In our tutorial Benjamin’s writing was explained to express his worries and fear of the capitalized of film and the possible risks that some creators like Hitler would use the new properties of the reproductive artworks to control the mass’s thoughts. This could be a way of interpretation.
However, I think Benjamin could also be regarded as neutral to the age of reproductive artworks, and our eyes could be shaded by the eclipsing predicting power of Fascism and Communism to neglect his positive sides.
The mass in Benjamin’s eyes may not be such “inferior”. Benjamin tends to support the existence of the new arts, the joyful moments that the mass could appreciate easily in their daily lives. Benjamin may not be pessimistic to the fact that people are now wandering along to pay less attention looking or listening on arts. He might believe this indicates the democratization of arts appreciation and aesthetics. I have such a suggestion partly because Benjamin is quite influenced by Marx and he might make himself a comrade of the mass.
If we turn to this kind of explanation, then how could we think about his warnings? I suggest we could look about his words on Egyptian. He believed movie or photographs are just like new languages being created and developed, and the mass were just yet to equip themselves with the new signifiers’ translator. When people are adapted to the new type of languages, they would then not such easy to be deceived by neither capital nor Fascist. It takes time for the “superstructure” to be built up.
Yalun, Li, 3035532777
In fact, at the time Benjamin wrote the piece, art was actively deployed in a political way. It was not a hypothesis by him but an observation of the dangers in society. Nonetheless, I appreciate how you interpret his work from a different point of view, thinking that the masses are actually smart. Do you think you are one of the masses or not? Is Benjamin one of the masses too? It is true that Benjamin encouraged the masses to synthesize film as a way for self-exploration instead of serving capitalism/ politics (see how he compared the use of film in Russia vs that in Europe in section XIII). Yet, again, it does not diminish his thought on how film was being politicized in his era. Again, this is a dialectic piece that provides multiple points of view to find the truth, which you have successfully delved into a message that is not covered in class.
The mass, is an “individual”, in the sense of it only uses “one word”. We human are smart to use one term to call a large amount. I think myself or Benjamin could be the one of the mass. When we talk about the mass, we are othering some people and call them as a mass. It’s common.
Film, on the other hand, is chosen by Benjamin to analyze. While, I think it has the dangers because of it has similar properties like the massmedia in that age. So on earth is the unique features of film that makes danger, or the features that it could be spread out and as persuasive as newspapers that makes it dangerous? I do not know. Anyway, my philosophy is a little social-scientific. There could be various philosophies to interpret.