Mass Deception and the Watchmen

Over the weekend, The Watchmen grossed approximately 55 million dollars in its opening weekend in the United States.  More than sixty years ago, sociologists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argued that movies no longer need to pretend to be art and are in reality, just businesses made into an ideology in order to justify “the rubbish they deliberately produce.” The recent big budget gates in hard economic times suggests a fresh reading of this classic.  The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as...