Theorist - Adorno and Hebdige

Adorno - Culture Industries

Theordor Adorno argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art in order to keep them passively satisfied. He suggested that culture industries (such as the music industry) produce a large mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more 'difficult' and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life and society.  

False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness.
These features are particularly true in the popular music industry.  All popular music products are commodities to be sold to an audience who believe that they are consuming 'true' emotion.

Products of the culture industry may be emotional or seemingly moving, but Adorno sees this as cathartic. For example, we might seek some comfort in a sad film or song and cry, and then feel restored and refreshed again afterwards. 

Hebdige - Subcultures

Dick Hebdige views Adorno's ideas as overly pessimistic and dismissive of mass audiences as passive and easily manipulated, when they are actually capable of seeing through the illusion of the culture industry.

Hebdige argues that consumption is an active process in which differences in audiences' social and ideological construction lead to different readings of the same cultural products. As such, the audience are free to resist the power of large companies by ignoring, undermining or finding alternative products to consume.  Often this takes the form of the audience constructing themselves as distinct and individual from mainstream culture - as subcultures.

Major companies will inevitably attempt to overtake this resistance by attempting to provide products which these audiences or subcultures will consume. These audiences must then decide whether to accept these products or whether to resist further.