Horkheimer and Adorno (1944), "The Culture Industry"

Horkheimer and Adorno (1944) argue that mass dissemination of art led to top-down control of consumers by producers. Coining the phrase "the culture industry" to describe the standardization of cultural forms through mass media, they argue that industrial society creates in workers a desire for escapism.

Workers are drawn to what they call "light art" as a way of escaping.

Producers appropriate mass social needs in order to provide something for everyone. In so doing, the industry's mass escapism appeases consumers, rendering us passive and unwilling to rebel against even the harshest economic circumstances.

This happens on two levels: not only did the mass culture industry destroy truths that didn't fit into its vision of culture, it also represented those truths as deception.