Apple's Culture Industry

Michael Szalay • University of California, Irvine

March 24th @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

In 1947, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer described Hollywood as “weak and dependent” on “the most powerful sectors of industry—steel, petroleum, electricity, and chemicals.” Hollywood needed to appease those sectors, they thought, “the true wielders of power,” lest it be subject to “purges.” Some 80 years later, new purges loom even as Hollywood is weak and dependent upon a new sector, “Big Tech.” This talk takes the measure of that dependency, and of the culture industry generally, by looking at Apple’s carefully coordinated device and streaming businesses. Tracking that coordination provides provisional answers to a frequently asked question: why does Apple, the world’s most valuable company, opt to lose billions annually on a minor streaming service that relatively few watch?

Energy and Exhaustion
View Spring 2025 Lecture List

Center for the Humanities · 95 Pearl Street, Middletown, CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/humanities

Wesleyan Logo