- Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:42 pm
#195146
I want to talk about Kracauer's Mass Ornament. Can I do that?
Kracauer claims that homogeneity in the form of the Mass Ornament, a universally-reflected cultural construct made from logic and capitalist “Ration” lacking human individuality, is preventing the emergence of true meaning and progress toward the dominance of reason by getting lost in abstract repetition.
Horkheimer and Adorno, members of the Frankfurt School and most famous for their book The Dialectic of Enlightenment, believe that products of the Culture Industry (a similar construct) are all the same, and don't contain any actual content. They merely support Capitalism and erode expression, forcing us to want things that don't even fulfill us.
Kracauer is claiming the Mass Ornament bears the same form everywhere, reducing to pure mathematics and inhuman "reason" what should be human expression (and supporting capitalism). This is real, but shallow; it is aesthetically legitimate but holds back progress, meaning and true human reason and knowledge by getting lost in abstract repetition.
They believe very similar things in regard to sameness. The Mass Ornament corresponds to the homogeneous ideology of the Culture Industry, with individual instances such as the Tiller Girls corresponding to specific products. They both believe that it destroys actual expression, meaning, and evolution. The big difference: Kracauer, unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, believes the Ornament to represent reality (as it is now, anyway), creating legitimate, if shallow, pleasure—which is, in his mind, still better than the ENTIRELY false promises of failed attempts to imitate the high art of the past. He believes that it is a necessary phase in our movement toward reason's domination over nature and mythology, but stops short with an empty, inhuman form of reason ("Ration") that supports mythology rather than destroying it. That is, the Tiller Girls (an example of the "ornament of which he speaks—look them up if you'd like) dominate nature, but they only do so with more mindless, homogenous mythology, rather than with unique human ideas and knowledge.
Horkheimer and Adorno, however, would argue that it is precisely the opposite of reality, and doesn't TRULY produce pleasure at all, only tricking us into thinking that we will receive it. While they agree with Kracauer that the art of the past is not still produced today, they think that its form is correct. They believe that true art does its best to rely entirely on its own "inherent ideas" (p. 127 of The Dialectics of Enlightenment) and that the homogeneity is entirely a result of their place in the market. They seem to believe that IF ONLY this could be the case for modern art as well, if it could only escape the Culture Industry that forces it to hide the ideology that inevitably guides it rather than saying out loud "look, here I am! I have ideology, and don't think I'm unbiased." This is still escape FROM the culture industry, however.
Kracauer, meanwhile, believes the only way is THROUGH the Mass Ornament (p. 86 of his essay); attempts at "escaping" our culture will not result in freedom, merely in "irreality" (the same page). The Mass Ornament may be terrible, but it still has more reason than art that ignores the reality of our society altogether, as if there were some form of inherent meaning outside any context whatsoever. This is very similar—nearly identical, in fact—to the fundamental concepts of structuralism, in which meaning is produced by the difference between objects in a system—originally applied to signs within language that create auditory meaning through the differences in their signifiers, and conceptual meaning through the differences in their signifieds. It would make about as much sense as it would for us, today, to try creating revolutionary new technology with no connection whatsoever to any systems used by organizations or the general population: without integrating it into society and finding a use for it, a way for it to express human reason (as Kracauer would say) or unique expression (as Horkheimer and Adorno would say), it's worse than nonsensical, having no meaning whatsoever.
In addition, Horkheimer and Adorno do not believe that it is possible to go outside of society and deal with this construct, but their conclusion is that this makes it impossible to deal with it at all. At least at this point, that is, since the fact that they even published their work means that they probably have SOME hope of positively influencing the future.
Kracauer, however, believes it for a different reason and draws a different conclusion. He doesn't believe merely that is impossible because there would be no way of supporting this art in our Culture-Industry focused and directed society; he believes that art created entirely out of society would have no meaning or reality whatsoever. Resultingly, he believes that the only possibility for progress is to move THROUGH the Mass Ornament—that is, by bringing humanity INTO the Mass Ornament (86), making from it an organic one of the type he speaks about on page 76. He would view Horkheimer and Adorno's self-admittedly futile desire to return to the sort-of-style of the past as a step backwards. To be close to nature AND have reason, we must push from mythology (close connection with nature dominating reason), through the Mass Ornament (no connection with nature but with empty "reason" that still supports mythology) to a state in which that empty "reason", "Ration", becomes true human knowledge and expression, upon which we will both be able to have rich, true reason, and enjoy a connection with nature dominated by that reason rather than mythology.
I told you that my occupation was baffling your mind with philosophy. Do you believe me now?
~dlgn
I am the whirring thing past the corner. I am the darker patch under the bed. I am the tapping on your window; the extra steps on the sidewalk; the voice whispering your name. I am Stalkerbot, and I am watching you.
