Page 24 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 24
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
fronts fascism and communism in regard to mass culture, is more than just
a slogan stating that fascism is rendering politics aesthetical and that “com-
munism responds by politicising art”. The underlying assumptions, which
help a bit to explain this programmatic exclamation, are presented in the
endnote 12, where Benjamin claims that a change in the method of exhibi-
tion “applies to politics as well”. If we read this endnote in view of its an-
ticipatory dimension, we should comprehend it as a description of the tele-
vised world, before there was any television:
The present crisis of the bourgeois democracies comprises a crisis of
the conditions, which determine the public presentations of the rul-
ers. Democracies exhibit a member of government directly and per-
sonally before the nation‘s representatives. Parliament is his public.
Since the innovations of camera and recording equipment make it
possible for the orator to become audible and visible to an unlim-
ited number of persons, the presentations of the man of politics be-
fore camera and recording equipment becomes paramount. Parlia-
ments as much as theatres are deserted. Radio and film not only
affect the function of the professional actor but likewise the func-
tion of those who also exhibit themselves before this mechanical
equipment, those who govern (Ibid.: p. 247).
This is as far as Benjamin took the analogy between spheres of the aes-
thetic and the political. It means that, for example, the “category” aura can-
not be simply applied to the political sphere as though the secluded deci-
sion-making political process all of sudden has become transparent and
accessible to the wider public. The world of the reproduction of art and po-
litical processes are two different orders, which are marked by mediated in-
terference, but they still keep their separate rules.
The media that has technologically transformed greatly from Benja-
min’s times, has obviously made use and further changed the means of
narration. However, television, for example news reporting, uses the same
means of narration in images as the earliest film makers: different views, fo-
cuses, framing and editing. The electronics instead of “mechanics” speeds
up the procedures of completing the narrative and certainly all this makes
it possible to visualise the reality in a far wider scope than in the case of
concentrated shooting of a film. Systems of broadcasting cater the imag-
es to large audiences so that the illusion of “everything” being represented
is almost complete. A step across the line of what Benjamin could imagine
22
fronts fascism and communism in regard to mass culture, is more than just
a slogan stating that fascism is rendering politics aesthetical and that “com-
munism responds by politicising art”. The underlying assumptions, which
help a bit to explain this programmatic exclamation, are presented in the
endnote 12, where Benjamin claims that a change in the method of exhibi-
tion “applies to politics as well”. If we read this endnote in view of its an-
ticipatory dimension, we should comprehend it as a description of the tele-
vised world, before there was any television:
The present crisis of the bourgeois democracies comprises a crisis of
the conditions, which determine the public presentations of the rul-
ers. Democracies exhibit a member of government directly and per-
sonally before the nation‘s representatives. Parliament is his public.
Since the innovations of camera and recording equipment make it
possible for the orator to become audible and visible to an unlim-
ited number of persons, the presentations of the man of politics be-
fore camera and recording equipment becomes paramount. Parlia-
ments as much as theatres are deserted. Radio and film not only
affect the function of the professional actor but likewise the func-
tion of those who also exhibit themselves before this mechanical
equipment, those who govern (Ibid.: p. 247).
This is as far as Benjamin took the analogy between spheres of the aes-
thetic and the political. It means that, for example, the “category” aura can-
not be simply applied to the political sphere as though the secluded deci-
sion-making political process all of sudden has become transparent and
accessible to the wider public. The world of the reproduction of art and po-
litical processes are two different orders, which are marked by mediated in-
terference, but they still keep their separate rules.
The media that has technologically transformed greatly from Benja-
min’s times, has obviously made use and further changed the means of
narration. However, television, for example news reporting, uses the same
means of narration in images as the earliest film makers: different views, fo-
cuses, framing and editing. The electronics instead of “mechanics” speeds
up the procedures of completing the narrative and certainly all this makes
it possible to visualise the reality in a far wider scope than in the case of
concentrated shooting of a film. Systems of broadcasting cater the imag-
es to large audiences so that the illusion of “everything” being represented
is almost complete. A step across the line of what Benjamin could imagine
22
