Theme 2: Critical media studies (after)

At the seminar we got a paper with discussion questions about the two texts. We talked about Adorno & Horkheimer’s arguments in the texts as well as Walter Benjamin’s political opinions. We also discussed about the concepts of “idée world” (idévärlden) and the “material world” (sinnevärlden). One can imagine the story of people sitting in jail (or a cave) with their backs leaning against the bars keeping them in the room. They look at the wall and see people dancing or something else, so they think they know what they see but instead they see the shadows of a fire that is placed behind their backs. It is the fire causing the moving pictures on the wall, but the people don’t see the fire, they only see what they think they see. This is a good comparison of the world we see today, maybe there are other things “in the reality” that only causes this illusion of our world.