THEME 2 - Prereflection

1.

The enlightenment, also called the age of enlightenment, is a historical period beginning in the late 17th century in Europe continuing through the 18th century. The period is characterized by dramatic revolutions that changed the medieval worldview into a more modern western world. The revolutions were in science, philosophy and especially politics and society, because the enlightenment is said to culminate in the French Revolution in the late 18th century. In the French Revolution the traditional hierarchical orders, such as the royal family and the Catholic Church, were destroyed and replaced by new orders that were originated from the thoughts of the Enlightenment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment

2.

The Enlightenment changed the way of explaining the world, from believing in myth and religions to rather focus on science and knowledge.

In the book they write: “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology”, which is quite a paradox.  By this they mean that the myth and the Enlightenment are not incompatible opposites of each other, but that both are qualities of life. The Enlightenment in its self is a myth, because science and knowledge is something that we are told believe in after the Enlightenment instead of believe in religion and can therefore also be considered as a myth.

According to the authors the function of the myth is to put things that we cannot explain into words.

3, 4, 5.

The mass culture was, at that time when they wrote this, a pretty new and growing industry. With the concept “culture industry” the authors criticizes the industry behind the new growing culture; the popular culture. It is mass produced standardized culture goods such as books, movies and music for the people. Adorno and Horkheimer’s think that the popular culture is produced to manipulate the consumers into passivity, which is dangerous for the society. They say: ”Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part” and they also states that the needs of the mass audience is not fulfilled, because the masses get what is being offered, not what they want. And that is also what they meant by the notion mass deception; the new ways of consuming and producing culture as a consequence of the new culture industry.

As far as I am concerned the authors never mention the notions old and new media, but I interpret it as the way the media is produced, according to the way it is described in the book. The popular culture, which is produced for the masses and to make money, is what I would consider as the new media. The focus with that type of culture is on the quantity, not the quality, which is the case with older media.

6.

I found the discussions about the culture industry in the chapter  “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” very interesting. Especially at page 96 where they talks about the telephone and a recently introduced media channel:  the radio. They criticize the radio for turning the participants into subjects and equally listeners, without a chance to reply to the radio content, different from the telephone where the point with it is the conversation and the involved are equal to each other. I found this discussion very interesting because it is the opposite of the society and media as it is today, with the Internet that gives everyone a chance to reply and the discuss the media that they have consumed and even to contribute with their own material. Today the consumers of media also are the producer.