Let us read an excerpt from the text by Horkheimer and Adorno:

“All mass culture under monopoly is identical, and the contours of its skeleton, the conceptual armature fabricated by monopoly, are beginning to stand out. Those in charge no longer take much trouble to conceal the structure, the power of which increases the more bluntly its existence is admitted. Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce.”

One would have expected that there would at least be an attempt by those in charge of the culture industry to hide the structures of mass culture through which we are deceived and which are so rampantly identical. We would expect that there be a degree of sophistication in the films and radio shows considered to be art, but they possess none. They are produced and distributed very bluntly as goods of mass consumption. We may cite here as examples films and soap operas which are identical to each other in themes, presentation and dialogues. We may wonder why such identical movies are produced in such large numbers. Adorno and Horkheimer explain that cultural products are no longer considered to be works of art but as business. The idea that they are nothing more than business is transformed into an ideology to legitimize the production of ‘trash'. The culture industry, therefore, is not accountable or answerable to the masses for whom it exists as long as it is in the service of capitalism.