Courtesy of Damn Interesting, we are directed toward the seminal 1935 essay by pioneering media theorist, cultural critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin—one of the many exemplars of the oppression and rejection of German-Jewish intellectuals under the Third Reich, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Informing later studies by Marshall McLuhan and Susan Sontag, Benjamin wrote of the limitless nature of publishing and distribution to have an estranging effect on the authentic experience of art, though while democratising access and stripping the ritual from production, the assembly line nature direction of publishing houses and film studios, exhibition of artefacts lessens the spectators’ identification with what’s being witnessed.
Benjamin nonetheless aspired to write radio dramas and adored movie stars like Catherine Hepburn. This commodification of author and artist, however, is not veneration of the aesthetic value but rather the politicisation of it that affords the chance for all to be critics and creators, the potential for expression but not the right to it, since the gatekeepers are not talent or excellence by rather monied interest of the industry—or it the case of authoritarian regimes, the state itself as a tool of maintaining the status quo. Contemporarily and retroactively, the
paralipomena—that is, things and topics omitted from the critical edition of his essay, like the prevalence of photography or as applied to television and social media, influencers and the spectacle of tribalism (
see previously) make Benjamin’s observations very relevant, particularly for the performative gratification seeking to redeem what’s been lost to distraction and desensitisation. Often misquoted from another collection of essays,
Theses on the Philosophy of History, as having said, “History is written by the victors,” more nuanced, Benjamin posits that “incumbents are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.”
