Sarah Hussey
CMC 300 Post-Class Blog Post 11/6
Dear Blog,
For Thursday’s class we discussed my favorite theorist(s) EVER: Adorno and Horkheimer. I absolutely love his theory. Adorno reiterates the idea that our capitalist society is highly restrictive socially, economically and politically and it does not actually care about specific individuals, only the mass consumer society. One of the terms mentioned by Adorno was “Culture Industry” from my understanding is when products are being marketed to manipulate mass society in their benefit which in almost all cases is money.
One aspect of their theory that stuck out to me in class discussion was how we refer to general products as brands, with the idea that everyone knows what we are talking about and mean. For example, I did not realize q tips were actually called cotton swabs! Or that band aids are a brand and the accurate name is bandages when referring to them generally! As a society, we collectively agree upon things like this.
Bringing me to my next point: the concept of reality TV. Firstly, we define reality as what we accept as the truth. Yet, for reality tv, this is a whole different meaning. Reality TV producers market towards the public that they are relatable and real when in real life they are scripted and edited. For example, the reality show “too hot to handle”. I won’t discuss the whole concept as I want to write my essay on this however, recently actors came out and said that a lot of the plot was scripted AND edited which defeats the entire concept of reality tv.
However, then it makes me question the fact if we ever really believed it was real? Was there ever a time where we didn’t think to question the authenticity of reality tv? What purpose does reality tv serve to our society? What are it’s benefits other than entertainment?
Anyways, I am excited to explore this concept more with my theory and praxis essay.
Signing Off,
SarahSlays
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