Theories on Theory

Studying critical theory is an interesting activity. Theory first of all, is the academic practise of scrutinizing social reality for problems with no intention to solve any of them. If you can expand on the importance of a social abberation, for example that television commercials from the 1960s are indirectly responsible for the psycho-social construction of ADHD, your field of specificity can be such that few others have the background to refute you. And those that do will endeavour to tear your work apart. Knowledge is pain, and the more you know, the more dire life seems to become.

At about the mid-point of an average article there can be the desire to find a lighter and ritualistically burn the words off the page. After all, critical theory further problematizes existing problems, explicating, then again complicating as you go along. However, after musing contemplatively for a few minutes and then daring to read a few more pages, the text often does seem to suggest that there ARE in fact ways to combat living in a metaphysical prison system where you can't make any decisions because they've all been made for you because capitalist mass communication caters directly to advertising and consumption and the profane and evil and Satan, but then doesn't tell you how to do it! Genius! You continue reading the article, assuring yourself that some kind of solution will be introduced by the end, then get there and realize that you've been fooled. There are no solutions, only complex ways to think about the problems using terms that no one really understands. This arguably would seem to be a counter-productive act, theorizing about social strata using language that cannot be understood by the networks it describes. So then you begin thinking of your brain in this difficult way, as more of a 'diachronous hegemony device perpetuating the verisimilitude of autonomous ideological development', at which point your friends tell you to stop talking like an idiot and you realize you've been thinking out loud.

What is the point of learning in this fashion? Why do people like Adorno and Horkheimer insist that there is something fundamentally wrong about uncritically enjoying mass culture? Why is critical (and therefore revealing) investigation such an integral part of academic theorizing, if there doesn't seem to be any noticeable form of practical application? Why are questions important? Essentially, these ideas all suggestively point to the notion of freedom. Whether or not some form of product or standard or legislative practise can be derived from theory doesn't matter as much as the concept of thinking freely and understanding the limitation of cultural networks built upon mythos. Simple pleasures appear to be desirable and amiable on a surface level. However, recognizing the lack of both available choice and liberation involved in these activities describes our participation as, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, a form of mass psychology in league with obedience. But we LIKE watching movies and television and we FEEL GOOD when we buy new clothes! What's wrong with that? The suggestion is that the reductionary position of finding enjoyment in these activities without engaging in them critically relegates people into consumers. Fight Club's Tyler Durdan raises the point of why, as a man in his mid 20s, a person knows what a duvet is, given it that duvets are rarely essential in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word. So what's wrong with being a consumer? I look forward to dinner at restaurants, I like IKEA furniture and I like electronic gizmos with dials and buttons and mystifying blinking lights. As first and foremost a consumer, a person unwittingly buys directly into the system under which they exist. For example, in a mass culture, mass communication revolves around the process of advertising. After the industrial revolution, the ability to create large amounts of goods and employing large amounts of personnel to do so necessitated that mass amounts of people start buying those products. In convincing people what they desire and what feels good through the seduction of advertising and a modified Puritan cultural rationale, people feel good and desire that which indebts them further into their socio-economic system. This extends not only to material objects like clothing and makeup, but also belief systems and personality traits. Tyler Durden explained this significance much more succinctly by suggesting that 'the things you own end up owning you'. Then he started an underground boxing club in order to free men from their cultural bondage (yes, getting beat up by total strangers is totally liberating!), and then later demolished several buildings containing bank records. In a less flashy manner, Adorno and Horkheimer state their opinions on the subject by describing that:

"The most intimate reactions of human beings have become so entirely reified, even to themselves, that the idea of anything peculiar to them survives only in extreme abstraction: personality means hardly more than dazzling white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions. That is the triumph of the culture industry: the compulsive imitation by consumers of cultural commodities which, at the same time, they recognize as false."

Ah yes, here we are, back to being told how hopeless our situation is as we begin reaching for a lighter...but wait! If we're so helpless, why not just submit and roll with it? After all, ignorance is bliss, and I'm definitely in the mood to go drive my inefficient car several measly blocks in order to watch Bruce Willis kick the shit out of everything while enjoying my Coke at an over-priced movie theatre anyways. I know that these desires stem from being a consumer in a particular cultural network, and yet want to engage in them regardless. Arguably, there's a difference between watching films or consuming other products uncritically and with doing so in an analytical fashion, but given that in both cases the system triumphs, this difference might be marginal. Parents often encourage their kids to be happy and think positively about life as an ameliorative psychological practise, while cynicism is rarely toted as having productive outlets. Keep in mind, however, that if you bitch and complain loudly and effectively enough, you could wind up being a pretty successful social theorist.