Bits and pieces of Benjamin’s article along with blog postings have begun to tie into a project I’m doing on newsletters. (similar to Benjamin’s discussion of Letters to the Editor, etc). These were initially published by individuals with great expertise and who were sought after for their insider’s information, or insight, on whatever specialized topic. These individuals were well-educated, skilled writers, and often times publicly revered. The newsletters were done on typewriters and even when computers became available writers would still maintain the “typewriter”-style font and layout because it was what the targeted audience was used to. With time and technological advances, the newsletter industry boomed and now any Joe Schmoe with a PC, printer or an email address can spit out their own personal newsletter. Instead of using the same old fashion fonts and designs, they’ve advanced in skill and artistic expression. One of Benjamin’s issues with the evolution of “art” is that through technology, through the new emerging forms of artistic expression, the once isolated field becomes easily accessible by anyone. The reproduction issue arises. The traditional newsletter has lost its “aura” because it’s been poked and prodded by the masses, just as the “aura” of writing, or being published, has lost some of its magic because it’s become a universally accessible market. (232) Benjamin says, “To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction (223).” I didn’t entirely understand what he meant by this, but through comparing it to the newsletter evolution that I’m reading about, I can see how something that used to be “artistic” is then lessened, or cheapened, by so many replicas and reproductions. Now, I also don’t think that personalized newsletters (or I guess the even more advanced form would be Internet blogs) can’t have their own artistic right, or that someone should be denied personal artistic expression through whatever medium they choose… but the fact that there are so many does make them less valuable. People don’t pay subscriptions to newsletters now like they used to before. Benjamin is criticizing the evolution of artistic expression because (I think) he’s saying it’s losing its unique appeal. Anyone can be an artist, just as anyone can be a writer, and with the use of technology it really doesn’t take a massive amount of talent to do so. I think in the postmodern genre that concept is made untrue because the filmmakers and authors and painters have retained their originality and unique expression through revamping the “aura” altogether. Although, in reference to Ada’s interesting response, I don’t know how Kinkade would fit into that assumption. This much I feel I understand, it’s when he begins to tie the evolution of art into Communism and Fascism and war that I get uh, well, confused.