The cultural industry: loss of identity
We say that communication is the exchange and coding of codes that allow the construction of common meanings, it is somewhat innate to human beings and is determined by culture. I consider that this construction is not unidirectional, there is a retro positive food between them, communication allows me to create a culture and in turn, culture determines the way of communicating myself. We understand by culture what defined and.B Tylor (1871) as any complex that includes knowledge, beliefs, customs, art, law, morals and any other habit and ability that man acquires by being part of a society.
We have created a fairly homogeneous culture to tell the truth, we are beings as equal that as Ortega y Gasset (1930) says we become a mass man. We do not differentiate. We are many doing so many different things that in the end turn out to be the same. What leads me to say that we are immersed in mass culture, a term proposed by Martín-Barbero (1987) stating that the mass should not be seen only from its wide ability to disseminate but as part of a social transformation in which you canfind demonstrations of culture.
In addition, with the development of new technologies from the twentieth century, a reality is glimpsed: the western world is defined by the mass media and industrialization, capitalism. Everything moves around this. Propaganda and fame. Sell and buy. There is nothing that does not have monetary value. In view of any industry we are market: politics, fashion, art, music, cinema, education, science, food, architecture, entertainment, personal relationships, technology … Let’s observe that today our life is mediated, even some would dareTo say that you need technology, so it is so common to hear anywhere the question "Do you have Facebook"? knowing someone. If we analyze in depth the involvement that knowing someone leads me to use a cell phone or computer, have wifi and be part of a social network to know about your life, I repeat, it makes us a market after all.
Both market and culture ideas are so present and are so powerful within this society that it gives place that authors such as Horkheimer and AdornCulture – with what should not be marketed – towards a homogeneous market, where music, crafts or even art become merchandise. The theme of art was also addressed by Walter (1935) who explained that the passage for the industrialization of the work of art, its mechanical and series reproduction, makes that unique and original characteristic (aura) that made it made itThat is, referring to a picture of the painter Vincent Van Gogh, in a certain way illustrating the corrosive and scorch that could become the desire for power and money that society demands us. And yes, even before a globalization was fully achieved, these authors managedcultural impositions, the trade of art and most importantly, the loss of identity of the human being.
The cultural industry at the same time does the role of oppressor and Salvador of the community. Social commercialization is so strong that it forces you to be part of a market to be someone, exist or be accepted, to meet certain even physical characteristics to belong to a group, generates the division of social classes, the rejection of the different,condemning everything outside the system because the different is prohibited. We are standards.
Just as art, the mass has meant that we also lose our aura, our essence, what makes us original and unique, we are copies of others believing to be different and free, mirage sold for a long time by the Enlightenment. We are so immersed in a system where they sell you to dreams of life, that they turn out to be the same as that of half humanity and we do not join. We are mass after all
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