Textual Reflection on Benjamin

Benjamin begins his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by quoting Paul Valéry, setting up his argument on how innovations have always and will continue to "transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself" and changing our own perceptions of art (431).  He then addresses Marx's expectation of the future of art in the context of capitalism, that capitalism would "exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity... [and] create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself" (431).  In the first section, Benjamin contends that any work of art can be reproduced, whether that is by manual or mechanical reproduction.  Throughout history, people have practiced the skill and craft by copying or imitating works of art, that which have already been made by man.  But with continual innovations, "mechanical reproduction of a work of art represents something new" (431).  As the process of reproduction becomes more efficient, the work of art becomes more immediate and accessible to the masses.  Before engraving, printing, photography, film, etc., one had to see the original work of art in its own time and place in history, something which every reproduction, no matter how perfect, will lack.  Benjamin calls this the 'aura' of the work of art, "that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction" (433).  Distance is necessary to our understanding of aura, according to Benjamin, for if we try to bring an object in nature or a work of art closer to ourselves by removing it from its original context, the aura is also removed from the object.  The are two social bases for this "decay of the aura," says Benjamin: 1) "the desire of contemporary masses to bring things 'closer' spatially and humanly," and 2) "overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction" (434).  At first, it seems as though he wants to argue against mechanical reproduction of art because of the uniqueness of a work of art due to its aura; however, Benjamin claims that "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual" (434).  Now that mechanical reproduction is becoming increasingly common, especially today, his point that "the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility" (434).  However, at the end of the fourth section, Benjamin returns to Marx and capitalism, that once artistic production is less concerned with ritual, it is based on politics.  Throughout the rest of his essay, he discusses the difference epilogue, Benjamin discusses Fascism and war in relation to the aura and mechanical reproduction.  He says that "the destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society" (444).  After reading through Benjamin's appraisal of the mechanical reproductions of photography and film and then arriving at this end, it becomes much less obvious as to what he thinks of the destruction of the aura in the work of art.