"On Popular Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adorno Theodor W)

prescription to substitute for it the right detail, or rather the naked scheme.
Understanding popular music means obeying such commands for listening. Popular
music commands its own listening habits.

[26] There is another type of individualization claimed in terms of kinds of
popular music and differences in name bands. The types of popular music are
carefully differentiated in production. The listener is presumed to be able to
choose between them. The most widely recognized differentiations are those
between swing and sweet and such name bands as Benny Goodman and Guy Lombardo.
The listener is quickly able to distinguish the types of music and even the
performing band, this in spite of the fundamental identity of the material and
the great similarity of the presentations apart from their emphasized
distinguishing trademarks. This labeling technique, as regards type of music and
band, is pseudo-individualization, but of a sociological kind outside the realm
of strict musical technology. It provides trademarks of identification for
differentiating between the actually undifferentiated.

[27] Popular music becomes a multiple-choice questionnaire. There are two main
types and their derivatives from which to choose. The listener is encouraged by
the inexorable presence of these types psychologically to cross out what he
dislikes and check what he likes. The limitation inherent in this choice and the
clear-cut alternative it entails provoke like-dislike patterns of behavior. This
mechanical dichotomy breaks down indifference it is imperative to fdvor sweet or
swing if one wishes to continue to listen to popular music.


THEORY ABOUT THE LISTENER

Popular Music and "Leisure Time"

[28] In order to understand why this whole type of music (i.e., popular music in
general) maintains its hold on the masses, some considerations of a general kind
may be appropriate.

[29] The frame of mind to which popular music originally appealed, on which it
feeds, and which it perpetually reinforces, is simultaneously one of distraction
and inattention. Listeners are distracted from the demands of reality by
entertainment which does not demand attention either.

[30] The notion of distraction can be properly understood only within its social
setting and not in self-subsistent terms of individual psychology. Distraction
is bound to the present mode of production, to the rationalized and mechanized
process of labor to which, directly or indirectly, masses are subject. This mode
of production, which engenders fears and anxiety about unemployment, loss of
income, war, has its "nonproductive" correlate in entertainment; that is,
relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all. People
want to have fun. A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is
possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in
their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously.
The whole sphere of cheap commercial entertainment reflects this dual desire. It