Hollywood and film critics: Is journalistic criticism about cinema now a part of the culture industry helping economy more than art? Argo: a case study of the movie and film reviews published in the printed media in United States

The term “Culture industry” coined by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1944, is now a very fundamental concept to analyse social and cultural problems in social sciences. When it comes to media studies, it is more useful to investigate problematics in this field. The purpose of this study is to focus on a special part of the culture industry which relates to the movies but not directly about them. The fact that Hollywood, as the biggest industry of film production, has all of the characteristics of the culture industry is something clear. What this study concerns about is film criticism (film reviews). This journalistic genre for years had the position of judging and criticizing the products of the movie industry. In this study it is discovered that journalistic reviews today are themselves a part of the culture industry. The investigation of this problem is done through a case study in two different steps. In the first step “Argo” is selected to be studied and proved as a product of the culture industry with all properties mentioned by Adorno and Horkheimer. In the second step the journalistic reviews published about this film is investigated. The result is that the same ideologies, political views and capitalistic values in the film, could be found in the reviews. This study is considered as a critical work (with critical paradigm) observing the production of journalistic texts about the films, discovering that at least in this case, film critics do not criticize, they reinforce the industry