A Research Of The Frankfurt School’s Culture Industry Critique Theory

Frankfurt school is an academic group composed of researchers from the Institute of social research in Frankfurt, Germany. It is the Philosophy- Sociology School that puts the contemporary capitalist society by multidisciplinary comprehensive research and criticism as the main task. The critical theory of cultural industry is the organic part of the Frankfurt school’s critical theory, embodied their unique thinking of contemporary cultural situation art. Critical theory of culture industry originated in 1930 s. The "Enlightenment Dialectics", published in the 40’s, marks its maturity. The 50’s and the 60’s reached its peak. At the same time, the critique of culture industry was extended to the psychological dimension, the school’s critical theory of culture industry was more profound and perfect. The theory of cultural industry criticism was the collective wisdom of the first generation of Frankfurt school thinker, such as M. Max Horkheimer, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Lowenthal, Fromm, Marcuse and so on, which they had contributed to the critical theory of culture industry.The Frankfurt school was based on Marx’s alienation theory, Lukac’s theory of materialization Theory, Gramsci’s theory of civil society and Freud’s psychoanalysis theory as the theoretical basis. Accord to analyze the impact of commercialization and industrialization on popular culture, the control of German Fascism totalitarian culture, especially the analysis of the control of the popular culture of American high monopoly, the Frankfurt school realized the school’s own academic turn and formed a unique cultural industry criticism theory. In essence, the culture industry is a kind of social control. The developed industrial society with modern science and technology, large-scale replication, propagation of commercialization, uniformity, standardization and pseudo individualization of cultural products poisoned and deceived people, so as to realize the ideological control and psychological control of the masses. The critical theory of cultural industry to reveal the modern capitalist social cultural value crisis, show mass culture to expel the historical reality of higher culture,reveal the individual consciousness of criticism and negative thinking loss has progressive significance. However, the Frankfurt school’s critical theory of culture industry is a product of social and historical context in twentieth Century, which disdains for popular culture and to be nostalgic, automatically ignores consumer groups of subject consciousness, the lack of guidance of mass culture practice, as for cultural production and commodity production has become the theoretical limitations can hardly be avoided, but it does not deny the contemporary value of this theory. Culture and art should play the guiding role in the interests of the people, should be combined with the practice of the masses, should achieve social and economic benefits of unity, should explore the rich resources of Chinese traditional culture that has become the important implications for the development of China’s culture and art.