From SEP on Adorno:

Quote

There Adorno argues that the culture industry involves a change in the commodity character of art, such that art's commodity character is deliberately acknowledged and art “abjures its autonomy” (DE 127). With its emphasis on marketability, the culture industry dispenses entirely with the “purposelessness” that was central to art's autonomy. Once marketability becomes a total demand, the internal economic structure of cultural commodities shifts. Instead of promising freedom from societally dictated uses, and thereby having a genuine use value that people can enjoy, products mediated by the culture industry have their use value replaced by exchange value: “Everything has value only in so far as it can be exchanged, not in so far as it is something in itself. For consumers the use value of art, its essence, is a fetish, and the fetish—the social valuation [gesellschaftliche Schätzung] which they mistake for the merit [Rang] of works of art— becomes its only use value, the only quality they enjoy” (DE 128). Hence the culture industry dissolves the “genuine commodity character” that artworks once possessed when exchange value still presupposed use value (DE 129–30).

So I started watching Evil ... Anyways, I've laughed a few times ( with the show, not at it ) and there's something to work with, so I'll keep watching it and let you know if it devolves into full on crap or we get somewhere.

Seems less about free will [than critiquing] this idea of the lone iconoclast "willing" themselves into breaking all social contracts/expectations.

If I understand him correctly he is also critiquing "will worship" as excessive hedonism toward whatever one desires.

Well, the main thrust, to me, was this part: "Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice."

That was the part that Žižek quoted which made me go and look up the source.  I think Chesterton's point is that, in a sort of Hegelian way, the "will" is not "positivity" in-itself, rather, the will is the (negative) discriminatory, limiting factor.

Well, Mr. Robot concluded.  His Dark Materials first season is over.  We just also finished the first season of The Witcher.

Now we just wait for The Good Place to start back again at the beginning of January and then we also have The New Pope coming up on HBO.

The Watchmen TV show has also been quite good.  At first I was figuring I wouldn't care, since these were new characters, but in actuality, the show is well done and quite interesting in it's own right, plus there seems to be tons of nods to be movie and the comic books.  I'd recommend it, but only if you already saw the movie first.