This article is a pure challenge for students without previous experience of reading literal and artistic works. Through the difficult words plus my guess, I have a vague feeling that the author is anti-modernization. He brags how valuable the greeks’ arts are and claims that it is all credited to the few spaces for further improvement of these works. He also devalues those ‘reproductions’ of technology.
Admittedly, each essay is written with the author’s bias, I dislike his bias on the circumstance.
The value of a film doesn’t decrease merely because part of it is finished by machine, human’s power and intelligence lead all factors to the completion and produce perfect artworks. Furthermore, the machine is also a result of human experience, wisdom and hands. Now we are exploring and even expanding the boundaries of ‘art’, with the accumulation of material and knowledge.
One thing that confuses me is that why Benjamin suspects the new-form art, given he was a Marxist. With my limited historical knowledge, Marx had a strong belief in material and technology and considered them as the engine for human society. Hope to see some interesting comments.
Wang Huiquan, 3035637515
Although Walter Benjamin’s piece is definitely not the easiest one to read, I’d say it fits the purpose of the writing: a critique. The dialectical inquiry that he adopts for this piece (how he went back and forth and provided arguments from several angles) suits the nature of the topic (see p.36: “The technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses to art.”), which is better not to be read as a mere black-and-white, right-or-wrong polarity.
In this article, Benjamin voices out his concerns (or suspicions) toward what the modernization might bring about (or lead to) from “the annihilation of the aura in every object they produced” (p.39). To Benjamin, it is significant because “What could be expected, … was not only an increasing harsh exploitation of the proletariat but, ultimately, the creation of conditions which would make it possible for capitalism to abolish itself” (p.19).