This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 01 Dec 2006, by Sam Kitonyi.
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01 Dec 06
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Every commodity has a fetishistic aura (a pro jection of its exchange-value) that far exceeds its material and utilitarian properties as a mere ob ject (its use-value).
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In other words, the entire drama of the aura and its decay, or what Benjamin also calls the movement from “cult value” to “exhibition value,” is internal to the commodity form itself. Technological reproducibility itself is a consequence of commodity production and circulation, rather than the reverse (a point on which Benjamin remains ambiguous).
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In other words, the cult of the painting and the cult of the movie star are equally artifacts of commodity culture. The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world; this is equivalent to saying that it is the most frequently reproduced. We would not be able to experience the aura of the singular painting that sits in the Louvre, if we had not seen its image reproduced so many times in books, on postcards, even on film and television.
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But can we really distinguish, as Benjamin wants us to do, between the sublime magic of the authentic work of art, and the “putrid magic” of the commodity? Is the aura of the Mona Lisa any different from the aura of Greta Garbo? In fact, Leonardo and MGM both provide us with images of enigmatic beauty; and we revere both images in the same way.
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My aura is not an attribute, or a consequence, of anything that I actually do. It is independent of my agency, just as it is inaccessible to my awareness. My aura is an expression of how I am “famous for being famous”: like Edie Sedgwick in Warhol’s entourage, or like Paris Hilton today.
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The heart of Benjamin’s argument is that “the whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological – and, of course, not only technological – reproducibility.” But that is precisely the point: the authenticity of the original Mona Lisa can only be perceived by way of contrast to its many inadequate, inauthentic replications. You can’t have one side of this duality without the other.
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