mony-Horkheimer and Adorno

This other morning my alarm clock hummed the soft voices of NPR morning anchors into my ear. As I half-listened to a story about how Target stores will no have a “Couture” clothing line, my body started to crave its grande size latte from the “neighborhood” Starbucks, God forbid I make a pot of Folgers at home. I also remembered that I had to go the alteration shop to get my jeans hemmed. As I got into my car, a US Post Man was walking up to my mailbox. I knew it was him by the eagle image on his shirt. Only twenty minutes from slumber and already my consumption of capitalist services, products, and symbols number more then the words uttered out of my mouth. Help! I live and breathe in Horkeimer and Adorno’s “The Culture Industry” and there is little I can do to leave it, for I am “confined to capitalism” and my straightjacket release seems no where in sight.

I am working for the Global Peace Film Festival and one of the films we are showing is “The Trails of Darryl Hunt”. It is a great documenatry about a wrongfully convicted man who spent twenty years in jail for a crime that he didn’t commit. I had the opportunity to pick up Darryl from the airport for his screening and boy, did he have some great stories to tell about how the “outside” world had changed in the last twenty years. He told me how Court TV put together a care package for him upon release( he said they did it for PR because they filmed themselves giving it to him on the courthouse steps). The contents included a cell phone, laptop, and ipod. Darryl had never used these items before, only seen images of them from TV. He said since his release more than a year ago, he has not touched a single one because he would not like to waste more time then he already has. He went on to talk about how the streets are lined with more fast food places, strip malls, and cars then before his incarceration. He wondered how in the last twenty years it is possible that the need for consumption has increased that much, or are people just telling themselves that they need more. This guy Darryl was definitely a PoMo theorist. I related a lot of what Horkhemier and Adorno said to Darryl’s observations. I have to say though; Darryl was more interesting and easier to understand.