Page 45 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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30 Then
vehicle for the seamless integration of technological thinking into
ever deeper levels of society. In the next chapter, Kracauer argues
that traditional artistic expression and modes of its reception are
premised on the production of objects ‘permeated by cognition’ – a
contemplative form of artistic appreciation. This type of relationship
to art is fatally undermined and displaced by mechanical reproduc-
tion’s creation of a largely autonomous realm of standardized objects
pre-designed for mass consumption. For Benjamin who saw the roots
of fascism’s aesthetic manipulations in the contemplative attitude,
this was a good thing. It meant that the masses now had a much
better access to art beyond the control traditional elites. In Ben-
jamin’s eyes, the potential of film as a means of awakening the
masses resides in the receptiveness it encourages towards contin-
gency. The traditional work of art was completely overdetermined,
every detail and element assembled with a view to its reception
through applied contemplation. As such it dictated its own condi-
tions of appreciation, it imposed its terms upon its audience. For
Benjamin, art after the advent of its technological reproduction
contains elements that escape the control of its creators. This results
in its capacity to make the masses confront their historical condition
– ideology is to be unveiled by the stresses the new media create in
the traditional forms of communication used to maintain that
ideology: ‘Film is the first art form capable of showing how matter
interferes with people’s lives. Hence, film can be a means of
materialist representation’ (Hansen 1987: 203). This exposure of the
material conditions of mass existence takes place outside of the
media’s explicit content, it is part of the medium’s essential mode of
operation – the manner with which it highlights the contingent.

The contingency of media
each former fragment of a narrative, that was once incompre-
hensible without the narrative context as a whole, has now
become capable of emitting a complete narrative message in its
own right. It has become autonomous … in its newly acquired
capacity to soak up content and to project it in a kind of
instant reflex.
(Jameson 1998: 160)
In their analyses of photography, Benjamin, Kracauer, and later
Barthes, emphasize the manner in which the internal logic of the
media privileges contingency – the rise to prominence of incidental
detail. Thus in Benjamin’s account the optical unconscious desig-
nates an inexhaustible ream of random features: ‘No matter how
artful the photographer, no matter how carefully posed his subject,
the beholder feels an irresistible urge to search such a picture for

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