The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Where do I begin with this essay? It’s a tough read; it’s one of the non-fiction reads I’ve really had to pay attention to, as there is a lot to get through. If my mind wanders for even a moment and I miss some details… the next few paragraphs make zero sense.
Walter’s essay looks at how the word is rapidly changing, and as a result, so is Art. And not just artworks, no. Walter looks at film, acting and literature. Essentially, all aspects of the arts that exist at the time Benjamin is writing. I feel like his mind would be blown if he found out about AI.
In recent news, Timothee Chalamet has been making waves by saying that “no one cares” about opera and ballet, prompting the opera and ballet community to rally together and give him a massive metaphorical and literal “F*CK YOU”. Sometimes books come along at just the right time, or an essay rather and you cannot help but laugh at the timing of the universe. There is a whole section where Benjamin talks about the experience of the performer on stage versus a performer in film. It is the question of authenticity, a live performance lives in a particular place in space and time - a film was performed live at one point in time and then repeated with several takes, line adjustments and tone changes. A live performance has to be present, no tone changes, no line adjustments, simply performing in the moment in front of a live audience. That is the experience of performers, or as Benjamin puts it, their ‘aura’. The mechanical reproduction of art lacks the intense aura of the moment it was performed. Being in the presence of the ‘aura’ is what is lacking in the mechanical version.
Sure, it might be a little unfair to use Chalamet as a scapegoat for cultural dissonance, but hey, no one told him to go on Variety and crap on a 400-year-old artistic tradition. We do need to offer a little grace. Benjamin wrote this essay way back in the 1930’s. Film culture was still in its infancy, and technology such as the ‘computer’ wasn’t really a twinkle in the eyes of the general populace. As I stated earlier, Benjamin would have a fit if he saw computer-generated animation like Pixar or Jurassic Park. 3D films, the metaverse, social media and AI would probably give Benjamin a ‘flip-the-table’ moment.
I don’t particularly love the Marxist angle, as we now know better: the rest of the 20th century saw the pitfalls of trying to make Marxism work and how it failed spectacularly. However, at the time of writing, Benjamin was a Jew fighting to escape from the Nazi regime and died by suicide in 1940 while attempting to cross the border into Spain. The circumstances are understandable, intellectuals, Marxists, Jews, and other ‘undesirables’ who happened to be just existing in Europe during the 30’s and 40’s were essentially f*cked. It changes the reading of this essay and is definitely worth investigating.