Society rests on unequal economic structures, which culture often hides or justifies.
Never neutral. Critique exposes ideology; research should help change things.
Whose interests does this serve?
Key thinkers: Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas
The longer story
Critical theory begins with Marx's claim that the ideas which dominate a society tend to serve those who hold power in it. The Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, later Habermas) applied this to culture: entertainment, advertising and even art can make an unequal arrangement feel natural or inevitable.
Research in this tradition does not aim only to describe. It criticises, in the hope of loosening what it describes. Questions about who funds the arts, who gets to be an artist and who is absent from the audience usually have critical theory somewhere behind them. Cultural studies, and a good deal of work on the creative industries, inherit this position.