"Art is the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and The Culture Indistry

"To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose "sense of the universal equality of things" has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction." The point has been made somewhere in our class discourse, that  by destroying the aura of a work of art, our perception of the work of art becomes more realistic because we no longer consecrate the material. Also, films and images produced for the masses have a larger production value because the production companies can predict, to a certain extent, a gross profit. This makes it possible for some truly stunning works of art to be created as a result of a larger budget.

It is hard for me to read this article, however, without thinking in terms of an Adorno & Horkenheimer article I read over the "Culture Industry." While capitalistic modes of production do allow for some incredible films, the artistic integrity of many art forms is diminished because they are not designed for "arts sake" but merely to attract a demographic that has already been established. This is why so much of the "art" in the post-modern era gets recycled year after year, decade mimicking decade. The argument against the mechanical reproduction of art is taken a step farther( in Adorno and Horkenheimer), when they make the claim (and i'm paraphrasing) that the "culture industry" is responsible for reinforcing existing social and political ideologies by perpetually producing content (Music, Blockbusters, Advertisements..etc) that perpetuate existing social idealologies, thus creating a stagnant, generic, and recycled culture.