Adorno and Horkheimer’s Theory in the Jurassic Park Franchise

 Adorno and Horkheimer’s Theory in the Jurassic Park Franchise

Adorno and Horkheimer believed that the culture industry produced cultural products that were designed for mass consumption, which could impact people's imagination and thinking. The Jurassic Park franchise is a prime example of how “cultural products” made for the consumption of the masses can have a negative or positive impact on the imagination of consumers. The Jurassic franchise over time, has become a staple in pop culture, but let’s take a step deeper into the world itself. 

In the original Jurassic Park movie, they gave a glimpse of how far bioengineering can actually go. The film introduces us to a capitalist stereotypical businessman who goes by the name of Dr. John Hammond. He wanted to share his excitement of living dinosaurs with the world. However, his true intentions, as you might expect, were to maximize profit and capital gain. Adorno and Horkheimer explained the power of mass media can manipulate a capitalist society. In the movie, Dr. Hammond wanted to maximize his profits by opening the first ever dinosaur theme park. Before he could open the park, he brought in paleontologists to back him in launching the operation to the public. Hammond’s foundation and research teams had cloned a great deal of dinosaurs and built the containments. He took paleontologists behind the scenes to show them how everything was possible and showed them the park, in hopes of getting all of their approval to open to the public. 

Dr. Malcolm, a mathematician who was brought in to view the project as well, was not a fan of the idea of bringing the dinosaurs back. He feared Hammond and his scientist were overestimating their competence, and underestimating their control over the dinosaurs. Later in the movie things go south, dinosaurs escape their enclosure, people die…blah blah blah- you get the picture. Dr. Malcolm’s worries were spot on, and, as expected, the overall project was shut down. Decades later, someone was able to make Hammond’s dreams come true in a later movie in the series- Jurassic World. The new dinosaur themed zoo/amusement park demonstrated how Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory that cultural products designed for mass consumption can alter imaginations of consumers. The theme park was successful for a while, until the mass media grew tired of the “boring” dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were once something beyond the imagination of the public, even the most non-violent dinosaurs were completely captivating the public initially. However, because dinosaurs were exposed to the public and became ‘normalized," peoples' imaginations grew beyond what they initially would have. This could be interpreted as being positive or negative depending on your perspective. While it expanded the research into dinosaurs, the technology to restrain them did not progress in an equivalent way to keep them contained appropriately. I hope I did not bore you with my fascination with dinosaurs and the Jurassic Park franchise, while sharing the popular culture concepts by Adorno and Horkheimer's theory that I found represented within these movies.  

Would you view the publics’ growing imagination generally as a positive or negative thing? Do you think growing imaginations contribute to the shortening attention spans in todays world?