The Old Masses and the New Elites
In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer offered a blunt vision of culture under capitalism: homogenized, mechanized, and hollow. Culture, they argued, had become an industry like any other—producing standardized goods to pacify the public and suppress critical thought. Consumers didn’t choose; they were chosen for.
But today, cultural consumption doesn’t feel quite so passive. We build Spotify playlists with surgical care, signal taste on Goodreads, debate aesthetics on Letterboxd, and curate our Netflix queues like digital mood boards. In this context, Adorno’s bleak vision seems… outdated. Haven’t we moved from being cultural dupes to cultural connoisseurs?
That’s where Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital sharpens the picture.
Theory Snapshot: From Mass Standardization to Taste as Distinction
If Adorno’s “culture industry” emphasized sameness, Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979) looked sideways—at how different social groups consume culture to signal class, education, and power. Cultural capital, in Bourdieu’s terms, is the non-economic currency of taste: knowing how to talk about cinema, choosing artisanal over mass-market, signaling refinement through what you don’t like.
Where Adorno saw culture flattening difference, Bourdieu saw it reinforcing social hierarchies. Highbrow vs. lowbrow wasn’t about quality—it was about class camouflage. Consuming "the right things" becomes a quiet performance of superiority.
Now, drop that into today’s world of influencers, aesthetic subcultures, and lifestyle branding—and things get interesting.
Case in Point: The Instagram Aesthetic and Taste as Content
Consider the visual economy of Instagram. Every brunch photo, reading list, travel snap, or shelfie is a small gesture of taste. These aren’t mass products; they’re signals—carefully composed, semi-public displays of cultural capital. A niche zine, a Margiela piece, a rare vinyl pressing—each says something about your position in the cultural field.
Platforms that seem democratic are often fields of quiet stratification. TikTok’s “core” subcultures (coquettecore, cottagecore, etc.) turn taste into aesthetic identity. Even anti-capitalist aesthetics—DIY zines, thrifted fits, lo-fi photography—become forms of capital when performed visibly.
This isn’t just consumption—it’s curation. And curation is power.
Why It Matters: The New Culture Industry
So, has the culture industry disappeared—or just adapted?
In some ways, Adorno and Bourdieu were diagnosing the same disease from different angles. Adorno warned of culture’s descent into pacifying sameness. Bourdieu warned of how difference itself can be commodified. Today, we live in a synthesis of both: a world where the appearance of uniqueness feeds a deeper logic of conformity and hierarchy.
Culture today is not mass-produced kitsch imposed from above—it’s a marketplace of taste distinctions, performed from below but shaped by invisible algorithms, platform norms, and brand aesthetics. The illusion is one of autonomy. You don’t have to watch Marvel; you can signal prestige by quoting Godard. But both exist in the same monetized attention economy.
To put it simply: we’re no longer just the audience. We’re the product and the promoters.
