ABSTRACT
Adorno once remarked that he seldom came out of a cinema without feeling that he had been made that little bit more stupid. It would be wrong to conclude from this that he detested all popular culture or that he admired none of the products of the mass culture industry. Adorno was scathing, for example, in his critique of the cruelty and conformism that he saw reflected in the laughter that filled the cinemas. This did not prevent him from being an admirer of the work of both the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin – surely among the most popular entertainers ever marketed by the culture industry. Moreover, during the years of his exile in California, he was sufficiently well connected to have become aquainted with many leading luminaries of the Hollywood entertainment business, including Chaplin. In a beautifully crafted memoir (Adorno 1996: 57-61) he pays tribute to the century’s quintessential clown, identifying, as his precursor, a comedian of the 1830s named Beckmann, of whom Kierkegaard had said: ‘He is not only able to walk but he is also able to come walking . . . and by means of this genius he also improvises the whole scenic setting’ (Kierkegaard, Repetition, cited by Adorno 1996: 58).
