Essay Questions

The content of what daily ritual religiously followed by hundreds of millions around the globe was identified by social critic Theodor Adorno as a powerful tool of ideological brainwashing?

In 1953, noted social critic of the Frankfurt School published an article which reported the results of a study of the content of the daily horoscope column printed in the Los Angele Times. What Adorno discovered and analyzed was an aspect of astrology rarely recognized and almost never addressed. Crushed under the hefty weight of criticizing horoscopes for their general vagueness as well as the inherently dubious scientific foundation of the enterprise is the too often overlooked reality that the advice being doled out is of incomprehensibly great value in coercing a population to submit the prevailing political ideology. The relative imprecision of any singular piece of advice is offset by the scrupulousness with which that advice as a whole serves “the function of re-establishing the established order, of enforcing conformity” and tamping down tendencies toward rebellion and subversion.

The notable events of what year leads him to define it as the point which makes “a decisive shift in the Zeitgeist” of utopian idealism?

Carefully cautioning that the consequences of what has occurred since offer no easily define lesson which one can take from it, the author nevertheless situates the fall of the Soviet bloc influence over Europe which took place in 1989 as a line of demarcation between the heights of radical utopian idealism and its current state of decline. The Cold War division between capitalist and socialist ideologies fed an energetic optimism on both sides of the possibility for a better future which has since evaporated into a capitalist status quo leaving an increasingly large percentage of the population farther and farther behind a fractional majority in terms of economic benefit and promise. The collapse of a binary approach to superpower protection of global states witnessed a rise in genocidal regimes in the vacuum created by the absence of geopolitical strategical alliances. These and other unforeseen consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall have contributed to a steady erosion of utopian idealistic spirit.

What iconic music video of the 1980’s which is itself a homage to an iconic scene from a 1950’s movie musical is cited as an exemplary model of intertextual studies?

The music video which is most often identified as pushing Madonna from star status to superstar status in the early 1980’s is for the song “Material Girl.” It is, in turn, an homage to a scene from Marilyn Monroe musical of the 1950’s. The video is pointed out as this exemplification of intertextuality in the way it has produce so many different interpretations. Its basic framework as pastiche allows it to be studied under the aegis of postmodernism. The actual narrative content of the video positions it as an example of post-feminism. The focus on acquiring material wealth opens the song up for analysis of capitalism and patriarchal control of feminine imagery.