Summary
As he continues his discussion of film art, Benjamin notes that it is a perfect medium for psychoanalytic theory. He explains that film technologies that like the slow-motion or close-up shot open viewers' eyes to see their own familiar world in differently and in more detail. He compares this phenomenon to psychoanalytic theory's study of the mediation between the unconscious and conscious human mind.
Next, Benjamin discusses the concept of contemplation. He argues that film scenes change too quickly to ever allow the viewer to actually contemplate what they have seen, as one would when standing in front of a painting. Thus, interest in film reflects a fundamentally distracted public. This phenomenon is nothing new, and has indeed existed in the history of architecture. Benjamin argues that architecture is viewed as art not through optics but through habit, by physical interaction with a building or even "noticing the object in incidental fashion" (242). Film has created a similar demand of its audiences: "the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one" (243).
In the epilogue, Benjamin cautions that it is the work of fascists to attempt to aestheticize politics by drawing on the societal and technological changes that have taken place with art. He quotes Filippo Marinetti, an Italian poet and fascist, who celebrates war as beautiful because of the aesthetics of destruction it generates. Benjamin cautions that fascism relies on the alienation of mankind from itself—fostered by mechanical reproduction of art and the loss of the aura—so that "it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order" (244).
Analysis
Benjamin's argument that film is well-suited for applications of psychoanalytic theory is quite predictive. Indeed, not long after the publication of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," scholars began using Freud's theories to "read" film in new ways. Benjamin here focuses on the similarities between the "unconscious" mind of psychoanalysis and the "unconscious" world of filmography. Just as Freud argued that a "slip of the tongue" was a signifier of unconscious desire or thought, so too does technology in film production produce an unconscious optics for viewers. Benjamin argues that through the use of close-ups and slow-motion shots, audiences become more aware of the otherwise unknown elements of familiar behavior. Anyone can imagine someone reaching to pick up an object for instance, but once that action is slowed down on film, the intricacies of the process are laid bare.
Paradoxically, at the same time audiences are experiencing their own world in new ways on film, Benjamin argues that watching a movie does not require true engagement from its audience. He labels audience's of films "distracted" and "absent-minded," not to criticize people who watch movies, but instead to showcase how the very nature of art has transformed into something that can be consumed in a passive manner. Unlike a spectator who sits in front of and contemplates a portrait, film spectators are deliberately not given time to think about what they have seen, as the action of a film moves too quickly. In other words, the spectator of a portrait is consumed by the painting, while audiences watching a movie consume the film itself.
Both of these points—that film showcases the unconscious world and that audiences are fundamentally absent-minded—leads Benjamin to his cautionary epilogue. Here, Benjamin asserts that with the loss of aura and authenticity, art will be swiftly co-opted for political means. He specifically refers to fascism at the end of his essay, appropriate for the time he was writing in which the Nazi regime was in power in Germany. Benjamin concludes his essay by cautioning that mechanical reproduction has altered art so fundamentally, and therefore altered society's perception of man so fundamentally, that fascist advocates will rely on these changes to aestheticize and promote political life—the worst incarnation of which is war.
