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produce an image offered potentially liberating, democratic possibilities. Similarly,

although cinema offered the masses mere entertainment and distraction, this didn’t
necessarily turn them into passive consumers; cinema-going was a gregarious, social
activity, with the potential for promoting critical interaction, and even possibly
energising them for revolutionary change.

Adorno dismissed such suggestions as “utopian”. Popular culture, he insisted, was
produced purely to be consumed, like the products of any other industry. Its
motivation was not, as with high culture, artistic or creative, but merely to appeal to

the market for profit and, more insidiously, to manipulate its consumers; keeping
them entertained will also keep them distracted from political reflection or activity,
thus moulding them to be passive, uncritical and conformist: “cultural dopes.”.
Beguiled by escapist popular culture, the masses will succumb to hegemony, without
even being aware that they are being manipulated.

To sum up, Adorno reached two big conclusions: that the way to challenge capitalist

hegemony was through cultural resistance; but also, that this must involve resistance
to popular culture, because it is fundamentally a tool of the hegemonic ruling class.
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Adorno’s analysis became very influential in the second half of the 20 century, but it
also provoked much debate. It begs many questions. Are the masses really
manipulated so easily by popular culture in the way he suggests? Is there are any
evidence to support the idea? And is it right to dismiss all popular culture as
unartistic and lacking in cultural value? These are all questions we must turn to in
the next session.

Conclusion: the century of culture
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What is clear however is that this new thinking lends support to the idea of the 20
century as the “century of culture”. Just as the Modernists revolutionised art and
“high” culture, so Gramsci and the Frankfurt School introduced into political thinking
the notions of cultural hegemony and cultural resistance. These would have a
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profound effect on both the theory and practice of later 20 century politics.

Nor is this the end of the Frankfurt School’s influence. What had begun as a
reappraisal of Marxism soon became something much bigger. The Second World War
brought the unprecedented horrors of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, described by
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some academics as the mid-20 century crisis. But it was more than just a crisis of the
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20 century. The Frankfurt School weren’t the only people to think that something
fundamental seemed to have gone wrong with western civilisation itself. What was
it? What could be done? This would lead the thinkers of the Frankfurt School to re-