Theodor Adorno: Unadorned Make-Up


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Annette del Sur publicizing salvage campaign in yard of Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942



The omnipresence of technology imprints itself upon objects and everything historical... Prototypical here is the actress who manages to appear fresh and painstakingly made up with her hair perfectly arranged even in the midst of the most appalling dangers... She is so closely, so precisely and so pitilessly photographed that the magic which her make-up is intended to exert is heightened by the lack of illusion with which it is thrust before the viewer as literally true and unexaggerated. Mass culture is unadorned make-up.



photo

Annette del Sur publicizing salvage campaign in yard of Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942

Theodor Adorno, The Schema of Mass Culture, 1978 (translated by Nicholas Walker), from The Culture Industry, 1991