The chapter introduces the key Critical Theory arguments produced by Frankfurt School scholars in analysing the power of mass-produced culture in capitalist society. While maintaining a somewhat similar cultural elitism with conservative writers on the question of ‘authentic culture’, scholars such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer use wider social theory (from both Marx and Freud) to argue that the consumption of low culture by the masses is a form of top-down ideological enslavement from the ruling classes. The ‘culture industry’, it is forwarded, is a form of cultural hegemony which blinds the working classes to the reality of their situation, reinforcing capitalist values and norms through the consumption of standardised and repetitive cultural products of no worth, such as TV sitcoms, Hollywood films and (Adorno’s infamous example) jazz music. Authentic, serious political art and high culture, meanwhile, is argued by such scholars to have real, emancipatory potential towards political consciousness and eventual revolution. Criticisms will also be highlighted towards the chapters that follow: namely, the assumed passivity and lack of agency of the audience in the reception of such cultural texts, the general elitism of Frankfurt School analysis, and the continued belief in the static nature of ‘authentic’ art and culture.