Adorno doesn't laugh

in the chapter called 'the culture industry' max and theo write:

'There is laughter because there is nothing to laugh at. Laughter, whether conciliatory or terrible, always occurs when some fear passes...Conciliatory laughter is heard as the echo of an escape from power...It is the echo of power as something inescapable. Fun is a medicinal bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud practised on happiness. Moments of happiness are without laughter; only operettas and films portray sex to the accompaniment of resounding laughter. But Baudeliare is as devoid of humor as Holderlin. In the false society laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness and is drawing it into its worthless totality.'

...in the false society laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness......

what i love about max and theo is there ability to just put it all out there. culture is open to critique and they are not going to let any element of mass cultural consumption get away with anything. maybe they would or would not let us laugh while striving to be authentic, to produce autonomous and authentic art outside of the culture industry, but we'd better at least think about that first before giving in to the simple pleasure and escape of laughter in the face of fear...or whatever...