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

induces relaxation because it is patterned and pre-digested. Its being patterned
and pre-digested serves within the psychological household of the masses to
spare them the effort of that participation (even in listening or observation)
without which there can be no receptivity to art. On the other hand, the stimuli
they provide permit an escape from the boredom of mechanized labor.

[31] The promoters of commercialized entertainment exonerate themselves by
referring to the fact that they are giving the masses what they want. This is an
ideology appropriate to commercial purposes: the less the mass discriminates,
the greater the possibility of selling cultural commodities indiscriminately.
Yet this ideology of vested interest cannot be dismissed so easily. It is not
possible completely to deny that mass consciousness can be molded by the
operative agencies only because the masses "want this stuff."

[32] But why do they want this stuff? In our present society the masses
themselves are kneaded by the same mode of production as the arti-craft material
foisted upon them. The customers of musical entertainment are themselves objects
or, indeed, products of the same mechanisms which determine the production of
popular music. Their spare time serves only to reproduce their working capacity.
It is a means instead of an end. The power of the process of production extends
over the time intervals which on the surface appear to be "free." They want
standardized goods and pseudo-individualization, because their leisure is an
escape from work and at the same time is molded after those psychological
attitudes to which their workaday world exclusively habituates them. Popular
music is for the masses a perpetual bus man's holiday. Thus, there is
justihcation for speaking of a preestablished harmony today between production
and consumption of popular music. The people clamor for what they are going to
get anyhow.

[33] To escape boredom and avoid effort are incompatible--hence the reproduction
of the very attitude from which escape is sought. To be sure, the way in which
they must work on the assembly line, in the factory, or at office machines
denies people any novelty. They seek novelty, but the strain and boredom
associated with actual work leads to avoidance of effort in that leisure time
which offers the only chance for really new experience. As a substitute, they
crave a stimulant. Popular music comes to offer it. Its stimulations are met
with the inability to vest effort in the ever-identical. This means boredom
again. It is a circle which makes escape impossible. The impossibility of escape
causes the widespread attitude of inattention toward popular music. The moment
of recognition is that of effortless sensation. The sudden attention attached to
this moment burns itself out instanter and relegates the listener to a realm of
inattention and distraction. On the one hand, the domain of production and
plugging presupposes distraction and, on the other, produces it.

[34] In this situation the industry faces an insoluble problem. It must arouse
attention by means of ever-new products, but this attention spells their doom.
If no attention is given to the song, it cannot be sold; if attention is paid to
it, there is always the possibility that people will no longer accept it,
because they know it too well. This partly accounts for the constantly renewed
effort to sweep the market with new products, to hound them to their graves;