Enlightenment
According to Adorno & Horkheimer, enlightenment can in its widest sense be described as the advance of thought. It is a phenomenon that has always aimed to liberate human beings from fear and instead install them as masters of their own fears and thoughts.
Adorno & Horkheimer makes the point that humans believe themselves free from these fears when anything unknown has ceased to exist. This has determined the path of demythologization - enlightenment - which equates the living with the nonliving as myth had equated the nonliving with the living. Through this they state that enlightenment somewhat is a radical fear of mythology, which I believe to be a fair conclusion drawn on their presented background.
Meaning and function of "myth"
Adorno & Horkheimer literally state that a myth "sought to report, to name, to tell of origins - but therefore also to narrate, record, explain". Through this quote you can dechiffer both their definition of meaning and functionality of a myth - that it is some kind of narrative description of the world and its history.
As also stated under the "Enlightenment" topic, a myth equates the nonliving with the living as enlightenment equates the living with the nonliving. It is therefore also fair to say that mythodology is less "kowledgebased" than when talking about enlightenment in this case. But if you remember Russells text in Theme 1, knowledge is still something that is based on a foundation of belief. So even in this case, the difference of mythodology and "enlighted knowledge" may not be viewed as black and white as one may like to incentively think.
Adorno & Horkheimer literally state that a myth "sought to report, to name, to tell of origins - but therefore also to narrate, record, explain". Through this quote you can dechiffer both their definition of meaning and functionality of a myth - that it is some kind of narrative description of the world and its history.
As also stated under the "Enlightenment" topic, a myth equates the nonliving with the living as enlightenment equates the living with the nonliving. It is therefore also fair to say that mythodology is less "kowledgebased" than when talking about enlightenment in this case. But if you remember Russells text in Theme 1, knowledge is still something that is based on a foundation of belief. So even in this case, the difference of mythodology and "enlighted knowledge" may not be viewed as black and white as one may like to incentively think.
Old and new media
Firstly, you have to bear in mind that the text was written in 1944. This makes the authors capable of talking of "media-steps" that we today would not perhaps view as so dominant. However, they make some interesting points when discussing the differences in the older "art" och "lone subject" medias, compared to the newer mass medias. They per example bring up the step from telephone to radio, where the former liberally permitted the user to play the subject role, whereas the latter makes everyone equally into listerners. They also make the point that newer medias fuses older medias together. Such as the way television aims at a synthesis of radio and film.
Culture industry
The culture industries were formed as the old media forms started moving into the newer mass media forms that could reach a whole lot more people. Films or radio shows no longer needed to present themselves as art, as bigger corporations or governments stepped in to handle productions and distributions. A culture industry, the authors argue, is an industry that tries to please each and everyone with standardized products - rather than producing "specialized art".
Mass media to mass deception
As mass media possess tremendous reach and, at the same time, possess quite an extensive amount of believed credibility (maybe especially in these earlier days) it therefore also possess a great power of opinion. As the authors state, mass medias can without much problem take on a deceptive form of a disinterested, impartial authority. They exemplify this with the contemporary times of fascism, as radio became the universal deceptive mouthpiece of Hitler.
Interesting concepts/terms
What I found most interesting with the text is how applicable it is with the times of today. Then I especially think of the deceptive media. I believe it is fascinating how people in general have not developed the concept of source critisism or questioning much further in these cases. The force of mass deception is daily evident in the media - maybe in more varigated and smaller forms than the fascism of the 30s/40s, but I believe even the journalistic impact of tweaking a story to get a more commercialized story to be a form of deception. Other than that, there are plenty of media networks that is governed by opinion in today's western world. The Fox network in the US is a great example. More extreme, governmental examples can be found in states like China or, probably the most extreme, in North Korea. I do not think that people living in these countries question much that is being said on these networks in general. Deceptive mass media is therefore still very existing, but perhaps existing in even more deceptive forms.
Good comment about mass deception used by authority leaders as a way to deceive the masses and spread their message using it's extensive reach to a wide audience.
SvaraRadera