¶ … jazz and the culture industry? Is Adorno simply an elitist or is there something useful you can appropriate from his argument? What connections can you draw from Benjamin and the "Andalusia Dog?"
Theodor Adorno was clearly inspired by Walter Benjamin, from whom he founded his philosophy of modern art, versus fine or popular art. Adorno constructed a theory of the modern art movement, as embodied in such early surrealist films as "The Andulasian Dog," that stressed that fine art was primarily characterized by a sense of formal autonomy within its structures. This is unlike modern art, which was the social antithesis of society. Jazz, for example, in its ideal form, is atonal and improvisational in its nature. It is of the moment, and of the individual artist's creation, rather than a creation of formal structures purely and calculatedly designed to please the larger populace. In its purest form, jazz is not produced in a capitalist factory of music, or in a capitalist-driven recording session, in a studio with prefabricated sounds, stars, and lyrics.
Yet jazz can become a product of a cultural industry. Once jazz is commodified and rendered into standard structures of music, jazz can be sold, once it has escaped the margins of society and escaped the clubs and jazz joints that used to purvey it in improvisational form. It becomes recorded, and rendered into Christmas carols, funny records for the consumptions of children songs and teen love ditties,...
He later wrote that their tribute reminded him of the "nation-wide" support he had received in 1913 in his fight against the "reds." (Valkenier, 1978, p. 28). The Russian Revolution also introduced an entirely new art form. It is thought that the period following the Bolshevik Revolution until the middle 1920s was progressive and at the forefront of the European avant-garde. Artists believed in the profound influence they could have
Politics, literature and the arts -- Transformation, Totalitarianism, and Modern Capitalist life in Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis," Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," and Albert Camus' Caligula At first, the towering heights of the German director Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" may seem to have little to do with the cramped world of the Czech author Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Fritz Lang portrayed a humanity whereby seemingly sleek human beings were dwarfed by towering and modernist structures, where
Politics, Literature & the Arts: Modernism has been discussed as a reaction to modernity: from the following works, is this a fair description? Modernism is often defined as a chaotic, pastiche-style of rendering the difficulties of modern, industrialized life. The attempted regimentation of modernity becomes, in modernism, exposed for the absurdity that it is through the surrealist and other modernist aesthetics, such as the improvised jazz riff. For example, in the
However, Mohr, once again became defensive and proposed that this flask was a way that brothers help the world to visualize the different occupations found at that time. In short, the pottery by Kirkpatrick brothers conveyed many messages. It held a lot of importance during that time. In fact, the pottery acted as a political messenger and conveyed many messages which would have otherwise would have remained untapped. For Mohr,
public sphere and the culture industry: has the former been fundamentally corrupted through the latter? Are there new possibilities that the culture industry has to offer politics? The public sphere of artistic discourse is one in which, according to Theodor Adorno, the culture industry sells its commodity goods that masquerade as truth and art. Where the media and world of art should speak to a kind of anti-structured and individualistic
Kafka, The Wannsee Conference, And Shadows and Fog Kafka's protagonist of "The Metamorphosis," Gregor Samsa, perfectly embodies the totalitarian mindset in the sense that he is colonized by the desires of his employer, his family, and even the room in which he lives to the point that he can hardly think for himself. The room in which Samsa dwells is so small; the man becomes a virtual prisoner of its confines.
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