Philosophical Analysis of Adorno’s Criticisms of the Function of Popular Music and Substance of Artwork

บทคัดย่อ

This paper aims to explore, simplify, and analyze Theodore W. Adorno’s criticisms and discussions of the function of music. Since Adorno’s criticisms were in a holistically sophisticated passage of a dialectical play. This paper commences with the question of whether a fragment can be retrieved from the whole. The result of this exploration found that it is possible retrieve and simplify, but an isolated fragment needs the complementary parts to be comprehend. Thus, the paper needs to explore from the main theme of late capitalism and the culture industry, and the fundamental components of art i.e., form, content (Inhalt), and substance (Gehalt) or import—a crucial part for understanding the function. According to the analysis of this paper, what appears to function as the culture industry is the “media industry,” and the result is that both the mind and body of the masses are under the control of the greater organization; the culture industry has a crucial function that affects the mind specifically, utilizing one-way communication strategies. However, the situation of the digital age that virtual network communication provides a space for content and ideology contest, offers an ability to publish content to the people who once were defined as a mass who merely had a role of media receiver. Thus, the status of the culture industry is shaken. The contemporary situation requires a deep analysis to reveal its mechanism and structure. However, Adorno’s practice still provides the potential of the artwork itself and the society it is in and his theory can be adopted to analyze the sophistication of the artwork in the contemporary situation.