The Media Industry killed Art's Aura

Amidst a changing culture and the increasing technologies of a digital age. Walter Benjamin in his article Illuminations and Theodor Adorno along with Max Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, portrays the writers’ distaste of the mechanical reproduction of an artwork in relation to the jeopardy it places on the existence of that artwork’s “aura.” Benjamin begins his explanation of the aura in his passionate desciption of what distinguishes the presence of an authentic piece of art. He explains the significance of a piece’s unique place in time, and the determination of that existence throughout history as what substantiates the phenomenon for which people intake its originality (Benjamin 220-1). Adorno elaborates on this sentiment and presents the infection of sameness, likewise the death of originality, as a crucial epidemic to today’s society (Adorno 94-5).

            Adorno goes on to classify the media industry as a conforming synonym to an all-encompassing “culture industry” (Adorno 104). He quotes, “ Nevertheless, the culture industry remains the entertainment business. Its control of consumers is mediated by entertainment… ”(108). It is due to the fact that the concept of media becomes synonymous with the masses that destroys the art form at the base of its existence; that is, ruptures the aura around which art gathers significance. Benjamin urges his readers to realize that the mechanical reproduction of art has a social significance on the reaction to it. No longer do people enjoy art, they actively criticize and attempt to change it (Benjamin 234). This results from the culture industry’s inability to provide satiable value to the public. Everything in entertainment is a copy of itself. Everything within the culture industry is only unique so long as it can still fit within a predetermined framework (Adorno 112).

            This framework supported so unquestionably and then criticized so openly by the masses is the anti-aura of modern art. Art gathered its original and unalterable being from the existence of unique perspective. People did not question art because it represented a singular perception of the world surroundings (Benjamin 237). This separation of A and B artwork, A for the culture and study of the time, and B for the mild mass entertainment (the media industry of today) captures the current media industry and likewise halts the originality synonymous with Benjamin’s definition of “aura” (Adorno 114-5).

 Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction. New York, New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Paperback.

Adorno, Theodor W. Max Horkeimer. Dialectiv of Enlightenment: Philosophical

Fragments. Standford, California. Stanford University Press, 2002. Typeset.