of “Mass culture.” It seemed that Adorno wanted to focus on negative effects of mass culture and needed to create a new term. “Thus, the expression “industry” is not to be taken literally. It refers to the standardization of the thing itself” (p.14)

Aesthetic Theory was, for me, a basis of Adorno’s view on art to come over to Culture Industry Reconsidered by Theodore Adorno. Also thank to The Culture Studies Reader on the blog, I could sketch  Adorno’s notion before I grabbed the latter reading. 

When I encountered these readings,I could think of our society in the middle of  severe mass-media stream. With this stream, Adorno is pessimistic with mass-culture because of its controlled uniformity or standardization. It seems that we are pleased to have so many choices around us, like Baskin Robbins, but the truth is, we are affected and controlled by certain power. Choices that we are happy with are the result of accumulation through repetition and replacement.

“The masses are not primary, but secondary, they are an object of calculation; an appendage of the machinery. The customer is not king, as the culture industry would like to have us believe, not its subject but its object.” (p.12)

“The masses are not the measure but the ideology of the culture industry, even though the culture industry itself could scarcely exist without adapting to the masses.”(p.12)

When I was working in a fashion company, I felt weird with the meaning of “trend.”Trend is defined as “a general direction in which something is developing or changing.”  I understood trend as a present tense not in future tense. That was what I know of. But in reality, I felt that trend was operated. The next season’s “trend” was determined about 1 year in advance before they design with specific style. It was because we needed to “plan.”  In this sense,  the leading fashion organization or a certain power from so-called the Mecca of the fashion or whatever suggested to use specific styles, colors, and fabrics as a part of “expected trend.” They also had preview show to cover that trend and sold that information to companies. Though it was presented with analysis of economic/ political situation of the world as its background contents, still it was rather subjective.Adorno is right here and say, “way to go!”

Everyday I am exposed to countless media such as the Internet ,television and radio, as well as all kinds of newspapers and magazines.Are these media consist of me or individual or my things consists of the media? 

Also sometimes I feel like I am in a world controlled by someone.In this sense, Truman show is no longer a mere movie and it reflects our everyday life which is controlled by someone or something. Imagine this someone chuckles at us!

Here is the link “RETHINK Mass Media-Rethink Capitalism” to taste a bit of Chomsky’s.

From Noam Chomsky and the media. 2004. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOsBZPnmoQA

In the three kinds of readings, I could see the development of Marxism and its expanded version of Critical Theory of Frankfurt school. Critical Theory could be titled as “the renaissance of Marxism” because the philosophers associated Marxism with psychological and sociological aspects. Here I write what I figured out with Marxism and Critical Theory and their relation to each other though sometimes difficult and unfamiliar terms blocked my reading.

In Marx for Beginners, the ceaseless struggle and challenge of working class is the base of its theory.Marxism explains the movement of society and the following role of the working class in that change. Proletariat, the working class is described as who makes products, has no material interest, and a scapegoat of system that is studded with adverse privileges of “bourgeois(the boss, capitalist and the rich man)” and distinctions. So the emancipation from this hereditary proportion becomes the main goal for this class. Each evolutionary status of society-Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism-has improved and created productive forces(technique, science, industry, etc.). However, if the system does not catch and satisfy the needs of these forces, the society would face opposition and revolution. With this regard, Marx can explain the contradictions of Capitalism which resulted in economic and social depression and finally Socialism, everyone has equal opportunity to benefit from a nation’s wealth(,  is newer and fairer system(p.133) The ideas of Marxism have been enriched by the working class and these ideas are used as the basis of the Labor Movement of today but it sometimes goes to extremism or radicalism with distorted or profit-seeking standpoint of a certain group.  

During reading Introduction to Critical Theory and Critical Theory-Selected Essays, the disposition of Frankfurt school was revealed. Critical Theory was derived from the philosophers’ desire to relieve the poverty of their country when Fascism became prominent in 1920s~1940s like Marx began to think of his own economic problems at the very beginning. The progress of Capitalism resulted in dehumanization and authoritarianism and they worried about the future of their society. Though Marx provided the idea of the theory, it is clearly distinguished in the point that  it is critical to the extent that it seeks human emancipation, ” to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them(Horkheimer)” At this point, ideologies (that prevents penetration into social relation and structure, that itself is to control the masses, and that educates the mass to think the society’s current system is the best, these ideologies cause monopoly and oligopoly) are included in “circumstances”.  

In light of the practical goal of identifying and overcoming all the circumstances that limit human freedom, the goal could be reached only by interdisciplinary study that includes psychological, cultural, and social dimensions, as well as institutional forms of rule. Human beings are producers of their historical form of life and it is society’s subject-object (p.22). In this sense, a capitalist society could be transformed only by becoming more democratic  to make all conditions are under control of “human beings” depend on mutual agreement.The focus on democracy as the location for cooperative, practical and transformative activity continues today in the work of Habermas, as does the attempt to determine the nature and limits of “real  democracy” in complex, pluralistic, and globalizing societies.

As a working class and a consumer of a society of globalization, in some ways, I tend to be controlled by certain power. This can be under the name of trend which is determined by some power-holders. In a view of Critical Theory, our creative and sur-realistic pursuit can be demolished by this kind of ideology. As an artist and an independent creature, we need to build our own pursuit  based on self-understanding for liberated satisfaction. To be the same does not mean the real globalization. Below link generates the question, “what is the globalization?”

http://www.geographyalltheway.com/ib_geography/ib_globalization/imagesetc/globalization.jpg