The Aesthetic Experience of Modernity: Benjamin, Adorno, and Contemporary Film Theory by Richard W, Allen There can be no aesthetic of the cinema, not even 4 parely technological one, which would rot in dude the sociology of the cinerna.* Theodor W. Adorno The Fantasy of Film Theory In contemporary film theory one may delineate two types of argu- ment to account for the nature of the fascination of film both of which lead to the conclusion that the experience of cinema is an experience of fantasy. will term these the argument from ontology and the argument from enunciation. The argument from ontology has two distinct parts ts premise, most eloquently articulated by André Bazin in “The Ontol- ogy of the Photographic Image,” is that in film there is a causal relation- ship between the image and what the image depicts? In contrast to painterly representation which involves an imaginative transformation of ‘reality’ on the part of the artist, film is essentially a non-intentional medium, involving the unmediated presentation of objects through the technology of photographic reproduction, and hence conforms, more or less, to standard perception. This arguments not vitiated by the con- “Many thanks to Miriam Elansen for her encouragement and guidance inthe writing of this paper. Thanks also to Thomas Elsaesscr and Paul Willemen for their comments on an earlier draft 1. Theodor W. Adomo, “Transparencies on German Critique 24-25 (Fall/Winter 1981), 202 2. See André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” in What és Cinema vol. 1, selected and trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor, nia Press, 1967}, pp. 9-16. m,” ans. Thomas Y. Levin, Netw 225 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.226 Aesthetic Experience of Modernity tention that the shots of a filin are isolared and edited from a specific point of view and thar, for example, two versions of the same story or de pictious of the same place may be entirely different.? The point is that a film image, other things being equal (i-e.,in the absence of specific sub- jective cnarkers}, does aot appear to has The sccond part of the argument could be construed as a Metzian transformation of this Bazinian concention. The distinction drawn be- tween the intentionality and non-inteniionality of the object is isomor- phic +9 2 conivast in the subjective apprchension of the object between fantasy and aesthetic contemplation. The sesthetic experience of the viewer of a painting comesponds to the intentionality expressed in the image looked at, and involves, as it were, an imaginary desire pursuing an imaginary object. By contrast, the cinema. in Christian Met2’s termic ology. is characterized as an ‘imaginary significa’ at once presess (the image, lacking subjective markers, appears to be real}, yerabsent itis re produced bya mechanical apparatus}.* The zeality-elfect thas produced x tsivates or services the fantasy of the viewer, which is understood as a real desire pursuing a real but surrogate abject* ‘The argument from enunciation 's move difficult to paraphrase Cause of its technical reliance on the concept of the suturing of the sub- ject in discourse articulated by Lacanian psychoanalysis, In its aq plica- ‘von to the discourse of filin the concept described a specific form of narrational system, the shot/counser-shot or severse-field cutting, which binds the subject inte the narrative through character pointol-view* Initially in this scenario, the spectator, in accordance with the ontolo gical aigument, identifies with the camera. But she spell cast by this ap- paren perception of the real is broken by she realization that one does ally own the look. This creates an absence, or to use the term «a ‘voice. niet ag G Durlley Andrew cironcously suggests that these contentions tefue, the ontological arguanent itt Concepts in Film: Thos (New York: Oxford University Press Tost) p. 52. He is arguing against Roge> Sevuron who pur forward a Bavinian argu, iment in “Photography and Represensation,” Ceca Ing 7 (1981), 577-603; reprinted a Phe testlotc Uadertanding (London and New York: Methuen, 1983), pp. 102-26. 1 See Christian Metz, “The Innaginary Significr,” trans. Ben Brewster in Seven 16:2 scammer 1975), reprinted in The Faaginany Signfer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), esp. pp. 42-87 S See Senaton's discussion of fantasy ard the cinessaalong Metaian lines in “Fantar sy; Imagivation and the Scieen,” in The Aeshetie Understanding, pp. 127-37 vo See Joom-Pierre Ouddar, "Cinesna ana Suture,” tans. i Sete 184 (Winses 197- 78), pp. 38247 -and Daniel Dayan, “The Tator-Code of Classical Cinema.” Fla’ Quartet (Fall 1974), pp. 22-31, reptintcd in Niche Mouics and Methods, pp. 498-81 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved....Richard Allen 297 with more resonance, a ‘lack’, which is temporarily assuaged by identifi cation wich the character's look in the reverse-field, and so on, In the light of empirical criticisms that the system of reverse-field cutting is not as ubiquitous in the cinema as the account suggests, even in classical Hollywood cinema, Stephen Heath has modified the argument, return- ing closer to Lacan’s original conception. All filins, as discourse, suture the subject, but some systematically reveal the process of stitching even as it holds the subject together in discourse, whilst others, classical Hol- 'ywood cinemmain particular, systematically mask it, even as the ‘subject effect’ is an unstable one. In this context, reverse-field cutting becomes the representative figure of a particular suturing system. Heath offers the following gloss on the relationship between the particular system and the general concept: “No discourse without suture... but, equally, no suture which is not from the beginning specifically defined within a particular system which gives it form.”? The argument from enunciation depends on the relationship be- tween fantasy and the reality-effect of the image established by the ontological argument. However, the ontological argument does not en- tail the argument from enunciation, Interpreted in psychoanalytic terms, the ontological argument suggests a regression to a point prior to the formation of the ego, but it does not depend upon a psychoanalytic conception of subjectivity for its coherence. Insofar as the point of the ontological argumentis to foreground the contrast between cinema and the traditional arts, between fantasy and imagination or contemplation, it can be made equally forcefully outside the terms of psychoanalytic theory as within them. By contzast, the enunciative argument recog- nizes the fact, so to speak, that you can only have fantasy when you have aan ego and the ‘lack’ that goes with it. It depends upon a psychoanalytic concept of the ‘subject in discourse’ thatis incommensurable with ‘nor. mal’ conceptions of subjectivity and aesthetic experience. As Geoffrey Jag tcbhien Heath, “Notes on Suture," Sercon 18:4 (Winter 1977-1978), reprinted as pen Suture in Question: of Cinema (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981), p. 101, {nc anticiame of susure theory are co he found in Barry Salt, “Film Style and Techlogy, i Quarterly (Falt 1977), 46-57, and William: Rothinan, “Agains the Sys. tem of the Suture,” Film Quarterly (Fall 1975), 46-50, reprinted in Nichols, ed, Mots ned Methait, pp. 451-59. por 2 now psychoanalyec arcount, sec Scruton, “Fantasy, Imagination and the Screen,” For a Freudian account ofthe distinction, though not explicitly applied wo the ginema sce Richard Wollheim, drt and fs Ojets, 2nd ed, (Camnbuidge an Meee wee Cambridge University Press, 1980}, esp. pp. 108-17. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.1” Aesthetic Experience of Modernits Nowell-Smith has pointed out, this psychoanalytic approach does nor yest content with the ontological argument for: itis cruvially concerned with the intersubjectivity of the con struction of meaning. In the absence of a subject of cauncia tion on the side of film it is hard to sec what position is possi- ble for chat other subject, that of the spectator him/herself “The spectating subject requizes the celation co another in o7- der #9 situate itself. and somewhere the flm must provide i swith that other? Wile in film such a relationship is established with fictional characters, the ontological argument suggests thar this fictive relationship is secon- davy 10 the reality-effect due to the absence of discursive oF subjective markers. Thus, for the enunciative argument, che play of discourse and realicy-effect (¢nonciation and énancé), the gavrativization of space, and the positioning and re positioning of the spectating subject is specified by the cnutual articulation of positional identification or locks, four in all, in narrative film." In this contest, even ifit is not thatcommon, reverse ‘atting, as described by the system of the sature, is nor simply one ‘articulation, but also serves to dramatize the general process by which 2 phantasmatic subject position is maintained by narrative film. ‘The central probler: with the conce of the cinema as fantasy and the phantasmatie subject of enunciation axticulated by contemporary Bln theory is that while denying an aesthetic relation to the cinema, as iradi- tignally conceived, it remains defined in terias of the traditional subject and object of esthetics, Aesthetic experience i stripped to_a semblance fits former character, Most crucially, the significance of the penetra tion of technology into aesthetics is trivialized, by effectively denying the acsthetic conient of the rechnological aétifact along with its oss of inzentionality. Yer, as with the artwork of traditional aestheties, the wider framework of historical experience seems irrelevant to understanding the significance of film texts, and ever: che institution of the cinema in general, for the apprehending subject. Similarly the traditional subject 3. Gaalliey Nowell Sinith, “A Note on Hisiory/Discomise,” Filnburgh Magasine | (1976) 28 10. ‘These looks ate inra-diegeti looks, the camera's took atthe profilin space and the viewer's Yook at the image. The fourth look, ofa diferent order to the other three. is the possibilsy 10 look ou at the spectator fio ition, See Paul Willerman, “Lever to Jolin.” Sore 21:2 (Summer 1980}, 53-66. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.......-.-p.cecnswRichard Allen 299 of aesthetic experience is denied, yet retained in an impoverished form, Stripped of his or her intentional faculties, the reified subject ofenuncia, tion in contemporary theory is an empty vessel shot through with libidinal currents, endlessly replicated in the viewing experience histor. ically unchanging and ineffectual. Itis my programmatic contention here that German film theory, in panicular the work of Theodor W. Adomo and Walter Benjamin, pro- vides an alternative, historically aware, conception of aesthetic expert ence. Two concepts seem crucial in the writings of Benjamin and Adomo: mimetic experience and distraction. An exploration of these forms will suggest the extent co which the aesthetic experience of the cin. ¢2a, and indeed other mass media, can be conceptualized only in the light of the historical transformation of experience in modernity. The traditional subject of aesthetic expetience is no longer appropriate, be- Grese subjectivity has undergone an imernal transformation along with the nature of aesthetic experience. In fact, the theory of cinematic fect, nation which emerges from these writers is historical in two senses, Not merely is this fascination necessarily predicated on the experience of modernity, but it implies a subjectivity chat itself undergoes historical fansformuation. Modemity is thus characterized as being thoroughly historical and cinematic fascination becomes an exemplary feature of this experience. My argument tmmns on the development of a concep- tion of cinemaas a form of intersubjective experience, called distracticn by Benjamin, which mediates beween the spheres of public and private experience. Breaking with past forms of aesthetic experience, the cine. 1 SuBBests a medium which is both productive of and produced by historically changing constellations in the relationship between public and private. In order to develop a clear understanding of the historical nature of the concept of distraction it will be necessary to trace the his- torical and theoretical dimensions of mimetic experience in Benjamii and Adorno. Mimetic Experience in Modernity The concept of mimesis is one which unites a philosophy of hi cory, an aesthetic theory and a theory of language. At the most general level, Benjamin argues in his essay “The Work of Artin the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” chat mechanical reproduction has transformed the rela- Uonship established since the Enlightenment between art, science and Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.230 Aesthetic Experience of Modernity progress, and hence has transformed the nature of mimetic experience Benjamin conceptualizes this historical transformation in opposition to the traditional picture, which is summarized in the Passagen- Werk by a quotation from Turgor’s Second discours sur les progrés successfs de Uesprit Ieuan: “The arts, whose purpose is to please us, are as limited as we are, Time constantly brings about sew discoveries in the sc ences; but petty, painting, music have a fixed point which is determined by the genius of Jangrage. the imitation of nax are, and the limited sensibility of our organs. Here, progress resides in the scientific domain, in the relationship be- rween reasou and technology through which mar dominates nature, This domain is radically split off frora the aesthetic realm in which man expresses his affinity to nature. Itis essentially the expression ofthis re~ 1p which forms, for Benjamin, the experience of “aura”: “the ansposition of a response common in human relationships to the rela- Honship between the inanimate or natural object and man."!" Benjamin speculates on the origins of the division between reason and nature in his early metaphysical account of the origins of language. He suggests that in the prelapsarian universe cognition and being were one, Linguistic sign and image universally combined in a mimetic cor respordence between word and thing, between human expressivity and the naiural world.) After the fall the si became split from its original resemblance to the object and the mimetic function became the esatcric provenance of art. Much later Benjamin refined this conception sug- gesting that knowledge, obtained through conceptualizario thoagh never comple, is genuine insofar as itwaces the “nonsensuous sities” whieh recall the archaic uniey of word and thing."* Con sir VL, Quoted in Walter Benjainin, Passagen-H Hafiey and Kichard Sicburth as “Theoreties of Kno Philasophival Foran 1521-2 (FalWinter 1983/84), p. 26. 12. Walicr Benjamin, “On Some Meaits in Baudelaise,” (1939), in Ibunouations nana, Harry Zohn (New Vork: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), p. 190. 15, See Walter Benjani, “On Language as Such anid on che Language of Man” (1916), in Reflvtions, ed. Pecer Demets, trans, Edmund Jepheou (New York: Schockes. 1986), pp. 814-82. For Benjamin, tanguage or deaotaive relation between word and thing. "The word after the fall maust Communicate something (other daa tse} ‘Pha is really the fall of language ming.” (p. $27). 14. Benjamin," Onthe Mimetic Facikey” (1993), in Relvtions, p. 385. An catler ver- sion of the essay, “Doctrine of the Similar” (1953), is tans. by Knut Tarnowski in New Gerean Critique 47 (Spring 1979), pp. 65-69. + “Konvolut N, trans. by ledge, Theory of Progres Copyright © 2001. All Rights RES@VEC oe ococcccccocevarnnnnnnnennisRichard Allen 231 versely art, while it can express this unity, can only intimate knowledge since itis abstracted from the concrete language of cognition, In Dialectic of Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer echo Benjamin’s account in the “Arcwotk” essay of the affinity between auratic art and the fetish of primitive ritual: Itis the nature of the work of ar, oraesthetic semblance, to be what the new, terrifying occurrence became in the prim. tive's magic; the appearance of the whole in the patticular, In the work of art that duplication still occurs by which the thing appeared as spirinual, as the expression of mana. This const ‘tutes its aura.”"!5 Furthermore, they stip the metaphysical dimension from Benjamin's Philosophy of language by describing the splitin the mimetic faculty as an historical consequence of the Enlightenment division between ine stramental reason and art: With the clean separation of science and poetry, the division of labor it has already helped to effoct was extended to lan guage... Asa system of signs, language is required to resign it- selfto calculation in order to know nature, and must discard the claim co be like her. As image itis required to resign itself ‘o mirror imagery in order to be nature entire, and must dis- card the claim to know her.!6 In fact, this division immediately threatens the status of art. Reduced to mere imitation, it can only imitate the increasingly reified world (see, ond nature’) of which itis a part, Thus for Adorno, ‘fart is mimetio; as thentic art, paradoxically, is that which imitates itvelf, intentionally ex- Pressing in its formal autonomy unreconciled reality.!7 Benjarain’s Passagen-Werk and, more directly still, he “Artwork” es: Say, express the vision that this divison is coming to an end. From the Point of view of Benjamin’s redemptive criticism, the traditional con feption of historical progress i dramatized and parodied by technolog- ical antiquation in advanced capitalism. At first sightinnovation appears ha cumeedor Adomo and Max Horkheimer, Dialect: of Enlilimmt (1944), ans, John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1968) p19, 18 Aflomo and Horkheimes, Dialects of Enlightenment, pp, 17-18 7 aa Ssentally, Adomo'stheory of modemism, canonical ‘nshrined in the posthumously published Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenka (London, Boston, Mel- ourne, Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984) Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.939 Aesthetic Experience of Modernity as repetition, historyas myth: “Only a thoughtless obse-ver would deny that those are correspondences beoween the world of modern tecuiclo- gy and the archaic symbolic world of mythology. Inially the new tech- Fulogy appears as no more than that”! Yer the accelerated antiquation teidenced for Benjamin in the debris of nineteenth-century costumer Capitalism, in particuar the ruins of the Patis Arcades, demonswates & ‘lijorent conception of history which is articulated in the “Theses on the Phitosophy of History.” Here the historical is that which can. ovly be lunderstpod from the point of view of messianic reconciliation in wh “the past carvies with ita teraporal inex by which itis refereed 0 1 demption.” Iris an index which is expressed in the aura of she wradi- tional artwork: Inevery itucwork of art, thereis 4 point at which anyone who puts himself into it will feel € blowing toward hin like the peel wind of the coming dawn. Itbecomes apparent thet art schich has often becri considrest resistant in any conncetion to progress, can give the later its ruc cetermination. Progscss odes, notin the continaity of the course of gine, but rates ie he waoments of interference: wheve she uly new first tnakes itself felt sith the sobriety of the dawn. However, as we have seen, traditional art also embodies the impossi- of seconcliation: i ite very abstraction from progress a adition- aly conceived, it cemains esoteric and asta. If medlernity offs a view vision of reconciliation itis rhat the mninctic capacity finds expr aoe ye lhe very realmn where it seemed co be denied. For Benjamin. the a pris of the Paris Arcades mimes the reified world ina manner akin to coor crcakists’ representation of found objects. These sediments of i pecaaire are relies of a collective social history which resonate with & topian force. Lanovarion appears 2s repetition in the images of iself noreninyseerctes, burtheyalso cevea! tothe cultural historian the ete et promise of the new in the guise of the always already old Because ae ales ane man-made, yet inert and lacking in intentionality, social yet appearing as naval, historical yes mnythical, they point so the possi- bitisy oF urepian reconciliation of cognition and being.” aan Pare irk “Konvolne N°. 6 1 ary etheseson the Phitosephy of History” (1940), in Kuminations p. 250 20 * passagen-Werk “Konvolut N,” p. 22 2 -eandling of Benjanuin's Passgen Werk s indebted to the work of Susan Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.Richard Allen 233 the Passagen-Werk and the Baudelaire essays suggest a secularization of the mimetic function by a kind of aestheticization of everyday life in the obsolescence of consumer antfacts, he “Amtwork” essay focuses on the penetration of art by reproductive technology and the development of new technologically based arts, of which film is a pre-eminent oxane ple. The question at stake in Benjamin’s essay is whether the penetration of technology into art offers the promise of the secular reconciliation of the two halves of existence in the name of anew collective mode of expe- Hence, simultaneously cognitive and mimetic, and how this experience is to be conceptualized. In presenting an “equipment free aspect of reality,” film offers arep- resentation of ‘second nature’ opening up the contemporary world ss ur alegorical landscape in a manner akin tothe representations provid ed by the relics of consumer culture: “Then came film and bese thig Prison world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so thar now, in the midst of its far-flung rains and debris, we calmly and adventurously go travelling.” Here, the camera is equated with the nineteenth century flaneur and Benjamin's own role as the cultural hi torian of modernity in the Passagen-Werk, However, as Miriam Hansen has suggested, “film is more than an epistemological tool for the mance alist intellectual.” While representation on film mimes the reified world, itdoes not do s0 in the sense of merely reproducing it, since “i ie teal? art of the historical process or crisis of which the urban masses are the obvious symprom.” Rather, an as “optical unconscious” the camer, Tedeems aspects of shared experience and invests it with mec intersubjective significance,* In this sense film preserves the aura of she ‘raditional artwork with its ability to return the gaze, but its an aura Gulnanets: Se "Walter Benjamin — Revolutonary Writer (I). New Leff Review L2s8 Guly/August 1981), pp. 50-75, “Walter Benjamin — Revolutionnry Weer (U)," New Left Mic l29 (SepvOc 1981), pp. 75-95, and “Benjamin's Passagen Work Redeeming Bag te fOr the Revolution,” New Geman Crlique 29 (SpringiSummen 1988}, pp, 211-40, aainagenbtanin, “The Work of Artin the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), in Mhominations, p. 238, rand ee RhOve quotations are fiom Miriam Hansen's papes, “The Blue Flower im seed of Technology: Benjamin on Representation and Reception,” delwere dee Bete qinetna. Studies Conference, New York, 1985. ‘The followiiie reading is indebted to this paper as tis to Jangen Habermas “Conscioastess Raising or Redemp- and Ca tt = The Contemporaneisy of Water Benjamin.” trans by Philip Brewster and Call Howard Bachner in New German Critique 17 (Spring 1979), Pp. 80-59. 24. Benjamin, “Artwork,” p. 239. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.231 Aesthetic Experience of Modernits stipped of ts basis in individual, csotevic, aesthetic, contemplation chic has “burst the auratic shell are become exoteric.”" Benjasnin tises Kracauer’s concept of distraction in its critical sense to describe this cxoteric aesthetic experience which he sors as characteristic of modeni- ty For Beajamin, the historical wransformarion of aesthetic experience in the wendicth century is intimnavely tied to a transformation in subjevtiv ryandl sense perception brought aliout by urban, mechanized, induscr fence: “Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing ceahly in all fields or art. s symptomatic of profound charges in jpperception, [and] finds ia film its rae means of exercise." Both in the represention of movement and in the movement of the perceptual eld through the edited! image. fl represents the ‘real as rhe synthet sof the fragmented and fragmentary perceptions of modern urban nae exteniorized realization of an interiorized transformation of perceprion, As distraction, film conforms 10 the habits of lived expert sce where individuals have learned 20 parry the shock factor of day to Gay eximence, anreflectingly making sense out of a whole array of visual data, But this lack of inwentionality in everyday perception that is repro” Gueedin the citiema, by being reproduced in mediated, extcrnalized and objectiied, thereby liberating its contents to be re-invested with rev meanings. The rational, cognitive aspect of the experience of film is suzgested by Benjaroin’s metaphor of the surgical insruunens cutting through realty like a sorgeon’s knife, she camera Tberates hither unievealed fragments of reality that cant be recontextualized in the edit: ing process in « multiplicity of semiotic operations, of which the pris ry one, for Benjamin, is montage. TL for Benjamin, film alfords the possiblity of the coming together of the vognitive and mimesic aspects of experience, itis throngh the fact that individual aesthetic experience is subordinated. duc to the sneentonless aspect of technological reproduction, to a process of col lective signif he auratic shell broken, mirnetic experi Gan once again take on a public intersubjective signifying form. Its 2 reconciliation at the level of aesthetic experience forged by the penetta- we D5. Habermas, “Consciousness Raising or Reslemptive Criticism,” p. 47. 26. For Kiacauer’s uiderstanding of distraction see “The Cult of Distraction,” (1926), isans. in this issue: 27. Benjamin, “Artwork,” pp. 242, 28. See Benjamin's “Artwork,” pp. 235-36. Copyright. © 2001. All. Rights. Reseved..Richard Allen 235 tion of technology into art. However, undoubtedly in the “Artwork” es- say, Benjamin wishes to go much further. In the light of Benjamin's pe- culiar brand ofeschatological Marxism, modernity not only offers a rew and universal form of aesthetic experience, icoffers a possiblity of recon. ciliation which goes beyond the aesthetic realm. The concept of distraction as shock has an aspect which expresses the very entrance into modernity and not merely the experience of a subjec: tivity which has already learned to live with the exigencies of modern fc. Film snight be said to mime this experience in that it too can pro- voke, quite commonly, a visceral sense of shock, a phenomenon which is intimately tied to its technological foundations. But Benjamin would Ike to link this visceral sense of shock toa cognitive dimension whereby dlistraction jolts the spectator out of an unreflective mode of apprehen. sion, The influence of Brecht is apparent here, as well as Fisenstein's Provocative synthesis of behaviorist psychology and Marxism in the context of film theory. This aspect of Benjamin's conception of dis. traction is tied to a “flatly realist theory of representation,” for the trans. formation of consciousness that it provokes is linked to its ability to rep- resent the masses. Finally, the intersubjective aspect of the medium here isa direct expression of the fact that film isa mass medium which is Simultaneously consumed due to its technological reproducibility. Thus the shock effect, together with the mimetic aspects of the medium, realistically construcd, allows the possibility of the masses gaining cog, nitive access to a reconciled reality in which they themselves appear as subjects of representation. From this perspective the historical nensfor. mations wrought by urban lifeand mechanical reproduction, expressed in the cinema, are nothing less than a prelude ta the revolutionary rec- onciliation promised by Hegelian Marxism; a reconciliation which Waits only for the revolution in the base (transformation in the relations of production) to catch up with the revolution in the superstructure (transformation in the mode of perception), On this interpretation, Benjamin falls at once into a naive realism and an equally naive historicism, To the extent that this realist emphasis pre- dominates and the intersubjective nature of the medium is seen oe a function of its transparent referential status and mode of simulaneous ro, Jaa ke fanexample, Sergei Eisenstein, “Methods of Montage," in Fin Formed and eo Traced Nee York and London: Harcourt Brace jovanovich, 1940), pp. 72-83. 30." Hansen, “Benjamin, Cinema and Experience?” Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.236 Aesthetic Experience of Modernity consumption. the status of the cinema under capitalism immediate! falls Besiamin’s analysis into question. Itinvites the kind of idcologic Gitique thar Adomo carries out in Dialectic of Enlighienment with Hork- heimer) and most directly contra Benjarain in “On the Fetish Charace in Music and the Regression of Listening. "*" In his analysis of the “culture industry,” Adorno, like Beajarnin, seodls the film image allegorically, and! like Benjamin, be is a privileged reader, However, the undeniably mimetic aspect of theimage, from the point of view of a realist ontology, 's,in Adorno’s view i strumentalized by the Sim industry, aking on the false aura’ of he commodity. Iris not simply that film under capitalism is a commodity tis that film repeo- ahuens the seracture of the commodity in the aesthetic realm. ‘The gclax tionship besseen image ane! refereat in the mechanically reprectuced imaxe mistors the reletionship established between use value and ex change valve in the commodity, Jus as use vale appears fo ensure that sxchonge value can function as an index of need, so the referent appears fo anchor the image in reality." Doubly infused with the rationality of the exchange function, the aesthet i fer a eeconeiliation of insteumental reason and mimetic experience. Tt arks the historical synthesis of traditional experience and the sech iene of advertising with their calculated appeal to the apparent needs vfan idea! auniversalized consumer. This, for Adorno, isa false recone Tarior,, to the one sided impoverishment of aesthetic experience. Mass calture eliminates the possibilicy of aesthetic experience rather than transforms it, in a process whieh is syraptoratic of the general erosion of experience in modernity. Ta Minima Moralia. in an explicit counter-argament to Benjam tion of shock” Adomo reads the modern transformation in perception tis the erosion of individuality, qualitative difference and genuine expe: vive ina reified world. In this context the concept of distraction Charaeterizes the way in which the mass media under capitalists € 0° “Trans. hv The Eosentiad Prank Gebhardt (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), pp. 27¢ Je For Avdomno’s arcount of the relationship bencen signification and! she cos modicy fori, sce Pegative Dialrtcs irans. Ff Ashon [New York: Ci a. 1973}, pip 6-48. See also ny avtle. “Critical Theory and the Paradox of Modemist Dis eae ee Sioa 28:3 {1987}, Tor a comparison berwcen Adora and Baudrillard on this Subou! Broder eds. Aude 29. Acato aust Sike Minima Morel crans, BAEN, Jephcott (London: Ve Copyright.©. 2001..All- Rights Reseved:Richard Allen 237 duce the individual as the subject of mass consumption, Adomo de- scribes this process as “psychoanalysis in reverse” whereby the film spectator is manipulated to the point of masochistcally desiting his or her own manipulation and the cinema actually activates repressed im. pulses to copy and compulsively repeat. The task of the critic becomes one of decoding the deceptive appearance of the image as ‘second na. ture.’ “Dialectic,” writes Adorno, “interprets every image as writing. It shows how the admission of its falsiy is to be read in the lines of its fea. tures ~ a confession that deprives it of its power and appropriates it for trath,”35 Adomo’s detailed analysis of the narrative effects and procedures of commercial cinema and their historical origin provide a precise, if totalizing, historical characterization of the mechanism of enchante ment, loss and re-enchantment analyzed by contemporary theory. Fur. thermore, implied in this historical argument itself is the possibilty of an authentic aesthetic experience. Benjamin's argument as to the inseparability of film technique from its basis in technological repro- duction, its essentially mimetic ontology, suggests for Adorno toc dhe collective nature of the medium, Butit is irreducibly and a prior aesthet, ic. Ie cannot, in a utopian gesture, reconcile the necessary truth of art and the contingency of reality, ahough it may readily be used to give the appearance of reconciliation: ‘That, among its functions, flim provides models for collective behavior is not just an additional imposition of ideology ‘Such collectivity, rather, inhercs in the innermost elementeof film. The movements which the film presents arc mimene impulses which prior to all content and meaning incite the viewers and listeners into step as ifin a parade... It would not Pevinomreerw atsenBe tie constitutive subject of film as 2 “we? in which the aesthecicand the sociological apsects of the tedium converge. Anything Goes was the title of a film by Gracie Fields; this ‘anything’ captures the very substance of film’s formal movement prior to all content... The indetermai, nave navure of this collective ‘anything’, however, which is linked to the formal character of film facilitates the ideological misuse of the medium... The liberated film would hare to 34. _Adomo uses this phrase, borrowed from Leo Lowenthal, in “Television and the Tost) a we cure, reprinted from Quarterly of Fm, Radio and Television 3 (Spring Tog, nMass Culture eds, Bernard Rosenberg and David White (Glencoe, Ik Free Breet 1957}, p. 480. 35. Adomo and Horkhcimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 24 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.238 Aesthetic Experience of Modernity wrest its a primi collectivity frosa the macchanisms of uncon Sous and irrational influcece and enlist this collectivity in the service of emancipatory intentions.** In asense the difference between Ben}: ain and Adorno lies in how to inerpret the relationship betwen the ontelogical satus of the medium win? the sociology of mass consumption. At first sight this difference wtkes the form of an invidious opposition between two equally exire views: Benjamins’s bold espousal of disiraction as an emancipatory form of collective experience and Adorno's bleak vision of collective cat atonia provoked by corporate capitalism. Adomo’s conception of thea 1! intersubjectivity of the aesthetic experience of film, even if itis # [evardedly positive evaluation of the medium, is still conceived within al nesthetic categories. These remain historically unchanging as ‘within which to characterize aesthetic experience, in spite of the fact that Adorno is rigorously historical in the sense that he maintains thar aesthetic value is governed by historics! context.” Fira tentatively regains an aesthetic status only insofar as i is matonomons art, and it only as astomomous art that it partakes of 2 true collectivigy me works of art, and that inckdes the so-called individualistic nes, speak the language of a‘We,’ not of an “land they do co to the extent 10 which they relraia frore conforming in some extrinsic fashion to that "We" and its idiom. * Nevestheless, Adorno’s formulation does suggest somevhing else. rmuch closer to Benjamin's conception of distraction, indeed almost a Harificadon of it, The sociology of mass consumption is stripped en tiely of che seaist dimension of representation and mass experience andl is interpreted in a resolutely Figerative fashion which expresses dhe transformed nature of aesthetic experience. Thisis not to say that 4 post von yaluation of the medium from a Benjaminian perspective should fe neritically endorsed, and that the kleological criticisms of Adomo duc simply invalidated because he remains wedded 0 a waditional ac count of aesthetic autonomy. Rather, the concept of disteaction allows nist begin to conceptualize, more adequately, the historically changing hip between aesthetics and ideology. relatio: Be. Adamo, “Transparencies on Flin,” 205, 37, Forexample, Adorne’s defense of moder ty baced on the contention that certain modernist art exp the alicnation of experience in late capitalism, 8. Adorno, Aestiatic Tery, (2. 240. si ies Aeathetie Theory is hurndarsentat 15, in its formal siructese Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.......--Richard Allen 239 Distraction and Film History Benjamin's conception of the destruction of aura as the historical transformation in the conditions of aesthetic understanding from indi- Vidual to collective modes of reception is crucial for the arguments sketched at the outset of this paper. These arguments only proceed on the assumption of the essentially private nature of aesthetic experience. In the light of Benjamin’s argument, the cinematic signifier cannot be divorced from its conditions of reception. Ifit is an imaginary signifier, the cinema signifies an intersubjective imaginary, even though it may be, as it were, consumied in private. The concept of distraction captures this dual aspect, at once a medium of signification and a shared mode of reception. The forms of subjectivity appealed to by a given cinema in a Biven institutional context become a particular way of giving shape to and realizing intersubjective experience, Itis at the moment of mould. ing the form of the spectator’s apprehension that the public sphere of experience, the dimension of history, intervenes in aesthetic experi- ence. If, in what has come to be known as classical Hollywood cinema, the particular form of subjectivity appealed to is a phantasmatic one, this is a result of a specific historical instrumentalization ofthe cinema, in par. ‘cular, the institutionalization of certain narrative techniques and de- vices, and not, pace Metz, as a result ofits essence. This, it seems to me, is the import of Noel Burch’s polemical characterization of a primitive Gnematic signifier, existing historically prior to and conceptually di tinct from what he terms the “instiwutional mode of representation.” Burch’s ‘primitive cinema’ suggests a different public sphere shaping a subjectivity at odds with that appealed to by the ‘linearization of the signifier’ in classical Hollywood cinema.®* Furthermore, it suggests the extent to which classical Hollywood cinema itself is less the machine for ‘eproducing the phantasmatic subject and more adequately coneep- twalized as an arena in which competing and potentially contradictory aacrap oe cxamples of Burch’s work sce “Porter or Ambivalence," Seren 19H (Winter 1278-79), pp. 91-108, and “A Parenthesis on Film History,” in To the Distant Obvnar Fad Meaning in the Joponese Cinema (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Calor nia Press, 1979), pp- 61-66. Sce also Miriam Hansen's important comments on Banclrs Speolee me Context ofa discussion of Oskar Negrs and Alexander Kluge's concept ofa pclecarian’ public sphere and early American silent cinema in “Eatly Silom Chee Whose Publie Sphere?” New German Critique 29 (Spring/Summer 1983), 155.55 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.adernity forins of subjectivity ar# appealed to. In particular, it suggests that the public sphcre which classical Hollywood emerges from is only partially lind incompletely repressed. It resurfaces forcefully ai different histor dal moments where norlincar signification disrupts the harmony of Classical narrative; in early silent films. silent comedy, the Marx Broth- fos, animated cartons and the thirties musical, bur also, argualy, in the hiqper-realism of genres such as the Western and film aniry in such 2 Js to bresk open overly monolithic conceptions of commercial can cineca. Amici In condusion, once the con fro ontology and relocates! in the relations cption of cinema as fantasy is wrested ip beewern signification and seception,a spaces opened up in which wo noderstand and analyze the aesthetics of the cinema which is reducible neither i traditional uplative zesthetics nor 10 a pyychoanalytic theory of subject divorced from historical context. The task of an historically informs film theory is to formulare the way in which individual subjectivity is ar- ticulated with ‘trans-individual’ subjectivity over time and within and across different instinusions! and national contexts. This is inseparable from the development of a sheoretically informed film history with 2 inerhod which is adequate «0 account for the shifting relationship be fie public and private spheres as leey intersect in the historically esthetic expericnce of film {ard otficr media). 1 do not sug- he theo- ivi tween chang! gest thai Benjamin or Adomo's writings on film provide eith ty or the method, but they do signpost directions to follow Copyright © 2001_ All. Rights. Reseved....