Capitulate Before the Superior Power / Purchase Spiritual Peace

Together with sport and film, mass music and the new listening help to make escape from the whole infantile milieu impossible.  The sickness has a preservative function.  Even the listening habits of the contemporary masses are certainly in no way new, and one may readily concede that the reception of the prewar hit song "Puppchen" was not so very different from that of a synthetic jazz children's song.  But the context in which such a children's song appears, the masochistic mocking of one's own wish for lost happiness, or the compromising of the desire for happiness itself by the reversion to a childhood whose unattainably bears witness to the unattainably of joy--this is the specific product of the new listening, and nothing which strikes the ear remains exempt from this system of assimilation.  There are indeed social differences, but the new listening extends so far that the stultification of the oppressed affects the oppressors themselves, and they become victims of the superior power of self-propelled wheels who think they are determining their direction.


Regressive listening is tied to production by the machinery of distribution, and particularly by advertising.  Regressive listening appears as soon as advertising turns into terror, as soon as nothing is left for the consciousness but to capitulate before the superior power of the advertised stuff and purchase spiritual peace by making the imposed goods literally its own thing.  In regressive listening, advertising takes on a compulsory character.  For a while, an English brewery used for propaganda purposes a billboard that bore a deceptive likeness to one of those whitewashed brick walls which are so numerous in the slums of London and the industrial cities of the North.  Properly placed, the billboard was barely distinguishable from a real wall.  On it, chalk-white, was a careful imitation of awkward writing.  The words said : "What we want is Watney's."  The brand of the beer was presented like a political slogan.  Not only does this billboard give an insight into the nature of up-to-date propaganda, which sells its slogans as well as its wares, just as here the wares masquerade as a slogan; the type of relationship suggested by the billboard, in which masses make a commodity recommended to them the object of their own action, is in fact found again as the pattern for the reception of light music.  They need and demand what has been palmed off on them.  They overcome the feeling of impotence that creeps over them in the face of monopolistic production by identifying themselves with the inescapable product.

More Adorno, Theodore ibid

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Why did it take so long for me to figure out the highlight function?

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Nothing says Christmas like

capitulate before the superior power of the advertised stuff and purchase spiritual peace by making the imposed goods literally its own thing.

That's a pretty great slogan right there.

Speaking of slogans

Not only does this billboard give an insight into the nature of up-to-date propaganda, which sells its slogans as well as its wares, just as here the wares masquerade as a slogan.

Just do it!  And man oh man when I'm wearing my swoosh swish what the fuck I AM REALLY DOING IT!

When and where are we going to see the first "Free Jazz" billboard?  Vandermark 5 billboards on Interstate 290?  William Parker billboards on the Mosholu Parkway?  Nate Wooley billboards on US 395?

Certainly there must be some art money out there to put up billboards in Northern Saskatchewan promoting Charles Gayle, complete with catchy slogan, something like:  Charles Gayle--The Best Answer To Everything Imaginable.

Ted goes on to say (as you probably read)

the type of relationship suggested by the billboard, in which masses make a commodity recommended to them the object of their own action, is in fact found again as the pattern for the reception of light music.  They need and demand what has been palmed off on them.   

and then later

They overcome the feeling of impotence that creeps over them in the face of monopolistic production by identifying themselves with the inescapable product.

My questions:

1. Can "we" with relationship suggestions on billboards induce the masses to make a commodity "we" recommend to them (Charles Gayle) the object of their own action?  Can "we," through the afore mentioned methods make the masses "need and demand what ("we" have) palmed off on them, namely Charles Gayle?
2. Could "Free Jazz" or "C.E.F." (crazy experimental freedom) create a feeling of impotence that creeps over (the masses) in the face of monopolistic production?  
3. Could "Free Jazz" or "C.E.F." ever become the object of monopolistic production?
4. If "Free Jazz" or "C.E.F." became the inescapable product with which the masses identify in order to overcome the feeling of impotence that creeps over them in the face of monopolistic production, would "Free Jazz" or "C.E.F." still sound like "Free Jazz" or "C.E.F"--or would it sound like the inescapable products of now, which give us (me anyway) this very feeling of impotence Adorno describes?