Culture Industry

The first time the term “culture industry” was used, was when the german philosoher Theodor Adorno along with Max Horkheimer published their book named “Dialectic of Enlightenment” in 1947. Back in that time, they began by using the term “mass culture”, but realized that this gave the idea of a culture that arises from the masses. In order to avoid this popular understanding, they preferred to call it “culture industry” because of the merchandising of the culture forms or artistic objects. In Adorno´s essay “Culture Industry Reconsidered”, he explains that the term “industry” does not refer to the production process, but to the “standardization of the thing itself”. According to Adorno, the artistic expressions has been overshadowed by the fact that cultural forms have now a powerful mean of income for their creators. Therefore, art has turn into an industry and cultural objects are looked at as products, where masses are perceived as objects of calculation. This lack of artistic expression and mediocre art is shown in Banksy´s documental called “Exit through the gift shop”. Here, Banksy shows us the unusual birth of a singular street artist whose pseudonym is Mr. Brainwash. His real name is Thierry Guetta and according to him, his pseudonym comes from the idea that his works of art somehow brainwash you. Based on the theory and concepts that Adorno has of “culture industry”, we will judge Mr. brain wash’s artistic proposal and analyze if he is a true artist or not.

Thierry Guetta is a French immigrant living In Los Angeles, where he owns a vintage clothing shop. He has the unusual habit, rather the obsession, of filming everything. On a holiday in France, he discovers that his cousin is a street artist, better known as “Space Invader”. Thierry starts filming the nocturnal adventures of his cousin and others street artists such as Monsieur André and Zevs, finding it fascinating. When Invader arrives to L.A, they meet street artist Shepard Fairey and Thierry films everything the artist do, documenting his activities, even when Invader return to France. Fairey does not understand why Thierry keeps filming and the French man explains him that he is doing a documentary about street art. They travel around the world meeting other artists in order to increase Thierry´s documentary material. But what Guetta doesn´t tell Shepard is that there is no documentary at all and he even never looks at the footage. Time past and Thierry is obsessed about meeting Banksy, a prominent and particularly secretive English artist, but it is impossible for him. Until one day Banksy calls Fairey in L.A and Guetta finally meets him. They become real close and Thierry follows the artist back to England winning the privilege to film Banksy on his home turf. Banksy sees this as an opportunity to document street art. Later, Banksy ask Guetta to film the preparations for his "Barely Legal" show and the two of them become suddenly friends. When Banksy shows opens, is a huge success. But immediately he sees that people is trying to convert street art as selling art. Therefore he urges Thierry to finish the documentary he has been working on, forcing Guetta to edit thousand of hours of footage. The final product is a documentary called “Life remote control”, 90 minutes of unwatchable distorted fast cutting of random themes. Banksy questions Thierry´s ability as a filmmaker and decided to do it himself. In order to Guetta remains occupied, Banksy suggest him to make some art by himself. Back to L.A Thierry is completely excited about making art by himself and put up some street art, calling himself “Mr. Brainwash”. He decides that he is going to make an art exhibition as big and magnificent as Banksy show “Barely Legal”. In order to do so, he remortgages his business to afford renting copious equipment and a complete production team to create pieces of art in a commercial scale. He rents a former CBS studio to prepare his first show, "Life Is Beautiful", and comes up with a much bigger production than Banksy suggest. When Guetta broke his leg, he and his crew realize that he has no idea of how to organize an art exposition. Banksy send a production team in order to help Guetta with his messy project. While this production team take care of the logistic of the proyect, Thierry focus on the publicity, asking Fairey and Banksy for support. The artists appreciate Thierry´s effort of trying to do art by himself and write a few lines about Mr. Brainwash in their online blogs. What they didn´t knew is that Guetta will take advantage of this. He took up huge billboards with their quotes all over the city and Guetta´s show appear on L.A weekly cover. With just a few days left, the crew of “Life is beautiful” work without rest and insist Thierry

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