Beating Around the Subliminal Bush

I apologize for the lateness of this post.

I had a little trouble with Benjamin’s article. It seems like he is going in multiple directions throughout the piece. At first I thought he was interested in the breakdown of art from a natural, living entity to the soulless, mass-produced Andy Warhol soup can. I had in mind Wordsworth’s: “ We murder to dissect.” However, while he does spend some time discussing the “aura” of a piece of art, this is not his purpose. He first hints at his goal on page 1237 when he states that art “begins to be based on another practice—politics.” For all his interest in the classification of photography and film as art, and his examination of actor’s role, I think his ultimate goal is to unmask modern art (film in particular) as a tool for subliminal control over the masses. On page 1248, he states that film is a “distraction,” and, as such, “The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one” open to “[r]eception in a state of distraction.”

Let me know if you think I’m reading too much into this, but I think he goes on in the epilogue to show that art can be framed as a medium by which the masses feel they have a way to express themselves, thought it has no affect upon the entrenched political power. The art merely serves to placate the masses into thinking they have a voice. I feel that Benjamin touches on this idea more specifically earlier in text when he states that mechanical reproduction has led to “the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert” (1244). Rather than criticism, the viewing is marked by the “enjoyment by the public.”