Reflections on leisure: notes on the pedagogy of the culture industry

Abstract

The present text deals with a few elements of the relation between the culture industry and leisure, the latter being understood as an undetachable part of the former. In order to do so, this article brings, in its first part, some of the origin of the concept of culture industry as it was developed by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. It then gives a few examples in which culture industry structures materialize – the broadcasting of the World Cup 2002, the contemporary political arena, a documentary film, the “perfect body” industry – in an attempt to verify how these structures form a gruesome constellation which make us perceive the domination processes behind contemporary entertainment as “natural”. In its final part, this text briefly analyzes the theme of laughter as an expression of a civilization’s dialectic, a pulsional control loss which is rationally mediated, but also a sign of hope of a nonconforming nature. KEYWORDS: leisure – the culture industry – Frankfurt School – free time – body – Theodor W. Adorno