Goodbye Long Tail, Hello Culture Industry: Adorno's Mass Culture in the Internet Age

Theodor W. Adorno, one of the twentieth-century’s most influential philosophers, outlined a substantive critique of the ‘mass culture’ developing since the Industrial Revolution. Along with other thinkers of a broadly Marxist mindset, known as the 'Frankfurt school’, he worked on the development of critical theory. The critique of 'mass culture’ is certainly the most famous remnant of Adorno’s addition to the group, thought arguably the philosophically weakest. This essay will discuss the application of Adorno’s critique in this young century, and conclude that, despite difficulties of translation, the fundamental core of the theory is still as useful today as it was sixty-five years ago.

What did the critique of mass culture consist of? Adorno took a dialectic look at history, very much in the tradition of Hegel and Marx. From Hegel he removed the 'Geist’, and from Marx the positive belief in future revolution, but there is clearly a substantial philosophical debt owed to both thinkers. The technological leaps of the Industrial Revolutions, though broadly welcomed by Marx as a step towards a Communist paradise, were more troublesome for Adorno. One of the dominant figures of German philosophy, Immanuel Kant, had believed that art could be valued by appearnce below, in a timeless manner. For Adorno, such thoughts are entirely mistaken. Kantian aesthetics ignore the conditions of art’s environment, from the historical era of its production to the socially conditioned intent of the artist. With such details ignored, a viewer cannot hope to understand the essence of the work. Furthermore, as the principles of taste are not lodged in our senses on an a priori basis, the idea of timeless aesthetics is a nonsense.

He believed that, for all of recorded history until the mid 18th century, art had been divided into 'high’ and 'low’ camps. These would respectively challenge and compliment our beliefs and values, but collectively represented the last refugee of human spontaneity in a world of increasing order and control. The situation seemed to be improving as the age of patronage gave way to a market in aesthetic goods, allowing every artist the relative freedom enjoyed by Michelangelo or Titian centuries before. They could focus on their art first and economic concerns second, living for 'l'art pour l'art’. These artists would produce art of 'purposiveness without a purpose’, autonomous works of singular creation, fulfilling Adorno’s criteria for art worthy of the name. Also, this was not simply a question of appearance, but of truth itself. He believed that we could find truth-values in art, following the Hegelian 'unfolding of truth’. These social values were paramount, compared to the unimportance of 'pleasure’ or 'usefulness’. The first theatre goers to experience Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex likely left the arena with a less than sunny disposition, but that meant nothing for the artistic value of the project. Indeed, for Adorno it may paradoxically reflect artistic success, as meaningful art must strike at the uncomfortable contradictions at the heart of societal existence. Moving forward in time somewhat, the 18th and 19th centuries signalled the end of the patron system, giving way to the organised and managed dominance of the market, which pervaded culture more deeply than the Medicis could ever dream of. Music was becoming a product, not to be judged in concert, but by the instrumental rationality of the weekly sales chart. With an interest only in rationally judging means rather than ends, the capitalist class could add aesthetics to their ever-expanding empire of the mind.

Clearly, there a number of answers to the question posed. In one sense, it is almost trivially true. Adorno’s critique of mass culture, like much of his work, is riven with notions and examples that were of dubious merit at the time of writing, and entirely disproven by his death. His cultural references are now out of date, and often, such as the famous case of his 'jazz’ critique, logically mangled. However, one can hardly read in his 1938 esssay that 'the star principle has become totalitarian, and not see a clear reference to our modern culture. Rather than take each of Adorno’s claims in turn and apply them individually to the current year, an atomistic use of his philosophy he would almost certainly bemoan, I will attempt to apply his critique to a modern case study, in the hope that it may shine old light on a new problem.

My theory of choice is the 'Long Tail’, popularised in a 2004 magazine article by Chris Anderson, and a subsequent book.  Anderson argues that the best direction for certain current and future business is to sell a wide variety of products in relatively small quantities, rather than relying on a small number of best-sellers. The name is taken from the statistical property which describes the theory, where more objects than expected by a Gaussian distribution are found in the 'tail’ end. 

How does this relates to Adorno’s critique? The 'Long Tail’ theory is an application of existing and emerging technologies to advocate vastly increasing consumer choice, to levels quite literally never seen before. Anderson used the online retailer Amazon as a particular example, who dedicate a great deal of their business to selling books few other retailers would stock. This 'long tail’ of low-interest titles have been far more successful than traditional business models would suggest, possibly inferring that we are undergoing a 'critical shift’ of Adorno’s desire. Imagine the resources of the model adjusted the 'Long Tail’ format, not for online booksellers, but for the entirety of modern culture and art. All artists, no matter how niche their interest, could connect with backers and fans in a global marketplace. This would bring a level of support to artistic endeavour simply not available in previous centuries. The concurrent increase in cultural choice is exactly the opposite of Adorno’s prediction, that the culture industry would enforce masked homogeneity through the 'purposeful integration of its consumers from above’.

Furthermore, this 'Long Tail’ may be leading to the positive benefits of art and media that Walter Benjamin predicted. He argued that culture could educate and politicise the masses, providing an awakening from their docile slumbers. Can we see this happening in the world today? One could well argue that the massive uptake of the internet service 'Twitter’ among opposition supporters in Iran is such a demonstration; showing a technology developed deep within the Internet’s own 'long tail’ enabling social change. Obviously, that is an extreme example, but one can see the positive effects of developing telecommunications in political systems across the globe.

Another effect has been the outsourcing or 'crowdsourcing’ of innovation, becoming a driver of change for the companies to adopt it. Customers, users or partners in particular niches are enfranchised, being allowed to help with or even change their own version of the product in question. This could be seen as the natural acceleration in capitalism that Marx predicted, as the mode of production advances us closer to the point of socialist revolution. If we were living under a 'culture industry’ before, perhaps technology, which took us in, could also lead us out?

Unfortunately, on that point I have to share Adorno’s wide-ranging skepticism. He didn’t believe that there would be a proletariat revolution, as the culture industry would keep people docile and therefore 'wouldn’t experience themselves as a class’. Traditional change would continue as it always had, but critical change, the radical refounding of rational foundations, would not occur. To be sure, the internet and related technologies have revolutionised telecommunications across the globe, but this seems to be a traditional rather than critical development. As radical as recent changes may seem, they do not fundamentally alter the balance of power between bourgeoisie and proletariat, capital and labour, market and individual.

A more pessimistic reading of the 'Long Tail’ concept may be that it offered the possibility of emancipation from the bounds of instrumental rationality, but the existing system adapted quickly enough to negate the revolutionary possibility. In other words, the spontaneous human art possible under the internet age have already been taken under the aegis of the capitalist system. We might see Twitter as a great source of political change, but it in reality the most popular accounts are of artificially-created boybands and film stars. For technology to allow art to be disruptive in the long term, it needs to not only allow an opening, but actively prevent its commoditisation once created.

For example, have the promised benefits of the 'Long tail’ for art, i.e. an increase in choice and support for niches, actually occurred? 1977’s 'Star Wars’ was a massive box office success, often drawing people to view the film multiple times. For many it was their first exposure to a number of new areas, such as relatively sophisticated special effects, costumes, and large changes to the science-fiction genre. It could be expected that, in those 1977 audiences, there were people viewing the film for different reasons, who weren’t particular well served by the film as a whole. Some went for the special effects, some for the storyline, others for the spectacle, etc. Perhaps in our multi-screened world, such blockbusters are unnecessary, as each can view exactly the art desired rather than an adaptation suited for vast audiences. A recent paper  argues that, in fact, our new technologies are pushing our society in the very opposite direction. It seems that the Internet in particular is actually decreasing practical artistic choices, both on the side of supply and demand. This seems entirely unexpected, but I believe some possible explanations can be given. The Internet has made the transfer of information effectively costless, but this has, paradoxically, imposed new costs. With so much choice, people aren’t sure what to watch, so turn to ratings websites, recommendations from friends, etc. These can easily be influenced, sometimes overtly, by the culture industry, to push people towards consuming the 'right’ products. Some of the most popular pages on Amazon are the lists of best-selling products, which allow others to shop for products the market has deemed most valuable. Of course, this was exactly the delegation of taste to the capitalist process that Adorno was viewing and predicting, played out on a greater stage. Even with the multitude of choices now available, the 'tail’ is shortening year by year. We have more television channels than ever before, but the most popular shows also command their best ever percentage of viewers. Independent cinema has done reasonably well over the past few years, but the worldwide box office record had just been broken by a film critically considered to be a C-grade vehicle for A-grade special effects. Despite cries of anguish over piracy, the music industry pays its main stars higher and higher amounts, as only they can command the necessary fan support. It seems clear that a move away from the mainstream is just not on the foreseeable horizon.

Adorno argued that the future would hold further management and control in an 'administered world’, similar to the 'iron cage’ of Weber’s work. It seems that, unfortunately, the Internet will not be used to unlock the value of the 'long tail’ and the artistic freedom within, but simply to push us further into the 'hits’, to capitalism’s advantage but aesthetics’ demise.