Page 37 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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22 Then
aficionado, one still needs to make a significant physical effort to see
it in person. In the move from ritual to exhibition status and the
dislocation and dilution of symbolic grounding so implied, the rise
of mechanical reproduction takes the process a major stage further.
The domain of reproducibility swamps traditional aura-based society
so that accessibility strips out all symbolic freight from the act of
consumption. This is what Valéry meant when he observed: ‘Just as
water, gas, and electricity are brought into our homes from far off to
satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be
supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and
disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a
sign’ (Essay: Section I).
First-time readers of the Essay may feel somewhat confused
because Benjamin’s account of aura seems to emphasize its decline
and fall and it is not immediately obvious why this is a development
to be welcomed. Indeed, this book is devoted to arguing that the
optimism Benjamin attempts to bolt onto his critical analysis of
aura’s decline was unfounded in the light of the subsequent history
of mass-media society. Benjamin’s hopes for this technologically
sponsored process lay in the new opportunities that arise once aura
is deposed. Thus, Benjamin describes quite literally the ruin of
traditional artistic aura: ‘Then came the film and burst this prison-
world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now,
in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and
adventurously go travelling’ (Section XIII). Aura is inextricably
bound to a unique position in time and space. The sophisticated
form of reproduction that arises with the mechanization of images,
however, liberates the object from these physical/temporal con-
straints. The camera frees reproduction from being merely derivative
or subordinate to an original artwork. The quasi-independent gaze
of the auratic artwork (it almost appears to look at the viewer rather
than just being the passive recipient of the gaze of the person
viewing it), is a condensation or personification of its history. As
such it is a form of inadvertent memory and consequently it is
diminished in the face of reproductive media that can preserve and
return a representation at any chosen moment – with mechanical
reproduction, it is no longer tied down to a unique point in space
and time. This alone represents a profound shift in human experi-
ence. The age-old role of human memory is significantly under-
mined (a theme pursued by Kracauer in the next chapter) with the
arrival of media technologies that effectively become prostheses for
not just our physical abilities, but also our consciousness (McLuhan’s
notion of media technologies as an electronic nervous system for
humankind is dealt with in Chapter 4). Time itself is no longer the

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