The concept of “culture industry” stems from a mix of German cultural pessimism, Weberian theory of rationality, and Marxist theory of reification. Theodor W. Adorno develops it by engaging critically with the work of Walter Benjamin, from whom he borrows the idea of the decline of the aura of the work of art in the industrial world, and that of Siegfried Kracauer, whose vision of the image as a means of knowledge he radically rejects. Fifty years later, Adorno’s essay appears both prophetic and short-sighted: prophetic because the reification of culture has been largely confirmed, and short-sighted because art and aesthetic creation are still alive, in spite of their commodified character.