Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

American Culture and the Loss of Autonomy

Why are we the types of people who reproduce an unjust, non-liberatory status quo? While material conditions become worse in the United States as people have less access to housing, healthcare, and food security, our government focuses on granting more money for the rich. Despite this, it appears that citizens are becoming more blind, forgiving, and even supportive of these conditions. Why do so many of us support government actions that work against our own self interests in support of the wealthy? Have the masses been stripped of independent thought? This paper seeks to answer these questions through Adorno and Horkheimer’s concept of the culture industry, Foucault’s and Bartky’s notion of disciplinary power, Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism,” and a critique of the United States’ public education system. These sources help outline the direct and indirect ways that we are shaped to accept capitalist ideology in the United States. From this framework, it is hypothesized that the working class has developed a false consciousness through forms of culture produced by the entertainment industry, marketing and advertising, and the selective teachings of history in schools. These structures work together, at both conscious and subconscious levels, to constantly bombard us with messaging that prevents us from thinking autonomously.