Abstract
This paper aims at reconsidering Adorno’s theses on the function of the televisual media “nach Auschwitz”, with special focus on the socio-psychological motives in his three analytical essays on television: “Prolog zum Fernsehen”(1953); “How to Look at Television”(1954); “Fernsehen als Ideologie”(1954). As can be seen from the fact that Adorno used the concept of “psychoanalysis in reverse” in analyzing both television and fascism (e.g., “Freudian Theory and Fascist Propaganda”(1951)), he evidently equated TV audiences with the masses under the fascist regime as a regressed group whose members are bound by libido alone. The present paper, however, intends to demonstrate that Adorno’s view of television is ambivalent. While television functions as an image-media to ideologically degenerate its audience, it also allows for the possibility of mass enlightenment which he saw in the reformation of a production system and the re-education of both TV spectators and broadcasters.
