Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Frankfurt School: How popular culture is produced?

• German-Marxist thinker

• The “aura” of art is lost in its reproduction.

• Thus, the original is “better”.

Isn’t “Aura” a religious word?

• With modernization to focus comes off of religion and onto the secular.

• Thus, the artwork becomes “holy”

Silly Secular modernists!

An aura connotes a person of particular power or holiness!

You are just entertainers!

• There is not truly an actor's “aura” but is merely replaced by the "artificial build-up of the personality” thus “the cult of the movie-star fostered by the money of the film industry”

• The aura in the original art work is lost…however, the original artwork is now accessible to the masses.

This also applies to film…

• Mechanical reproduction brought the work of art into countless different situations but the quality of the artistic presence always depreciated.

• Thus the aura depreciates.

Key points in Benjamin’s work

• Art is designed for reproducibility.• Film is built on artificial “personality”.• Thus, what we reproduce is artificial. No?

So…does this mean…• “reality” is an artifice?

• If an art piece is authentic it is valued and represents “true” art…remember, postmodernism does not believe in truth and Marxists don’t believe in private ownership…so this makes sense given Benjamin’s background.

So…What would Benjamin think of…

Have you ever been to a concert?