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Women are trained as engine mechanics in thorough Douglas training methods, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942
A poetic tremor is expected of every example of emphatic objectivity... The tremor lives off the excess power which technology as a whole, along with the capital that stands behind it, exercises over every individual thing. This is what transcendence is in mass culture. The poetic mystery of the product, in which it is more than itself, consists in the fact that it participates in the infinite mystery of production and the reverential awe inspired by objectivity fits in well with the schema of advertising... Reality becomes its own ideology through the spell cast by its faithful duplication. This is how the technological veil and the myth of the positive is woven.
Men and women make efficient operating teams on riveting and other jobs at the Douglas Aircraft plant, Long Beach, Calif. Most important of the many types of aircraft made at this plant are the B-17F ("Flying Fortress") heavy bomber, the A-20 ("Havoc") assault bomber and the C-47 heavy transport plane for the carrying of troops and cargo: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942
This girl in a glass house is putting finishing touches on the bombardier nose section of a B-17F navy bomber, Long Beach, California. She's one of many capable women workers in the Douglas Aircraft Company plant. Better known as the "Flying Fortress," the B-17F is a later model of the B-17 which distinguished itself in action in the South Pacific, over Germany and elsewhere. It is a long range, high altitude heavy bomber, with a crew of seven to nine men, and with armament sufficient to defend itself on daylight missions: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942
Woman at work on motor, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942
Women are trained to do precise and vital engine installation detail in Douglas Aircraft Company plants, Long Beach, California: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942
Operating a hand drill at North American Aviation, Inc., a woman is working in the control surface department assembling a section of the leading edge for the horizontal stabilizer of a plane, Inglewood, California: photo by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942
Theodor Adorno: The Schema of Mass Culture (translated by Nicholas Walker),1978, edited excerpt, from The Culture Industry, 1991
Photos by Alfred T. Palmer from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress
