Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

I really enjoyed reading this essay and taking apart the thoughts Benjamin expresses about technology and its role in shaping how society values a "created thing." I think parallels can be drawn between art objects and works of professional writing as well.

There's a school of thought in the professional and technical writing area that advocates for those of us practitioners and theorists involved to organize ourselves, hammer out a definition for the field and draw lines to determine what is, and what isn't, who is and who isn't in the club. They argue that defining something lends a little more prestige. If one's work can be described as the domain of a recognized, organized brotherhood, then it can garner more respect for the practitioners and their process of creation, and probably a higher price tag, too. The work of *Professional Writers* becomes a skilled craft, and not something just anyone can produce. There are, of course, implications about the way one uses his or her command of the language and understanding of audience to produce writing involved here, too, but it's the topic of dissertations, pedagogical stances and could fill volumes.

It seems like Benjamin is heading in a similar direction with his explanation of how the ability to mass produce changed how we value art.

I thought the passivity implied in Sections 8 and 9, where he discusses the screen actor's performance for the camera, rather than the audience, with whom a stage actor can maintain a kind of limited dialog during his or her performance. The audience is reacting to the end product of a long production cycle, not an immediate exchange. The actor interprets the character in short takes, the takes are selected by the editor and compiled into the final product, polished and finally trimmed with effects. The actor, when performing his or her lines doesn't know how they'll play to an audience, and so is only communicating with the camera.

I think the connection between the stage actor and the audience plays into the concept of the "willing suspension of disbelief." An audience approaches live theater and agrees to forego the realism possible through the technologies of film and television for the chance to be part of this production, at this moment. Props and stage effects aren't as dazzling as computer-generated imagery, but the actor has a chance to nuance his or her performance to the mood of this group assembled in the audience, which makes each experience personal. A film can't deliver quite the same experience, which elevates the original experience of seeing a particular performance to the level of "original artwork."