CCS 313
Blog Post #1
[T]he distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. - Walter Benjamin "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Section 10
By examining his contemporary moment and the technological advances which it engendered, Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", looked at how photography and, even more so, film compared historically and artistically with long established forms of art such as painting and sculpture. Benjamin probes into the question of what he refers to as "aura", which, when found in these older forms, can be said to be the unique place a piece has both spatially, in a museum, or a place of religious worship, etc., and historically how it fits itself into the cannon of art history. The loosening of spatial fixity and distancing of art from canonizing authorities, are, however, not strictly Benjamin's focus as much as the material conditions with allow for those movements are, and the conditions which follow from them. Given this focus, the question of "aura" may not be the right one for examining our current moment, TV Studies 3.0, as Toby Miller would have us call it, but instead we should look at how we both consume television and film in the 21st Century and how television and film are made to be consumed in the 21st Century.
Beginning with the latter and drawing again from Toby Miller's conclusion to "Television Studies: The Basics", it's important to remember that despite personally having the technological means to create and disseminate media content (cameras, smartphones, Youtube, the internet, etc.) the public does not dictate how television functions. "[Televisions] history is not a tale of visionary inve(n)(v)tors finding means to satisfy the existing curiosity of audiences --a consumer-driven market-- but an uncertain dance of the law, the state, capital, labor, performance, and interpretation that reveals complex, shifting power relations." Our position in relation to the creation of media is not only becoming concrete and, in fact, much less clear, but it is also becoming less important. Whether you're watching or uploading a Youtube video, either a personal home movie or a profession show resembling that of a traditional television show in this example, your presence on the site is what matters not the content, because, producer or consumer or both, Youtube and its corporate owners are ultimately the owners of both the means of production and the ones drawing in the largest profit. Similar can be said for new television platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime, where smaller, more creatively driven projects can be funded and shown, ultimately and primarily the profit from their work goes back to the owners of the site before smaller fractions of that money are seen by the creators and workers themselves.
In terms of consumption in our time, Benjamin himself weighs in almost seven decades early by stating: "[e]very day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, it reproduction." If spatial closeness to a work of art is said to erode the "aura" of the piece, than even if one could have argued for the aura of a film or television show in the past, doing so now, in the age of smartphones, would be quite stretch; even the major broadcast networks of television early history all have apps that let smartphone users view their programs from anywhere at different times. These shows that do still air on television at specific times, which Toby Miller reminds us, is still how the majority of television is viewed, the ritual of sitting at certain times to watch it has been undermined by both modern DVR technology, network websites and apps, and various illegal means on the internet. Beyond those shows which do still have set air times, both Netflix and Amazon Prime have their own shows which never aired, in the traditional sense, but were released once and have been "airing" continuously since their release. And, once again, even further, Youtube as a means of watching television doesn't even have "shows" in the traditional sense, but an endless stream of content which sometimes refers to itself, but more often exists unknowingly side-by-side with millions of other "shows" of varying qualities. Without these traditional touchstones of previous art or a fixed ritualistic site of consumption, the public can truly and constantly be the absent-minded examiner which Benjamin claims it to be.
As Benjamin draws from Marx's dialect formation of capitalism that contained, within the process by which the workers are exploited is also the ability to create conditions by which capitalism itself could be abolished, we can draw from our current situation a similar dialect: as dichotomy between producer and consumer of content becomes increasingly unclear, the means by which the owners of those platforms of media distribution becomes increasingly all encompassing, at the same time, and using the same technology, however, media users, on both production and consumption side, are entering the position by which they can become entirely unreliant on those forms and owners of the previous generation's media.
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 1935. <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>
Miller, Toby. Television
Studies: The Basics. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Print
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