Reflection Piece Week 5.

In this reflective piece two excerpts will be discussed from "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Firtstly, the piece speaks of an idea from Immanual Kant which sums, "While the mechanism is to all appearances planned by those who serve up the data of experience, that is, by the culture industry, it is in fact forced upon the latter by the power of society, which remains irrational, however we may try to rationalise it; and this inescapable force is processed by commercial agencies so that they give an artificial impression of being in command." This quote was pulled from the article as it could be argue to demonstrate a parallel of the religious themes circling in Australian secular media. Lets take the article from Week 2, "Renegotiating religious imaginations through transformations of "banal religion" in Supernatural, Peterson speaks of how society may be rejecting religious ideologies, however by placing them into undertones in pop-media (4.2). The irrational is now rational in the context of a marketed irrational framework of Supernatural.  Australian society is lead to believe we live in a secular culture however what is occurring is the cultural industry is marketing religious themes to us through outlets like popular media.

Secondly this quote, "The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them," can be applied to the theme of religion with the example of Hillsong or maybe even the everyday church as the social capital or networking that grows from such industry my compel people to attend even if they may not fully engrossed in the faith itself.   

References: Adorno, T. Horkeimer, M. 1944, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," Dialectic of Enligthmentment URL: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htmPetersen, L.N. 2010, "Renegotiating religious imaginations through transformations of "banal religion" in Supernatural," Department of Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, Volume 4.