Walter Benjamin

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

What Mechanical Reproduction Enables1. As opposed to manual reproductions, process reproduction is

removed from the original work of art2. Technical reproduction can put a copy of the original work into the

hands of the masses. It it a way for everyone to have access to the work, which otherwise would not be possible.

What is Missing in Mechanical Reproduction?• The Aura vanished in mechanical reproduction• The Aura of Works of Art: Aura refers to how we, as humans,

experience authentic entities at a distance. Walter Benjamin provides us with this following example: Imagine that you are laying down in a grassy field and looking at the trees and foliage around you. The shadows cast down from the tree land upon you. Through the shadows of the branches you experience the tree’s aura: In essence, you are experiencing the tree’s authentic essence at a distance. This is true of art (Benjamin emphasized original paintings); you experience this same aura exuding from the painting, and therefore actually experience this work of art.

The Aura• “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one

element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”

• “The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology.”

Benjamin on Movies• “ The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film

industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality,” the phony spell of a commodity”• Notice how he uses the Marxist term of commodity in order to show how film

is a product rather than an art form• This also touches on Horkheimer and Adorno’s thesis on the production of

celebrity. The production of movies rests on the monopolies ability to reproduce inauthentic sameness. Movies are a commodity, celebrities are a commodity, and therefore film is not an art, but a product to perpetuate the status quo or authority ditrum

• “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.”• Again, notice his appropriation of other theorists we have seen in the class so

far. He is using Freud’s school of psychoanalysis in order to exemplify the effect the camera has on human consciousness

Technology and Ideology: The Case of

the TelegraphJames W. Carey

Why We Should Not Neglect the Telegraph• The telegraph was dominated by the first great industrial monopoly: Western Union

• Prototype to many communications and other empires to follow

• The telegraph, along with the emergence of the railway, provides the setting in which modern techniques of management would be worked out• Again, was the prototype for communication management for complex industrial structures that plan among

diverse geographies

• Patent conflicts lead to the rewrite of American law• The telegraph was the first electrical engineering technology; therefore it laid the foundation for

science and technology based industries• The telegraph brought changes to the nature of language and knowledge; along with the very nature of

awareness• Foundation upon which subsequent communication industries would develop• For the first time, the telegraph permitted for the separation of communication from transportation

• Provides a new model of thinking about communication- what the author calls the transmission model

“In their conversations telegraphers use a system of abbreviations which enables them to say considerably more in a certain period of time then they otherwise could. Their morning greeting to a friend in a distant city is usually “g. m.,” and the farewell for the evening, “g. n.,” the letters of course standing for good morning and good night. The salutation may be accompanied by an inquiry by one as to the health of the other, which would be expressed thus: “Hw r u ts mng?” And the answer would be: “I’m pty wl; hw r u?” or “I’m nt flg vy wl; fraid I’ve gt t mlaria.”(New York Times, November 30th 1890)

The Telegraph and Ideas1. New ideology about capitalism

• “The visible hand of management replaced the invisible hand of market forces” (Chandler, 1977, p. 12)

2. Popular imagery, changed the way we talked about electricity: “rhetoric of the technological sublime”

3. Changed social relations and ordinary ideas: New Ideologies introduced• Reorganization of commodity markets: from regional to national• The development of future markets: condition that underlays Marx’s analysis of

the commodity fetish• Space and Time