Artificial Reality

In the essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, the authors discuss the idea that the masses have difficulty distinguishing reality from culture.  At first this was a little confusing and hard to wrap my head around.  After some thought, it made sense after thinking about it in terms of reality shows.  We can look specifically at reality shows like the Jersey Shore, the Real Housewives Series, and others that ultimately create this fictitious culture to capture as reality. 

            These shows are shows in which the people are specifically chosen and the environment set.  Then in order to create what the producers would consider the best show, they are able to edit everything in order to show only certain parts of this “reality” giving a skewed perspective to the audience.  These shows are labeled as “reality” shows because they are “real” people in “real” environments and that are supposedly unscripted.  Despite the artificial culture, the masses really don’t distinguish it as a separate culture.  This “culture” they are watching on television is not a reality as they tend to perceive it. 

            When I think about it, I think it’s kind of crazy that these shows are not separated from reality.  I feel as though it has become fairly well known that these shows aren’t as “real” as people thought when they originally started airing on television.  I wonder if this is something that is naturally engrained in us or is it something more.  In the article “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the authors discuss how there is a small ruling class and they are the ones that chooses what ideas and concepts go out to the masses.  Essentially, this ruling class has a great influence over the masses and can basically manipulate them.  So there’s also the possibility that the ruling class is manipulating the masses making it difficult for us to distinguish the reality and culture.  While this is something that would be quite difficult to research specifically I think this is something that would be quite interesting to think about and possibly look more into.   

Meghan O.