Barthes’s and Benjamin’s articles help me to examine and understand the distance between films and me, and providing me with the insight of the fittest position to appreciate films.
Benjamin states that films have a relatively closer relationship with the audiences, and he compares films to surgeries that they have direct interactions with the audiences, while traditional arts are distant to the audiences. However, with my personal feelings on watching films, films are still keeping some distances from us and preserving the beauty and depth within the camera. This important distance should be credited to cinema, the venue for audiences to appreciate films, which containing a vital setting: darkness. The darkness creates a sense of mystery and distance, putting the audiences in an unknown space, and the film playing on the screen is the brightness that attracts us. Hence, films are “healing” but distant in the setting of cinemas.
—-Shuntian Tan 3035777585
I appreciate how you attempted to synthesize the two texts with the notion of ‘distance’. The two writers had different thoughts on how did film become close to the audience. Benjamin thought film was like a surgeon cutting through flesh, eliminating aura and cult value; Barthes considered film to be glued to the audience as the image lured them to identify it as themselves. Contrary to their beliefs, you think there is a certain distance to film. I would like to hear more about your rebuttal on the writers. You could elaborate on how the camera preserves the beauty and depths. To you/ to the writers, why is distance more attractive than proximity?