"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is an essay that questions how perception of the masses has changed with the advent of technology. More specifically, Benjamin argues that advances in technology that allow art to be more easily replicated have divorced art from its traditional connection to ritual and sense of "aura," or uniqueness. Benjamin cautions that this decline of the aura will lead to art that is fundamentally and wholly political.
Benjamin begins his essay by recapitulating Marx's argument about the rise of the proletariat and the potential for the abolition of capitalism. He explains that theories of present art production can be used to better understand and predict the art of the future, whether it manifest as the rise of the proletariat or the existence of a classless society. Benjamin goes on to provide a brief history of art's evolution and technologies that made it more reproducible, including the printing press, the lithograph, and the camera. He notes that there is no better case study for understanding the way technology has influenced artistic production and reception than the contemporary film. Before beginning his analysis of film production, Benjamin demonstrates how art traditionally maintains its value because of its connection to ritual and history. This connection to tradition is what generates a work of art's uniqueness, or what Benjamin calls its "aura."
According to Benjamin, art is valued in two separate ways: the cult, and the exhibition. The cult tradition features ceremonial objects meant to be valued simply for their existence, while exhibition value stems from a piece of art being on view. Contemporary art, Benjamin argues, is valued entirely for its exhibition value, and thus art is being created with entirely new functions and purposes. Regarding photography, the precursor to film, Benjamin says that rather than ask whether photography was considered art—which many critics did, at the time of photography's invention—one should have instead asked whether photography changed the entire nature of art. This change to the fundamentals of art is at the heart of Benjamin's contentions regarding both photography and now film.
In his discussion of film, Benjamin argues that movie-making is a central example of how the aura of artistic work has disappeared. He says that because films are not continues productions but are instead shot in scenes, and because audiences connect with the camera rather than the actor, the uniqueness that one defined artistic modes like theater evaporates. In its place is an artificial worship of the "movie star" in place of their character, and a new kind of audience that is always viewing films through a critical, expert lens.
Film also, Benjamin explains, changes viewers' own perception of their world. With technology like slow-motion and close-ups, "unconscious optics" are brought to view for the first time (239). In this way, film makes itself readily open for psychoanalytic interpretation, because psychoanalysis focuses on the mediation between the unconscious and conscious human mind. Benjamin then pivots to discussing architecture as a particular type of art that is absorbed by habit rather than by contemplation. He argues that film operates the same way, noting that "the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one" (243).
In the epilogue, Benjamin addresses the political element of his argument, saying that fascism attempts to aestheticize politics. He argues that the only result of an aestheticized political discourse is war, and that proponents of war will try to make war and its technologies seem beautiful and valuable. The essay concludes with Benjamin asserting that this destruction of the aura has ultimately alienated mankind from himself, so much so that "it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order" (244).
