Week 5 Reading: Comprehensive Academic Notes: Film Theory, Aesthetics, Literary Realism, and Short Fiction
Walter Benjamin's Aesthetic Theory & Technological Reproducibility
Publication & Historical Context:
Written in 1935, Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Second Version, published in Selected Writings, Vol. 3, 1935–1938, Belknap Press, 2008, pp. 21–34) is a foundational text in 20th-century aesthetics, media theory, and film studies.
The essay expands upon early film theories (such as those by Vachel Lindsay and Hugo Münsterberg) by asserting that cinema introduces a radical social relationship with modern audiences, grounded in the technological differences between film and classical art/literature.
Key figures referenced include French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, theater director Max Reinhardt (adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream), French filmmaker Abel Gance, French photographer Eugène Atget, Charlie Chaplin, and the literary movement of Dadaism.
Section III: The "Here and Now", Authenticity, and the Decay of the Aura:
The "Here and Now" (Hic et Nunc):
Even the most perfect reproduction lacks the unique existence of the original artwork in a specific place and time.
This unique existence bears the entire history of the physical object, including structural changes over time and shifts in ownership.
Structural changes can only be determined through physical or chemical analyses (which cannot be performed on a copy); changes in ownership can only be traced from the standpoint of the original's present location.
Concept of Authenticity:
The "here and now" of the original is the foundation of authenticity, which underpins tradition and historical transmission.
Technological reproduction differs from manual reproduction (forgery) because it is far more independent of the original:
It captures details inaccessible to natural human optics via adjustable lenses, viewpoint changes, enlargements, and slow motion.
It places copies in contexts beyond the reach of the original itself (e.g., bringing a cathedral into an art lover's studio or a public choral performance into a private room).
Authenticity is defined as "the quintessence of all that is transmissible in it from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the historical testimony relating to it."
Because reproduction lacks physical duration, it jeopardizes historical testimony and severely undermines the authority of the object derived from tradition.
The Aura:
Defined as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be ("a strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be").
Natural metaphor: Resting on a summer afternoon, following with the eye a mountain range on the horizon or a branch casting its shadow on the beholder means breathing the aura of those mountains or that branch.
What withers in the age of technological reproducibility is the artwork's aura.
Social Consequences of Reproduction:
Detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition.
Replaces a unique existence with a mass existence.
Reactivates and actualizes the copy in the recipient's personal situation, causing a massive upheaval in cultural heritage.
Film acts as the primary agent of this process, liquidating the traditional value of cultural heritage (seen prominently in historical films).
In 1927, Abel Gance proclaimed: "Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films… All legends, all mythologies, and all myths, all the founders of religions, indeed, all religion… await their celluloid resurrection, and the heroes are pressing at the gates." This invitation signals a comprehensive liquidation of traditional authority.
Section IV: Historical Perception & Mass Desire:
Historical Conditioning of Perception:
Modes of human perception are conditioned by both nature and history.
Example: The Migration of Peoples saw the rise of the late-Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, producing both a different art and a different organization of human perception.
Viennese school scholars Alois Riegl and Franz Wickhoff highlighted formal signatures of perception in late-Roman times but failed to show the underlying social upheavals.
Social Determinants of the Aura's Decay:
Driven by two factors connected to the rise of mass movements:
The passionate desire of modern masses to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly.
The urge to overcome each object's uniqueness (Uberwindung des Einmaligen jeder Gegebenheit) by assimilating it as a reproduction.
Distinction between an Image (Bild) and a Facsimile/Reproduction (Abbild / Reproduktion):
Image: Uniqueness and permanence are tightly intertwined.
Reproduction: Transitoriness and repeatability are tightly intertwined.
Stripping the veil from the object and destroying the aura reflects a perceptual sense that extracts sameness even from unique objects, parallel to the growth of statistics in theoretical fields.
Section V: Tradition, Ritual, and Political Practice:
Evolution of Art's Function:
Artwork's uniqueness was originally embedded in the context of tradition (e.g., an ancient statue of Venus was an object of worship for ancient Greeks, but a sinister idol for medieval clerics; both recognized its unique aura).
Originally rooted in ritual—first magical, later religious.
Renaissance secular worship of beauty maintained this ritualistic foundation for three centuries.
Crisis of Beauty & Rise of Pure Art: When photography emerged alongside socialism, art reacted against the loss of ritual function by inventing the doctrine of l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake)—a theology of art that evolved into a negative theology of "pure" art, rejecting any social function or representational content (first adopted in poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé).
Shift from Ritual to Politics:
Technological reproducibility emancipates artwork for the first time from its parasitic subservience to ritual.
Asking for an "authentic" print from a photographic plate makes no sense.
Once authenticity ceases to apply to artistic production, art's social function is revolutionized: instead of being grounded in ritual, it becomes based on politics.
Section VI: Cult Value vs. Exhibition Value:
Polarity within Art History:
Art history is driven by tension between two poles: Cult Value (Kultwert) and Exhibition Value (Ausstellungswert).
Cult Value: Focuses on the artwork's mere existence rather than its visibility (e.g., Stone Age cave paintings of elks created as magical instruments for spirits; statues of gods accessible only to priests in the cella; covered Madonnas; high cathedral sculptures invisible from ground level).
Exhibition Value: Emancipation from ritual increases opportunities for display (e.g., portable portrait busts vs. fixed temple statues; panel paintings vs. fixed mosaics/frescoes; symphonies vs. public masses).
Quantitative Shift to Qualitative Transformation:
As exhibition value increases exponentially through technological reproduction, the artwork becomes a construct (Gebilde) with entirely new functions, among which the conscious "artistic" function may later be viewed as secondary.
First Technology vs. Second Technology:
First Technology: Fused with ritual, maximizes human labor/use, culminates in human sacrifice, yields results valid once and for all (eternity), seeks absolute mastery over nature.
Second Technology: Machine age, reduces human labor to a minimum (culminates in uncrewed remote-controlled aircraft), yields provisional/experimental results, originates in play (distancing humanity from nature).
Function of art/film today: Rather than mastering nature, the second technology aims at an interplay between nature and humanity. Film serves to train human apperceptions and reactions to deal with a vast technological apparatus expanding daily.
Section VII: Photography, Crime Scenes, and Captions:
Cult Value's Last Refuge:
Cult value retreats to the human countenance in early portrait photography (remembrance of dead or absent loved ones).
The aura beckons for the last time in the fleeting expression of a human face, giving early photographs their melancholy beauty.
Eugène Atget & The Crime Scene Analogy:
Around 1900, Eugène Atget photographed deserted Paris streets like scenes of a crime.
Crime scenes are photographed to establish evidence in an historical trial (Prozess), demanding a specific, active reception rather than free-floating contemplation.
Obligatory Directives & Captions:
Illustrated magazines begin introducing obligatory captions to guide viewer interpretation.
Film accelerates this process: the sequence of preceding images strictly prescribes how each individual image is understood.
Section VIII: Classical Antiquity vs. Film's Capacity for Improvement:
Greek Technology:
Limited to casting and stamping (bronzes, terra cottas, coins). All other works were unique and could not be reproduced technologically, forcing Greeks to produce eternal values (all of a piece, unalterable).
Pinnacle of Greek art was sculpture, the art form least capable of improvement.
Modern Film & Renunciation of Eternal Value:
Film is the first art form whose character is entirely defined by its reproducibility.
Key feature: Its capacity for improvement (montierbar / assembleable).
Example: To produce A Woman of Paris (final length ), Charlie Chaplin shot of film footage.
Film radically renounces eternal values; consequently, the decline of traditional sculpture in the modern age is inevitable.
Section IX: Misguided 19th-Century Debates & Film Theory:
The 19th-century dispute over whether photography was an art missed the primary question: whether the invention of photography had not transformed the entire character of art.
Early film theorists made the same error, attempting to attribute cult elements to cinema:
Abel Gance compared film to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Séverin-Mars likened film to a dream at once poetic and real, comparing its aura to paintings by Fra Angelico.
Franz Werfel argued that film's sterile copying of external objects (streets, cars, restaurants) blocked its artistic purpose, claiming its true purpose lay in using natural means to express the fairylike, marvelous, and supernatural (as in Max Reinhardt's film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream).
Section X: The Film Actor and Mechanized Test Performances:
Studio Action vs. Stage Performance:
Photographing a painting reproduces an artwork; photographing studio action reproduces a process that is not an artwork in itself.
Artwork in film is produced exclusively through montage.
The film actor performs not for a live audience, but before a group of experts (director, cinematographer, sound recordist, lighting designer, executive producer) who intervene at any point.
Mechanized Aptitude Tests:
Film acting mirrors standardized assembly-line work and professional aptitude tests.
While athletes face natural tests (e.g., Paavo Nurmi running against the clock), the film actor performs under arc lamps and microphones, facing a mechanized test before an apparatus.
Spectators (office and factory workers who relinquish their humanity to a technological apparatus during the workday) visit the cinema to witness the actor taking revenge on their behalf, asserting humanity against the apparatus and pressing it into human service.
Section XI: Fragmented Acting & Displacement of the Aura:
Pirandello's Si gira (Shoot!):
Luigi Pirandello noted that the film actor feels exiled—stripped of reality, voice, physical substance, and movement, turned into a mute shadow flickering on a screen.
Dispelling the Character's Aura:
Aura is bound to the actor's live presence in the "here and now". In film, the camera replaces the audience, dispelling the aura of the actor and, by extension, the aura of the character portrayed (e.g., Macbeth on stage vs. film).
Prop-like Acting & Montage Intervention:
Rudolf Arnheim (1932) noted that film development trends toward using the actor as a typical "prop" rather than having them identify with a unified role.
Performance is split into discrete takes spread across hours/weeks (e.g., a leap from a window shot on a studio scaffold, followed weeks later by a fall filmed at an outdoor location).
Example of artificial montage: To obtain a genuine startled reaction from an actor, the director fires a gun unannounced behind their back and edits the reaction into the scene. Art thus departs entirely from the realm of "beautiful semblance".
Section XII: Alienation, Commodity Cults, and Fascism:
Film utilizes human self-alienation by making the transportable mirror image available to the masses.
Capitalist Exploitation vs. Revolutionary Potential:
Capitalist film industry fosters the "cult of the movie star" (preserving the putrid magic of personality/commodity character) and the "cult of the audience" to corrupt mass class consciousness.
Fascism uses these mechanisms to supplant class consciousness and divert mass revolutionary desires into counterrevolutionary channels.
Section XIII: Quasi-Experts, Polytechnic Literacy, and Expropriation:
Audience as Quasi-Experts:
Technological exposure makes the audience quasi-experts (analogous to newspaper boys discussing bicycle races).
The Claim to be Reproduced:
Newsreels demonstrate that anyone can be filmed; modern citizens claim a right to be reproduced.
Parallel in literature: Late 19th-century expansion of the press (letters to the editor, professional journals) turned readers into writers. Distinction between author and public changed from axiomatic to functional.
Literary competence shifted from specialized higher education to polytechnic training, becoming common property.
Soviet Cinema vs. Western Capitalist Film:
Soviet cinema realized this shift by casting non-actors who portray themselves in their actual work processes.
Western capitalist film obstructs this legitimate claim through unemployment and publicity machines (star lifestyle gossip, beauty contests, fan polls) that distort class understanding.
Political conclusion: The expropriation of film capital is an urgent demand for the proletariat.
Related Cinematic Adaptations & Debates:
Marcel L'Herbier's updating of Émile Zola's novel L'Argent (1929).
George Cukor's Camille (1937).
Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth (1930).
Sergei Eisenstein's aborted project with Upton Sinclair, Qué viva México! (1933).
Narrative Realism and Existential Dread in Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers"
Setting & Atmosphere:
Location: Henry's Lunch-Room (converted from a saloon), located in Summit.
Time: (the clock behind the counter reads , running fast).
Environmental details: Street-light coming on outside the window, bare tree branches under arc-lights, darkening autumn evening.
Dramatis Personae:
George: The counterman running Henry's Lunch-Room.
Nick Adams: Young protagonist sitting at the end of the counter, talking to George.
Sam: The African American cook at Henry's Lunch-Room (derogatorily referred to as "the nigger" by the hitmen).
Al: Hitman wearing a derby hat, black overcoat buttoned tight across the chest, small white face, tight lips, silk muffler, and gloves. Armed with a sawed-off shotgun.
Max: Hitman dressed identically to Al in derby hat and tight overcoat, wearing gloves. Talks incessantly, mocks George and Nick as "bright boys", and observes the room via the counter mirror.
Ole Andreson: Former heavyweight prizefighter; tall Swede who lies fully clothed on his bed at Hirsch's rooming-house, resigned to his impending assassination.
Mrs. Bell: Caretaker at Hirsch's rooming-house (owned by Mrs. Hirsch); describes Ole Andreson as an "awfully nice, gentle man" despite his battered boxer's face.
Plot & Structural Breakdown:
Arrival & Hostile Interaction ():
Al and Max enter Henry's Lunch-Room and attempt to order dinner menu items (roast pork tenderloin with applesauce; chicken croquettes with green peas).
George explains that dinner items are not served until . The hitmen complain and order ham & eggs and bacon & eggs instead, eating their meal without taking off their gloves.
They mock the town of Summit as a "pot town" and repeatedly label George and Nick "bright boys".
The Seizure of the Lunch-Room:
Al orders Nick behind the counter and forces Sam the cook and Nick into the kitchen.
In the kitchen, Al ties Nick and Sam back-to-back in the corner using towels as gags.
Al props open the pass-through dish wicket with a catsup bottle and rests the muzzle of his sawed-off shotgun on the ledge.
Disclosure of Motive:
Max remains at the counter watching the mirror and discloses their intention: they are going to murder Ole Andreson when he arrives for dinner at .
Max reveals that they have never met Ole Andreson before and are killing him solely "to oblige a friend."
Customers enter during the standoff: George turns away a street-car motorman and a second customer by claiming the cook is out/sick; he prepares a ham-and-egg to-go sandwich himself for a third customer.
Abandonment of the Ambush (–):
By , Ole Andreson has not arrived. They wait until before giving up.
Al and Max exit the lunch-room, looking like a "vaudeville team" in their tight overcoats and derby hats as they cross under the arc-light.
Warning Ole Andreson:
George unties Nick and Sam. Sam advises staying out of it ("Mixing up in this ain't going to get you anywhere").
Nick decides to warn Ole Andreson and walks along the car-tracks to Hirsch's rooming-house.
Mrs. Bell directs Nick to Ole's room. Nick finds the giant ex-boxer lying on his bed fully clothed, head propped on two pillows, staring at the wall.
Nick reports the hitmen's plan. Ole exhibits total passivity and paralysis: he refuses to contact the police, refuses to leave town, and declines to try to fix it ("I'm through with all that running around… I got in wrong… There ain't anything to do").
Existential Aftermath:
Nick returns to Henry's Lunch-Room and informs George of Ole's resignation. They speculate Ole double-crossed someone in Chicago.
Traumatized by Ole's passive acceptance of his fatal fate, Nick decides he must leave town ("I can't stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he's going to get it. It's too damned awful").
George responds with pragmatic coping advice: "Well, you better not think about it."
Memory, Identity, and Narrative Structure in Jonathan Nolan's Short Story Excerpt ("Memento Mori" / Earl)
Protagonist & Condition:
Earl: Amnesiac protagonist suffering from anterograde amnesia ("broken brain"), unable to form new long-term memories.
Setting: A cheap motel room featuring a veneer headboard, a minibar, a television playing flesh-colored broadcasts, and a cracked ceiling mirror fading in creases.
Narrative Mechanics & Epistolary Devices:
The Automated Call:
A mechanical phone voice wakes Earl at : "The time is 8:00 a.m. This is a courtesy call."
The Letter in Careful Capitals:
A letter written in careful little capitals informs Earl of his wife's attack: "I RAPED AND KILLED YOUR WIFE."
Explains that the writer bought Earl a bell as a birthday gift, pawning Earl's watch to afford it.
Historical Metaphor of the Bell:
Describes a historical obsession with being buried alive due to rudimentary medical science.
Wealthy individuals outfitted coffins with breathing tubes and attached a string running up to a bell on the headstone so that if they revived underground, they could ring the bell for rescue.
The letter taunts Earl, noting that every time he pulls the bell from his pocket and wonders why he has it, a piece of his broken brain might remember and laugh.
Notes that while normal people need mirrors to remind themselves who they are, Earl relies on his system of letters and physical markers.
Tattoos & Physical Records:
Wrist & Arms:
Earl's left wrist lacks a watch, showing an even tan with a solid black arrow pointing up his shirtsleeve.
Unbuttoning and rolling up his sleeve reveals a sentence tattooed along his inner arm, preceded and followed by directional arrows leading up his arm.
Torso, Chest, and Backward Writing:
The arrow crosses his shoulder and descends onto his chest, pointing to a tattoo of a large, balding man with a mustache and goatee (resembling a police sketch).
The remainder of Earl's torso is covered in words, phrases, clues, and directives—all written backward on his skin so that he can read them correctly when looking into a mirror.
The Cycle of Self-Instruction:
Earl sits at the motel desk, removes a pen and paper from the drawer, and writes a letter to his future self.
Acknowledges that he and his future self will never consciously meet: "By the time you read this note, I'll be gone."
Notes that they are close to finding the killer, expressing relief that his future self will not have to carry the conscious memory of the horrific actions taken to reach that point.
Additional Nuances in Benjamin's Media and Aesthetic Theory
Sensitivity of the Artwork vs. Natural Objects:
The devaluation of the "here and now" (Hic et Nunc) through changed circumstances of technological reproduction can affect natural phenomena, such as a landscape moving past a spectator in a film.
However, in an artwork, this process touches a core that is far more sensitive and vulnerable than that of any natural object: its authenticity.
Alignment of Reality and the Masses:
The perceptual capacity to extract sameness even from unique objects via technological reproduction is part of a broader historical movement.
This process represents the alignment of reality with the masses and of the masses with reality—a transformation of immeasurable significance for both human thinking and human perception.
Human Constitution and Liberation from the Apparatus:
While the primary social function of contemporary art (especially film) is to train human beings in the apperceptions and reactions required to navigate an expanding technological apparatus, full liberation is conditional.
Technology will release humanity from its enslavement to the powers of the apparatus only when humanity's entire constitution has adapted itself to the new productive forces set free by the second technology.
Comparative Analogies and Structural Mechanics of Film Production
The Lens/Baton Analogy in Studio Reproduction:
Photographing a studio action is fundamentally distinct from photographing a pre-existing artwork (such as a painting).
Just as an orchestral conductor's execution with a baton creates an artistic performance rather than an artwork, a cinematographer's technical operation with a lens generates an artistic performance rather than a work of art in itself.
The actual work of art in cinema comes into existence solely through the process of montage.
The Discus Throwing Metaphor for Studio Test Performances:
Studio actions differ from real-life actions in the same manner that athletic competition differs from lethal force.
A competitive discus throw performed in a sports arena constitutes a standardized "test performance," whereas throwing the exact same discus from the same spot in the same direction in order to kill a person is a direct action rather than a test.
Film actors undergo a unique mechanized test performance where multiple takes (such as recording several variations of a single cry for help) allow an editor to select and establish one version as the official record.
Romantic Self-Alienation and Invisible Mass Control:
The film actor's estrangement when facing the camera apparatus directly parallels a classic Romantic literary theme: the feeling of alienation experienced when confronting one's own mirror image (Erscheinung / Bild).
Cinema renders this reflected image detachable and transportable, delivering it directly to a site in front of the masses.
Although the masses are absent and invisible during the actor's studio performance, the actor remains fully aware of their eventual scrutiny; the very invisibility of these controlling spectators heightens the authority of their control.