The culture industry and models of living
In the 1950s, the two well-known Frankfurt School theorists, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, explained their concept of the culture industry in capitalist societies, often drawing on cinema as an example. They pointed out how, in the United States, film characters were almost always good-looking, wore beautiful clothes and had wonderful families, homes and cars. They had wealth and an enviable lifestyle.
Adorno and Horkheimer explained this phenomenon as the manufacture of models by the culture industry. For them, cinema and television were the means through which the things people were supposed to consume could be standardised. The mass consumption of these things constituted popular culture.
At the same time, repeated exposure to these means of the culture industry could reach the point where even models of living were standardised through them. In this way, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, television and cinema in the United States in those years produced the visual version of what endured as: the American Dream!.
Criminal realism in Albanian music
If we take this approach to analysing what constitutes the Albanian Dream! we might say that it stems from society’s lack of awareness of the existence of criminal capitalism, and was created by standardising the model of getting rich as quickly as possible, regardless of the costs.
Whether legally or illegally, everyone dreams of making money, and doing so as quickly as possible. This happens because, in Albanian society, the person who has more money and displays it has greater social value.
Albania does not have a developed film industry. Television also developed late, and most of its output is borrowed. Beyond these two media, however, popular culture is overwhelmingly shaped by music produced for the internet, an output that, it must be said, is enormous.
No theorist can explain how a population of 3-4 million can generate tens and hundreds of millions of views of music videos on YouTube.
The songs and artists with the largest audiences are always young, always use coarse language, invoke a world of violent tough guys and an outlaw way of life. What they chiefly promote is drug consumption and trafficking; this is praised and amplified, while almost all the videos must feature spectacular, rare cars, expensive clothes and luxury accessories.
Exposure to this 3-4-minute output to the point of overdose, through millions of clicks, standardises the consumption of a model: the young man who gets rich quickly, the young man who leads a life without restraint, the young man who lives in affluence, and affluence that comes from drugs.
This is the art of criminal realism for a society that, in its unconscious, has turned crime into a virtue. The young man who makes money quickly, who displays his wealth and power in material form, is the Dream of every Albanian.
Previously published in Exit.al