"Amusement, free of all restraint, would be not only the opposite of art but its complementary extreme. Absurdity in the manner of Mark Twain, with which the American culture industry flirts from time to time, would be a corrective to art," (pg113).
Did you guys learn anything in Aesthetics about Mark Twain that could help elaborate on this a little more? I've never heard of him or his work talked about in terms of art before.
Ms. Abbate -
ReplyDeleteI think your question could me more appropriate phrased "Did you guys learn anything in aesthetics?"
To answer your actual question: no, I don’t believe we did learn anything about him specifically.
To me, what Horkeimer and Adorno are trying to express is somewhat analogous to what they said of works such as those by the Dadaist. By the statement, “Absurdity in the manner of Mark Twain… would be a corrective to art” is in regards to the idea of going against the status quo, and not giving into the pressures of the culture industry. Although, I’m not quite sure that is completely it. What they also say about amusement is that it “always means putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even while it is on display… It is indeed escape, but not, as it claims, escape from bad reality but from the last thought of resisting that reality” (116). In this way it would seem to play right back into the goals of the culture industry itself. Which way do you see it?
One final thought – Mark Twain, through his absurdity manages to criticize the norms of society, right? How would that factor in? Would he, unlike Chaplin in my opinion, succeed in resisting the pull of the culture industry? I’m thinking maybe…
In this particular section of "The Culture Industry," H & A are explicitly granting the possibility that humor can serve as a critical tool in society. Now, it quickly becomes debased and co-opted by the culture industry (take as an example the absurd, biting wit of someone like Twain and any garden variety sitcom in which the names change but the characters don't). This is their point about art as well, and the critical potential that it once embodied.
ReplyDeleteChaplin is mentioned, albeit briefly, as someone whose work can resist the universal categories of culture in the same way that art once promised to be able to do so (cf. p. 103 for the art discussion).
I think that Mark Twain is more effective in critisizing society with his use of satire than Charlie Chaplin is in just completely conflicting with functions within society. This is because what Mark Twain does more closely resembles the mechanism desscribed by Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis of Odyseus. Odyseus becomes part of nature to control it. Mark Twain's stories involve his characters becoming a part of society to reveal its injustices and other faults.
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