culture industry on steroids

It would seem that contrary to popular belief that the chapter on the culture industry in Dialectics of enlightenment is too pessimistic - a symptom of a fundamental misunderstanding not only of the work, but philosophy in general - it was not pessimistic enough, as the contemporary fusion of culture and advertising demonstrates. Two cases in Slovenia are symptomatic. A few months ago a mobile phone network operating company (Mobitel) sponsored the broadcasting of a "concert" by the Gorillaz free of charge. As I am writing this post billboards are being covered with advertisements for a concert of the Killers, brought to us by the same company. The deal is this: if you subscribe to a specific price plan the company has to offer, you get the tickets free of charge. Horkheimer and Adorno had much to say about a culture industry that sells mass-produced products, aimed at eliciting prestandardised psychological responses from target audiences, thereby mimicking the productive process culture was meant to transcend. These recent developments are at once in continuity with the logic of the culture industry and an intensification of the tendencies Horkheimer and Adorno extrapolated. We are witnessing the cultural artefact becoming even more degraded, no longer does it even aim to achieve some standardised psychological response, like identification with a hero or heroine and their plight, but is merely a sideshow. The function of the cultural artefact in such a situation is not to be a product that is consumed for its own sake, but as advertising. Culture, in such instances, has truly become what Horkheimer and Adorno accused it to be: mere propaganda.