The Culture Industry Book

How old were you when you realized that the methods and modes that govern Hollywood cultural production are EXACTLY THE SAME as the propaganda machines that power some of the most oppressive totalitarian regimes in human history? I know how old I was. I was twenty-five and this realization came to me, not immanently, but because I read this critical text. Critical theory is exactly what gives voice to suspicions that all intelligent people have, but lack the ability to voice. Whereas some critical theorists give voice to (boring) suspicions on the nature of truth, the limits of cognition, the embedded psychic processes which produce reactions like nostalgia (and so on and so forth), Adorno gives voice to every right-thinking persons attractive/repulsive relationship with Hollywood. Read Adorno, but be warned: the perceptive door that this text knocks wide open will be just as painful as it will be illuminating.