In keeping with this view, many scholars have seen the culture industry as a system by which a small number of cultural middlemen who know how to manipulate public tastes feed consumers with a standardized, mass-produced "canned culture" that is artificial and bogus, neither the product of cultural workers 'autonomous creativity, nor capable of representing consumers' inner yearnings.
承襲這樣的觀點，許多學者認為，文化工業宛如一種標準化、規格化的「文化罐頭」，由少數知道如何操弄大眾口味的文化掮客「餵養」給消費者；它是人工的、虛偽的，不是來自文化工作者的自發性創造，也不能代表消費者的內在渴求。