"The Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Aaron Tanyhill

“Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art... Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film.” This is around the point when I became really interested in the readings.  When this concept of “The Age of Mechanical Reproduction” was applied to film, I found that very interesting.  From what I gathered from reading Mechanical Reproduction, is a revolutionary thing. Once something can be reproduced or imitated mechanically, it can be reproduced faster but it also loses a component. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space. This is basically saying that after mechanical reproduction things can lose their authenticity or “unique existence”. There were and probably still are disputes about the artistic values of different forms of art post mechanical reproduction for example: Painting vs. photography or Stage Actor vs. Screen Actor. I can see both sides of the stage actor vs. the screen actor clash. Benjamin raises the point of an actor’s aura vanishing when he or she moves from stage to screen because it cannot be replicated. I would agree with this because when an actor is on stage they are putting on a show for the live audience, they are connected with the spectators, as opposed to when the actor is filming they are acting for a camera, this immediate aura, the actors presence to the audience is reduced by the mechanical lens but is not vanished. I would say the aura isn’t completely gone, when Brad Pitt or Bruce Willis are seen in a trailer for an upcoming movie, you do get the sense of “I know this guy, I like this guy, I’m going to see this movie” these actors still have a presence and draw you in with their aura even if there aren’t actually in the building, because of this I don’t think either stage acting or screen acting is more artistic, just different.

There have been many new age ways of mechanical reproduction; we have grown technologically to be able to mass produce things. I think this is a very interesting concept. This is why I liked the concept of the movie “Repo Men” so much, this was a movie set in a society where mechanical reproduction had moved to organs in the human body. At this point it wasn’t donors saying lives, it was engineers and scientist. Here is the Trailer (Repo Men Movie Trailer)