A positively notorious essay, for many reasons. In truth, it is hardly an essay or a philosophical tract, it is much rather a venomous polemic of the type that only a "forever lagging" (ewig gestrig) type of thinker could produce.
As it often is with my reviews, it is precisely this shortcoming which gives it enough character to drudge through the inflated, self assured, dusty and pretentious prose, and thus makes the book enjoyable.
Kulturindustrie Is full of vitriol and elitism, that is it's essence. So much so that virtually all philosophical positions become secondary to the highly emotional and personal critique of Adorno.
Ironically his own text is "syncopated" in the exact same way as the jazz music that draws his ire: Many of this essay's most profound thoughts are only implied, hidden or buried, while it's least interesting observations and arguments are underlined.
What is in my opinion the essays central thesis is never actually articulated fully. This might be in part s result of cold war politics - supposedly much of the Marxist rhetoric was later toned down as the Frankfurt school opportunists pivoted towards rejecting all AES states. Nevertheless, I believe this following idea to implicitly permeate all of the document:
The dominant mode of production will necessarily write itself into every product of the culture industry - moreso to the degree that more individuals work on it, moreso to the degree that art increasingly is treated as a technical challenge.
It will write itself into fiction using artists, executives, actors and editors as its agents. This idea already envelops the passification on both audience and creators that Adorno and Horkheimer attest to.
The "essay" receives its charm from the incredible datedness and specificity of its critique - a lot of zhe phenomena the authors bring up will not be familiar to anyone borne in the last 40 years.
Yet with everything in the culture industry being a copy of a copy, a high order simulacrum, it is the very specificity of their object which injects a universality to their critique.
It is precisely their critique being rooted in a highly specific period of historical development which opens up sheer infinite parallels - the "newspaper boys" fantasizing about becoming professional cyclists mirror our current hustle culture, the racist tropes of white Hollywood classics remind us of the bizarre Jingoism still present in much of Hollywood.
And while Adornos tireless crusade against jazz music appears mostly as the clueless rantings of an old man left behind by the newly emerging post-war society, they do retain some relevancy: Especially when Adorno correctly notices that in the culture industry, even the negation, even the deviation from the standard, has itself become part of the standard.
Syncopation itself is a rejection of classical theories in musicology, but the dissonance, the differance within the culture industry is itself based on endless means testing and control grouping. Any deviation of the norm is only tolerated if it fits even more snugly in the paradigm that the norm itself.
Similar to how syncopation became a standard in free jazz, and thus unpredictability became predictable, deviation from the norms of the culture industry becomes an integral part of the culture industry. This is also mirrored today.
The Disney starlette needs a counterpart: the supposedly edgy, unique, risque and mysterious "indie" singer: Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish are contemporary examples, the Sex Pistols are an older one. Ironically these personas are often even more manufactured than said Disney Girls.
Entire "countercultural" industries are stamped out of the ground, like the Emo Boom of the 90s, commercializing an originally local and vaguely progressive and anti capitalist scene. millions dollar pictures are sold as and presented in festivals as "indie".
These and other trends were correctly identified and virulently critiqued by Adorno and Horkheimer. Yet their critique is highly idealist, it almost always deals in absolutes, or escalates. Everything constantly turns into its own inversion. Grand liberties are taken, stylistically already anticipating Zizek and his constant turning things on their head.
It is because of this that their critique suffers, and it is for the complete and utter lack of any actionable alternatives or even constructive criticism that their entire project falls short. At least the Situationists had a counter-strategy, a unique approach.
Adorno and Horkheimer on the other hand mirror the elitist critique of feudal nobility, instead of advancing to become the avant garde of the proletariat. One wonders who they even adressed their critique to - the answer is that they are both authors and recipients; the later Frankfurt school writes for the Frankfurt school.
If one wants a critique of art and the culture industry from a marxist point of view, Walter Benjamin is better in virtually every measure except vitriol.