Branding and the culture industry represent relatively simple, yet pervasive, causal loops that corporate media enterprises have learned to skillfully manage in their favor. When cultural values are connected into a causal system that is able to perpetuate itself and grow, the question of ethics--whether what the system is fostering is right or wrong--becomes comparatively inconsequential, because the vagaries and deceit of the logic become commonplace.
Yet ethics are intrinsically entwined into branding and the culture industry, even though the media oligarchy would seemingly prefer to propagate a belief that they are not -- as they logically should. It is in their financial interests to keep the question of ethics, and the controlling nature of marketing and consumption, separate from the larger understanding of the role media plays in our society.
The origins of the culture industry are perhaps implicitly connected to the original "deception" of the visual image. When the first photographic image appeared on Louis Daguerre's "highly polished silver-plated sheet of copper," the first harbinger of the current culture industry was on display. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's biography of Daguerre describes the duality of the medium and the "aura" of art:
From the moment of its birth, photography had a dual character—as a medium of artistic expression and as a powerful scientific tool—and Daguerre promoted his invention on both fronts. Several of his earliest plates were still-life compositions of plaster casts after antique sculpture—an ideal subject since the white casts reflected light well, were immobile during long exposures, and lent, by association, the aura of "art" to pictures made by mechanical means.
(Timeline of art history)
This straightforward image capture of a harmless still life seems innocuous at first blush. But it was not. And Daguerre most likely didn't think of photography as creating an "aura of art" which implies falseness and a deception. Yet according to the preceding passage, Daguerre did recognize the power of his invention, and its clever novelty and newness certainly must have masked the cultural danger that an "image of art" (something that wasn't the real thing) would portend.
This idea of the "aura of art" is a theme echoed by Adorno and Horkheimer in their essay The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. One of their arguments deconstructs "style" as a homogeneous regulator, a true generality that classifies real expression into codified reconciliation. This church of style seeks to promise that art will create truth by recasting conventional social forms -- a necessary hypocrisy. To this extent art is always an ideology. Real life is secondary to art through the suggestion "that fulfilment lies in their (it's) aesthetic derivative" (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944).
This intuits that true art, as opposed to art as ideology, can transcend reality and impart to its appreciator an experience of transcendence, because true art is beyond doubt.
The pejorative "aura of art" is necessarily rife in inferior artwork; imitators of true art who create an identity of similarity, a mélange of tired metaphors. It follows that inferior artwork, or the aura of art, is directly analogous to the media and its taxonomic cousins -- marketing and the branding culture -- that use it as a vehicle to mass produce purchasing consent and subordination to icons that are hyper-prevalent and programmed into our overarching cultural psyche.
Culture is a term rife with meaning that seemingly remains neutral -- mention the word culture in a discussion or conversation and it will not illicit strong reaction. This is, perhaps, because it has broad context, and is not an "ism". Yet, ironically, many isms are rooted in its concepts. Out of culture comes our focusing lens on reality, our context for understanding our positions in our immediate environment and, subsequently, the greater world community. These contexts become the isms that rule our existence and which often manifest in negative ways. So the idea of a culture industry is naturally deviant. Prevailing wisdom declares that these two terms are in opposition to one another, that culture should not be manufactured. Placing them together creates its own scary irony, and reveals that, in fact, our culture is manufactured for us while we innocently play along, and that the scary irony is commonplace.
Arguably the greatest single irony of the culture industry is the willingness of the individual consumer to consume, en masse, even when they are aware of and in on the deception. As Adorno and Horkheimer point out, "the attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is part of the system and not an excuse for it."
So where was the tipping point in which the public ceded their autonomy to the culture industry? Or did the change happen incrementally, while we were sleeping? Certainly there are landmarks in human history that together collectively subordinated us into the role of submissive consumer and that triggered the gradual accrual of the culture industry.
If we have truly allowed our imagination to be shaped for us, based on the latest trends, marketing techniques, or movie plot formulas, then we have entered into the industry's reinforcing causal loop that is unremitting and enduring -- and we seem to be satisfied with it.
We don't need to make decisions and act, if we would rather not; we can enjoy the warm cocoon that the culture industry soothes us with. This reality is easily recognized, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, through the suggestion that real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. It creates a veil that furthers the deception and requisite subordination of the public into a fluid arena that the culture industry can maximize to their benefit, making the societal zeitgeist malleable and under their implicit control. The industry is so programmed that they may even fail to recognize the explicit power they possess as part of the system.
Adorno & Horkheimer also point out that the movie script and the entertainment formula it promotes is its own reality, more "real" than real life.
The sound film, far surpassing the theatre of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality.
(Adorno & Horheimer, 1944)
In such a scenario, the temptation to succumb to the whims of the culture industry -- thus, enjoying the movie -- are nearly impossible to contend with. Even if we are cognizant of the deceit, we still must stand in line and take our medicine as the media and brands see fit to serve it.
Times may be changing. Madison Avenue is wary. New media in the form of the "social web" is creating a more even playing field that is bending the culture industry's rules. The deceit is still in play, but the cards are in many more hands, and the prevailing hierarchies that injected a top-down model where the rules were made in corporate boardrooms are faced with a new approach to structure; a structure that grows from the bottom-up where the "consumers" of the product can speak loudly and determine what stays and what goes.
But perhaps the damage has been done. The milquetoast nature of the entertainment industry and its "culture" has even dulled the senses of the cognoscenti. The radio play list, designed in concert with the marketing/advertising department and the corporate board whose sole purpose is to please the stockholders, will not stray into musical territory that appeals to the niche listeners that are agents of change.
So, yes, the culture industry is unethical. It could not be anything but. It stunts societal growth by feeding the automatons it created. And they like it, and they want more, but they will never discover anything but the "aura of art" -- an incumbently false pretense.
If you enjoyed this post, you can watch as I go deeper on the The Aura of Art.
References
Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1944) The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception, Retrieved on 3/30/07 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.html
Lester P. (1999) Photojournalism an ethical approach. Chapter Six Picture Manipulations. Retrieved from http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/chapter6.html
Timeline of art history, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daguerre (1787-1851) and the invention of photography, Retrieved on 4-16-07 from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm
Holt, D. (2002) Why do brands cause trouble? A dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding, Journal of consumer research, vol. 29