Response to Adorno's 'Mass Culture'

Mass mediated popular culture (such as television, the central focus of the article) for Adorno is no longer simply novels and popular music, but now encompasses basically "all media of artistic expression". New popular culture has grown to such an extent that it is impossible to ignore. It surrounds all of us in most aspects of our daily lives, even those living farthest from it. Popular culture follows a strict set of rules and structure (he explains that any form not following these rules will have trouble even reaching the masses). It is created to appease the masses as easy as possible (creating it so that little attention and intellect is needed on the audience's part). Adorno explains that the aura of autonomous art is now replaced with the almost-evil power of mass mediated popular culture, which allows it to integrate it's audience with the ideals of "conformity and conventionalism". Adorno describes the way in which it does this by illustrating it's "multilayered structure". Mass media, according to Adorno, is not just the actions that appear on the surface, but is comprised of numerous layers of messages all contributing to this conformitive effect. There is the messages sent to the audience by the surface or "overt" layer, which for example could be the basic plot of a movie or television show, and beyond that there is the hidden meanings which send messages (that are sometime subtly present in the overt meaning) to the audience without them being aware of it. Both, or all of the layers of meaning work together in promoting the "nefarious" ideals Adorno talks about.
In contrast with Benjamin's idea that aura is not lost, but transformed, I think Adorno's thoughts are a bit different (according to this essay). While art forms placed in different cultures/settings gain new aura (according to Benjamin), mass media seems to be created with a specific aura indoctrinating the ideals of the creator into the minds of the audience both on a conscious and subconcious level. This, inevitably leads to a homogenous mass culture, shifting the ideas and stereotypes represented in popular culture into the minds of the masses.