{"id":119,"date":"2005-10-24T23:22:19","date_gmt":"2005-10-25T03:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/?p=119"},"modified":"2005-10-25T08:41:33","modified_gmt":"2005-10-25T12:41:33","slug":"devils-advocate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/10\/24\/devils-advocate\/","title":{"rendered":"Devil’s Advocate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benjamin’s piece clearly has its flaws, but he’s also got some good points…of which I’ll discuss one.  He says that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.  To an even greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.”  This means that film is radically different from most other art forms.  How much does it cost to create a painting?  Write a book?  A poem?  Take a picture?  Even the cost of buying the material to sculpt a statue pales in comparison to the cost of making a film.  (Yes, I know one must take audience into consideration if a book, poem or picture is to be published or a picture sold; but the simple act of creating a book, poem, picture or painting requires very little financial investment.)  But the filmmaker, on the other hand, must, in most cases, keep profitability in mind when creating his film (unless he’s Mel Gibson or Kim Jong Il).  Thus his film must be designed, to a significant extent, for its reproducibility if it’s to be profitable.  Before one can create a film, she needs a significant financial commitment.  Therefore the artist must almost necessarily consider profitability, which requires reproduction in film’s case, when she’s conceiving her art; this is a radical shift from art that preceded film, and it democratizes film as an art form; but, contrary to current sentiment, democracy is not always a good thing.  By requiring the filmmaker to create art that as a precondition must be received by many people, the medium of film constrains the filmmaker’s artistic imagination.  That’s not to say that truly original and creative films of artistic merit that don’t appeal to the masses can’t be created (see Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle<\/em>…who the hell financed these anyway?).  But for the most part, films must appeal to a large audience – though I know “large” is subjective; this constrains the filmmaker’s imagination, creativity and abilities, and it also represents a radical departure from those art forms that preceded film.  All this could be changed, however, by the proliferation of digital video, inexpensive editing software and the internet as a platform for distribution.  But in context, Benjamin has a point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benjamin’s piece clearly has its flaws, but he’s also got some good points…of which I’ll discuss one.  He says that “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.  To an even greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.”  This means that film … Continue reading Devil’s Advocate<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}