A & H Ning Questions

For a final alternative, use this quotation — “Love is downgraded to romance.” — as an opening to try to explain the overall argument(s) of the chapter.

Downgrading love to romance is, I think, more obvious when you've been in love. Love isn't exciting, it's not a bunch of roses or fighting with Matthew McConaughey until he chases you down in the airport, it's not something that follows the plot of the movies. At least that's my experience.

Adorno and Horkheimer are talking about the representation of human relationships through the culture industry. Love becomes romance when romance films and shows begin to tell the masses what "real" love is - it's roses and Matthew McConaughey, or the taming of the shrew (see McClintock!, for example). When we're told what certain emotions look like, or certain human relationships, we're more likely to act in what is considered appropriate ways. I can remember going to a funeral and a wedding as a child and trying to figure out how I was supposed to behave - I relied on the culture industry's representation of normative behavior to figure it out.

(An example I refer to based on my own, very Western upbringing, is that "there's no crying in baseball", or really, ever. Crying is a sign of weakness and weakness is unacceptable, regardless of gender. This is a lesson that I work every day to forget - not because I cry every day, but because I have cried twice in the last four years, and one of those times I had to make myself cry by drinking a beer and watching Steel Magnolias (yes, I get the irony of exploring representation of emotion and relationships throught the culture industry while using a film as an example for how I can become more "cultured"). Le sigh.)

Generalize about how you might apply what you've read in the Benjamin and the Adorno and Horkheimer: describe (again quickly!) a media object you would like sometime to analyze, and add a sentence or three about what our background-theory readings allow or encourage you to say about the object.

Actually, to combine all three of them, I'd like to analyze an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The reproduction of images, often popular or historical images, in the cartoons, could be really interesting for exploring the aura of the art object, particularly one that has been completely altered for the sake of a different audience. Python often uses images of high art and high culture, but repurposes them for the masses.