Page 50 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

JOBNAME: McGraw−TaylorHarris PAGE: 21 SESS: 13 OUTPUT: Thu Sep 13 15:44:55 2007 SUM: 548B4E2F
/production/mcgraw−hill/booksxml/tayharris/chap01

Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of art’ essay 35
1 The media user can learn from the unconscious effort of habit
which is, ‘not forgetfulness as such, but rather a form of
accomplishment amidst amnesia’.
2 Distraction is ‘not to be understood as simple inattention.
Distraction involves paying attention elsewhere’. (Gilloch 2002: 191;
emphasis in original)

In Benjamin’s account the person experiencing traditional auratic
art is invited to contemplate the piece in a highly structured fashion
and a controlled environment. This is true whether it be in the
ritualistic forms of early religious art or the later secular, but still
essentially ritualistic, form of an art gallery. According to Benjamin
this leads to the viewer’s absorption by the work. In contrast, with
the advent of media such as film, the critical appreciation of the
work takes a much more natural and enjoyable form – the masses
absorb the artwork. For Benjamin this shift from auratic concentra-
tion to reproductive distraction can be illustrated by considering the
different processes involved in the reception of a painting and a
building. The individual artwork in a gallery or church is removed
from the stream of common life, contemplating it represents a
suspension of ordinary physical and mental processes and their
conscious redirection. Its removal from daily life means that access
to it is strictly limited, the space/time restrictions that characterize
the auratic artwork are such that (historically) it can never be fully
present before the mass. In this manner the singularity of aura is
controlled by those who regulate access to the artwork and aura
incorporates within itself the distinction of the class that possesses it
(think of the stereotypically goateed and pony-tailed gatekeepers of
the contemporary art market).
For Benjamin, architecture provides the model for a radically
different and more empowering mode of appreciation, it is by its
very nature a public art (or at least the clearest prototype of an art
of the masses). Architecture is not subject to the same short-term
cultural fads that determine the rise and fall of other cultural forms,
rather it is (like the poor) always with us (and as the proletariat
slumbers within the poor so within architecture there resides a
hidden potentiality). The historical and environmental presence of
architecture’s buildings results in quite a different means of appre-
ciation from that of traditional art. Architecture is absorbed through
use and perception, by a process of ‘tactile appropriation’. Unlike
the total but circumscribed contemplation of the artwork, a building
becomes known through everyday use that slowly and almost uncon-
sciously leads to an understanding of the whole. Like the media of
reproduction, and in distinct contrast to the auratic work of art,
architecture constitutes an environment. When media become ‘envi-
ronments’ immediately accessible to all, it thus follows that their

Kerrypress Ltd – Typeset in XML A Division: chap01 F Sequential 21

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