Culture—entertainment, consumerism, the arts—doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that can imprison a people. This intuition, however, Adorno argues, is precisely the thought that lowers one’s defenses. Popular culture shapes a people’s preferences, delimiting the scope of human activity and desire. Our consumer culture might give us choices, might give us the semblance of being free to choose, but this liberty amounts to pitifully little if everyone is given the same circumscribed options.
