Page 38 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

JOBNAME: McGraw−TaylorHarris PAGE: 9 SESS: 13 OUTPUT: Thu Sep 13 15:44:55 2007 SUM: 4F89CA02
/production/mcgraw−hill/booksxml/tayharris/chap01

Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of art’ essay 23
same. As with time, so with space, the artwork as a reproducible
object has no proper location; its place is wherever a reproduction is
encountered.
Although Benjamin hoped for empowering freedom from the
inhibiting qualities of tradition, critical readings of the mass media
stem from this dislocation of the artwork from its previously unique
point in space and time. While the artwork and its public are now
freed from a dependence upon location, a reduction in the particu-
larity of the artwork occurs as it loses part of this singular location-
specific context. It is now usurped by a simulacral copy that can
never encompass the totality of the original. In the subsequent
chapters, we examine the full consequences of a society in which the
simulacral increasingly contributes to a society of the spectacle mani-
fested in various forms of pseudo-events (Chapter 5) and simulated
cultural categories (Chapter 6 – the democratization of celebrity
forms; Chapter 7 – Reality TV; and in both Chapters 7 and 8 we see
the decline of aura revisited in the form of a decline in the
discourse of sobriety and a corresponding rise in pseudo-news – the
Other News). Benjamin believed the quantitative shift in the amount of
mechanically reproducible artworks newly available for consumption
by the masses was an opportunity of momentous qualitative impor-
tance. It represented the subordination of all previous dimensions of
art to the value of exhibition – art after mechanical reproduction
becomes, first and foremost, what is exhibited. New media of
reproduction de-localize art, and place it directly in front of the
masses, thus ‘today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value
the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions,
among which … the artistic function, later may be recognized as
incidental’ (Section V). However, in subsequent pages, the betrayal
of Benjamin’s hopes is demonstrated as the process he analysed in
its early stages has proceeded beyond his optimistic projections to
produce the commodified disempowerment of the masses. In Part 2
we analyse in detail how the decline of aura has tended to evolve
closely with ever more sophisticated commodity forms. The freeing
of the masses from their dependence upon aura is shown to have
broken through the previously unbreakable bonds of reciprocity Baudril-
lard saw in symbolically grounded cultural practices. The decline of
aura gives free rein for the commodity form to create its own ersatz
aura based upon the inevitably shallow, made-for-manipulation, and
therefore ultimately disempowering/alienating, social bonds of com-
modity culture – the culture industry.

Benjamin and McLuhan

With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work
of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that

Kerrypress Ltd – Typeset in XML A Division: chap01 F Sequential 9

www.kerrypress.co.uk - 01582 451331 - www.xpp-web-services.co.uk
McGraw Hill - 152mm x 229mm - Fonts: New Baskerville