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/lit/ - Literature

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20551051 No.20551051 [Reply] [Original]

Is Adorno right about popular culture? Are guilty pleasures bad?

>> No.20551056

I love Jews I love the CIA I hate my parents I hate authoritarians.

>> No.20551097

>>20551051
No. Adorno is demiurge

>> No.20551108
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20551108

>> No.20551202

>>20551097
I used to think of the whole frankfurt school as one and the same neo-Marxist tripe, but I've come to the conclusion Adorno and Horkheimer are actually pretty alright. Eclipse of Reason is a classic, and very relevant to our times, not in the least part in how it applies to the apologia you see surrounding left-wing political violence today.

Markuse and Fromm are definitely satanic commie fuckers though, same for Benjamin.

>> No.20551259

>>20551202
Fromm isn’t even that bad

>> No.20551267

>>20551202
Benjamin is the basedest of them all

>> No.20551268

>>20551108
What a psycho effeminate jew
> Oxford one can differentiate between two kinds of students: the “tough guys” [in English in original] and the intellectuals; the latter are equated almost without further ado to those who are effeminate. There is a great deal of evidence that the ruling class polarizes itself according to these extremes on the road to dictatorship. Such disintegration is the secret of integration, of happiness of unity in the absence of happiness. In the end the “tough guys” [in English in original] are the ones who are really effeminate, who require the weaklings as their victims, in order not to admit that they are like them. Totality and homosexuality belong together. While the subject falls apart, it negates everything which is not of its own kind. The opposites of the strong man and the compliant youth fuse into a social order, which unreservedly asserts the masculine principle of domination. By making everyone, without exception – even presumed subjects – into its objects, it recoils into total passivity, virtually into what is feminine.

>> No.20551289
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20551289

It’s not a matter of good or bad, pop culture simply exists for the middle brow regardless of who’s making it. The real question is who controls it—right now the people that do need to be executed. Worrying about censorship is for faggots, we should be worrying about how to take control of culture. Pop culture is only bad for intellectuals, high culture has been destroyed in the west due to our empires ending so pop culture is what’s left and the right people need to control it.

>> No.20551326

>>20551268
There’s nothing wrong with this
>when strong men are pressured to subservience to prove their manhood, they become effeminate bugmen and the very thing they hated
Or
>commie punks decided that a strong social order could bring about the progressive utopia better than anarchism, which over the past decade turned them into effeminate bugmen and the very thing they hated

>> No.20551347

>>20551051
You absolute mongoloid.
>guilty pleasures
Go fuck yourself and resume eating the trash the culture industry is feeding you.
>popular culture
It may astound your amerilard mind, but commercialized culture (proud american invention) and popular culture (timeless) are not the same. It may look the same to you because all you consume is the mental refuse the culture industry churns out.
You deserve it, actually.

>> No.20551354

>>20551259
Fromm still believed in "we did it lads, we reached the end of history, now everyone else just needs to catch up, by force if necessary"-style scientific socialism in the 1960s, which in itself is beneath contempt. And the weird psychoanalytic twist he tried to put on it didn't make it any better.

>> No.20551359

>>20551268
>>20551108
kek why is it always a Jew?

>> No.20551367

>>20551359
>kek why is it always a Jew?
because - unlike white people - jews are intelligent.

>> No.20551375
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20551375

>>20551359
high functioning schizophrenia is a hell of a thing

>> No.20551397

>>20551326
Nah, its just him seething
>The archetype for this is the good looking man in a smoking jacket, who enters his bachelor’s pad alone one late evening, turns on the indirect lighting, and pours a whisky-soda: the carefully recorded fizzing of the mineral water says what the arrogant mouth does not; that he despises whatever does not smell of smoke, leather and shaving cream – above all, women, and for that very reason they swarm all over him. For him, the pinnacle of human relations is the club, the site of a respect founded on a considerate inconsiderateness. The joys of such men, or on the contrary of their models, which hardly anyone alive really matches, for human beings are always better than their culture, have altogether something of the latent act of violence. By all appearances, this is threatened to others, though he has long since had no need to do so, sprawled on his easy chair. In truth it is past violence against himself. If all pleasure sublates earlier displeasure [Unlust], then here displeasure is raised – as pride in bearing it – unmediated, untransformed, stereotypically into pleasure: unlike wine, every glass of whiskey, every puff on the cigar still recalls the reluctance, which it must have cost the organism, to accustom itself to such powerful stimuli
I-im the real manly man!

>> No.20551514
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20551514

>>20551397
>The archetype for this is the good looking man in a smoking jacket, who enters his bachelor’s pad alone one late evening, turns on the indirect lighting, and pours a whisky-soda: the carefully recorded fizzing of the mineral water says what the arrogant mouth does not; that he despises whatever does not smell of smoke, leather and shaving cream – above all, women,
holy fuck my sides
is this meant to be funny? honest to god it reads like a weird inversion of Eliot Rodger's My Twisted World but from some closeted academia incel's perspective

post more anon

>> No.20551630

>>20551514
I'm in too good of a mood to look for any funny tidbits but look up his essay "tough baby"

>> No.20551687

No, he just spews bullshit. Even Lacan is more sensible than him

>> No.20551713

>>20551051
yes, the consequences of human culture being produced by hegemonic industries owned exclusively by multinationals have been catastrophic. cultures which have thrived for thousands of years were indiscriminately and relentlessly snuffed out in the 20th century. now you probably don't even have the same accent your grandparents had, and all to make some shareholders you've never met a quick buck

>> No.20551803

>>20551268
lmao this is an exact portrait of the rural LARPers

>> No.20552801

>>20551051
Was he right when he said in 1937 that fascists will use jazz as marching music?
This man doesn't know what he is talking about.

>> No.20552810

>>20552801
That happened though.

>> No.20552830

>>20551202
Benjamin is the best. I know he got high on Marx, Goethe and Judaism, but this made him even better.

>> No.20552842

>>20551202
It's funny how the author of the Authoritarian Personality became this "bruh he's ackshully kinda based" figure among right wingers.

>> No.20552845

>>20551051
even as a marxist, idk don't really care about his take
>>20551108
this, again, am marxist, but yeah.

>> No.20553142

>>20552845
You're 80 years too late to the party if you're unironically a marxist

>> No.20553160

>>20551202
based for the most part, but fromm and benjamin are okay. marcuse is rotting in hell and was an unironic cia plant; houellebecq hates him also iirc.

>> No.20553380

>>20553142
Half this board is 2000 years late to the party so I'm fine.

>> No.20553438

>>20553380
I mean, I agree that it's just as sad if you're a tradlarping catholic in this day and age, but christians at least have 2000 years of venerable tradition to back up the claim that their ideology mostly isn't genocidal.

>> No.20553462

>>20553438
Cuck claim tho.

>> No.20553504

>>20553462
I don't advocate being delusional, but people who do go for that sort of thing are better off picking a tried-and-tested coping mechanism.

>> No.20553674

>>20551108
a sub3

>> No.20553683

>>20552845
>am marxist
You should kill yourself

>> No.20554145

>>20551051
There is no such thing as popular culture. There is no such thing as high or low culture. There is only culture and the falsehood is in believing you get to choose it.
If you feel guilt for engaging in a culture what it means is that it was never really yours.

>> No.20554495

>>20551267
The guy who loved the Weimar republic?

>> No.20554830

>>20551268
Feminine jews like him dont hate chad because chad is a bully, the bully is usually the fat kid or the ugly kid from a disfunctional family, they think chad bullies them, because he is strong and confident. Period. This they see as bullying.

>> No.20556225

>>20551051
Did Adorno ever get any quality pussy?

>> No.20556244

>>20551268
>it's actually gay to get pussy

>> No.20556245

>good tier
Adorno
>meh tier
Horkheimer
Benjamin
Habermas
Honneth
Fromm

>shit tier
Marcuse

>literally kys if you like him tier
Brecht

>> No.20556260

>>20556245
>Brecht
Jim Morrison liked him

>> No.20556264

Fromm was based and courageous

>> No.20556270

>>20556260
Not surprising

>> No.20556278

>>20556264
He was lovepilled too

>> No.20556315

>>20552830
Ideology aside he was above all an excellent writer, definitely compared to the others.

>> No.20556322

>>20553504
All societies are built around some foundation. But reality is that life is just a struggle for existence and social relations precede material conditions.

>> No.20556341

>>20552842
Ikr? Overintellectualization has gone too far. I think we should’ve stopped at “Marx had some good points”, desu. Next you’ll have guys trying to reinstate Trotsky and the neocons as based defenders of Evropa.

>> No.20556362

adorno had great taste and was a pretty decent composer at that
https://youtu.be/wzqKG47V9bY

>> No.20556382

>>20551051
>Is Adorno right about popular culture?
no

>> No.20556383

>>20552842
>Authoritarian Personality
That book was evidently written with a lot of seethe and anger so I guess it's easy to dismiss. It did do one good thing, it made me realize that many leftists are legitimately terrified at the thought of being "dominated" by a buff ubermasculine homofascist. Or that a lot of them are ironically homophobic, atleast to masculine homos, which was very visible among the soviet elite.

>> No.20556387

>>20551108
https://youtu.be/QDyC448swa4

>> No.20556404

>>20556387
Sociology was a mistake.

>> No.20556426

>>20551051
>Are guilty pleasures bad?
Why?

>> No.20556438

>>20556383
That "fear" is classic neurotic homolust

>> No.20556452

>>20556438
The soviet defense against germany was actually just the Spirit repressing itself...
just kidding, Hegel was a retard

>> No.20556455

>>20551051
>Adorno
Is a Jew. Enough said.

>> No.20556491

>>20556455
Worse, he's a liberal
>inb4 nuh-uh because brlbrlbrlbrlbrlbloo

>> No.20556509

>>20556455
based retard

>> No.20556526

I haven't read him outside of his inane meme quote about jazz. Calling Pop media "guilty pleasure" is a sure sign of a retard.
Plenty of records with artistic greatness. If you got filtered because of some trap song on the radio you didn't like, that just means you're an idiot.

>> No.20556558

>>20556383
Lipset rightly pointed out to Adorno that you could very well turn that book against some of his colleagues, or friends, and it would ring true just the same.

Anyway, it's odd to me that people think ambiguous profiles can't work in multiple directions.

>> No.20556594

move Habermas up one, and Fromm down one

>> No.20556751

>>20556594
Why?

>> No.20556898

>>20556225
Gretel wasn’t that bad looking desu

>> No.20557034

>>20551051
Adorno's concern wasn't with popular culture as much as it is with the mass culture. That is an important distinction though much more difficult to mistake in Adorno's time. Here are some interesting quotes from the essay (read it):

>the new bungalows on the outskirts, [...], sing the praises of technical progress while inviting their users to throw them away after short use like tin cans. But the town-planning projects, which are supposed to perpetuate individuals as autonomous units in hygienic small apartments, subjugate them only more completely to their adversary, the total power of capital.
>All mass culture under monopoly is identical. [...] Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce.
>Any trace of spontaneity... is steered and absorbed into a selection of specializations by talent-spotters [...]. The talents belong to the operation long before they are put on show [...].
>Everyone is supposed to behave spontaneously according to a "level" determined by indices and to select the category of mass product manufactured for the type.
>The standardized forms, it is claimed, were originally derived from the needs of consumers [...] In reality, a cycle of manipulation and retroactive need is unifying the system ever more tightly. What is not mentioned is that the basis on which technology is gaining power over society is the power of those whose economic position in society is strongest.
>To impress the omnipotence of capital on... job candidates as the power of their true master is the purpose of all films, regardless of the plot selected by production directors.

The last one is especially important. Mass culture perpetuates the idea that the market can provide for all needs (from biological to spiritual). This led Marcuse to the idea of man being flattened into "one dimensional man".

>> No.20557039

>>20557034
which is funny considering that's what the market wants to do now and leftards defend it for some godforsaken reason.

>> No.20557045

>>20556751
Habermas is really good with communication theory. Fromm is just the most Freudian of Frankfurters and should be disregarded for that alone.

>> No.20557073

>>20554495
>>20551267
Benjamin is based if you read his descriptions of fascism and unironically see it as a good thing

>> No.20557081

>>20556383
And where can I find these buff sexy ubermasculine homofascists?

>> No.20557086

>>20557073
still need to peruse him and see if he's ok

>> No.20557099

>>20557039
Yeah, that's the great irony of the contemporary left. The corresponding irony of the right is that they react with disgust at the mention of the Frankfurt School writers like Adorno and then restate Frankfurt School arguments, often much less eloquently, in justification. It's only their continued marriage to capitalism that prevents them from seeing that, which is a shame; you don't have to be a Marxist to understand that capitalism has been a major source of the erosion and corruption of the social institutions the right wishes to preserve.

>>20557045
>>20556751
For me Habermas is helpful more as a critic than anything else (fitting for a Frankfurt Schooler). See his correspondence with Rawls, especially as interpreted by whoever has a book on that subject. Habermas was one of the first (and still one of the only) to see and expose the logical conclusion of the Rawlsian project for what it is: deeply undemocratic. It is very disconcerting that Rawls is still held in as high regard as he is academically and even juridically.

>> No.20557121

>>20557086
He's a real slimeball who basically makes the argument that leftists have to politicize every facet of society or they risk being out-competed by the allure of fascism, which allows the masses to express themselves as the expense of owning the means of production. If you go into reading him as anything besides an unrepentant Marxist you'll find his conception of fascism to be superior to his conception of Marxism.

>> No.20557156

>>20552842
I think a lot of your confusion about 'the right' appropriating/finding value in certain frankfurt texts just comes down to conflating fascism, traditionalism and liberalism, probably because from a commie perspective it's all basically treated as different forms taken by the logic of capitalism. Have you considered that maybe the basic premise of your analysis is just wrong and these groups have completely different and fundamentally opposed value structures, and that liberalism in particular is much more compatible with the genuinely post-communist frankfurt texts (and postmodern thought as well, for that matter) than leftism ever has been?

>> No.20557179

>>20557121
I read the work of art in the age of its mechanical reproduction a few years back and the thesis is literally "the fascists are trying to aestheticize politics and it's horrible, so anyway, here's my idea on how we should politicize all of art to achieve socialism." It's almost funny how blatantly the text describes two sides of the same coin and then doubles down on "but it's good and necessary when we do it".

>> No.20557187

>>20556455
Go back to /pol/.

>> No.20557190

>>20557099
What is the essence of Habermas' critique of Rawls?

>> No.20557520

>>20557190
I can't do it justice in such a short space. Very poorly, Habermas takes issue with the legitimacy of the Rawlsian state. In Political Liberalism Rawls spends an inordinate amount of space expounding upon the constitutional convention that sets the Rawlsian state into motion. He has extremely specific ideas about what is appropriate and inappropriate. Habermas notes that democracy proper plays a very minute, almost secondary, role in government (past the ratification of the Rawlsian constitution) to Rawls; it is restricted to issues of little to no significance and is basically delegated the task of enacting what are only sporadic and virtually coincidental overlaps of opinion into law. This is because Rawls restricts any comprehensive doctrines (which Rawls notably states his theory of justice is not) which attempt to force their will on others in any way other than mere argumentation/persuasion (which can never rise past that level): anything else does not fit the "reasonable" clause of the "reasonable pluralism" that Rawls allows for. The exception is where there is an overlapping consensus, something each and every comprehensive doctrine can agree on, in other words Rawls' justice as fairness.

The issue for Habermas then comes down to whether or not Rawls' constitution is ratifiable or alterable once ratified by a democratic constituency. Rawls often stops one step short (and probably occasionally does not stop, but I haven't read the book in too long to be sure) of conflating the real ratification of his constitution with its a-priori ratification by representatives of the comprehensive doctrines that remain behind the veil of ignorance in the original position. In any case, once we've reached this point, is it really clear that Rawls' constitution would be as popular (read: universally accepted via overlapping consensus) as he states? Is this an indicator that our pluralism is not reasonable (and if so, can we expect any real pluralism to be as reasonable as Rawls necessitates)? Or is it an indicator that his justice as fairness is a comprehensive doctrine the same as any other, and in reality the original position behind the veil of ignorance is not as universal a solution as Rawls would have?

These are the questions that lead from Habermas' critique, which specifically plays to the role of democracy and legitimacy in the Rawlsian project; to Habermas, Rawls seems just one more universalist political theorist who has found "the answer".

>> No.20557540
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20557540

>>20557190
But seriously get the Finlayson book. My rambling distillation is colored by my hatred of Rawls (or at least of his continued deification) and Finlayson covers the correspondence fairly and variously, providing alternative interpretations and their consequences, both on Rawls and Habermas. It's a great book.

>> No.20557562

>>20557520
>>20557540
Thanks for the effortpost and attempt at encapsulating it anon, I have just enough knowledge of Habermas and Rawls to sorta kinda follow. Enough to check out the book at least. Have you ever read some of Habermas' other engagements like the Habermas Gadamer debate or Habermas Foucault debate?

Am I wrong in interpreting Rawls as basically pulling a Joseph de Maistre move, that whole line about the best constitution being the one already established and agreed upon tacitly by all, except with negative liberty / liberalism? Almost like a Straussian

>> No.20557615

>>20557562
No problem anon. Unfortunately I haven't read anything on his other engagements (or anything from Gadamer or very much at all from Foucault). I can't lie about my motivation in finding the debate and reading up on Habermas though either; I was assigned Rawls in a course and it never sat well with me though for the longest time I had a very hard time saying why exactly. For all his faults I find Habermas a far more practical writer.

And I'd say yeah, you almost have it there. Along that line, multiple times in Political Liberalism Rawls talks about the selection of a just constitution from among many just constitutions, the eventual choice being the one that most appropriately corresponds with the public reason as reasoned through the overlapping consensus. This is strange for me (and either Habermas or one of the reviewers of the book point it out as well). It is very difficult for me to believe that these competing constitutions would be very different at all; Rawls has already basically elaborated on what the constitution should look like for most of the 400 pages of the book.

>> No.20558213

>>20556362
This shit sounds disgusting

>> No.20558975

>>20551056
Fpbp