[Article] Popular culture and guilty pleasures

Some of these quotes may apply to PMO:

https://aeon.co/essays/against-guilty-pleasures-adorno-on-the-crimes-of-pop-culture

The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them.

For Adorno, a large part of the harm inflicted by popular culture is harm to our ability to act freely and spontaneously. He claims that popular culture, as well as being a source of pleasure, is also a kind of training; it engages us in, and reinforces, certain patterns of thought and self-understanding that harm our ability to live as truly free people. It accomplishes this partly through its very predictability.

No space is left for consumers to exhibit ‘imagination and spontaneity’ – rather, they are swept along in a succession of predictable moments, each of which is so easy to digest that they can be ‘alertly consumed even in a state of distraction’

The temporary pleasure we take in satisfying our needs, and discharging our frustrations, in popular culture stands in the way of a more powerful change in our way of life that could ameliorate our frustrations, and serve our pleasures, in a deeper and more lasting way. Our very satisfaction deceives us, and stands in the way of a more lasting and free pleasure in the future.

It now seems that what is immoral is the world that prevents us from realising our potential, and closes off any chance of a pleasure other than that which merely repeats the demands of work, or which relies on deep, immoral inequality. Adorno’s complaints are not aimed at us, but at the obstacles that are placed in our way. He takes pleasure very seriously, and demands that our lives be filled with it. But what Adorno finds is that the structure of the modern world ensures that our pleasure is always incomplete, and qualified.​