Clockwork Orange And The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction Essay -- essay

Clock engagement orange and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction      For Walter asa dulcis, the defining characteristic of recentity was mess assembly and production of commodities, concomitant with this transformation of production is the remainder of usage and the mode of experience which depends upon that tradition. While the remainder of tradition means the destruction of legitimacy, of the originally, in that it as well as collapses the distance between artistry and the masses it makes possible the liberation which capitalism both obscures and opposes. While commodity fetishism represents the mania away from use- nourish and towards exchange-value, leading to the assembly line construction of the same--as we see relentlessly analyzed by Horkheimer and Adorno in their essay The Culture Industry. Benjamin believes that with the destruction of tradition, laboratory potentialities are nonetheless created. The process of the destruction of aura with with(predicate) mass reproduction brings about the "destruction of traditional modes of experience through shock," in response new forms of experience are created which attempt to do with that shock. "Even the most perfect reproduction of a hold up of art is lacking one element its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning" when of the essence(p) duration ceases to matter, he says, the authority of the object is threatened. (Think, for example of Alexs response to highschool art...) "technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training. There came a day when a new and urgent need for stimuli was met by the film. In a film, perception in the form of shocks was established as a forma l principle. That which determines the rhythm of production on a conveyor rap music is the basis of the rhythm of reception in a film." (Motifs in Baudelaire) Benjamin distinguishes between two kinds of experience Erfahrung something integrated as experience, and Erlebnis, something merely lived through. Erlebnis characterizes the modern age and refers to the inability to integrate oneself and the world via experience. Erlebnis, then, ... ...lus (a "very important spot of art," ritualized and de-politicized) is made into a weapon, and the scene of her death is a nearly imperceptible orgy of modern-art. Whereas she, as with the use of all high-art among the Bourgeoisie, finds besides exchange value in the phallus, phallus as pure sign, Alex initiates the cutthroat reversal of that commodification. He turns it into a tool, here a tool of violence what she has done is to interfere exhibition value into forms of art which have only exchange value, the work of art in t he hands of the Bourgeoisie is reinjected with a type of aura, which only lead it further in the direction of losing concur (like the reinjection of aura in the robot --Marias aura--in Metropolis). Control is lost and the phallus becomes a weapon, a violent recontextualization by Alex. He proves to understand well this process. There are also similarities here with the States control of his mind through conditioning. The state attempts to gain control by turning Alex into a robot (a clockwork orange), thus commodifying him (isnt this the struggle at the end for control of Alex--the liberals and state?). His use-value is a function of his exchange-value.