Essay Explications of Debord and Benjamin

Do we have a full understanding of how the media affects us in our daily lives? Basically, there are many levels to such an understanding several of which are touched upon by two authors: Guy Debord and Walter Benjamin, two media critics that made several in depth criticisms of modern media in our lives. Walter Benjamin lived in Germany and escaped to Los Angeles at the onset of World War II. He wrote his essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” after moving to California and witnessing the intense commercialism and cultural blandness of the media in Hollywood. Therefore, fascism and Hollywood greatly influence his opinion of the media of the day. Guy Debord’s book Society of the Spectacle focuses on the role of the “spectacle” presented by the media in the lives of the French in the 1960’s. Both authors give an interesting perspective a subject that has changed and evolved over the last century yet still the two critics’ words remain very pertinent in the modern United States’ media inundated society.

The technology of media in Germany and the US in the middle of the last century had advanced greatly and changed how many people interacted with art. Walter Benjamin’s critique, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction, “ elaborates this concept very successfully yet falls slightly short when applied to today’s media world. The essay explores the rise of media from the “Middle Ages [where] engraving and etching” was popular art/media, which eventually gave way to lithography (Benjamin49). With the arrival of film and photography art was forever changed. When an object/subject is subjected to the lens and captured on film the subject loses its authenticity when reproduced using that negative. “[W]hen the historical testimony is affected” the authenticity of that which has been removed is jeopardized (Benjamin 51). In other words, the art loses the relationship it had with the spectator, changing the prior authentic emanating presence of the artwork such as a cathedral into a picture on the wall of a studio, two completely distinct locations (Benjamin 50). Not only is the space filled by the art contextually minimized, but the sensations of touching the wall, sitting in the pew, or watching the light change through stained-glass windows are all but diminished into a subjective photograph. The same applies to any reproduction taking the original work of art unauthenticated through film. Possibly, the widespread distribution of art increases awareness of the piece and the proliferation of art in society, which, arguably benefits all competent enough to perceivable appreciate the art in the sense that more now have access to art.

One could say that Benjamin’s experiences with Hollywood’s beautiful star actors/actresses, lead him to criticize the “cult of beauty” present in media (Benjamin 52). Today the “cult of beauty” dominates the popular media coming out of Hollywood evident in the repetitive use of popular icons such as Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts in movies. The society of the United States practically worships beauty in the media, which applies to the land when real estate values are highest in “beautiful” places and only “beautiful land is deemed worthy of protection such as Yellow Stone versus the Mesquite-scrubland of Southeast Texas. Yellow Stone National Park remains protected while the “unaesthetic land” of southeast Texas continues to be degraded. The underlying reason behind both the dominance of the “star” in the movie industry and the “beautiful” land in federal efforts in environmental protection is the inundation of the media with these “spectacles,” a concept discussed by Debord and explored later in this essay. The reproduction of art and the loss of authenticity in art lead to a shift in art’s function as ritual to art as political (Benjamin 53). With the possibility of influencing the masses comes the phenomenon of propaganda, which has existed for thousands of years and is evident in ancient civilizations such as Egypt, where recorded history directly boosted the Pharaoh’s standing in society. Propaganda took on new heights after World War II and on into the Cold War. Throughout the existence of Communist Russia we see rampant propaganda in photography and film, idolizing the leaders of the Communist Party. Sergey Eizenstien’s film Battleship Potemkin exemplified communist takeover by the Bolsheviks partly because Eizenstein had no other market to cater towards and partly because he knew little else. However, the styles of art could either cater to the ideals of the government or be abstract enough to not warrant ill attention from the authorities. The same generally applies to the United States in a more masked and diluted fashion, except during the obvious targeting of art in the McCarthyism of the 50’s when Hollywood was singled out as a scapegoat for anti-communistic sentiment. One cannot ignore the current Anti-Terrorism that dominates government propaganda today. Similar to McCarthyism, Anti-Terrorist sentiment is quick to point fingers with intent of ensuring an ideal upheld by the government.

Pointing out that the films of the 60’s in Hollywood were falling short of their full potential, Benjamin touches on the a current issue that many films in the popular media today follow a common three act formula of beginning middle and end. The films fail to explore their full potential within the medium aiming to mimic real life such as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Franz Werfel is quoted saying the film hadn’t reached its “true meaning” or “its real possibilities” in expressing all that is fairylike, marvelous, supernatural” and was merely a realistic representation of life (Benjamin 55).
The analogy of a comparing the painter to filmmaker vs. comparing a “magician” to a surgeon, details an effective point. That the cameraman penetrates deeply into reality capturing a specific aspect just as a surgeon cuts into the patient directly, while the painter demonstrates a more removed representation of reality just as the “magician” heals through passing his/her hands over the patient. Therefore, the cameraman can express a succinct point realistically and is more “significant” than a painting to the average viewer (Benjamin 59). Considering how widespread film’s domain and distribution has become, demonstrating such high significance gives film ultimate power as art. This ultimate influence explains film’s use as propaganda or as a scientific record.

Benjamin ends his discussion with mention of Fascism “aestheticizing” politics and making a spectacle of War. War, according to Benjamin, mobilizes all of the modern technologies together and is the only phenomenon capable of doing so. By mobilizing and aestheticizing government, Fascism provided the masses with an expression of themselves through a “Furher cult”(Benjamin 63). Because of the capacity of humanity to utilize technology in such a destructive way, the world is not yet ready for the technology (Benjamin64). Benjamin most likely included film in his opinion of technology and the ills that may become of misuse of technology.

In The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, we are introduced through a series of points to the concept that our society is centered around “the spectacle” or

[t]he whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representations (Debord 12).

In his points, 1-18, and 42, Debord expresses in his own words how he thinks the system dominated by an economically inspired series of spectacles that has its grip on society. Much of Debord’s words apply to the United States, but one’s understanding of this book depends on the interpretation that person holds. Therefore, Debord’s language is very general and could apply to many aspects of society. For instance, the spectacle “is a social relationship that is mediated by images” could mean a number of things depending on what we consider to be a social relationship and what we consider “images” to entail (Debord 12). However, the strongest interpretation could be that our entire relations to other people has become dominated and predetermined by images we have already seen on television, in magazines or in films. When two people interact in the US, their interactions are influenced on by how those two people perceive the world and the media mediates this perception. They have already been told how they should go about meeting one another by the media. For example, Susie sees on a TV show that when a boy asks you out to the movies, you shouldn’t say yes right away because you don’t want to seem desperate. When Joe asks Susie to the movies, he will be prepared for her to say no, because he has seen the same show on TV. Also Susie and Joe will be expecting one another to say or do certain things throughout the interaction because of things they have seen in TV shows or movies, or read in magazines. In this way their relation is mediated by the “images” from the media or spectacles.

Such a situation is definitely true of the United States where every home has a TV and Internet with access to huge amounts of “information.” Children grow up learning about life through these two mediums. If viewed, pornography and sex scenes influence a young persons view of sex until they actually perform the act. Even then, what they have seen through the media is how the sexual encounter is measured.

For Debord, “the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life”, which will be presented by whoever owns the means of producing the spectacle. People’s view of love, death, and war become what they have seen in the media. None of these things are actually experienced with what Benjamin coined as “authenticity.” The spectacle is removed from its original location by a camera that is pointed subjectively and then edited subjectively only to be shown and viewed subjectively. Nothing about the spectacle is objective and the aura that any original part of reality is removed when it is captured on film or digitalized. The “production process” represents the only real choice made regarding the spectacle which “governs almost all time spent outside the…process” (Debord 13).

“In any world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.” (Debord 14) In a society where the spectacle or contrived has become reality, anything held to be truth is in fact contrived. US society may not seem to outwardly express this concept. However, the media and the spectacle are so far ingrained in our society that we are unable to separate ourselves from the spectacle. Because of this notion, Debord sees the spectacle as a “visible negation of life” (Debord 14).

A following point is that “modern industrial society…is based on the spectacle in the most fundamental way” (Debord 15). Specifically, the spectacle holds so much sway because the ruling economic class is portrayed perfectly by the spectacle (Debord 15). One could say that the ruling ideology, image, and policies are enforced by the spectacle. News programs on prime time TV in the US today represent the war in Iraq as good and necessary in order to portray war’s supporters as supporting the right cause. Supporters of the war control news and this fits into what Debord was saying almost 40 years ago in France.

In the end both Benjamin and Debord leave us with very interesting and new perspectives on the popular media of the day. Both authors do so through the spyglass they have trained on their own time around the middle of the last century, not too long after World War II along with the rise of Television as a modern commodity. The criticisms brought to light by both of these men are still applicable today showing us that the media has much sway over our society in the United States and we should be careful in our mindless intake of what we see.

Works cited:
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1995.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham. MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001. 48-70.