The Dialectic of Enlightenment

"The two authors are also Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1940s. They published their book in 1947, and they share a great deal with Ernst Bloch, whom they knew, although they had different perspectives in regard to philosophy and sociology. Horkheimer and Adorno began as sociologists. I want to focus on Adorno because he wrote the key chapters in The Dialectic of Enlightenment . He developed the concept of the culture industry, and this is extremely significant for me, because in my work, not only on fairy tales but on literature in general, I wanted to try and understand to what extent we are conditioned through the mass media to understand the world. Adorno developed a thesis about how the monopoly of the culture in the United States was controlled by a few key players. He maintained that they basically sought to dumb down the people so that they do not understand complicated mediations in our lives. Therefore, we are easily controlled. In this respect he was also critiquing Nazism and neo-fascist tendencies in the United States. Adorno also helped me to understand to what extent, say, Walt Disney’s fairy tales, which began in the 1930s, influenced society. I am not just talking about the fairy tales but also about the films, books and all the merchandise that went with them. Disney’s products are filled with stereotypical passive women and men as active, daring heroes. Disney’s films such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty dominated the field of children’s films in the United States and throughout most of the Western world. Adorno led me to see how they represented the worst aspects of the culture industry. And by applying his notion of the cultural history, I have been able to explore and analyse what a serious effect Disney stereotypes have had on our attitudes and dispositions regarding gender. The hundreds of films that the Disney Corporation made – and continue to make – reiterate sexist notions of gender and elitist thinking, encouraging common people to sacrifice their lives for highly gifted kings and queens and princes and princesses. All my analyses of mass culture, not only of the Disney films but also other forms of popular culture, try to show that we must take mass culture seriously and must be very careful with regard to what type of art form we want to promote in our own world."