As I was walking from class to the middle ground last Thursday, a member of our class intercepted me at the entrance to the mail room and asked something along the lines of "Do you think Grady really believes what he just told us?" I said that I did, but that because our professor was simply trying to argue most points from Benjamin's side, the graveness of Benjamin's conclusions may have been exaggerated during the lecture.
Benjamin himself felt positively about some aspects of the shift in our treatment of images, although his motives seem contrary to those of someone who truly values art. The author is content in knowing that the loss of "aura" will move art into a more political sphere, or one in which it's "exhibition value" is prized most of all. Rapidity, perfection, and accessibility will all take priority over "distance" and ceremonial role. Additionally, there lies a concept akin to Hegel's aesthetic philosophy in that both authors depict a time in which major cultural bonding over a work of is no longer possible.
It does seem true that humans are obsessed with images, and that we trust them to an extent that could quite easily be proved to be reckless. I think it can also be agreed upon that the having the value of art lie in its existence (cult value) is better than having it lie in its consumption (exhibition). At least, that seems to be the case when looking at the tone in which the lecture was given on Thursday and the conclusions of past philosophers as to what makes "good" art. Nothing that we have studied would lead us to believe that rapidity, perfection of detail, and accessibility constitute a "good" work of art. We have glamorized qualities like "truth" and originality, yet it may not be realistic to assume that we can preserve these things in our art any longer.
For instance, the ability of art to show a cultural truth (per Hegel) is relatively lost, at least in our country, due in part to the heterogenous nature of our society. Surely one thing that made art so powerful a long time ago was the fact that the piece generally stayed in one town, and that the people of the town were more unified in their races and ideologies. Now, we simply have less distance between clumps of people in the world. As that distance has been torn down, so has the "distance" that Benjamin relates to our connection with art. I believe that the mixing of societies in our world was inevitable and positive, and as it has been aided by photography, cinema, and the internet, it has contributed to a less ignorant population as a whole. Some defame the information age, saying that it makes our country less unified, but I myself am perfectly willing to make that trade if it means that there is less chance of extremist hate.
That escalated quickly, but back to Benjamin; if we look back at thursday's lecture and at the reading itself, we see that the aesthetic shift from cult to exhibition value requires a data-hungry, highly-informed mass. This was portrayed in its most negative light in the frame of a fascist society, for example, in the way that the Nazi regime used propaganda to control the population in Germany. The power of accessibility combined with the trust that humans put in images and film can has reached a point at which massive overnight movements can occur (See: Kony 2012). These movements range from utterly detrimental to a race of people to a waste of time. However, how many times has the exhibition value of art, its rapidity, its accessibility, and its detail, been used for good? We Are the World, a song created by a pantheon of popular musicians in 1985, sold 3 million copies and donated all of it to famine relief in Ethiopia. When the earthquake hit Haiti, a renovated group created more songs for the same purpose, and kids from our generation were able to click a button on iTunes or text a certain number and contribute to the cause. Without the spread of images, film (news reports), and music, there is no feasible way that 500+ million dollars could have been raised to help Haiti.
My point, and this is the point I made on that walk from Palmer to the mail room, is that the shift of art from having cult value to having exhibition value is not as negative as it might have seemed during our lecture, and during our reading. The shift is simply something that has happened; its effects on our world have been widespread and should not be marked down as either beneficial or detrimental to our society. That said, it seems likely that our personal connection with art will not reach the heights that once existed, in a time without photography and other mechanical reproduction.
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