The definition of culture offers scholars the opportunity to present many different interpretations of meaning and function. This opportunity has allowed scholars to present interpretations of variance. Despite these differences among scholars, many similar points of view remain repetitively concrete. The different interpretations work together to explain what culture is, creating a new ideology made up of many different ideas. Two schools of thought often encountered in the analysis of culture, are the Frankfurt School and the Birmingham School of cultural theory. Each school is made up of well-known scholars, who share common beliefs in analysis. In analyzing these scholar’s diverse studies, similarities and differences between the two schools can be identified. These observations prove complementary to each other, working together to create further understanding of what culture is. The first school to consider is the Frankfurt school. Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Max Horkheimer are among the scholars that make up this school of thought. The scholar’s similarities in thinking explain the grouping of these scholars together, and associates them with the Frankfurt institute for social research. The Frankfurt school originated in Germany, by a young Marxist philosopher. Although he wouldn’t lead the school forever, his beliefs in Marxism remained a key part of the school long after his departure. These beliefs became one of the biggest influences in the Frankfurt school. Despite early establishment, it was not until Max Horkheimer became head of the organization in 1930 that the Frankfurt school of cultural theory came to be fully known. Horkheimer recruited other fellow philosophers, and together, Frankfurt’s greatest theories started to be born. Among the recruited, was Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin. With the organization’s move to New York City, came the production of these philosopher’s theories, which are considered their best work still to the present day. The first of the articles, which had the most influence shaping the Frankfurt school, was Walter Benjamin’s “ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In this piece, Benjamin considers how art proves susceptible to losing its cultural value when it begins to be mechanically reproduced on a mass scale. The production of photographs, films, recordings, and prints, allowed for art to become reproducible. This changed the value of art, and accessibility of work, essentially prompting the loss of aura in art. Benjamin concluded that, “One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the rep