Article Response: A User's Guide To The Culture Industry Part Two

This sentence is fascinating: This latter step must be a repetition in order to distinguish it from the merely aesthetic freedom postulated by the Romantics against a neoclassical art based on imitation of prior models, and supposed to enable us to transcend a mundane world also characterised by mere repetition.

I don't understand these sentences: If we assume that Adorno has a similar opposition in mind to Kierkegaard, with a bad repetition opposed to something like a good repetition, rather than some kind of easy escape into another world, his complaint about the repetition of the same in the culture industry becomes not so much a fact as a critical given. Because the impetus of the culture industry is always towards novelty, the ‘new’ is already compromised, no matter which actual product we examine.

Are the Thrills appreciated ironically? I have a feeling that the aesthetic of the Tyde is very similar, but I don't think they're just a rehash of the Beach Boys. Nor are they entirely ironic about the myth of the west coast.

I think Alex has said somewhere on these boards that he considers indie fundamentally conservative. I wish he would elaborate on this in his next article.