The Aura of Subjects

**Please note that all of my page citations apply to the seventh edition of the text**

I certainly second Sonora’s observation that both Eisenstein and Benjamin particularly emphasize the subjectivity of film as an art form, although I think their focus in their respective articles holds an problematic (by which I mean not uncomplicated) value for our class. While both men give very detailed dissections of the ways in which the technical processes of making film and the artificially constructed perspectives that result from these processes become the centrally important elements of film (and in fact, their only element of critical value), I think it is important to note the ways in which both critics (Benjamin in particular – which is who I’m going to focus on) use the language of art analysis that is both more commonly associated with and (as seems to be the conclusion of many theorists thus far) more appropriate to a discussion of the plastic arts.

Through his insistence on the artistic (redemptive?) value of the aura of the subject, Benjamin is highlighting an element that seems to hold a curious place in art criticism. If I understand his definition correctly, aura is “the unique appearance of distance [in relation between viewer and subject being viewed], however close it may be,” something that appears to be closely tied to the cultural and ritualistic significance of art (669).[1] While he does rather eloquently point to the portrait as the last (only?) manifestation of aura in photographic art, the “melancholy [and] incomparable beauty” that he attributes to the aura might, in fact, not necessarily be tied to either the static composition of the piece (672). If the aura is generated by the subject (the capture of a human expression), what is to say that this aura cannot be captured in film, or photography that is conceived as artistic (where portraiture in photography is generally considered commercial – barring people like Avedon)? Or, if aura is merely a function of the positioning of an object in relation to the viewer (that inescapable “distance”), then can’t we conceive of conceptual distance as projecting an aura? After all, he does seem to mean conceptual distance rather than physical (with the caveat, “however close it may be”). Isn’t there always an unavoidable distance between the art and the viewer? We can never access that moment in time, that point of inspiration, that genesis of the art from the subject it depicts. There is always some of that haunting beauty in a photograph, a suggestion of a moment in time that we weren’t there for, that we’re only lucky enough to catch a glimpse of through this special piece of art: even if this is only a lie. Despite the fact that photographs quite often produce moments that never were there, capture the play of light or sound (in film) that never surrounded a subject, these additions to the subject create something quite beautiful.

Furthermore (and to return more generally to my overarching point), his emphasis on the importance of heritage and authenticity in art seems to be a criticism unsuitable for film. As we are all well aware, film is the first, best, and only capitalistic art form. Born exclusively from the twin possibilities of technology and commercialism, film through its genesis became something more. While, painting and sculpture did have their origins in religious function, isn’t it possible that film could be conceived of as a theoretical extension of our cultural (and yes, religious) emphasis on the value of the human mind and body in relation to spirituality? Barring films produced for strictly commercial purposes (where here I am obligated to point out the innumerable examples of commercial production of art that had no spiritual value, even when it did not involve technical reproduction; e.g., portraits commissioned by kings and queens), isn’t all film essentially about accessing some quality of the human spirit? If that isn’t the true root of religion, of faith, and of culture, I think I’m misunderstanding the true value beneath all art. If Egyptian tomb paintings or Medieval Pietas were only about paying service to a religion that held no humanistic or emotive cultural value, if they were a tribute to an empty faith and a hollow practice, then why do we look to them at all? Why do we read into them a love of the lost, a love of the mother, a love for each other? I think that all art attempts to capture this aura, which I think can be broadly conceived of as the “essence” of a subject, and film accomplishes this no less than painting.




[1] It is interesting to me to note quickly the contrast between Benjamin’s emphasis on the continuing (indeed, inextricable) value of the ritualistic/religious heritage in art and previous theorists, who so vehemently insisted upon the dissolution of faith and the destabilizing position of religion in society as an important sociological and cultural movement that ushered in modernism (a movement in which photography and film figure prominently as representative art forms).