Page 41 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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26 Then
The alteration in the pace and scale of perception is imposed upon
the masses as the condition of their emergence as a new political
force. The masses do indeed arise as a force but one that is born
into a heavily commodified and rationalized world. Benjamin’s new
‘haptic experiences’ result from increased levels of technological
mediation and contain within them a major element of disempow-
erment despite his best hopes. For example, prefiguring later active
audience studies approaches, the audience for Benjamin is active but
often in the form of the self-controlling behaviour required to suit
the needs of industrial society:
technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex
kind of training. There came a day when a new and urgent
need for stimuli was met by the film. In a film, perception in
the form of shocks was established as a formal principle. That
which determines the rhythm of production on a conveyor belt
is the basis of the rhythm of reception in the film.
(Benjamin 1973: 177)
The film is the art that is in keeping with the increased threat
to his life which modern man has to face. Man’s need to
expose himself to shock effects is his adjustment to the dangers
threatening him. The film corresponds to profound changes in
the apperceptive apparatus – changes that are … experienced
by the man in the street in big-city traffic …
(Essay: note 19)

The ‘shock’ of the modern urban environment is figured in terms of
a welter of new micro-perceptions, disorientating cuts and contin-
gent images–arealm of experience that also characterizes the
cinematic experience. Cinema thus trains the sensorium and helps
the subject adapt to this new technological social reality. Below the
surface-level optimism of Benjamin’s account, is the basis of a critical
analysis very similar to Adorno’s scathing observation that the
culture industry uses even leisure time to prepare workers more
efficiently for their work lives.
One reason for Benjamin’s stubborn optimism resides in the fact
that while photography and film extend ‘our comprehension of the
necessities which rule our lives’ (Section XIII), at the same time,
they also expose the manner in which modernity creates the masses,
and transforms them into labouring bodies. This is a sentiment
shared by Kracauer for whom the camera, despite its alienating
effects, at least forces humankind to consider the mediated nature of
its relationship to a heavily technologized world. Benjamin’s inter-
pretation suggests that the dialectical nature of this relationship
between media technology and the mass audiences it produces
serves to create the possibility for an empowered, non-passive mass –

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