The first few decades of the 19th century brought about the emergence of modern photographic processes that augmented reproduction innovation first made viable by the lithograph. Inevitably- precipitated in its powers of mass assemblage only by newsprint- came the advent of filmmaking. Possibilities of a new cohesive culture placed an incredible emphasis on “exhibition value” and transfigured the capacity of art that continues today in a digital sphere. As these mechanical/ technological practices proliferated, outmoded concepts of “aura” inherent of artwork prior, such as painting or sculpture, began to rescind. Walter Benjamin’s notion of “shriveling aura,” delineated in his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” alludes to replication replacing authenticity and tradition with a shift from cult value to political. In today’s capitalist- or neo-capitalist- epoch, with websites such as Wikileaks confronting issues of mass societal deceit, the proletariat is being presented with a revolutionary “fork-in-the-road” where the optimism of Karl Marx comes in direct contention with Benjamin’s pessimism. The coalescence and blurred distinction of art and digital communications media has now bred a mass culture unaware of the extent to which they are manipulated.
Deciphering Benjamin’s conceptualization of “aura,” as well as “exhibition value,” and rendering their contemporary implications is first step in unearthing art’s transgression to propagandized media in an age of technological reproduction. Benjamin remarks that, “For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual… the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics,” (p. 670-71). In this sense art becomes commodity, an artifact no longer unique to an individual in time and space but processed and reproduced for mass societal appeal; the contemplative experience is continuously eroded in favor of the critical. When discussing the spectator identification with the lens rather than the actor in his essay ”Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction” Richard Kazis notes that, “The importance of this, in Benjamin’s opinion, is the distancing it forces on the audience. The filmgoer more easily takes on the role of critic, for there is no personal contact with the actor to influence judgments.” Modern society has extrapolated the hybridization of audience and critic with the advent of the Internet and social networking sites. User comments on YouTube videos, Facebook “walls,” Blogspot, and thread posts allow the audience to directly criticize the artist with no concern of repercussions. Implementation of user names, profiles, and avatars instill the illusion that the spectator/ critic is a realistic representation of an individual, but in reality these online personas merely constitute an idealized and fictional construction. The Internet populous is consequently able to cloud their comments with a synthetic identity while simultaneously retaining what they perceive as dignity; behind the artifice lays nothing more than a clever stratagem employed by overarching capitalist powers.
To acknowledge the substitution/ integration of aura with politics would be indicative of communist mentalities like those expressed in Soviet montage cinema. Capitalist approaches, on the other hand, tend towards false impressions by formulating generic cult value and ritual with admiration/ mystification of the artist. Contrasting fascist productions Soviet Filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov operated by, as Kazis stats, “politicizing art, by demystifying the production, the distribution, the form, and the content of art, in an attempt to make art serve the cause of the masses and not vice versa.” His claim is substantiated first and foremost by the creation and inception of montage practices that emblematize the sociopolitical aim of attaining a unified whole made up of individual yet equal parts. American film responds to this withering of aura with, “an artificial build up of the ‘personality’ outside the studio,” (Benjamin, 676). He is referring here directly to the star system imbedded within the classical Hollywood narrative that is “fostered by the money of the film industry.” Today celebrity status has spread virally. Digital video has become so simplistic and accessible that even infants are capable of obtaining a certain level of stardom. In this way the “spell of personality” has been forcibly altered by technological innovation and commoditized to the point where the promise of fame is being packaged with the purchase of a camera and Internet connection. Fraudulent materialization of aura is magnified by various other innovations as well, including streaming video chats to any area of the globe. Interaction on this level denotes the ever-unfolding modification of Benjamin’s “[unattainable] blue flower in the land of technology.” Familiar faces and voices transmitted through webcams may evoke the sense of realistic production, as one might know it to be second nature, but none-the-less they are not authentic rather performances for a public. If aura had been replaced with film production, which still necessitated physical reels/ prints, mechanics, and attendance at the cinema during the 1930’s, any trace left behind has surely subsided in the age of the Internet, where data flows freely and hard materials are obsolete. Recent development and expeditious advancement of quantum teleportation represents a technological advancement that may prove to be the antithesis to aura or paradoxically promote its sustained semblance.
Exhibition value is realized today in news media and information technologies. Art and media have completely merged together to become proponents of propaganda. Benjamin asserts, “by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental,” (p. 672). Consciously we are aware of news media’s informational intents, which would be recognized as incidental when compounded with insight into ulterior motives and intrinsic propagandizing. In the age of commodity and reconstructed functionality exhibition has superseded artistic value but maintains the deceptive appearance of cult worth. The film industry epitomizes the penchant for exhibition instead of artistic value by subjugating art-house films, designating them to small unassuming cinemas. As a result the unknowing consumer wanders to multiplexes where they are spoon-fed regurgitated material produced only in the interest of capital. Monetary concerns (Hollywood blockbusters, remakes, etc…) have almost completely transcended pertinent socio-political development characteristic of “independent” films’ thematic concepts/ motifs by relegating vital artistic expression to few and far off theaters.
We, like Benjamin’s article, are in a paradoxical state of affairs. Wikileaks liberation of classified “cables” and video clips signifies a temporary impasse for politics and digital communication. Opportunities to revolutionize society, art, and culture are being afforded to the masses but the skewed political agendas of mainstream media aim to subvert the proletariat. It may in fact be this very issue that generates Marxist conditions, “which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself (p. 666),” or once again the masses will be subdued by a government and economical system that has been continually utilizing media to distract and quietly sway opinion. If this revolutionary occasion is not seized it will be on account of “illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations (677),” practiced by dominant forces. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lifted the veil to reveal news media’s unbalanced politicized nature. Online publication of these cables has sparked incredible controversy, undoubtedly because they have proven to what extent government bodies will go to- with media as its unseen surrogate- in the name of preserving deceptive authority. Paradoxes permeate supposed “journalistic” practices of news conglomerates and even the Presidential office. In an example, not intended to resonate with a political agenda or party system, we can look to Fox News’ promotion of “fair and balanced” reporting. With the release of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004) the public received the first major investigation into the camouflaged bias of the Fox News Channel. A documentary that should encourage hesitation in regards to the legitimacy of any modern reporting, Outfoxed constitutes an opening of a figurative floodgate that went unnoticed by the majority of ignorant viewers. In his 2001 article “The Most Biased Name in News” Seth Ackerman identifies the network’s mode of operation:
“Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement’s well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone. Yet, at the same time, the network bristles at the slightest suggestion of a conservative tilt.”
Going on to corroborate an early repudiation of branding he states that, “wrapping itself in slogans like “Fair and balanced” and “We report, you decide,” Fox argues precisely the opposite: Far from being a biased network, Fox argues, it is the only unbiased network.” Hannity and Colmes substantiates Ackerman’s argument. The popular show pins conservative Sean Hannity against liberal Alan Colmes with the impression of equality but one only has to visualize the two men to understand bias tactics inherent with the program. Hannity, rugged and masculine, embodies what mainstream media has dubbed powerful and attractive while Colmes typifies the nerd. Before any words are spoken the show has already subconsciously evinced the victor through purely visual means. News media of the modern age embodies what Benjamin knew film was under the capitalist regime- a revolutionary tool being squandered. He observes that, “so long as the movie-makers’ capital sets the fashion, as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today’s film than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art,” (p. 676). Wikileaks now represents a hopeful Marxist alternative to these unbiased media outlets. The proletariat must realize the misdeeds of our country’s journalistic practices and understand that through the fate of what seems to be the only incorruptible news source we will finally observe whether or not the potential to know leads to potential action. Obama’s administration presents one other noteworthy paradox. In his campaign for office and start of the term President Obama championed a platform that promised the safeguarding of whistleblowers. Instead they have attacked Julian Assange- who is for all intents and purposes a journalist, not whistleblower. Allegations of treason and terrorist acts have surfaced in an attempt to subdue epiphanic circumstances for the masses- all of which harkens back to the “state of distraction” Benjamin had taken not of in the 1930’s.
If fascism introduces aesthetics into political life and communism is an overt politicization of art, then capitalism represents their subtle amalgamation; the allusion of individual identity and chance for revolution is utilized to sustain distraction. Benjamin is right to be more of a pessimist than Marx. Writing in a time when The National Socialist German Workers’ Party had indoctrinated an entire country, he more clearly saw the great and powerful misuses of art/ media in the age of mechanical reproduction. It should be deduced that there is too much information in mass media and film for the social, economical, and historical message to be completely registered. Small, brief insights, in place of a “well-constructed totality” culminates in perceived comprehension of overarching issues. Benjamin bared witness to this phenomenon noting that the, “public thinks they are in control of perception but they are absent-minded receptionists in a ‘state of distraction,’” (p. 683). Canonical news outlets today are littered with distraction. Advertisements abound off television screens, Internet browsers, radio frequencies, and newsprint in an attempt to commodity the basic conveyance of information, and in turn thrive off of the vacuous consumer mindset imbedded within the proletariat. News tickers constantly scrolling across the bottom of television screens heighten distraction again. One-line statements relay a general story idea that the viewer is incapable of fully developing while simultaneously averting attention from the larger story at hand. News programs, ala the Hollywood film industry, have begun to devote an exorbitant amount of airtime to the development of faux cult value by virtue of celebrities; star culture has infiltrated and taken over free press. In and effort to distract the masses from pertinent social issues broadcasters have veered from atrocities in the world to concentrate on the personal lives of iconic cultural figures- and it is working.
In the epilogue Benjamin proclaims, “All efforts to render politics aesthetic leads to one thing: war,” (p. 684). In the context of that supposition the last one hundred years of American history exhibits how the fascist tendencies he was referring to have materialized in capitalist society. Congruency between fascist and capitalist operation in the age of mechanical reproduction is illuminated by occurrences of organized military conflict. War is, in actuality, the strongest tool of capitalism, generating billions of dollars in revenue. Italian futurist conventions, which Benjamin discusses, ultimately begin to manifest itself in American media with broadcast images of the Vietnam War. For the first time in history images of warfare were transmitted untainted by propaganda to the public. As this parallel continues capitalist forces learn from their mistakes by presenting greater distraction and promoting false patriotic values. Analogous to the reporting of a feigned North Vietnamese attack on a US destroyer that garnered public support for the war in Vietnam is the Bush administration’s implication of Saddam Hussein in the involvement of the 9/11 attacks perpetrated by Al Qaeda terrorists. Compounded by the knowingly false claim that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists the US public was duped into supporting a war that’s motivation was, in reality, the acquiring of capital in the form of oil fields. Since the conclusion of WWII America has fought in four major wars and numerous other armed conflicts, instinctively betraying the trust of the proletariat and brainwashing them into wholehearted support. Fascism and the fusion of aesthetics into the political realm may be realized today and American culture and the mainstream medias depiction of US armed conflict.
Benjamin outlines the implications and possibilities of arts politicization in a world essentially connected by their accessibility to easily reproducible forms of art.
Most frightening and significant are the modes in which art, when mass-produced, becomes propagandized and form a dangerously motivational tool, subconsciously imbedded within the spectator. Almost seventy-five years after Benjamin first published his landmark essay mass culture is being consumed and contemplated by neo-capitalist powers, unbeknownst to its spectator. Over time the medium of film has transmuted into varying forms of art and media, delicately oriented to configure a single consumerist entity. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and almost every “reputable” news outlet in the United States have been subversively instilled with political agendas- a direct result of mechanical and technical reproduction. America, the golden child of capitalism, has been swelling. It has reached a crossroads in the form of Wikileaks and other inventive media outlets where inevitable progression of history will lead to either the triumph of humanity and the proletariat (Marx) or society will continue its degradation via misusage of media technologies as Benjamin feared. Only time will tell.
Works Cited
- Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen. Film Theory & Criticism. Seventh Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009
- Kazis, Richard. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1977, 2004, no. 15, 1977, pp. 23-25 <http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC15folder/WalterBenjamin.html>
- Ackerman, Seth. The Most Biased Name in News: Fox News Channel’s extraordinary right-wing tilt <http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067> July/ August 2001
Fourth Wall Writing 