The Director in the German Theater: Harmony, Spectacle and Ensemble

Abstract

At several points in their chapter on modern culture industry in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer display a distinct nostalgia for art of 19th century. This was an era, they suggest, in which art had not yet been fully appropriated serve interests of market place. As a result, one may surmise, work of art that still retained some degree of autonomy did not display stereotypical features, repetitiveness, predictability nor false identity of particular with general, all of which Adorno and Horkheimer find so characteristic of art in age of mass media. Indeed, in period between romanticism and expressionism they claim, the detail won its freedom...became rebellious and...asserted itself as free expression, as a vehicle of protest against organization.' The work of art that displayed such freedom was, of course, incomplete as it contained an intractability of subject matter or irregularity of vision that could not be made part of a harmonious totality. Through this work took on an autonomy that raised it above routine fiction or mere reportage: That factor in a work of art which enables it transcend reality...does not consist of harmony actually realized, of any doubtful unity of form and content, within or without, of individual and society; it is be found in those features in which discrepancy appears: in necessary failure of passionate striving for identity.2 Faced with such material, each member of artist's public was free think about art he experienced, adopt an attitude towards it through which he or she might, if so inclined, be able to relate varied experiences of senses fundamental concepts.' As their theme is culture of a modern, Americanized world, Adorno and Horkheimer spend little time in exemplifying such art,