He himself being Jewish and openly disclosing his distaste for Jazz (it being a Jewish creation) is indeed an honest remark that should be noted. I myself am a fan of Jazz today but it is different now to then. I guess it would be more avant-garde now and your now popular house/synth music would be the after-glow of leisure, which would be your commercialised form of entertainent. Music should be food for thought instead it is now nothing more than something to be consumed then discarded.
@xfghkhjfsejid Music that provides nothing more than pleasure isn't worthwhile, no? Your use of the word "consumed" suggests that this is the main attraction of pop music. REFUTE
@100FingeredMonkey I really do not understand the argument you were trying to make. But I respectfully will say that consumption means a variety of things: buying/downloading, hearing; yet not listening and maybe also to articulate ones body in a certain way, in certain arenas such as clubs. Finally to move on. I do not believe that is sufficient enough stimuli to cognitively challenge someone, especially if they are tripping on drugs.
@xfghkhjfsejid OK, I see now the more complex understanding of consumption you're using (rather than just the purchase/download). But how do you mean 'cognitively challenge' someone? Does music like that of John Maus not challenge the listener (politically, if not formally)? Also, don't gangsta rap, black metal, etc. challenge conventional/liberal morality?
@100FingeredMonkey Well yes, if you can understand the lyrics in black metal that is haha. Also gangsta rap and black metal aren't really commercial, although they've had their own forms of success. What I said is similar to what Adorno implies; music that challenges an individual’s cognitive, perceptual and conceptual habits. That is, meaningful music is a seed/idea which can manifest and grow in various ways. Most (not all) pop music fails at this, due to other intentions.
I tend to like adorno but his views on music and society where too all-encompassing. He was right about consumerism in cultural structures but he didn't realize that even popular music could be subversive to a degree because consumption is only a tool of the state apparatus, not its aim.
American "intellectuals" love positioning themselves as Marxists and Socialists; it makes them feel less guilty of living in abundance. But the truth is they could not survive under such regimes. Their freedom-at-the-cost-of-soul, hyper-consumption and absolute adherence to a false moral ground makes them unable to acclimate and to see the world in any other way than mono-dimensionally.
Mainstream songs should not be used by you during the act of protest.
Buying such songs only fuels the capitalistic system that you detest.
Adorno was talking about how corporations use culture to gain capital as a means to gain power over people. As such, he thought it was counteractive for people to buy music and use it during the act of protest since they would be fueling the very system they were seeking to disband.
@originalsessions And, of course, the same rules apply when buying his books. Yes, you have to BUY them, he didn't give lectures for free either. Funny that. You would have thought he would have distributed them freely given he was "outside" the "culture industry" eh?
@almanacofsleep Indeed unless one is either an amateur or does not write at all. Adorno is/was just as much a part of that industry as the hundreds of other worthier people he consigned to the aesthetic gas chamber.
When listening to this oily pretentious hypocrite spout on about the "Culture Industry" ask yourself the following question. "How seriously can we take the elitist neo-fascist pronouncements from a PROFESSIONAL academic/failed composer"? Unless he gave his lectures for free and distributed his books likewise, he is just as much a part of the same "industry" as all those worthwhile artists (like Stravinsky) he consigned to the aesthetic gas chamber.
@almanacofsleep Because in his ideal world only music north of Webern would be composed distributed and produced. Every thing else would be consigned to the aesthetic gas chamber. For goodness sake he even agreed with Hitler about jazz.
@almanacofsleep Only in your opinion. Which, to me, means little anyway. He was a Marxist which is a hegelian doctrine. As Schopenhauer points out and as is obvious to anybody who has read the whole Hegelian ouevre, Hegel was a self serving charlatan using dense language to cover up the fact that his whole philosophy is a self gloryfing hymn to the 19th century Prussian state. Hence anybody who builds upon that foundation has clearly a superficial mind anyway. So Adorno is really not worth it.
@almanacofsleep No it is simply a materialist inversion. The idea of utopia being reached through violent conflict that in Hegel refers to civilizations is simply applied to social classes. The idea of history as a rational process is common to both. As it is in Gobineau's racial theory (though he applies it backwards).
@almanacofsleep Ha ha nice come back. Shame you really have no idea what your talking about though isn't it? But then I tend to find that with Adorno freaks anyway so don't feel lonely.
@almanacofsleep And of course, Hegelianism gave birth to both Marxism and Fascism so it is hardly suprising that Adorno agreed with Hitler about Jazz. You clearly are the one with the superficial understanding here. Not me.
@egapnala65@egapnala65 The point here is that mainstream culture cannot stimulate critical thinking in its receivers - which are always anonymous consumers - and not that consumerism needs to be equalled with the devil. If you think that's hypocritical, well, I wouldn't know, because I'm sure you've took the time to read and understand his thought and that this isn't an overly immature and defensive reaction.
@87Julius Adorno cannot stimulate any thinking at all owing to his self imposed usage of over elaborate terminology and elitist outlook. If he was such a critic of the commodification of culture why did he SELL his books?
Ere this I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance!
@gazz12345a Yes it would. Being a right winger doesn't mean you can't attack other right wingers. A neo-fascist or Holocaust denier or what have you would most certainly be opposed to neoconservative funding of Israel. You have not made any real point. So I restate my initial reply: disgruntled right wing twit.
@gazz12345a I did not call you a fascist or a holocaust denier. I called you a disgruntled right wing twit. I have indeed read Marcuse, though he is extremely overrated. This "exchange" is not a debate-- Rather, it was me calling you a cunt and you trying to advertise your ZOG-fearing hokum. Feel free to fuck off at any time.
Otherwise me and the anti-European Jewish cabal I represent are going to come hunt you down and cut your dick off.
I think that "popular music" has expanded to the point where some of it has actually left the popular music arena. Some of what was "popular music" has become "authentic" as Heidegger would put it. The vast majority of it does fit Adorno's description though.
adorno was still a 19th century romantic at his core, and (like every other romantic) failed to understand the 20th century most radical cultural changings.
Adorno's saying a little more than "they control us through culture".
You need to understand the difference between a mythical symbol and an abstraction, and its relatation to utilitarianism and the reduction of people to numbers.
You gotta think about existentialist views of freedom and the limiting factor of style in the art work.
You need to think how science has become an inversion of myth, and how extreme positivism has limited our ability to constantly reinterpret the inanimate world.
And suddenly it's clear why you spout disconnected, meaningless, very bad 'poetry' or whatever it is, rather than arguments or insightful comments: everything you say is psychotic and doesn't make any sense and you are incapable of making sense.
'For the majority it likely is profound'. What am I or anyone else to do with this? It's like you think in psychotic mantra's. Perhaps you should go easy on the Zoloft and you are informed that you are blocked now.
All that pompous verbiage to convey I have no appreciation for truth while providing no argument or counter-proposition whatsoever addressing my statements? You really needn't have bothered...
I totally disagree with Adorno here. And I feel that he is in disagreement with himself.
Aesthetics: art, music etc. in the Frankfurt School, as I understand, has two functions. Firstly, it is a way accuse/confront the existing social framework. Secondly, it should link us up to an image of a better world beyond the now.
The popular folk music in the 60's ( esp. Dylan) is much more powerful than a mere commodity as he explains here. Protest and Freedom are there, intrinsic within the music!
@roostadon Good points, but maybe Dylan (and popuplar music) didn't satisfy Adorno's other criteria you mentioned: an image of a better world. Or as Marx said:..not to interpret the world but to change it.
By the 70's, it'd've been more clear to him that an entire war had been stopped solely by protests of the citizens, and that music had been an important part of the solidarity and dissemination of the protestors' ideas.
I also wonder if he would have expressed the same feeling about a song like "Strange Fruit," or if he dismissed absolutely all politically-powerful songs as mere "entertainment" if they lacked the forms of classical art music.
adorno not a snob?> mon dieu he wrote the book on neo marxist mandarins.... a brahmin thru and thru--- a complete academic..... read brechts critique of the frankfurters- er ist der echt akademiker bonzen zum bittere ended. he had a problem with walter benjamin... benjamin saw clearly and adorno hated him for it. see martin jay's critique of adorno.... mensch, was ist das denn da?
adorno not a snob?> mon dieu he wrote the book on neo marxist mandarins.... a brahmin thru and thru--- a complete academic..... read brechts critique of the frankfurters- er ist der echt akademiker bonzen zum bittere ended. he had a problem with walter benjamin... benjamin saw clearly and adorno hated him for it.
Hey youtube, watchout for Stefan B Wir tanzen, Slut maschine, Sex at the party (piss off) Born to be so porn and dirty trancing. Also look at Love baloon, I am best of Oktoberfest and Pa-Party. All really good songs listen to them.
Hey adorno, what about Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki? What about that? There's been other stuff like that too, like recently On the Transmigration of Souls about 9/11
Adorno war ein narzisstisches, von einer unglaublichen Weltfremdheit geprägtes, eine eigentlich total anachronistische Pseudophilosophie umsichpropagierendes RIESENARSCHLOCH.
There's an interview probably on YouTube from around '65 or so in San Francisco and he's asked if he'll be attending protests and he says no. He then mentions a protest he could envision with people carrying signs with random words on them that have no connection (apparently) with the the other signs. Nonsensical march...
Wonder what Bob Dylan would make of this. Aside from some early songs concerning civil rights for blacks Dylan steered clear away from protesting and has never spoken against the Vietnam War. Or said much directly on politics in terms of having a position for against whatever. (CONTINUED...
I knew it was true when I saw the Ramones on a beer commercial. Thomass Frank is a Frankfurt School guy and he sums it up with the phrase, and book, commodify your dissent. it's tough for artists who have things worth saying because the very form they choose sorrupts the message because it is instantly sellable.
... interposed links, ultimately financed by the public. Such a system must inevitably collapse & I say that is precisely what we're assisting at...
Most crucially, I'd add that this collapse was anticipated by the very people who benefitted most from capitalism all along, people who are using that collapse to edify a new global system.
Destroying economies is just as profitable to them as building them, if not more...
Today, a few massive companies really suffice to replace what's written off.
So why is everybody working? What are they really producing?
The financial crisis represents a collapse of this derivative principle, but it can & should be extrapolated from the strictly financial sphere to the entire structure of the economy, that is today -& the first signs of it were the birth of advertising- based on superfluous "unwealth" and more and more derivative,...
This should really come as no surprise since the money system is PRIVATELY owned & money is printed out of thin air...
Real estate agents, bankers, "human resource headhunters", interim agencies etc etc.
None of these people produce actual wealth.
In fact, capitalism could only "work" for a short duration after the industrial revolution, as cities were being built, cars, modern appliances, laundry machines, televisions, computers etc.
The dead give-away really that capitalism is an elaborate hoax about to end is that all the "richest" countries, even after having exploited the world for centuries are massively in debt, and their entire economies are today essentially based on derivative, interposed mechanisms parasiting increasingly few actual wealth transactions. In other words, the number of people involved in any real wealth transaction has soared, which basically means that the money all these people...
...& those enterprises are de facto NOT in competition with each other but rather part of an interlinked superstructure OWNED by the ruling class/party.
A case can be made that we are in reality ALREADY in a communist system still maskerading as a capitalist, liberal, democratic one...
Those that own the means of production are basically the same people controlling politics, the judicial system, the media, the military: the party.
Representatives of the LEGAL system visit your restaurant & THEY decide whether the food you serve complies with stringent norms.
If you own cattle, or even a pet, their "health" is controlled by the system. Countless vaccinations, micro-chips...
We're obviously not in a situation of "free enterprise" anymore...
The masses will increasingly be working in those few successful massive enterprises controlled by the system without options for change & making it themselves,...
already owns or at least controls all, people are indoctrinated for life and must work to basically produce nothing of substance, personal initiative is anathema, more rights are lost each day, & "enterprise" concentrates in the hands of fewer & fewer.
You cannot simply start a hotdog stand on a suitable spot. You need permission.
You cannot even serve the food you choose in your own restaurant and count on capitalist mechanisms -the market- punishishing you if it's bad.
Big Pharma? Banking? Advertising? Security companies? The military? etc etc: NOTHING. Yet the income of the massive quantities of people working in these sectors are added up & considered part of a nation's generation of wealth.
Also, physical money will of course ultimately disappear in favour of "credits".
Credits are NOT actual wealth but "rights".
You'll have to be in the system's good books to earn/deserve them & exercise them.
...-that ultimately are paid by the people- are taken into account, virtually everybody is in debt & needs to work to pay it off.
Consider that most/all resources are already owned & controlled by a few elites, that the economy produces no substantive wealth anymore but debt & actually destroys REAL wealth/ "natural resources". All the remaining wealth is already owned.
Add all incomes & you get GNP. But what does that mean? GNP is simply bookkeeping.
..."resources of power & wealth" and wealth is only theoretically so. The democratic process boils down to control through deceit & in Europe the EC is in fact already controlling all the significant parameters while being completely out of "democratic reach" for the citizen, who's vote relates to national politics that are de facto obsolete.
In terms of access to wealth, it's easy to see the overwhelming majority works to pay bills, and if the catastrofic national debts...
But what if they've paid off the mortgage? Well, they can't construct what they want on their land. They have to pay taxes on their property. Not allowed to hunt on it. Their house can be searched without a warrant. In many countries they're not even allowed to paint it the colour they choose.
What does ownership mean under those conditions?
Merely the right to live there under certain conditions becoming increasingly stringent.
The free market economy, trade, commerce, economics of which capitalism is simply a consequence, will never be defeated. It's not a system but a byproduct. Socialism is self defeating. Ok. So the world finance sector is unstable. There's been a injurous blow. Not a mortal one I don't think. I don't agree they'll reach their totalitarian aim. Even if we do get a one world government. I don't think the proleteriat and the perennial opressed masses will rise up anytime soon.
''The counter-culture was in reality CREATED and ENGINEERED. None of the 60s emerging rockstars were even dreafted for Nam. Most of these guys had military backgrounds.''
Adorno belonged to the Frankfurt school. Who sort to answer the question of who would spearhead the Cultural Marxist revolution after the working class failed. They decided on the American youth. It was THEY who engineered it. Completely back fired, lmao. This is Adorno lamenting that the indoctrination wasn't going to plan.
nothing is more vomit inducing than hearing fucking bono,sting or geldof preach their sermons on how WE are responsible for the worlds ills while these tossers swan around in their multi million pound mansions,getting down on their boney knees and receiving their gongs from her majesty and have their hats flown across the planet while telling us why we shouldn't exist because 'we're hurting the planet' why dont you just fuck off! Adorno worked in similar circles of ' weaponised ' music
Good point. The system has spared itself no efforts inculcating us with the notions of sin, perversion, the "banality of evil", the "human cancer", sustainability, overpopulation etc and of course OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONIBILITY. Today the masses are not merely considered "useless eaters" anymore, but actually TOXIC BREATHERS.
We must all help to make the world a "brighter place", because we are so evil, so irresponsible, so iirational & there's so many...
So we must all work together now, we must all comply, OBEY....OBEY....OBEY...
Amazing people don't realize it's NOT a collective problem but an elite problem. That war, 1 billion starving, disease, economic collapse etc etc are engineered.
Sting, Bono and the rest are AGENTS, constantly brainwashing us with "sustainability, ONE WORLD, United Nations etc.
Events like Band Aid were massive social engineering programs. We must buy a single to help Ethiopians?! RIDICULOUS.
It's so bizarre & exasperating that the majority just won't see that the world is being SAVAGED by a few & turning into a monstrous nightmare. Stockholm syndrome...
it also came out in the wash that the 'aid' money actually went towards buying arms,nice one bob have a knighthood,you earned millions for our arms manufacturing industry.
Total elitist : he blames everyone for not bringing the revolution but in the end he did nothing either for it. And he prefered to blame ordinary people rather than the powers that be and their underlings in the workers movement (social-democrats, stalinists, pabloites...). If protest songs didn't go far enough is that to be blamed on the young artists who had a sincere feeling against injustice or on 1) the corporate industry and 2) the elitists like Adorno who didn't bother to help them.
...than taking a long hard look at reality, figure out what's REALLY going on, stop singing and idolizing some controlled superstar puppet, and actually develop A REAL, HONEST culture, that isn't controlled from the start.
Remarkable how people don't see how obvious & evident & really not all that intelligent Adorno's observation is. He's merely stating the most obvious and people think it's so "PROFOUND". Pfft.
@suddenlyitsobvious Well said. A few 'aren't we smart for watching to Adorno' comments from smug Marxist Liberals no doubt who feel part of the special club of those who looked at American culture with contempt for not following the dictats of Marxism. Or being dour German existentialists. Just an extention of the False Consciousness argument it seems.
Hi, yeah that's exactly it. I've pretty much stopped going on philosophy threads altogether cos they get colonized by completely brainwashed people with pompous verbiage, who start screaming at you if you dare put the integrity of their idol in doubt. "WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION HIM?!!! WHAT ARE YOUR CREDENTIALS?!!?
Society is controlled by evil, & when one starts to see this, it's really the emperor's new clothes situation.
@suddenlyitsobvious Trouble was that there were so many of them taking themselves seriously that we now have this militiant breed of Marxist progressives who, having acheived some of the admirable social changes, and now so full of themselves and unable to question themselves or their policies at all, that we get these insufferbly sanctimonious Bono types who knows what best for us as you highlighted. And the type of idolators who go into paroxisms of fury at the merest hint of an opposing view.
Just saw your 2nd post. Why do you think it backfired & TA laments?
What I see is it all worked LIKE A CHARM -popculture & music industry to dissociate the masses & generate a suitable mindframe, as the elite proceed with their business unhindered.
It's precisely those who WANT a bad situation to exist that hypocritically denounce it when the damage is done. The system covers both ends of the equation.
@suddenlyitsobvious I just pictured him surveying the results of his handwork and thinking ''How are we meant to overthrow the Capitalist West by strumming gutiars for christ sake? Who in their right mind if gonna take us seriously with this lot running around''. You're right in that they acheived a lot of their aims, breed generations of non-thinking Liberal types and have managed to get in to government. But their ultimate aims to destroy capitalism from within failed.
" But their ultimate aims to destroy capitalism from within failed."
I don't agree. EXACTLY as Marx has predicted, capitalism WAS DESTROYED! It was an unsustainable system and today we basically hear it's over. "Sorry folks, we tried giving it to you."
The financial crisis!!! Capitalism is over. Everything today is ALREADY OWNED. A one world system is practically in place.
Only the means by which the elite maintains private ownership in the face of increasing economic crises has changed/intensified.
The private ownership of the means of production, and the selling of one's labor power to produce capital (for the capitalist/bourgeois class) is still in tact. In China, USA, Europe- everywhere.
We don't have common ownership of the means of production.
Well, I'm really not well-versed in economic theory or Marxism but let's see if I can make a case for capitalism being a fast-fading abstraction.
First, what does "private ownership" really mean when the ratio rights/duties attached to ownership is eroded? If you own a house or a piece of land, is it really yours? Many people say they "own a house", which basically means they pay off a mortgage for decades if not for life.
Fascism & communism basically boil down to the same thing if they're GLOBAL.
It is today becoming increasingly obvious that the notion of a "free, liberal democratic society" is obsolete and it's quite farcical that the system is still maskerading as one & people applaud their rights and freedoms even as they're losing them every day and are being turned into idiotized, medicalized, obeying numbers.
In reality, THROUGH capitalism the stage was set for "global communism" -or call it what you will, basically a totalitarian system, that will of course have different features than the traditional communist ones, mainly because of technology and a higher level of complexity + its global scale.
Don't be fooled: for the Marxists everything is going smoothly...precisely according to plan!
once again, Marx and Marxism is in opposition to the private means of production, and for the democratic control of it- for the entire population's access to the resources of community's power and wealth.
Sure, corporate conglomerates and a more dense concentration of the means of control exists, and is not in the hands of singular individuals as in capitalism's ''golden age'' (i.e, there's no vanderbilts, morgans, stanleys, rockefellers) but there is still an owning class.
@suddenlyitsobvious : I agree with you to some extent. Adorno is trying to understand something, but using "his" intellectual tools instead of those that would fit the reality he's addressing. But HE IS trying to understand, and that is to be put to his credit. Now, to my view, the big mistake he is making is that what he calls "amusement music" (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez etc) is not at all "amusement music" for lots of people but "heart music" that really moves them and makes them think.
I agree with you to some extent. Adorno is trying to understand something, but using "his" intellectual tools instead of those that would fit the reality he's addressing. But HE IS trying to understand, and that is to be put to his credit. Now, to my view, the big mistake he is making is that what he calls "amusement music" (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez etc) is not at all "amusement music" for lots of people but "heart music" that really moves them and makes them think.
I quite agree with his observation, that remains however superficial. The counter-culture was in reality CREATED and ENGINEERED. None of the 60s emerging rockstars were even dreafted for Nam. Most of these guys had military backgrounds.
Point of it all is social engineering broadly speaking, and in relation to the specific 60s situation, essentially DISSOCIATING the masses from reality & fact, CANALIZING there feelings and sensations into a harmless youth-culture who sings about war rather...
The reality proves him wrong on so many of his views on music. We now see "the last refuge of true art" getting torn up by capitalism. No matter if its the Beatles or Schönberg. BTW he was a prick!
@Lurking99 The subtitles come on when Adorno starts speaking about half way through, although what he says seems like bollox to begin with. I'm sure he explained better at some stage though.
perhaps this point has already been made, but joan baez wasn't a pop musician. she was a folk musician. i wonder if that distinction makes a difference to adorno?
Adorno's critique of 'protest' pop music was on the ball, particularly now in the light of Band Aid, Bono, Make Poverty History and the whole Neo-Liberal Humanitarian Project. But his belief in the importance of high art (basically Bourgeois) was elitist and ridiculous.
I TOTALLY agree with Adorno. Comments on this video show that people can't conceive anything without a commercial value. Bruckner symphonies or Bach's Art of Fugue where not done for making money, and although other people got some performing or recording this works afterwards, it is not a contradiction with the very first nature of the works. But you can't criticize vietnam's war (a war to preserve capitalism) with a song that makes huge profits at the same time. It is hypocrisy or naiveté.
love adorno, but hes so wrong on this. what is music supposed to be then? completeley seperated form the world in some sort of anti-consumable/anti-"popular" bubble? He assumes there is some clean uncommercialized space in which to make real, authentic music, but this is fale.
@perkzo No, there's no anti-consumable space that we can just jump into and come back. That would be a consumable space of anti-consumption, something like Joan Baez. Authentic music doesn't dwell in such a space, but creates it and recreates it. That's what's so revolutionary about music. As the Marxist filmmaker Straub said, poetic art can be more political than art whose subject is obviously political. The music of Gesualdo outlasted empires. Pop music usually lasts until next Monday.
@shapeswentagain: Incorrect- what we see in Youtube is that pop music has become a new cannon which is now effectively immortalized in the form of global digital storage and retrieval systems.
The idea of a distiction between authentic and 'inauthentic' art is highly questionable. Another marxist analysis of art would see it as a bourgeois category that emerged in the 18th C. and serves to legitimate the ruling class! Where is the music that creates a rupture with capitalist mode of production?
@ExMachine This past month has showed me you're right, although I don't think Youtube or the 18th Century bourgeoisie have anything to do with it. It's all a matter of being serious about music. More and more, I can see this in pop music, maybe its highest forms being in jazz and rock, but of course spreading to everything else. I'm honestly not afraid of musical consumption anymore. As long as musicians make music that's better than themselves, I should be fine. And they will.
of course everything is CONSUMABLE in the capitalism but music has the characteristic of not changing completely people s mind but it can surely help forming a political thinking.art is a place of class struggle,where views on reality fight each other.
Is it better for marxist point of view people and labour class to hear only music that makes them forget their problems that capitalism is bringing or to come closer to a form of art that is against imperialism?Adorno should have read Althousser!
Maybe he had too much in common with the self-punishing bourgeoisie he spent his life raging against.
The only modern art he seemed to approve of was strange, absract, nightmarish stuff that was forever locked into its own hard, bitter struggle against style.
"Only thought that does harm to itself is sufficiently hard enough to shatter myths".
Watch out people before critical theory draws you into ITS worthless totality. Everyone: "I wanna have sex on da beach, come on move your bo-dy....sex, on the beach, come on move your body with me bay-bee...."
Popular music=entertainment, that's where Adorno goes wrong.Popular music has many meanings, for example indiepop does not conform to Adornos definiton. And there's nothing wrong with consumption, it's the WAY we consume that is problematic.Though Adornos analysis of modernity is brilliant i think he, like many others of his generation had a hard time understanding the new youth culture emerging in the 50's and 60's.
Adorno -armchair analysis gone awry. Yes Dylan ended up buying mansions in the ultimate ode to consumerism and was never keen on having his horse hitched to the counter culture cart in the first place -hence his distancing from Joan Baez. But what voice did Adorno give to that generation who went on the streets to rail against the absurdity and immorality of the American war on Indo-China? He hid in his ivory tower criticizing student actions and torture by the Vietcong.
Very arrogant, but the voice of logic, truth and actually - of good taste. How strange that twenty seconds of speech on film carries far more power than page (upon page) of dense prose.
It's true that protest music can trivialize and incorporate revolt into consumerism though, and it does for most. It might even de-culpabilize and turn active into passive. But it might wake up some people too. It's not inherently bad I say. He's too rough. very interesting
but this music plays a role on opinions at the least (which is not necessarily bad) despite it's consumerist diffusion, no? It has its effect, not always superficial!
thedor adorno what a great man for the the educational and intellectual world and what a treasure.. and what a treasure for me as i use his analysis to complete my assighments in university
A particularly potent rebuff to the argument Adorno presents here is the book File_ Under_Popular by Chris Cutler. The question of whether political content should be included in popular music is addressed at length, as is the question of the pairing of avant-garde stylistic traits within a nominally 'popular' artform. I don't endorse his conclusions, but his is a more careful take on the subject that Adorno here. Theodor is unbeatable on Alban Berg however, and Minima Moralia is dope.
I greatly admire Adorno, but I have to disagree with him here. 'Popular' music has energised radical progressive movements for as long as records exist. Of course capitalist production influences what gets produced and heard, and the manner in which that happens, but that does not make political music worthless. Adorno sold his books through the capitalist system. Did he comidify accademic discussionof suffering in the way he accuses others of comidifying musical discussion of suffering?
as Middleton observes, Adorno perfomes his critique of popular music from the Euro- centric perspective and he analyses it by means of tools aplicable to Austro- German symphonic tradition, not taking into account that they both belong to completely incompatible discourses; but I like that old dead German!
I mean can one really say there is superior styles of music when the artistry is determined by the skill of the composer and not the music? You can only blame an intangible or inanimate object for an individuals shortfallings for only so long. I think Mozart or Ravel could orchestrate just as structurally sound compositions using Hip-Hop as using Western European Classical with the proper perspective and understanding of Hip-Hop music. Now, feel free to lambaste me you obsolete snobs!
He wasn't saying there are superior styles. What he said is that style is the enemy, as style is imposed by the status-quo. Whether that style is Hip-Hop OR Western classical it threatens to destroy the artwork. The true work of art is one that at crucial times can say "Fuck style" and provide us with real human freedom through the magic of imagination.
So in other words I think he would have completely agreed with your point about Mozart and Ravel using Hip-Hop. He wasn't a snob.
With all due respect, I think you are completely wrong. Even Mozart would not be able to create works of genius if he used the style and idiom of 'Hip Hop' because it is not rich enough as a musical form. Classical music, as a musical tradition, contains far greater potential because it is richer is styles and forms- counterpoint, sonata form, etc, etc.
@bayreuth79 sorry bud, there is simply no basis for this judgment. it is clear to me that your notions of "richness" and "potential" are predicated on an evaluation of qualities that are specific to the form. namely, the preoccupation with form and technique, which is something that has dominated the western classical tradition. but these aren't inherently required of any music to be "good." the argument boils down to "it is not better than classical music because it is not classical music"
@bayreuth79@bayreuth79 Wrong. Both music are made with the tools of the era, our technology, that and the advancement, with the natural transient state of human culture, make each of music and it's place equivalent or also affected by the way music has shifted in society.
You can syntactically define levels of patterns in either music both describing, sensing aural perceptions equally.
@noonward Your reply does not tell me 'how' your observation that changing human culture and advancing technology some how makes music from different historical periods equivalent. How exactly? Is Beethoven's 9th Symphony no better than a Beatles song? Without being disrespectful, if you regard these as equivalent I would question your aesthetic judgement. Beethoven's music is superior to the Beatles because his music is far more complex and far more emotionally evocative.
@bayreuth79 Why do you assume complexity and emotional evocativeness are universal bestowers of value? And isn't a Beatles song far more complex than a Beethoven symphony with regard to some musical properties (if you're hung up on complexity)? Bear in mind that simplicity has often been claimed as the main criterion for value.
It is funny how after 1969 there were no good Beatles that songs were recorded- even as solo albums they never had the same quality of songs after 1969.
John Coleman's book "The Committee of 300" claims that Theodor Adorno wrote 18 albums of music for the Beatles - shocking - and all part of a Tavistock Institute mind control experiment to use music to create a generation gap and a drug culture, mostly to fuck up the USA. Adorno is a musical genius, he created the first rock and roll and sold out the world. Interesting that he DIED of a HEART ATTACK in 1969 - when the Beatles group broke up. The irony is he wrote some really beautiful music.
Unless you have a phd it's very, very unlikely you understand it.
That's not to say it's RIGHT, by the way (or wrong). But unless you've worked like a dog for a year or so getting your head round what he said, you're not criticising Adorno so much of your own idea of Adorno.
This is a hard subject. It's even harder than wanking without porn - and that's really hard (or soft, as the case may be.)
Natürlich verleugnet Adornos Elitismus zugleich die schwachsinnige Idee einer Revolution. Er versteht, dass Singsang nicht die Macht verschieben kann.
He himself being Jewish and openly disclosing his distaste for Jazz (it being a Jewish creation) is indeed an honest remark that should be noted. I myself am a fan of Jazz today but it is different now to then. I guess it would be more avant-garde now and your now popular house/synth music would be the after-glow of leisure, which would be your commercialised form of entertainent. Music should be food for thought instead it is now nothing more than something to be consumed then discarded.
xfghkhjfsejid 2 weeks ago
@xfghkhjfsejid Music that provides nothing more than pleasure isn't worthwhile, no? Your use of the word "consumed" suggests that this is the main attraction of pop music. REFUTE
100FingeredMonkey 6 days ago
@100FingeredMonkey I really do not understand the argument you were trying to make. But I respectfully will say that consumption means a variety of things: buying/downloading, hearing; yet not listening and maybe also to articulate ones body in a certain way, in certain arenas such as clubs. Finally to move on. I do not believe that is sufficient enough stimuli to cognitively challenge someone, especially if they are tripping on drugs.
xfghkhjfsejid 6 days ago
@xfghkhjfsejid OK, I see now the more complex understanding of consumption you're using (rather than just the purchase/download). But how do you mean 'cognitively challenge' someone? Does music like that of John Maus not challenge the listener (politically, if not formally)? Also, don't gangsta rap, black metal, etc. challenge conventional/liberal morality?
100FingeredMonkey 3 days ago
@100FingeredMonkey Well yes, if you can understand the lyrics in black metal that is haha. Also gangsta rap and black metal aren't really commercial, although they've had their own forms of success. What I said is similar to what Adorno implies; music that challenges an individual’s cognitive, perceptual and conceptual habits. That is, meaningful music is a seed/idea which can manifest and grow in various ways. Most (not all) pop music fails at this, due to other intentions.
xfghkhjfsejid 3 days ago
I tend to like adorno but his views on music and society where too all-encompassing. He was right about consumerism in cultural structures but he didn't realize that even popular music could be subversive to a degree because consumption is only a tool of the state apparatus, not its aim.
coosoorlog 3 weeks ago 4
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American "intellectuals" love positioning themselves as Marxists and Socialists; it makes them feel less guilty of living in abundance. But the truth is they could not survive under such regimes. Their freedom-at-the-cost-of-soul, hyper-consumption and absolute adherence to a false moral ground makes them unable to acclimate and to see the world in any other way than mono-dimensionally.
IzzyIsou 1 month ago
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IzzyIsou 1 month ago
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IzzyIsou 1 month ago
He hated Jazz. Nuff said.
IzzyIsou 1 month ago 3
Adorno's thinking on popular music is anachronistic and silly.
lclneto100 1 month ago
The writings of Adorno have been overrated for many decades. I bet he never had a day of fun in his tormented life.
aedo67 1 month ago
Mainstream songs should not be used by you during the act of protest.
Buying such songs only fuels the capitalistic system that you detest.
Adorno was talking about how corporations use culture to gain capital as a means to gain power over people. As such, he thought it was counteractive for people to buy music and use it during the act of protest since they would be fueling the very system they were seeking to disband.
originalsessions 2 months ago
@originalsessions And, of course, the same rules apply when buying his books. Yes, you have to BUY them, he didn't give lectures for free either. Funny that. You would have thought he would have distributed them freely given he was "outside" the "culture industry" eh?
egapnala65 1 month ago
@egapnala65 Its imposible to be outside the culture industry, capitalism is all pervasive in our lives.
almanacofsleep 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep Indeed unless one is either an amateur or does not write at all. Adorno is/was just as much a part of that industry as the hundreds of other worthier people he consigned to the aesthetic gas chamber.
egapnala65 1 month ago
When listening to this oily pretentious hypocrite spout on about the "Culture Industry" ask yourself the following question. "How seriously can we take the elitist neo-fascist pronouncements from a PROFESSIONAL academic/failed composer"? Unless he gave his lectures for free and distributed his books likewise, he is just as much a part of the same "industry" as all those worthwhile artists (like Stravinsky) he consigned to the aesthetic gas chamber.
egapnala65 2 months ago
@egapnala65 He may have a different demogrpahic to the Beatles, Glass, Nyman, Jazz etc. but, essentially he's on board the same boat.
egapnala65 2 months ago
@egapnala65 in what way is he a Neo-fascist.
almanacofsleep 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep Because in his ideal world only music north of Webern would be composed distributed and produced. Every thing else would be consigned to the aesthetic gas chamber. For goodness sake he even agreed with Hitler about jazz.
egapnala65 1 month ago
@egapnala65 thats a very shallow understanding of adorno and fascism
almanacofsleep 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep Only in your opinion. Which, to me, means little anyway. He was a Marxist which is a hegelian doctrine. As Schopenhauer points out and as is obvious to anybody who has read the whole Hegelian ouevre, Hegel was a self serving charlatan using dense language to cover up the fact that his whole philosophy is a self gloryfing hymn to the 19th century Prussian state. Hence anybody who builds upon that foundation has clearly a superficial mind anyway. So Adorno is really not worth it.
egapnala65 1 month ago
@egapnala65 Marxism is a rejection of Hegelian dialectics....
almanacofsleep 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep No it is simply a materialist inversion. The idea of utopia being reached through violent conflict that in Hegel refers to civilizations is simply applied to social classes. The idea of history as a rational process is common to both. As it is in Gobineau's racial theory (though he applies it backwards).
egapnala65 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep That's a very shallow understanding indeed.
egapnala65 1 month ago
@egapnala65 glad you recognize your own faults
almanacofsleep 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep Ha ha nice come back. Shame you really have no idea what your talking about though isn't it? But then I tend to find that with Adorno freaks anyway so don't feel lonely.
egapnala65 1 month ago
@egapnala65 I dont wanna be a pinhead no more I just met a nurse that I could go for
almanacofsleep 1 month ago
@almanacofsleep And of course, Hegelianism gave birth to both Marxism and Fascism so it is hardly suprising that Adorno agreed with Hitler about Jazz. You clearly are the one with the superficial understanding here. Not me.
egapnala65 1 month ago
@egapnala65 @egapnala65 The point here is that mainstream culture cannot stimulate critical thinking in its receivers - which are always anonymous consumers - and not that consumerism needs to be equalled with the devil. If you think that's hypocritical, well, I wouldn't know, because I'm sure you've took the time to read and understand his thought and that this isn't an overly immature and defensive reaction.
87Julius 1 month ago
@87Julius Adorno cannot stimulate any thinking at all owing to his self imposed usage of over elaborate terminology and elitist outlook. If he was such a critic of the commodification of culture why did he SELL his books?
egapnala65 1 month ago
Ere this I should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance!
FireEyedMaidOfWar 6 months ago
Frankfurt school = cultural and national deconstruction for you - zionism for us.
gazz12345a 6 months ago
@gazz12345a Ah, another disgruntled right wing twit.
agapeiron 5 months ago
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gazz12345a 5 months ago
@gazz12345a Yes it would. Being a right winger doesn't mean you can't attack other right wingers. A neo-fascist or Holocaust denier or what have you would most certainly be opposed to neoconservative funding of Israel. You have not made any real point. So I restate my initial reply: disgruntled right wing twit.
agapeiron 5 months ago
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gazz12345a 5 months ago
@gazz12345a I did not call you a fascist or a holocaust denier. I called you a disgruntled right wing twit. I have indeed read Marcuse, though he is extremely overrated. This "exchange" is not a debate-- Rather, it was me calling you a cunt and you trying to advertise your ZOG-fearing hokum. Feel free to fuck off at any time.
Otherwise me and the anti-European Jewish cabal I represent are going to come hunt you down and cut your dick off.
agapeiron 5 months ago
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gazz12345a 5 months ago
I think that "popular music" has expanded to the point where some of it has actually left the popular music arena. Some of what was "popular music" has become "authentic" as Heidegger would put it. The vast majority of it does fit Adorno's description though.
TheDavid2222 6 months ago
adorno was still a 19th century romantic at his core, and (like every other romantic) failed to understand the 20th century most radical cultural changings.
85cube 6 months ago
Danke, das ist sehr interessant!
TheDmitrilover 6 months ago
It took me six months full study to understand Adorno.
But now there's all these ego-maniacs trying to critique him.
Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant.
What matters is that you don't criticise something you don't understand.
DrunkenPoetic 7 months ago
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markusstollenwerk 6 months ago
Adorno's saying a little more than "they control us through culture".
You need to understand the difference between a mythical symbol and an abstraction, and its relatation to utilitarianism and the reduction of people to numbers.
You gotta think about existentialist views of freedom and the limiting factor of style in the art work.
You need to think how science has become an inversion of myth, and how extreme positivism has limited our ability to constantly reinterpret the inanimate world.
DrunkenPoetic 7 months ago
@divinityboy
And suddenly it's clear why you spout disconnected, meaningless, very bad 'poetry' or whatever it is, rather than arguments or insightful comments: everything you say is psychotic and doesn't make any sense and you are incapable of making sense.
'For the majority it likely is profound'. What am I or anyone else to do with this? It's like you think in psychotic mantra's. Perhaps you should go easy on the Zoloft and you are informed that you are blocked now.
suddenlyitsobvious 7 months ago
@divinityboy
All that pompous verbiage to convey I have no appreciation for truth while providing no argument or counter-proposition whatsoever addressing my statements? You really needn't have bothered...
suddenlyitsobvious 7 months ago
I totally disagree with Adorno here. And I feel that he is in disagreement with himself.
Aesthetics: art, music etc. in the Frankfurt School, as I understand, has two functions. Firstly, it is a way accuse/confront the existing social framework. Secondly, it should link us up to an image of a better world beyond the now.
The popular folk music in the 60's ( esp. Dylan) is much more powerful than a mere commodity as he explains here. Protest and Freedom are there, intrinsic within the music!
roostadon 7 months ago
@roostadon Good points, but maybe Dylan (and popuplar music) didn't satisfy Adorno's other criteria you mentioned: an image of a better world. Or as Marx said:..not to interpret the world but to change it.
mrfreudable 7 months ago
By the 70's, it'd've been more clear to him that an entire war had been stopped solely by protests of the citizens, and that music had been an important part of the solidarity and dissemination of the protestors' ideas.
I also wonder if he would have expressed the same feeling about a song like "Strange Fruit," or if he dismissed absolutely all politically-powerful songs as mere "entertainment" if they lacked the forms of classical art music.
k2doggo 7 months ago
Can anybody tell me in which year the interview with Adorno was done?
pinkeschminke 7 months ago
Sadly he wasnt right in his predication that pop music would be predestined to fail :(
mastermasel 8 months ago
adorno not a snob?> mon dieu he wrote the book on neo marxist mandarins.... a brahmin thru and thru--- a complete academic..... read brechts critique of the frankfurters- er ist der echt akademiker bonzen zum bittere ended. he had a problem with walter benjamin... benjamin saw clearly and adorno hated him for it. see martin jay's critique of adorno.... mensch, was ist das denn da?
ColdChicago 9 months ago
adorno not a snob?> mon dieu he wrote the book on neo marxist mandarins.... a brahmin thru and thru--- a complete academic..... read brechts critique of the frankfurters- er ist der echt akademiker bonzen zum bittere ended. he had a problem with walter benjamin... benjamin saw clearly and adorno hated him for it.
ColdChicago 9 months ago
Der Mann hatte echt was auf dem Kasten.
WasGibtsLeute 9 months ago
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Hey youtube, watchout for Stefan B Wir tanzen, Slut maschine, Sex at the party (piss off) Born to be so porn and dirty trancing. Also look at Love baloon, I am best of Oktoberfest and Pa-Party. All really good songs listen to them.
Have fun and use headphones.
vincenz1111 9 months ago
this is a hint not to consume but share the music ;)
8ut8f8rder 9 months ago
Hey adorno, what about Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki? What about that? There's been other stuff like that too, like recently On the Transmigration of Souls about 9/11
bafoley17 9 months ago
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Adorno, like Marcuse and Horkheimer, is a Jew who wanted to destabilise European civilisation.
FlorisVanHolland 10 months ago
Adorno war ein narzisstisches, von einer unglaublichen Weltfremdheit geprägtes, eine eigentlich total anachronistische Pseudophilosophie umsichpropagierendes RIESENARSCHLOCH.
MultiTyrannosaurus 11 months ago
@MultiTyrannosaurus Also wenn man wirklich unter Null Ahnung hat, sollte man nicht kommentieren.
OLee82 9 months ago
There's an interview probably on YouTube from around '65 or so in San Francisco and he's asked if he'll be attending protests and he says no. He then mentions a protest he could envision with people carrying signs with random words on them that have no connection (apparently) with the the other signs. Nonsensical march...
S2Cents 11 months ago
Wonder what Bob Dylan would make of this. Aside from some early songs concerning civil rights for blacks Dylan steered clear away from protesting and has never spoken against the Vietnam War. Or said much directly on politics in terms of having a position for against whatever. (CONTINUED...
S2Cents 11 months ago
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420protoman 8 months ago
What he's saying is that the so-called "anti-war" songs were in actuality promoting war by making images of war acceptable to the masses.
BTW, Joan Baez's father was CIA
imjdg1961 11 months ago
adorno war kein globalisierungskritiker.
ChelseaGirlYALLAH 11 months ago
I knew it was true when I saw the Ramones on a beer commercial. Thomass Frank is a Frankfurt School guy and he sums it up with the phrase, and book, commodify your dissent. it's tough for artists who have things worth saying because the very form they choose sorrupts the message because it is instantly sellable.
rmorte62 11 months ago
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another ugly old man
queenieepstein 1 year ago
"they`re selling postcards of the hanging."
-bob dylan, desolation row
deanims 1 year ago
@deanims They're painting the pasports brown
The beauty parlor's filled with sailors, a circus is in town.
Sorry, you got the song playing in my head.
Aamonath 10 months ago
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scavengedfantasyname 1 year ago
(12)
... interposed links, ultimately financed by the public. Such a system must inevitably collapse & I say that is precisely what we're assisting at...
Most crucially, I'd add that this collapse was anticipated by the very people who benefitted most from capitalism all along, people who are using that collapse to edify a new global system.
Destroying economies is just as profitable to them as building them, if not more...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(11)
Today, a few massive companies really suffice to replace what's written off.
So why is everybody working? What are they really producing?
The financial crisis represents a collapse of this derivative principle, but it can & should be extrapolated from the strictly financial sphere to the entire structure of the economy, that is today -& the first signs of it were the birth of advertising- based on superfluous "unwealth" and more and more derivative,...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(10)
... earn is increasingly worthless.
This should really come as no surprise since the money system is PRIVATELY owned & money is printed out of thin air...
Real estate agents, bankers, "human resource headhunters", interim agencies etc etc.
None of these people produce actual wealth.
In fact, capitalism could only "work" for a short duration after the industrial revolution, as cities were being built, cars, modern appliances, laundry machines, televisions, computers etc.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(9)
The dead give-away really that capitalism is an elaborate hoax about to end is that all the "richest" countries, even after having exploited the world for centuries are massively in debt, and their entire economies are today essentially based on derivative, interposed mechanisms parasiting increasingly few actual wealth transactions. In other words, the number of people involved in any real wealth transaction has soared, which basically means that the money all these people...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(8)
...& those enterprises are de facto NOT in competition with each other but rather part of an interlinked superstructure OWNED by the ruling class/party.
A case can be made that we are in reality ALREADY in a communist system still maskerading as a capitalist, liberal, democratic one...
Those that own the means of production are basically the same people controlling politics, the judicial system, the media, the military: the party.
We are simply all pretending.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(7)
Representatives of the LEGAL system visit your restaurant & THEY decide whether the food you serve complies with stringent norms.
If you own cattle, or even a pet, their "health" is controlled by the system. Countless vaccinations, micro-chips...
We're obviously not in a situation of "free enterprise" anymore...
The masses will increasingly be working in those few successful massive enterprises controlled by the system without options for change & making it themselves,...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(6)
already owns or at least controls all, people are indoctrinated for life and must work to basically produce nothing of substance, personal initiative is anathema, more rights are lost each day, & "enterprise" concentrates in the hands of fewer & fewer.
You cannot simply start a hotdog stand on a suitable spot. You need permission.
You cannot even serve the food you choose in your own restaurant and count on capitalist mechanisms -the market- punishishing you if it's bad.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(5)
Big Pharma? Banking? Advertising? Security companies? The military? etc etc: NOTHING. Yet the income of the massive quantities of people working in these sectors are added up & considered part of a nation's generation of wealth.
Also, physical money will of course ultimately disappear in favour of "credits".
Credits are NOT actual wealth but "rights".
You'll have to be in the system's good books to earn/deserve them & exercise them.
So the way I see it, a small elite group...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(4)
...-that ultimately are paid by the people- are taken into account, virtually everybody is in debt & needs to work to pay it off.
Consider that most/all resources are already owned & controlled by a few elites, that the economy produces no substantive wealth anymore but debt & actually destroys REAL wealth/ "natural resources". All the remaining wealth is already owned.
Add all incomes & you get GNP. But what does that mean? GNP is simply bookkeeping.
What wealth does a doctor add?
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(3)
..."resources of power & wealth" and wealth is only theoretically so. The democratic process boils down to control through deceit & in Europe the EC is in fact already controlling all the significant parameters while being completely out of "democratic reach" for the citizen, who's vote relates to national politics that are de facto obsolete.
In terms of access to wealth, it's easy to see the overwhelming majority works to pay bills, and if the catastrofic national debts...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
(2)
But what if they've paid off the mortgage? Well, they can't construct what they want on their land. They have to pay taxes on their property. Not allowed to hunt on it. Their house can be searched without a warrant. In many countries they're not even allowed to paint it the colour they choose.
What does ownership mean under those conditions?
Merely the right to live there under certain conditions becoming increasingly stringent.
That the entire population has access to the...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
The free market economy, trade, commerce, economics of which capitalism is simply a consequence, will never be defeated. It's not a system but a byproduct. Socialism is self defeating. Ok. So the world finance sector is unstable. There's been a injurous blow. Not a mortal one I don't think. I don't agree they'll reach their totalitarian aim. Even if we do get a one world government. I don't think the proleteriat and the perennial opressed masses will rise up anytime soon.
Underground906 1 year ago
''The counter-culture was in reality CREATED and ENGINEERED. None of the 60s emerging rockstars were even dreafted for Nam. Most of these guys had military backgrounds.''
Adorno belonged to the Frankfurt school. Who sort to answer the question of who would spearhead the Cultural Marxist revolution after the working class failed. They decided on the American youth. It was THEY who engineered it. Completely back fired, lmao. This is Adorno lamenting that the indoctrination wasn't going to plan.
Underground906 1 year ago
nothing is more vomit inducing than hearing fucking bono,sting or geldof preach their sermons on how WE are responsible for the worlds ills while these tossers swan around in their multi million pound mansions,getting down on their boney knees and receiving their gongs from her majesty and have their hats flown across the planet while telling us why we shouldn't exist because 'we're hurting the planet' why dont you just fuck off! Adorno worked in similar circles of ' weaponised ' music
pilgim 1 year ago
@pilgim
"we are responsible"
Good point. The system has spared itself no efforts inculcating us with the notions of sin, perversion, the "banality of evil", the "human cancer", sustainability, overpopulation etc and of course OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONIBILITY. Today the masses are not merely considered "useless eaters" anymore, but actually TOXIC BREATHERS.
We must all help to make the world a "brighter place", because we are so evil, so irresponsible, so iirational & there's so many...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@pilgim
...many of us. Way too many...
So we must all work together now, we must all comply, OBEY....OBEY....OBEY...
Amazing people don't realize it's NOT a collective problem but an elite problem. That war, 1 billion starving, disease, economic collapse etc etc are engineered.
Sting, Bono and the rest are AGENTS, constantly brainwashing us with "sustainability, ONE WORLD, United Nations etc.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@pilgim
Geldof? Just look at his smug face.
Events like Band Aid were massive social engineering programs. We must buy a single to help Ethiopians?! RIDICULOUS.
It's so bizarre & exasperating that the majority just won't see that the world is being SAVAGED by a few & turning into a monstrous nightmare. Stockholm syndrome...
Those few are telling us WE ARE THE PROBLEM!
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@suddenlyitsobvious
it also came out in the wash that the 'aid' money actually went towards buying arms,nice one bob have a knighthood,you earned millions for our arms manufacturing industry.
pilgim 1 year ago
Total elitist : he blames everyone for not bringing the revolution but in the end he did nothing either for it. And he prefered to blame ordinary people rather than the powers that be and their underlings in the workers movement (social-democrats, stalinists, pabloites...). If protest songs didn't go far enough is that to be blamed on the young artists who had a sincere feeling against injustice or on 1) the corporate industry and 2) the elitists like Adorno who didn't bother to help them.
Longlivethe4th 1 year ago
Take that Bob Dylan!
ejgiv 1 year ago
@ejgiv Yeah,that's true!
meleethe13 1 year ago
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ThoughtsofaPerson 1 year ago
...than taking a long hard look at reality, figure out what's REALLY going on, stop singing and idolizing some controlled superstar puppet, and actually develop A REAL, HONEST culture, that isn't controlled from the start.
Remarkable how people don't see how obvious & evident & really not all that intelligent Adorno's observation is. He's merely stating the most obvious and people think it's so "PROFOUND". Pfft.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago 7
@suddenlyitsobvious Well said. A few 'aren't we smart for watching to Adorno' comments from smug Marxist Liberals no doubt who feel part of the special club of those who looked at American culture with contempt for not following the dictats of Marxism. Or being dour German existentialists. Just an extention of the False Consciousness argument it seems.
Underground906 1 year ago
@Underground906
Hi, yeah that's exactly it. I've pretty much stopped going on philosophy threads altogether cos they get colonized by completely brainwashed people with pompous verbiage, who start screaming at you if you dare put the integrity of their idol in doubt. "WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION HIM?!!! WHAT ARE YOUR CREDENTIALS?!!?
Society is controlled by evil, & when one starts to see this, it's really the emperor's new clothes situation.
Everybody goes "ooooh, aaaah" at all these...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@suddenlyitsobvious Trouble was that there were so many of them taking themselves seriously that we now have this militiant breed of Marxist progressives who, having acheived some of the admirable social changes, and now so full of themselves and unable to question themselves or their policies at all, that we get these insufferbly sanctimonious Bono types who knows what best for us as you highlighted. And the type of idolators who go into paroxisms of fury at the merest hint of an opposing view.
Underground906 1 year ago
@Underground906
...same "heroes" who have in reality SOLD OUT.
Just saw your 2nd post. Why do you think it backfired & TA laments?
What I see is it all worked LIKE A CHARM -popculture & music industry to dissociate the masses & generate a suitable mindframe, as the elite proceed with their business unhindered.
It's precisely those who WANT a bad situation to exist that hypocritically denounce it when the damage is done. The system covers both ends of the equation.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@suddenlyitsobvious I just pictured him surveying the results of his handwork and thinking ''How are we meant to overthrow the Capitalist West by strumming gutiars for christ sake? Who in their right mind if gonna take us seriously with this lot running around''. You're right in that they acheived a lot of their aims, breed generations of non-thinking Liberal types and have managed to get in to government. But their ultimate aims to destroy capitalism from within failed.
Underground906 1 year ago
@Underground906
" But their ultimate aims to destroy capitalism from within failed."
I don't agree. EXACTLY as Marx has predicted, capitalism WAS DESTROYED! It was an unsustainable system and today we basically hear it's over. "Sorry folks, we tried giving it to you."
The financial crisis!!! Capitalism is over. Everything today is ALREADY OWNED. A one world system is practically in place.
Do you think this will be a CAPITALIST SYSTEM?
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
hold on, capitalism never left, man.
it's not "DESTROYED'' as you so eloquently put.
Only the means by which the elite maintains private ownership in the face of increasing economic crises has changed/intensified.
The private ownership of the means of production, and the selling of one's labor power to produce capital (for the capitalist/bourgeois class) is still in tact. In China, USA, Europe- everywhere.
We don't have common ownership of the means of production.
mikezephyr 1 year ago
@mikezephyr
"private ownership, means of production"
Well, I'm really not well-versed in economic theory or Marxism but let's see if I can make a case for capitalism being a fast-fading abstraction.
First, what does "private ownership" really mean when the ratio rights/duties attached to ownership is eroded? If you own a house or a piece of land, is it really yours? Many people say they "own a house", which basically means they pay off a mortgage for decades if not for life.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@Underground906
Fascism & communism basically boil down to the same thing if they're GLOBAL.
It is today becoming increasingly obvious that the notion of a "free, liberal democratic society" is obsolete and it's quite farcical that the system is still maskerading as one & people applaud their rights and freedoms even as they're losing them every day and are being turned into idiotized, medicalized, obeying numbers.
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
@Underground906
In reality, THROUGH capitalism the stage was set for "global communism" -or call it what you will, basically a totalitarian system, that will of course have different features than the traditional communist ones, mainly because of technology and a higher level of complexity + its global scale.
Don't be fooled: for the Marxists everything is going smoothly...precisely according to plan!
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
once again, Marx and Marxism is in opposition to the private means of production, and for the democratic control of it- for the entire population's access to the resources of community's power and wealth.
Sure, corporate conglomerates and a more dense concentration of the means of control exists, and is not in the hands of singular individuals as in capitalism's ''golden age'' (i.e, there's no vanderbilts, morgans, stanleys, rockefellers) but there is still an owning class.
mikezephyr 1 year ago
@suddenlyitsobvious
you understand a shit about adorno
headless0815 8 months ago
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@headless0815
'you understand a shit about adorno'
A brainless, uninformative comment. Why did you even bother...
suddenlyitsobvious 8 months ago
@suddenlyitsobvious : I agree with you to some extent. Adorno is trying to understand something, but using "his" intellectual tools instead of those that would fit the reality he's addressing. But HE IS trying to understand, and that is to be put to his credit. Now, to my view, the big mistake he is making is that what he calls "amusement music" (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez etc) is not at all "amusement music" for lots of people but "heart music" that really moves them and makes them think.
DavidSBaltuch 7 months ago
@suddenlyitsobvious :
I agree with you to some extent. Adorno is trying to understand something, but using "his" intellectual tools instead of those that would fit the reality he's addressing. But HE IS trying to understand, and that is to be put to his credit. Now, to my view, the big mistake he is making is that what he calls "amusement music" (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez etc) is not at all "amusement music" for lots of people but "heart music" that really moves them and makes them think.
DavidSBaltuch 7 months ago
I quite agree with his observation, that remains however superficial. The counter-culture was in reality CREATED and ENGINEERED. None of the 60s emerging rockstars were even dreafted for Nam. Most of these guys had military backgrounds.
Point of it all is social engineering broadly speaking, and in relation to the specific 60s situation, essentially DISSOCIATING the masses from reality & fact, CANALIZING there feelings and sensations into a harmless youth-culture who sings about war rather...
suddenlyitsobvious 1 year ago
Guess, who wrote entire Beatles repetoire, using and modifying classical composers like Mozart and Verdi, etc? You will be very surprised.
Quex01 1 year ago
The reality proves him wrong on so many of his views on music. We now see "the last refuge of true art" getting torn up by capitalism. No matter if its the Beatles or Schönberg. BTW he was a prick!
eteokles3 1 year ago
Thank you for this upload!
ImaniHekima 1 year ago
Um, all I'm getting is German, no English. Is there some trick here? I don't see a subtitle button anywhere.
Lurking99 1 year ago
@Lurking99 The subtitles come on when Adorno starts speaking about half way through, although what he says seems like bollox to begin with. I'm sure he explained better at some stage though.
TheGrouse 1 year ago
today the true kitsch goes by the name of 'indie'
planetjanet 1 year ago
youtube tells me neither annotations nor captions are available for this video - any help?
ostrichspeed 1 year ago
perhaps this point has already been made, but joan baez wasn't a pop musician. she was a folk musician. i wonder if that distinction makes a difference to adorno?
atwarwithdust 1 year ago
Adorno's critique of 'protest' pop music was on the ball, particularly now in the light of Band Aid, Bono, Make Poverty History and the whole Neo-Liberal Humanitarian Project. But his belief in the importance of high art (basically Bourgeois) was elitist and ridiculous.
shadowhalfcast 1 year ago
I TOTALLY agree with Adorno. Comments on this video show that people can't conceive anything without a commercial value. Bruckner symphonies or Bach's Art of Fugue where not done for making money, and although other people got some performing or recording this works afterwards, it is not a contradiction with the very first nature of the works. But you can't criticize vietnam's war (a war to preserve capitalism) with a song that makes huge profits at the same time. It is hypocrisy or naiveté.
dion82 1 year ago 6
@dion82 Which isn't entirely true given the works of the likes of Bach or Bruckner were commissioned.
djsmurfie 7 months ago
@dion82 But he knew it, he knew abou the role of a clever minority
gimmigiois 5 months ago
Yes and No Adorno. Yes and no.
YoungSaydeezy 1 year ago
love adorno, but hes so wrong on this. what is music supposed to be then? completeley seperated form the world in some sort of anti-consumable/anti-"popular" bubble? He assumes there is some clean uncommercialized space in which to make real, authentic music, but this is fale.
perkzo 1 year ago
@perkzo No, there's no anti-consumable space that we can just jump into and come back. That would be a consumable space of anti-consumption, something like Joan Baez. Authentic music doesn't dwell in such a space, but creates it and recreates it. That's what's so revolutionary about music. As the Marxist filmmaker Straub said, poetic art can be more political than art whose subject is obviously political. The music of Gesualdo outlasted empires. Pop music usually lasts until next Monday.
shapeswentagain 1 year ago
@shapeswentagain: Incorrect- what we see in Youtube is that pop music has become a new cannon which is now effectively immortalized in the form of global digital storage and retrieval systems.
The idea of a distiction between authentic and 'inauthentic' art is highly questionable. Another marxist analysis of art would see it as a bourgeois category that emerged in the 18th C. and serves to legitimate the ruling class! Where is the music that creates a rupture with capitalist mode of production?
ExMachine 1 year ago
@ExMachine This past month has showed me you're right, although I don't think Youtube or the 18th Century bourgeoisie have anything to do with it. It's all a matter of being serious about music. More and more, I can see this in pop music, maybe its highest forms being in jazz and rock, but of course spreading to everything else. I'm honestly not afraid of musical consumption anymore. As long as musicians make music that's better than themselves, I should be fine. And they will.
shapeswentagain 1 year ago
i wish he could still be alive to comment on creative commons.
aura113 1 year ago
of course everything is CONSUMABLE in the capitalism but music has the characteristic of not changing completely people s mind but it can surely help forming a political thinking.art is a place of class struggle,where views on reality fight each other.
Is it better for marxist point of view people and labour class to hear only music that makes them forget their problems that capitalism is bringing or to come closer to a form of art that is against imperialism?Adorno should have read Althousser!
RedSkyBlues 1 year ago
I find it hard to agree. Would it not then be equally wrong to display critical opinion in theatre plays or films?
silverbud 1 year ago
Maybe he had too much in common with the self-punishing bourgeoisie he spent his life raging against.
The only modern art he seemed to approve of was strange, absract, nightmarish stuff that was forever locked into its own hard, bitter struggle against style.
"Only thought that does harm to itself is sufficiently hard enough to shatter myths".
Still a great man though.
DrunkenPoetic 1 year ago
Great philosopher, but a complete fool when it comes to popular music.
toolesttool 1 year ago
tja blumfeld...
EbClectic 1 year ago
this is so good
soluna37 1 year ago
Watch out people before critical theory draws you into ITS worthless totality. Everyone: "I wanna have sex on da beach, come on move your bo-dy....sex, on the beach, come on move your body with me bay-bee...."
eleuthromania 1 year ago
Popular music=entertainment, that's where Adorno goes wrong.Popular music has many meanings, for example indiepop does not conform to Adornos definiton. And there's nothing wrong with consumption, it's the WAY we consume that is problematic.Though Adornos analysis of modernity is brilliant i think he, like many others of his generation had a hard time understanding the new youth culture emerging in the 50's and 60's.
unjusdorange 1 year ago
@unjusdorange didn't get marx' critizism of the political economy, did you?
rostkehlchen 1 year ago
@rostkehlchen Probably not.
unjusdorange 1 year ago
Adorno -armchair analysis gone awry. Yes Dylan ended up buying mansions in the ultimate ode to consumerism and was never keen on having his horse hitched to the counter culture cart in the first place -hence his distancing from Joan Baez. But what voice did Adorno give to that generation who went on the streets to rail against the absurdity and immorality of the American war on Indo-China? He hid in his ivory tower criticizing student actions and torture by the Vietcong.
Adorno -FuckOff
fctchk 1 year ago 3
Furthermore, he is so much more clear and focussed when following him in German and not some awful translation.
vivienmerchant 1 year ago
Very arrogant, but the voice of logic, truth and actually - of good taste. How strange that twenty seconds of speech on film carries far more power than page (upon page) of dense prose.
vivienmerchant 1 year ago
It's true that protest music can trivialize and incorporate revolt into consumerism though, and it does for most. It might even de-culpabilize and turn active into passive. But it might wake up some people too. It's not inherently bad I say. He's too rough. very interesting
johnsdeath 1 year ago
but this music plays a role on opinions at the least (which is not necessarily bad) despite it's consumerist diffusion, no? It has its effect, not always superficial!
johnsdeath 1 year ago
thedor adorno what a great man for the the educational and intellectual world and what a treasure.. and what a treasure for me as i use his analysis to complete my assighments in university
timetochilli 1 year ago
Adorno was a genius!!! One of my favourite philosophers, alongside guys like Derrida, Kant, Kierkegaard and Sartre.
Thanks for sharing this video.
tertiusf 1 year ago
Comment removed
tvphobic 1 year ago
A particularly potent rebuff to the argument Adorno presents here is the book File_ Under_Popular by Chris Cutler. The question of whether political content should be included in popular music is addressed at length, as is the question of the pairing of avant-garde stylistic traits within a nominally 'popular' artform. I don't endorse his conclusions, but his is a more careful take on the subject that Adorno here. Theodor is unbeatable on Alban Berg however, and Minima Moralia is dope.
tvphobic 1 year ago
L'ultimo grande filosofo del '900.. grazie.
dorapezzilli 1 year ago
I greatly admire Adorno, but I have to disagree with him here. 'Popular' music has energised radical progressive movements for as long as records exist. Of course capitalist production influences what gets produced and heard, and the manner in which that happens, but that does not make political music worthless. Adorno sold his books through the capitalist system. Did he comidify accademic discussionof suffering in the way he accuses others of comidifying musical discussion of suffering?
wid85 1 year ago 2
as Middleton observes, Adorno perfomes his critique of popular music from the Euro- centric perspective and he analyses it by means of tools aplicable to Austro- German symphonic tradition, not taking into account that they both belong to completely incompatible discourses; but I like that old dead German!
uhj4 1 year ago
Yo, Adorno....
bimhimbim 1 year ago
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More nonsense from jews.
jy768 1 year ago
would you ever consider reposting this with English subtitles? my german isn't that great but I'd like to learn and vids with subtitles is a good way
RevolutionaryJam 1 year ago
I mean can one really say there is superior styles of music when the artistry is determined by the skill of the composer and not the music? You can only blame an intangible or inanimate object for an individuals shortfallings for only so long. I think Mozart or Ravel could orchestrate just as structurally sound compositions using Hip-Hop as using Western European Classical with the proper perspective and understanding of Hip-Hop music. Now, feel free to lambaste me you obsolete snobs!
Jubel06 1 year ago
He wasn't saying there are superior styles. What he said is that style is the enemy, as style is imposed by the status-quo. Whether that style is Hip-Hop OR Western classical it threatens to destroy the artwork. The true work of art is one that at crucial times can say "Fuck style" and provide us with real human freedom through the magic of imagination.
So in other words I think he would have completely agreed with your point about Mozart and Ravel using Hip-Hop. He wasn't a snob.
DrunkenPoetic 1 year ago 14
With all due respect, I think you are completely wrong. Even Mozart would not be able to create works of genius if he used the style and idiom of 'Hip Hop' because it is not rich enough as a musical form. Classical music, as a musical tradition, contains far greater potential because it is richer is styles and forms- counterpoint, sonata form, etc, etc.
bayreuth79 1 year ago 2
@bayreuth79 sorry bud, there is simply no basis for this judgment. it is clear to me that your notions of "richness" and "potential" are predicated on an evaluation of qualities that are specific to the form. namely, the preoccupation with form and technique, which is something that has dominated the western classical tradition. but these aren't inherently required of any music to be "good." the argument boils down to "it is not better than classical music because it is not classical music"
invernessfalls 1 year ago
@bayreuth79 @bayreuth79 Wrong. Both music are made with the tools of the era, our technology, that and the advancement, with the natural transient state of human culture, make each of music and it's place equivalent or also affected by the way music has shifted in society.
You can syntactically define levels of patterns in either music both describing, sensing aural perceptions equally.
noonward 1 year ago
@noonward Your reply does not tell me 'how' your observation that changing human culture and advancing technology some how makes music from different historical periods equivalent. How exactly? Is Beethoven's 9th Symphony no better than a Beatles song? Without being disrespectful, if you regard these as equivalent I would question your aesthetic judgement. Beethoven's music is superior to the Beatles because his music is far more complex and far more emotionally evocative.
bayreuth79 1 year ago
@bayreuth79 Why do you assume complexity and emotional evocativeness are universal bestowers of value? And isn't a Beatles song far more complex than a Beethoven symphony with regard to some musical properties (if you're hung up on complexity)? Bear in mind that simplicity has often been claimed as the main criterion for value.
topologyrob 1 year ago
Popular movements move the populace, sell records, make a few people a lot of money.
War goes on as before. The culture industry coopts completely. YouTube too.
BabetteBabich 2 years ago 10
It is funny how after 1969 there were no good Beatles that songs were recorded- even as solo albums they never had the same quality of songs after 1969.
BushZappa 2 years ago
John Coleman's book "The Committee of 300" claims that Theodor Adorno wrote 18 albums of music for the Beatles - shocking - and all part of a Tavistock Institute mind control experiment to use music to create a generation gap and a drug culture, mostly to fuck up the USA. Adorno is a musical genius, he created the first rock and roll and sold out the world. Interesting that he DIED of a HEART ATTACK in 1969 - when the Beatles group broke up. The irony is he wrote some really beautiful music.
jak11planet 2 years ago
@jak11planet
I've read that too, on web, but I would like to see more on that subject, is there something on youtube?Or could you upload anything?
And I would REALLY love to know who wrote the songs for The Stones?
katula9 2 years ago
This guy was a barrel of laughs.
davidHasselhoff 2 years ago
His critique of pop culture was very complicated.
Unless you have a phd it's very, very unlikely you understand it.
That's not to say it's RIGHT, by the way (or wrong). But unless you've worked like a dog for a year or so getting your head round what he said, you're not criticising Adorno so much of your own idea of Adorno.
This is a hard subject. It's even harder than wanking without porn - and that's really hard (or soft, as the case may be.)
RHYSsoul 2 years ago 3
Phd? I thought you needed a degree in psychology to understand the ramblings of insane people.
kristopaivinen 2 years ago
Der ist doch nur total unmusikalisch... =)
8ut8f8rder 2 years ago
Natürlich verleugnet Adornos Elitismus zugleich die schwachsinnige Idee einer Revolution. Er versteht, dass Singsang nicht die Macht verschieben kann.
bimhimbim 2 years ago
adorno was an asshole
Cubensis00 2 years ago
What is the name of this Documentary?
globalbeehive 2 years ago