Adorno argued mass entertainment doesn't reflect what people want — it manufactures it

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, written with Max Horkheimer in 1947, Theodor Adorno argued that film, radio and popular music had become a standardized 'culture industry' that packages conformity as entertainment and sells people back a flattened version of their own desires. Genuine individuality, he claimed, survives only in art difficult enough to resist easy consumption.

— Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment — 1947
Go deeper: get the book →