Kracauer and the Role of Sensations in Upholding the Cult of Mythology

"Reason can gain entrance only with difficulty when the masses it ought to pervade yield to sensations afforded by the godless mythological cult. The latter's social meaning is equivalent to that of the Roman circus games, which were sponsored by those in power."

Siegfried Kracauer, "The Mass Ornament", The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 85.