Walter Benjamin in the 21st Century

In an attempt to archive some academic papers I've written over the past few years (relying on the hard drives of sometimes faulty PCs has left me tired and frustrated), I have been uploading some of my old work to this website. Here is one I wrote for a "Understanding Media Studies" class I took in the Fall of 2010.

“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men.” – Walter Benjamin

      With an influx of new digital technology arriving in the media landscape in what seems like every passing minute, one could easily find themselves perplexed and overwhelmed, left to ask, “what's it all about, Alfie?” DVDs, Blu Rays, content available to stream online, Ipods, Ipads, Iphones, blackberries, and more all come (from the heavens above) to shock, surprise, and collect a healthy profit. The companies that come together to design and distribute these items do so with the basic understanding that they are primarily selling information, i.e. content to the hungry masses. This content is derived from various art forms – film, music, fine arts – and is spruced up and compacted for an easier, more travel-friendly consumer experience. 

     Convenience is key. People are now allowed to watch their favorite movie while on line at a grocery store. They can read their favorite novel without ever having to deal with a heavy hardcover or impending pesky paper-cut; wear-and-tear is a concept foreign to new media. Pop music doesn't thrive on records or compact discs anymore – the music industry is now in the business of selling digital files (read: information).

     As our way of processing content shifts to a lighter, less analog-supported approach, a famous essay by Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” springs to mind. Are these advanced modes of distribution bringing us closer to to the original art forms they wish to expose us to, or further away? We are replicating replicated content. My intentions, in regards to this short literature review, is to show how Benjamin's various examples easily apply to art in the digital age for the better and for the worse. Using sections one through six of Benjamin's essay as a starting point, I will note several sources that speak about film, or the “photoplay”, in its purest form, and contemplate whether or not we are moving closer or further from its origin, fully acknowledging that the question itself may prove to be hypocritical.

     “Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art..... the greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public.” (Benjamin 29). With this idea, Benjamin implies that the more access people have to a particular piece of art, the more its value will be called into question. But perhaps there is more to it than that. If a piece of art is duplicated over and over again and is made easily available to the masses, must that mean that is importance has dwindled? There can only be one original, right? 

Literature Review

     For a number of reasons, less and less filmmakers today are shooting on 35MM: it's too expensive, it weights a lot, and cheaper digital cameras are producing high quality video and sound while being easier to handle and transport. In terms of preservation, 35MM film must be kept in very specific temperature and lighting conditions so that it will not deteriorate over a number of years. This, of course, is expensive, and time-consuming. 

      35MM has become something for the expensive Hollywood productions to use at their disposal – everyone else is going for digital and 16MM. This unfortunately leads us to what appears to be the hot question these days: is cinema dead? The answer at this moment appears to be no, but film is dying. The movies possess a long sustainable future, but our ways of shooting them have been altered, as have our ways of consuming them. Most moviegoers appear to be okay with this. It is not uncommon to see people on the bus or riding the subway train using hand-held devices to watch a movie on a tiny (but clear) screen. What would Benjamin say about this occurrence? Are we further removing ourselves from the experience of gathering for a communal viewing of a projected image on a large silver screen? Can we really claim we've watched a movie when we view one on a screen smaller than the size of our hand? 

     Benjamin wrote, “Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science. To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film.” (Benjamin 30). Perhaps a small screen would rob us of these observations; reproductions of movies for new formats are condensing the power of their initial effect.

      The irony of this dilemma is that feature films on 35MM arrive in multiple reels when they are ready to be projected in a commercial movie-house. These reels are the finished product, with all the completed edits, sound cues, musical score, dubbing, looping, and more that goes into a completing a professional film. The movie is not technically on a film print, but it is not really the original print. To further confuse the situation, it would be classified as an original film print (as in, it was made for the film's initial opening exhibition), but it is not the original film print (i.e. the actual roll of film that was in the camera when the director yelled “action”). The original negative isn't shipped out to a theater, for that is what the studios must go back to when going through the process of digital conversion for the eventual DVD release – and even then, a duplicate is occasionally used. 

      “Can there such a thing as more than one original?”, a person may curiously ask. In the case of film, everything is a reproduction of another. If there were only a single print available, the precautions take to protect it would be too great and costly. Today, purists want to see old classics in revival houses on 35MM. Whether or not the print is an “original” from the time of its first release is less important than the need to know that it is definitely on 35MM (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences frequently lease out newly restored prints of old favorites to repertory movie-houses). A film print, it is believed, is closer to an authentic viewing experience than a digitally-modified one.

The Function of the Photoplay

      There are those who may disagree with the anti-digital stance, however, and this may have as much to do with viewer perception as it does with savvy technical craftsmanship. To borrow a quote from a timely Hugo Munsterberg essay, “....the greatest mission in which the photoplay may have in our community is that of esthetic cultivation. No art reaches a larger audience daily, no esthetic influence finds spectators in a more receptive frame of mind.” (Munsterberg 16) In layman's terms, when it comes to primal satisfaction in regards to film-viewing, everyone's a critic. Even Benjamin, who writes much about the role of the “spectator” in relation to the cinema, would most likely agree.

      There are quite a few Hollywood heavyweights who are not opposed to the digitized reconstruction of the cinema, and one in particular who has used it to vandalize his own filmography. Known for being the creator of the uber-successful Star Wars universe, director George Lucas has recently gone back to his 1977 film (and the two 1980s sequels which he subsequently produced) to make a few adjustments here and there. This included the addition of a few frames of background special effects, and an extended sequence where a character from the third movie (in that film, a gigantic, multi-man controlled puppet), was recreated in a CGI format to make a cameo in the earlier one. Lucas used modern technology to go back and alter, however slightly, popular American film history. 

     Kids growing up with Star Wars today will either appreciate the computerized changes or not even notice them. Lucas originally released Star Wars in the summer of 1977 as a stand-alone film; there was no Episode IV: A New Hope subtitle to be found in the famous ascending opening credits. When the director found out that he could afford to make more Star Wars movies, he went back and added the the “Episode IV” moniker. All future home video editions kept the subtitle intact, sparking an intense and heated debate over whether or not Lucas had predicted at least six Star Wars movies from the very beginning. To be able to have solved this issue, you would have to request the services of someone whom had seen the film during its initial run – you would have to look for a historiographer and not necessarily a movie lover.

Decoding Jay-Z's “Decoded”

  
     In a recent interview with The Village Voice writer Zach Baron, rap mogul Jay-Z made an observation which fell very much in line with the thought process of Walter Benjamin's essay. In Decoded, Shawn Carter dates the birth of Jay-Z to the day he first heard himself rap on tape. Hearing his own voice played back, a young Carter realizes 'that a recording captures you, but plays back a distortion—a different voice from the one you hear in your own head.' At this exact moment, creator and creation split.” (Baron). The article goes on to describe the difference between a character and the real person playing one, with the aforementioned quote helping to note the distinction between the two when technology comes into play; the rapper is noting the “noise” between the message and the receiver. 

     When listening to a singer at a rock concert, chances are they are using a microphone to get their voice out into the open air. Their voice is going through several electronic devices (a microphone, speakers, etc.) before it reaches the ears of the adoring fans. This is also true of many actors in the theater. They too are usually equipped with a mic of some sort to help project their voices throughout a massive barn of a theater, to be heard from the orchestra all the way up to the last row of the mezzanine (and in some theaters, the last row of the balcony). Times sure have changed since Ethel Merman, a musical theater star throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, sang her heart out to packed houses without the use of any electronic aids (she is quite famous for this feat). What would her comments be on the use of body mics? Heck, what would any singers of the 1950s say about the now common practice of auto-tuning? Are vocalists now relying on mechanical reproduction and manipulation to help improve their artistry?

The Impact of Digital Technology on Film Aesthetics

      Michael Allen's essay attempts to shed light on the way the craft of filmmaking has changed since the inclusion of CGI in mainstream Hollywood movies. Examing shot length, framing, and the “live and the virtual”, Allen notes that films today (and since James Cameron's 1989 The Abyss) are being crafted to complement and complete a sequence which relies on computerized imagery; the digital elements of the film, while brief, remain the the focal point of the entire attraction. The special effects aren't on screen for very long – there is usually a special effects shot placed between two non-effects shots, thus giving the three-shot sequence a grounded weight. It also helps to integrate the CGI into the “real world” seemlessly, being shown quickly and efficently. 

 

      Allen writes, “ More generally speaking, a specific formal structure has developed that establishes the rules by which CGI and live action are combined. While CGI shots, in themselves, might be lengthy, allowing the spectator to gaze at and to scrutinize them, it is rare that several CGI shots are run together in a sequence at any one time. More normally, a CGI shot will be bracketed by live-action shots before and/or after it. The moment of 'artificiality', therefore, is both set up as coming out of, perhaps extending, the real and is also retrospectively confirmed by the real.” (Allen 830). Like creating a second “original” copy, the authenticity of a piece of work is becoming harder and harder to distinguish. Many filmmakers wish for CGI to blend, unbeknownst to the audience, into a live action scene. Is this a deceptive cheat by the technicians or a suspension of disbelief on the viewer's part? Allen later continues, “This theory of referencing allows us to understand the dynamic interaction between CGI effects and shots of live action, in which the live-action shots explicitly give us the information to which we will refer as the simulated equivalent in the following CGI shot appears on screen. While it might be thought that this could work to undermine the integrity of the diegetic world, especially if the CGI version fares poorly when directly juxtaposed with the 'real thing', generally the shift into the 'virtual world' and back out to the real repairs any momentary viewer sceptismi about the believability of the former.” (Allen 831).

      If there's nothing quite like the real thing, perhaps we've all become accustomed (and satisfied) with secondary copies. Maybe the strenuous hobby of collecting originals of anything is overrated. Reproduction of art is removed from the art, but is still a representation of the art itself, no? Even if there is a difference, it's all representing the same thing, that is, while manipulating the consumer experience; I often find myself amazed by the amount of people that go to live sporting events and spend more time taking in the game by looking at the overhead televisions above them, rather than focusing on the physical beings in front of them. Has art, as Benjamin implied, been given over to the masses? Yes, and the economizing of it has either enhanced its ability to reach further than any original piece could, or it has damaged the value of the original itself. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.