Page 40 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of art’ essay 25
dimensions of depth in a conversation which had seemed to be
taking its course on the surface. Since the Psychopathology of
Everyday Life things have changed. This book isolated and made
analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed
in the broad stream of perception.
(Section XIII)
This terrain is not simply a source of aesthetic novelty but also one
of shock, assault, and radical de-familiarization. A life-world previ-
ously self-contained and familiar has now become threatening. In
this respect it partakes of a wider process of perceptual disruption
that accompanies the historical shift from the countryside into the
industrial metropolis. The optical unconscious revealed by film and
photography represent the most visible expression of this much
broader alteration in the nature of perception.
Of the countless movements of switching, inserting, pressing
and the like, the ‘snapping’ of the photographer has had the
greatest consequences. A touch of the finger now sufficed to fix
for an unlimited period of time. The camera gave the moment
a posthumous shock, as it were. Haptic experiences were joined
by optic ones, such as are supplied by the advertising pages of
a newspaper or the traffic of the big city. Moving through this
traffic involves the individual in a series of shocks and colli-
sions. At dangerous intersections, nervous impulses flow
throughout him in rapid succession, like energy from a battery.
(Benjamin 1973: 177)
This is a critical (in both senses of the word) feature of Benjamin’s
analysis – the notion that media technology serves to acclimatize
people for life within a heavily technologized society can be read in
much more negative fashion than he chooses. For example, in the
next chapter Kracauer exhibits more sensitivity than Benjamin
manages in relation to the negative social impact of these perceptual
shocks. He describes how they are caused by the sheer proliferation
and contiguity of images stemming from the combination of media
technologies and the rise of urban centres. Thus, Kracauer talks in
terms of ‘a strike against understanding’ and describes the disem-
powering, alienating features of such shock effects. Similarly, Ador-
no’s extremely critical account of the culture industry is largely
premised upon his perception of how the values and needs of
advanced industrialization colonize and undermine competing social
and cultural values. Unlike Benjamin, the fact that the media serve
to prepare people for the similar perceptual shocks of industrialized
life can be seen as evidence of the damagingly pervasive nature of
the culture industry’s influence upon peoples’ lives. Benjamin is only
able to see new media as empowering by being unduly reluctant to
ask – empowerment in terms of what and in whose ultimate interest?

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