Exceptional Enemies of Hollywood: The Nazis. “It is claimed that the values counted as true are wrong, and those that are considered wrong are true… But today there is neither right nor wrong and everything gets harder as it gets hard… Yes, we are increasingly showing more, but we are seeing less and less…” (J. L. Godard)
It is possible to see that many of the features / functions attributed to culture, media and art have also changed radically in the 21st century, where we have experienced many milestones for human history. Actually, we are talking about a change that goes far beyond the debate whether art is for art or for society. Culture is turning into a powerful weapon in the hands of capitalism day by day; so that even anti-capitalist cultural products become commodities for capitalism.
This system, which has the power to grind the world uncontrolledly, considers as much as conservative roads as it uses, and as Gramsci draws attention, it does not hesitate to use cultural products to dominate civil society on this road. Similarly, in the article “Culture Industry”, Adorno mentions that the role of art has changed in a sense because of the domination of the capitalist division of labor and the rise of Fordism and the emergence of modern means of communication.
According to Adorno, capitalism uses cultural tools and products as a weapon to impose its ideological infrastructure on society. These products are no longer cultural products, they become a marketable industry of the Culture Industry, where the value of change overrides the value of use. In this system, both producers and consumers are not free, according to Adorno; As manufacturers produce what the system imposes, the demand is already predetermined, creating the illusion that consumers choose.
In fact, it is a fetishism created delicately by ideology. A passion for identity is created and this passion is provided by order. Expected reactions and cultural mass production in general create a false individualization. In this sense, according to Adorno, individuals are actually puppets; these puppets deliver their thinking skills to the system during their leisure time, and enjoy their so-called “choice”. According to Horkheimer, in the Culture Industry, which aims to capture the body at work hours and the souls at work times, it is stated that “with the transformation of private life into free time, the soulless pursuits until the last detail of free time, the pleasure of the human his inner world has also disappeared.”
In the middle of this industry, cinema stops / shows people the life they need to live. Ideal / exemplary and / or not to be presented to viewers with cinema films are visually “explained” so that the consumer can be less than making decisions. In this respect, we can think the following: In the Culture Industry, cinema even makes questioning controlled.
Moreover, the opposition elements in the movies claim to represent a contentious opposition, they cannot have an objection at the point of mass consumption! According to Adorno, those who set out with the aim of destroying capitalism with the tools used by capitalism are doomed to lose; because when they use those tools, they become part of the system. In other words, it is not possible to use the tools of the system without being a part of the system. So how sincere is the opposition produced in terms of content?
Next Page: Ideal Enemies of Cinema: Fascism and Nazis.
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