Page 63 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 63
A Distant View
in Michelle Pfeiffer‘s Smiling Eyes
Already at its beginning, the industrial society – when this beginning
took place is perhaps a matter of some controversy – ruined or at least dis-
placed many “traditional” institutions and forms of human relationships.
Accordingly, we may accept that the most basic forms of human (co)exist-
ence, especially family, were generally understood as mediated by tradition.
In almost all cultures this mediation was guaranteed by religion or other
beliefs that had been, and still are, incorporated into society through such
supposedly traditional institutions as the religious organisations. They are
different in various cultures, but as a rule, they all have some form of hi-
erarchy and a “spiritual authority” at the top. During the age of enlight-
enment, social thinkers discovered the fact that a “tradition” gradually or
swiftly changes, and that it is even retrospectively constructed. This implic-
it and explicit discovery opened the way towards bourgeois society, secu-
larism and individualism. In spite of the intervention of enlightenment,
traditions functioned so that patterns and rituals determined the lives of
the majority of society. “Tradition incorporates power relations and tends
to naturalise them” (Giddens, 1996: p. 61).
The Paradox of Tradition
The rapid developments within different discourses of social sciences and
humanities, which moved the notion of culture into the centre of their re-
flections, can be understood as an attempt to define different manifesta-
61
in Michelle Pfeiffer‘s Smiling Eyes
Already at its beginning, the industrial society – when this beginning
took place is perhaps a matter of some controversy – ruined or at least dis-
placed many “traditional” institutions and forms of human relationships.
Accordingly, we may accept that the most basic forms of human (co)exist-
ence, especially family, were generally understood as mediated by tradition.
In almost all cultures this mediation was guaranteed by religion or other
beliefs that had been, and still are, incorporated into society through such
supposedly traditional institutions as the religious organisations. They are
different in various cultures, but as a rule, they all have some form of hi-
erarchy and a “spiritual authority” at the top. During the age of enlight-
enment, social thinkers discovered the fact that a “tradition” gradually or
swiftly changes, and that it is even retrospectively constructed. This implic-
it and explicit discovery opened the way towards bourgeois society, secu-
larism and individualism. In spite of the intervention of enlightenment,
traditions functioned so that patterns and rituals determined the lives of
the majority of society. “Tradition incorporates power relations and tends
to naturalise them” (Giddens, 1996: p. 61).
The Paradox of Tradition
The rapid developments within different discourses of social sciences and
humanities, which moved the notion of culture into the centre of their re-
flections, can be understood as an attempt to define different manifesta-
61
