There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a sub-category of Art proper, it is worth re-considering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as pseudo-art is expressed in moral terms. T. W. Adorno, for example, critiques film as ‘mass-cult’; mass produced culture which presents a ‘flattened’ version of (...) reality. Adorno worries about the passivity encouraged in viewers. Films are narrative artworks, received by an audience in a context, making the focus on the reception of the work important. The dialogue held between Adorno and Walter Benjamin post-WWII is interesting because, between them, they consider both the possible positive emancipatory and negative politicization effects of film as a mass produced and distributed story-telling medium. Reading Adorno alongside Benjamin is a way to highlight the role of the critical thinker who receives the film. Arguing that the critical thinker is a valuable citizen, this paper focuses on the value of critical thinking in the reception of cinematic artworks. It achieves this by reconsidering Adorno and Benjamin 's theories of mass art. (shrink)

There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a subcategory of Art proper, it is worth reconsidering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as pseudo-art is expressed in moral terms. Adorno, for example, critiques film as ‘mass-cult’, mass-produced culture which presents a ‘flattened’ version of reality. Adorno worries (...) about the passivity encouraged in viewers. Films are narrative artworks, received by an audience in a context, making the focus on the reception of the work important. The dialogue held between Adorno and Walter Benjamin post-Second World War is interesting because, between them, they consider both the possible positive emancipatory and negative politicization effects of film as a mass produced and distributed storytelling medium. Reading Adorno alongside Benjamin is a way to highlight the role of the critical thinker who receives the film. Arguing that the critical thinker is a valuable citizen, this paper focuses on the value of critical thinking in the reception of cinematic artworks. It achieves this by reconsidering Adorno and Benjamin’s theories of mass art. (shrink)

This article argues that Walter Benjamin’s aesthetico-political philosophy cannot be understood without reconsidering Hamlet. It elucidates Benjamin’s Hamlet via his theory of Baroque “mourning” and its counter-measure, the “Saturnine Dialectic.” It likewise offers an analysis of the 1877 Herman Ulrici edition of Hamlet, the German edition Benjamin cites exclusively. This analysis reconciles the differences in the secondary literature regarding Benjamin’s Hamlet, expounding upon the edition’s singular use of the word “foreordination”. Finally, by rereading Benjamin’s Hamlet through Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or (...) Hecuba, it argues that Fortinbras’s succession, effectuated by Hamlet’s dying voice, conditions the repetition of sovereignty in Hamlet, betraying the emergence of the new. Despite this betrayal, the revolutionary potential that is sunken into the content of Hamlet is disjunctively brought to the surface by examining the “dialectical image” of Laertes’s rebellion, rescuing what I term the revolutionary-new from the jaws of defeat. (shrink)

Durante las últimas tres décadas, el ensayo de Walter Benjamin "La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica" puede haber sido citado con más frecuencia que cualquier otra fuente, en áreas que van desde la teoría de los medios de la nueva izquierda hasta los estudios culturales, desde el cine y la historia del arte hasta la cultura visual, desde la escena artística posmoderna hasta los debates sobre el destino del arte, incluido el cine, en la era (...) digital. En el contexto de estas invocaciones, el ensayo no siempre ha adquirido nuevos significados ni se ha vuelto menos problemático que cuando fue escrito por primera vez. (shrink)