Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940)

German philosopher and cultural critic. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, historical materialism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism. He is associated with the Frankfurt School, a loose aggregation of intellectuals They asked two recognizable questions: How did we get here? Where does salvation lie?

Answers lay not in political activism or in a revolutionary labor movement, but in such obscure phenomena as avant-garde art, psychoanalysis, dialectical philosophy, and a messianic religious faith. Under the general name of "critical theory," they were among the first to be properly labeled interdisciplinary. By the time of their mature works, the members referred to their work as philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, or psychology; it was simply termed "theory."

For Benjamin the aura of art represented the Originality and Authenticity of a "Work of Art" that has not been mechanically reproduced; painting has an aura while a photograph does not; Walter Benjamin writes of the loss of the aura through the "Mechanical Reproduction of Art" itself.

MOTIVATIONS / IDEAS

Film is art and therefore demands theory to explain and quantify it.

The nature, quality, and artistic essence of film changes, based on the machinery used to produce, display, and exhibit it.

Film is folk art.

Folk art is produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative or entertaining rather than purely aesthetic.

The dividing-line between auratic and non-auratic art does not coincide with the line drawn between authentic art and the administered, degraded art of the culture industry (the masses).

A loss of cult value occurs thru the use of film.

Death, or loss of aura, is the breaking of tradition.

RELATED STUDY NOTES

Aura – the distinctive atmosphere, quality, or essence generated by or belonging and surrounding an object, a place, or a person.

Auratic art is the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a work of art. Seen as unique and permanent "high" art.

Nonauratic art is available to everyone, all of the time.

Reproducibility – the ability of an entire film, or other work of art, to be duplicated, either by the same artist or by someone else working independently.

Aestheticization of politics -- idea first coined by Walter Benjamin as being a key ingredient to Fascist regimes. In this theory, life and the affairs of living are conceived of as innately artistic, and related to as such politically.

Marxist theory – focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the reinforcement of class distinctions through the medium of film.

Relevant film: Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1935)