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FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE BONDIAN ÁPPROACH suspension of disbelief in order for the consumer to buy"."" He identifies the main tool of branding as decontextualizing and re-contextualising products, making the reference points of judgement, of ‘reality’ obscure.?7? The bigger question is related to Bond’s description of ideology as a story, as a monolith construct.””* Can there be one ideology that defines the thinking of individuals in different cultures, social classes and political positions? This question can be raised in relation to other widely referred to theories of ideology as well, that show similarities to Bond’s position. There are prominent thinkers, discussed below, who describe ideology as a fictional reality and who also define the structures that put them in place. I return to Bond’s concept of ideology after a short detour. In their seminal work titled the Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944] the German philosophers Adorno and Horkheimer documented the totalitarian nature of commodity culture that they met in America as they escaped Nazi Germany. The book contains a chapter, written by Adorno, of in-depth analysis of the culture industry that blurred the borders between reality and fiction and offered a pretence world that consumers can aspire to. Adorno points to the similarities between totalitarian state propaganda and advertising mechanisms that come to dominate people’s life and thinking. The culture industries’ impact on the individual is “to turn oneself into an apparatus which, even in its unconscious impulses, conforms to the model presented by the culture industry”.*” The models are presented as schematised narratives that can easily be adhered to, they do not demand an effort on behalf of the recipient. Appelrouth and Desfor Edles explain that according to Adorno societies are administered similarly and are rooted in an all-encompassing culture industry so it does not matter which political ideology they are based on; they conclude that “culture industry combines with technological rationality to produce a totalitarian social order that transcends any particular economic or political arrangement”.”® The totalitarian nature of the culture industry described by Adorno is questioned by many,”*' the impact of the social reality leaves little space for divergence for the individual. 276 Tbid., 161. 277 Thid., 147. Bond describes ideology as ’culture’s story’ (Bond: Our story, 3.), ’authority’s story’ (Bond: Letters 3, 2.) or ‘society’s story’ (Bond: The reason for theatre, 117.), it is never in the plural. 279 Theodor W. Adorno — Max Horkheimer: Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2002, 136. Scot Appelrouth - Laura Desfor Edles: Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory: Text and Readings, London, Sage, 2008, 410. 281 Jay M. Bernstein: Introduction, in Jay M. Bernstein (ed.): The Culture Industry, Selected essays on mass culture, London, Routledge, 1991, 22. 280 + 79 +
