The concept of aura has to do with the authenticity of a work of art. In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Benjamin defines aura as an object's unique existence in time and space in a specific place. (Benjamin, 220). It is almost as if an object's authenticity or aura symbolizes its purity and when it is replicated, it loses that purity or importance. This is becoming an increasing problem due to advancements in technology. In the time of the Ancient Greeks, the technology for replication simply relied on reproducing the work by hand. Today it is so easy to replicate a work of art due to photography or the internet that real art work is almost beginning to lose it's general value and "spiritual" or "cult" value. (Benjamin, 224). I agree with this, but I feel that it can be said for almost anything. For example, due to the law of supply and demand, when there is a low supply it usually means that the demand for the item will be high because there is not much of it. When the supply is high the demand is usually lower because it is to find. Just as with the artwork when there are many copies of a work of art people seem to be less interested in it because it is not the only one so it's not as important or special.
The concept of "culture industry" is basically just a more extreme version of the "Decay of Aura" (Benjamin, 222) brought up by Benjamin in "Illuminations". It is the idea that sources of media such as film, radio, television, internet, etc, are simply just propaganda from a higher power that is set on standardization of society. Adorno said it perfectly, "Culture today is infecting everything with its sameness". (Adorno, 94). He is basically saying that do to all of this technology that we have today everything is losing its "aura" or what makes it unique.
Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schoken Books, 1968.
Horkeimer, Max and Adorno, Theodore. Dialect of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 2002.
No comments:
Post a Comment