The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

“Mass media then gives us a more realistic view of the world and increases our ability to communicate with others even though we lose out in the sense of the supernatural and the mysterious that used to make art so powerful, what he later refers to as the “cult value” of art. But he is aware that the potential exists for fascism to capitalize on this technology for its own purposes as well.”

In this quote Benjamin pointed out that Mass media is more realistic than art. For example documentary film or a photograph will have images that reflect exactly our real life. However, art has a supernatural side that artists use in order to produce paint for instance and most of the time the interpretation (or the meaning) is not easy to make for everyone. In addition, Mass media makes communication much easier than before. For instance, we can be informed of what is going on thousands miles away from where we live. Moreover, the Internet made it possible and this is one of the remarkable revolutions in Mass media. But Benjamin noted also that Mass media can be abused by a government or an individual. For example the Nazi (Fascism) was able to use the Mass media for its own propaganda and the consequences were terrible.

This quote is related to today’s media because people are now able to communicate even faster than Benjamin’s era because with the Internet governments are not able to control the information anymore. We experienced this situation during the Arab spring and Egyptians were able to organize themselves thru the Internet in order to overthrow their ex-president Mubarak. Therefore, we can say that the Internet was able to free Egypt population from a dictator. In addition, governments cannot control the Mass media like the fascism did in Germany. Today people are in control of the circulation of information because of the Internet and governments cannot stop it happening. The Internet even allowed certain governments’ secrets to be leaked and the recent one was the classified documents that Manning from the US army gave to Wikileaks.

Political Consciousness

Chaplin film mocked Nazi’s regime specially its army. For example the movie demonstrated how the army was imperfect and soldiers seemed to be afraid and unorganized. From this point we can say that Chaplin really underestimated the Nazi and Germany army. Chaplin attitude in the film was completely the opposite of what Ernest Junger did.