Page 51 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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36 Then
characteristic mode of apprehension would display a proximity to
the existing environmental apperception already to be found in
architecture. In this manner, the tactile appropriation encountered
by the masses and their buildings anticipates the state of distraction
that exemplifies the consciousness of the masses in the age of media
technologies. For Benjamin this new mode of consciousness is no
mere somnambulism, but a form of sensory instruction. It bypasses
the conscious mind and acts directly on the sensorium. But why
should tactile appropriation in the guise of distraction assume such
importance? Because, we are told, there are ‘tasks that face the
human apparatus of perception … that cannot be solved by …
contemplation alone (Essay: Section XV). The task is that of adjusting
to these novel affects, the new realm of the senses generated by
reproductive media.
Film is exemplary in this respect since the ‘characteristics of the
film lie not only in the manner in which man presents himself to
mechanical equipment but also in the manner in which, by means of
this apparatus, man can represent his environment’ (Section XIII).
This re-presentation of man, media and environment is what defines
Benjamin’s distraction. The external environment is figured in terms
of ‘shock’, the previously cited welter of new micro-perceptions,
disorientating cuts and contingent images that characterizes both the
built environment and the cinematic encounter. In this situation,
‘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 kind of distraction that commen-
tators such as Duhammel had seen in terms of a theft of thought ‘I
can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been
replaced by moving images’ (a sentiment cited in Section XIV of the
Essay and also present in Kracauer’s notion, explored in the next
chapter, that the ‘image-idea drives away the idea’), is perversely the
source of Benjamin’s optimism. Distraction’s emancipatory potential
allegedly resides in its ability to educate humanity en masse –
bypassing the hierarchies encoded in traditional knowledge. Cinema
imposes shock, but in training the sensorium of viewers it provides
them with the means to deal with the wider social environment of
shock, and thus provides the foundations for an authentic mass
culture.

Conclusion: Benjamin today

ideology is intrinsic to the mechanical reproduction of art, to
destruction, and not only to the tradition or what remains of it.

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