Updating Adorno for the Digital Age: Vaporwave as an Object of the Accelerated Culture Industry

Jasmine Russell, Scripps College

Abstract

Using the historical progress of functional music, otherwise known as muzak, in western society as a marker to update Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's theory of the culture industry, the political changes signified by the "death" of the underground music genre vaporwave is considered.