These two critics are members of the Frankfurt School of thinkers, who moved to America in the 1930s from Germany. Since they had Jewish and Marxist sympathies, it would have been dangerous for them to stay in Germany, because Hitler was gaining power.
The media of America was vastly different to how it was in Germany, where it was controlled to ensure that it conformed with Nazi ideals. In America, anyone could do whatever they wanted in the media, in theory at least, because there was more freedom. It is possible that the duo were unable to adapt to the American way, as they found popular culture of the time, such as the cinemas or flapper girls to be abhorrent. (If they saw what was going on nowadays, they'd be spinning in their graves!) They had rather elitist views, and preferred dignified things such as classical music and operas. Unlike the even more extreme F.R. Leavis, who must have lost all faith in humanity several times by the time he died, Adorno and Horkmeier seemed to show concern for people, and wanted them to be more highbrow. However, the reading gives an implication of selfish hypocrisy, as part of them may want highbrow art to reach a wider audience, a more selfish part doesn't want them to be tainted by the simpleton masses, if quotations such as "...a movement from a Beethoven symphony is crudely “adapted” for a film sound-track in the same way as a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a film script..." are anything to go by.
Source
- Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. (1979) The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. London: Verso, pp. 120-124.
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