We need a critical appreciation of Benjamin

Submitted by Anon on 30 September, 2001 - 1:01

Esther Leslie’s article on Walter Benjamin (‘Tragedy, Progress and Struggle’ WL66) is welcome and I hope, along with her, that his work can be rescued from the academics who have done him to death in recent the years. There are, however, a number of problems with Benjamin’s work, some of them quite fundamental, that Esther Leslie’s article doesn’t touch on. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to read her book yet, so if any of the points I now raise are discussed there then I offer my apologies in advance.

First of all there is, I believe, within Benjamin’s work, but particularly in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction a utopian view of technology and a correspondingly hazy notion of progress. Benjamin seems to say (though he is never very clear) that changes in the way artworks are produced and received (particularly films) have changed our way of seeing the world (“the mode of human sense perception”) and this in turn develops within us a more critical stance to the world around us. This is muddled and pretty much unsupported by any evidence. Two points need to be made:

1. There is no evidence that the way we perceive the world changes other than by a slow, lengthy, and complex process of evolutionary adaptation. In the few generations that have lived since the advent of photograph and film (1896) such fundamental change is impossible — a much greater time-scale is required. It may be that film has released human perceptual capacities that have been underused (somewhat akin to the blind person who develops an exceptionally sharp sense of hearing) but this is hardly a new mode of perception. In fact the examples that Benjamin offers are somewhat pedestrian — the use of close-ups, rapid editing techniques and slow motion in film hardly require any major perceptual leaps by the viewer and can be accommodated for quite comfortably by our existing visual apparatus (which we have inherited from our hunter-gatherer forebears). In other words the new faster, more intense visual input of the modern, technological age has simply heightened our already existing capacities.

2. The idea that changes in our mode of perception through photography and film (assuming that the idea is correct) also results in a critical attitude to the world is also questionable. To give a concrete example, which Esther Leslie mentions, how does watching a film by Sergei Eisenstein, with its extensive use of montage, develop within the viewer the idea or desire to then go out into the world and, one hopes, change it? I would argue that there is nothing intrinsically within montage that is revolutionary, or that changes our ways of perceiving the world. Montage as practised by Eisenstein and others is basically a technique and, as such, can be used in a number of ways. It is, therefore, politically neutral. What is inspiring about Battleship Potemkin is its theme and subject matter.

However, powerful and striking montage techniques can also be employed to pursue the most reactionary purposes as they were in Triumph of the Will, the Nazi documentary by Leni Riefenstahl, and Napoleon by Abel Gance (“a Bonaparte for budding fascists” according to leftist film critic Leon Moussinac who, nevertheless, greatly admired the techniques and aesthetics of the film). Goebbels, the Nazi head of propaganda, was a great admirer of Eisenstein but the Nazis weren’t the only ones who recognised the possibilities of montage: it can also be found, admittedly in a bowdlerised form, in a number of Hollywood productions and is also, sometimes, used in such outwardly commercial formats as as pop videos and advertisements. The great man himself saw montage, usually, in terms of technique. In 1937 he referred to montage as a “powerful component of film composition” and his writings (admittedly somewhat rambling) devote a lot of space to concrete applications of montage techniques to specific filmic problems, including for example, the numerous exercises he set his students at the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK).

This last point leads me on to another, wider, issue and that is the way that the left has often regarded cinema. Esther Leslie writes that “cinema had at least the potential to generate a critical, politically based culture” but, like Benjamin, she’s a little short on examples: she mentions only Charlie Chaplin and Eisenstein. Both deserve enormous credit for their work but it has to be noted that in the Soviet Union Eisenstein’s films were never that popular. Even Battleship Potemkin ran for only a few weeks in Moscow’s cinemas. Western films, on the other hand, were big box office attractions (Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks being particular favourites). My point is that not that cinema couldn’t be part of a wider “critical, politically-based culture” (though I find the phrase somewhat vague) but that the left has too often formulated notions about what a political or radical cinema should be in a manner which has been restrictive and often disastrous, resulting in films which nobody in their right mind would want to go and see. As examples I would cite La Chinoise by Jean Luc Godard, anything by the French-German filmmakers Straube and Huillet, The Riddle of the Sphinx by Laura Mulvey, and almost any film which attempts to apply notions of Brechtian “alienation” or “distanciation” (a sure guarantee you will be bored to death — and incidentally another overworked “theory” that cries out to be critically re-examined).

The connection with Benjamin is that his theories have often been cited as support for a so called revolutionary or alternative or political cinema. Benjamin’s advocacy of popular, accessible art is surely welcome, yet his notion that the new technology and techniques associated with film and photography result, somehow automatically, in new ways of seeing the world is fundamentally flawed.

John Cunningham

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