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In Pièces sur l’art, Paul Valéry states that “[o]ur fine arts were developed… in times very different from the present,” and while the “ancient craft” is beautiful, “[w]e must expect great innovations to transfer the entire technique of the arts” (Benjamin 217). Indeed, as we enter the 21st century, art definitionally encompasses a wide range of expressive forms that are genre-bending and paradigm-shifting. Technological advancement over the last few centuries has paralleled the transition from romanticism to modernism, shifting from traditional artistic representations to challenging notions of how art must depict the world’s reality. This deviation from tradition is one examined by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in a Mechanical Reproduction.” With new methods of replicating artwork, once original pieces are now accessible to the masses. The growth of mass culture is viewed as a means of increasing availability and approachability, but it also introduces a “distinction between criticism and enjoyment,” resulting in reduced critical potential (Benjamin 234). This lack of criticism and simultaneous entertainment has significant impacts, many of which are intrinsic to the medium of film. Benjamin’s film, as an industry, tries hard to “spur the interest of the masses” through “illusion-promoting spectacles” and “dubious speculations”. However, the impact of the medium on viewer perception does not begin with film; in the “Heresy of Paraphrase,” Cleanth Brooks highlights how poetry is a product of its structure. Structure is not “altogether…
