『메뚜기의 날』(The Day of the Locust)과 미국의 문화 산업

The Day of the Locust and American culture industry

Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust offers the most insightful critiques of spectacles of capitalism during the thirties His novel fully demonstrates the emergence of mass man in a consumer society, his spectacles show us the universal equality of cultural products in the age of mechanical reproduction His characters are frequently not proper humans but mechanical toys of helpless automatons Mass production ultimately results in the grotesque sameness and the loss of individuality The Day of the Locust, in this context, shares the vision of Walter Bengamin's works which cover a sustained analysis of mass culture West's novel can be sharply contrasted to John Schlesinger's 1975 film Instead of attacking the process of mass production, Schlesinger replicates of restores conventions of Hollywood culture industry Westian powerful critique of mass culture and sign of cultural despair are largely absent in the screen Instead a series of spectacles meet the desire of the modern spectators the bloody cockfights, the collapse of the stage, and a date with a sexy girl beside a fountain Unlike West's work, characters are frequently finalized by the Hollywood code and thus fail to resist authoritarian powers Schlesinger's screen adaptation provides a case study of Hollywood industry's capacity to take advantage of subversive counternarratives