The Main Goal of Cultural Industries - Essay Example

The question ‘do the culture industries make money or art?’ is somewhat invalid because the question posits a binary opposition between two poles. The question overlooks the possibility that the culture industries produce money, art, and something more; ‘for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything’ (Adorno & Horkheimer 1976, p. 120). The overlap and extension of money and art occurs in discussions about the politics and sociology of the cultural industries. For instance, ‘more attention will have to be paid to unfashionable issues about commodification and the place of cultural production within changing forms of profit-making’ (Hesmondhalgh 1997, p. 178). And the link between money and art becomes more clearly demarked when we recognise that ‘the cultural industries [have] become an increasingly vital part of the strategies of global corporations and national governments’ (Hesmondhalgh 1997, p. 178). That is, in moving ‘from modernity to the current era of globalization, the crucial link is provided by the interventions brought about by technology and information networks’ (Singh 2007, p. 38). Therefore, this paper briefly explores how the culture industries produce something other than just money or art. The political economy of cultural production provides one example of what some people thought was an art-form deviating from the norm. What is more, because the ‘monopolistic hold on culture which forbids anything that cannot be grasped, necessarily refers us back to what has already been produced in the past and institutes self-reflection’ (Adorno 1992, p. 56) the British dance music scene of the 1980s and 1990s offers a useful analytical point in the history of culture. In the penultimate decade of the last century advocates for alternative culture claimed the British dance music scene represented a major break with the mainstream music recording industry (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 234). However, ‘a number of features of the British dance music industry work against a view of the sector as a radical challenge to prevailing cultural-industry practices’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 234). One such factor common to alternative and mainstream culture remains the ‘relationship between economic and cultural capital’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 234). Without doubt, the British dance music scene of 1980s and 1990s spawned inter alia new forms of music, new audiences, and new ways of promoting the art. And yet, paradoxically, while ‘dance music has served as the most prestigious indigenous form of sub-cultural music in Britain and Europe’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 243) the shift took place ‘during a time of unprecedented collaboration between majors and independents’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 243). This outcome results from ‘contemporary ways of life and thought which keep growing out of the interplay between imported and indigenous cultures’ (Hannerz 1987) with the imported being the independents in the British dance music scene and the indigenous being mainstream recording companies. But the question remains, how do two seemingly divergent ideologies converge in the field of economics? Partly, the answer lies in the observation that the ‘[c]ounter cultural discourse clearly overstated the opposition between the two ideal-types, majors and independents’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 243). What is more, the counter culture discourse tended to downplay how the distinction slowly blurred as the majors realised the potential market generated by the independents. Proponents of the counter culture failed to refer to the collaboration between majors and independents in the manufacture of specialised divisions within the corporate establishment (see for example Hesmondhalgh 1998, pp. 244-245). What is interesting about the relationship between the majors and the independents is not so much the economics but the mythology that supports the growth of the emergent industry. That is, dance music began as a revolt against the corporate approach to music production, as a quest for creative autonomy. And yet, within less than a decade, mainstream recording companies were ‘effective in creating the illusion that acquired, large independent companies such as Island are fully separate from the parent’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998, p. 245). The major recording companies clearly maintain the illusion of the creative autonomy of independent producers by organising corporate structures that enable the producers of dance music to project some semblance of independence. What the British dance music scene of 1980s and 1990s suggests is that the corporate ideology of making money from art underpins the putative counter cultures of the post-modern society. What the counter of the counter culture supports is not a full-blown social revolutionary ideology to reconstruct the economic system and social values of capitalism but a bourgeois individualist revolt against the appropriation of profits by large multinational corporations. The situation of the independent music producer might appear to differ from that of the corporate producer. And the illusion might seem especially valid if one takes the following quotation out of context – ‘there is the agreement – or at least the determination – of all executive authorities not to produce or sanction anything that in any way differs from their own rules’ (Adorno & Horkheimer 1976, p. 2). However, a dialectical approach reveals quite the opposite, for the differences between the independent producers and mainstream recording companies ‘serve only to perpetuate the semblance of competition and range of choice’ (Adorno & Horkheimer 1976, p. 3). The willing absorption of the dance music scene into the corporate culture is somehow not surprising given that corporations feel the ‘constant pressure to produce new effects (which must conform to the old pattern)’ (Adorno & Horkheimer 1976, p. 7). And what is more, although one might view the ‘complex relations between the centre and the margin’ (Alhassan 2007, p. 104) as an example of disparate domains, the adoption by the mainstream of the counter culture ‘serves merely as another rule to increase the power of the conventions when any single effect threatens to slip through the net’ (Adorno & Horkheimer 1976, p. 7). That is to say, the case of the British dance music scene during the 1980s and 1990s reveals not the suppression of novelty, nor the emergence of radical politics, but rather the adoption, at the grass-root of society, of the capitalist ideology. One might therefore conclude that although ‘the commercial character of culture causes the difference between culture and practical life to disappear’ (Adorno 1992, p. 53) the capitalist ideology was nevertheless thoroughly entrenched within the British dance music scene of the 1980s and1990s. Moreover, corporatized culture industries operate according the law of ‘cultural imperialism’ (Alhassan 2007, p. 105). And imperialism as ‘a policy of extending your rule over foreign’ (Lewis 2007) territories is always about establishing new markets — ergo extracting profits. However, although the political economy of the culture industries reveal a commercial collusion between independents and majors, a fuller analysis must take account of the consumers of the cultural artefacts. For, music, and art in general, evidence ‘our social relationships ... and ... the various forms of collective identity which help to make us who we are’ (Hesmondhalgh 2007, p. 508). Therefore, the nexus between the consumers of dance music and the foregoing discussion is that ‘an apparent connection with other social groups might involve fantasies that link up with discourses which serve ultimately to belittle those very same people’ (Hesmondhalgh 2007, p. 524). That is, as a community of consumers, fans of early dance music bought into the mythology of a radical art-form. For example, dance events were often ‘viewed as rituals of togetherness and inclusion’ (Hesmondhalgh 1997, p. 169). Such notions of community centred on the rejection of several pillars of institutional forms of music such the star system of the mainstream rock genre. The basis of the mainstream star system continues to be the notion of a clearly identified author. In contrast, fans of early dance music privileged anonymity. However, during the 1990s audiences in the British dance music scene began to reject ‘the values of obscurity and anonymity’ (Hesmondhalgh 1998). Therefore, in terms of ideology, and apropos music and artists, audiences of the putative counter culture began to move toward the dominant mode of thinking. So, again, based on the case of the British dance music scene of the 1980s and 1990s, one may well ask whether the art-form ever represented a radical break from the ideology of capitalist art. The case also illustrates ‘one of Baudrillards ... arguments, namely, that simulation has replaced production at the centre of our social system’ (Huyssen 1989, p. 7). For, if ‘networked capitalism, in replacing industrial capitalism, creates fragmented and multiple social identities’ (Singh 2007, p. 39) then the case of the British dance music scene during the 1980s and 1990s serves as an illustration ‘that contemporary culture has gone beyond the classical Marxist [dichotomy of] use value/exchange value’ (Huyssen 1989, p. 7). And if ‘cultural complexity arises ... out of the clash of modernity and tradition’ (Singh 2007, p. 39) and that clash manifests somewhere between ‘the structures of power understood in radical worldviews and the liberal notions of agency’ (Singh 2007, p. 39) then the sense of railing against the dominant ideology, which the formative community of dance music purported to cluster around, actually examples how the culture industries generate symbolical value. In conclusion, the question whether ‘the culture industries make money or art’ rests on ‘a distinction still at the heart of Adornos frozen dialectic of modernism and mass culture’ (Huyssen 1989, p. 7). And yet, based on the case of the British dance music scene in the 1980s and 1990s, the commerce of cultural production seems to go beyond the classic Marxist dichotomy of use-value and exchange-value. What arises from the absorption by the mainstream of a putative counter culture is the production of symbolic value — a simulacra (Baudrillard 1988) of dissent. Clearly then, what the culture industries manufacture, beyond commerce and artefacts, beyond money or art, is a politically correct symbol that supports the capitalist ideology by promoting the vision of a liberal democracy. References Adorno, T 1992, Schema of Mass Culture, in Culture Industry, Sage, Thousand Oaks, pp. 53-84. Adorno, T & Horkheimer, M 1976, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Continuum, London, pp. 120-145. Alhassan, A 2007, The Canonic Economy of Communication and Culture: The Centrality of the Postcolonial Margins, Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 103-118. Baudrillard, J 1988, Simulacra, in Selected Writings, ed. M Poster, Standford University Press, Standford. Hannerz, U 1987, The World in Creolisation , Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 546-559. Hesmondhalgh, D 2007, Audiences and Everyday Aesthetics: Talking About Good and Bad Music, European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 507-527. 1998, The British Dance Music Industry: A Case Study of Independent Cultural Production , The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 234-251 1997, The Cultural Politics of Dance Music, Soundings, vol. 5, no. Spring, pp. 167-178. Huyssen, A 1989, In the Shadow of Mcluhan: Jean Baudrillards Theory of Simulation , Assemblage, vol. 10, no. Dec, pp. 6-17. Lewis, A, 2007, Wordweb Pro, Princeton University, Princeton. Singh, JP 2007, Culture or Commerce? A Comparative Assessment of International Interactions and Developing Countries at Unesco, Wto, and Beyond, International Studies Perspectives, vol. 8, pp. 36-53.  Read More