Blogging about Benjamin (say Ben-Yah Meeen) --Walter, that is.

Walter Benjamin was a pretty impressive writer, at least that much is clear. Not much else is, except I like him -- mostly.

This piece we read, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," is a classic, but I think you have to be a full-on Marxist philosopher yourself if you're going to a) fully understand his argument and, therefore, b) have any hope of knowing how close to being right he is. I think he's got something, by Jove, but haven't a clue as to what it is! Or put it this way. I think he's mostly right, but whether and how all the advanced Marxist theory really fits in or helps his argument (never mind his little foray into Freudian theory), I couldn't say myself. Well, let me think about it a minute.... No, no, I really couldn't say, not this time, anyway.

Luckily, in this digital age of ours, you can cut and paste the things you don't understand into another document and file it away for some late night when you're having trouble sleeping. And you're left with all the gems, which are sprinkled throughout, generously, especially at the beginnings and endings of paragraphs, which to me is a sign that he's an excellent writer. Anyone who knows to put his best stuff at the beginning or the end of a paragraph is alright in my book. Either that or he's a politician. --Ok, but enough with the comedy! Let's have some pictures, or at least a few quotes!...

Ok, here's a smattering, with which I will try to summarize his argument (I'll put a smiley after the real gems and a frowner after the ones that are sort of confusing but I can kind of see where he's going if I squint really hard with my head upside down on a clear day.

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one thing: its presence in time and space..."

In other words,

"The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity."

:Q

OK, and then he ties that to the concept of the "aura" of a work, which he defines conveniently as "that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction."

[Incidentally I wish the translators had updated his usage. He's always talking about "the film" is this and "the film" is that -- it's hard not to read it with a heavy German accent: "Ze filum, ze filum, zat vill be ze end."]

"By making reproductions, [this process] substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence."

Here's one where he loses me:

"The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition."

Then he goes on for a while with some historical analysis about the difference between a cult value and an exhibitionist value of art through history, and some other stuff which is REALLY interesting (I don't mean to be sarcastic this time), but is too much for here and now. Later he gets to some good bits with

"...Much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question -- whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art -- was not raised."

"For the first time -- and this is the effect of [the] film -- man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura."

"The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera...is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one's own image in the mirror."

And here's where he becomes downright prophetic in his vision of the impact of technology on the arts and society -- in reference to the ease of 'self-publishing':

"Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character.... Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property."

(like blogging, maybe?... --but he was wrting in 1934!)

Then he goes on again about "the film" and how it's changed EVERYTHING! And one of my favorite phrases here (dutifully at the end of a paragraph):

"The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology."

Then he starts talking about "the masses" again in a way that makes it rough going. But he works in some Freudian stuff -- and more than just name-dropping (Sigmund was quite popular then among "ze intellectuellz")--this in regard to the documentary possibilities of "the film"(and the technique of "slow motion"):

"The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses."

:-/

Now that one kind of falls flat as I type it into my blog, but the very next sentence (the beginning of the next paragraph, of course) is a doozy:

"One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later." (Or perhaps never? --one is tempted to add) And then he proceeds to talk about Dadaism with great intelligence:

"The dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its uselessness for contemplative immersion." Now that's revolutionary!...What a turn of phrase too...

Then he brings his argument back to the idea of the "aura" he raised earlier (now in respect to the Dadaists' paintings):

"What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production."

I am running out of steam, if not material. Benjamin ends his manifesto, if one might call it that, with a rousing bit of Marxist demagoguery not unsuited to our own times:

"The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life....
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war."

Some frightening quotes of Marinetti, the Futurist, and his aesthetics of war, followed by a suitable finish:

"[Mankind's] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience it's own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art."

And both are wrong? perhaps.

But does all that follow from what came before it? I certainly don't have the skill or patience to find out just now.

Here's a picture: