WebCT: Mass Production

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
"The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses."

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
"The assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synethetic, planned method of turning out its products...the easy yet catchy, the skillful yet simple; the object is to overpower the customer, who is conceived as absent-minded or resistant."

Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451
"The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm, do you follow me?"

Interesting discussion this week, concerning the Benjamin, Adorno, and Ray Bradbury’s quotes. Essentially, I do think that the quality of art, which encompasses the visual and performing, or actually anything really, is going down in standards due to mass production. Yes, I’m on that side of the fence.

My reasoning is because I’ve watched a lot of documentaries on the Discovery Channel of how items are stamped out by the millions by machines. Clothes, food, musical instruments, what have you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same T-shirt on a person because they sell dozens of the same shirt at a particular store. Or what about food made in factories, like packaged or processed foods, where a human hand has never touched a single aspect of the cooking? I guess you can say I’m much more partial to products where a lot of care and attention has been paid to each individual item.

I realize that today’s big factory machines are programmed to ensure high quality standards and maintain consistency. And that most companies would lose money if things were manufactured without the machines, because of time and labor. But then it starts to become a cookie cutter. Wouldn’t we get bored of it after a while? Or are we already bored of it? The mass production that we have in America is a huge contributor to making us such a dominant country. The simple laws of supply and demand have made our lives a little simpler and have made everything more accessible to all people.

However, in David Harvey’s interview, which I thoroughly enjoyed for his magnificent insight into America’s future, he spoke of America’s dominance in production will eventually waver and no longer be the dominant. I just think if we keep simplifying everything, making everything cookie cutter, things lose their uniqueness.

(I recommend watching the last 20 minutes of this video).

We’re not currently in danger of losing our own individual identities and uniqueness, like the people in gray jumpsuits of Orwell's 1984, but I do think that it is a form of streamlining into something more uniform. Besides, cookie cutters are a necessary evil. So that when we do have something come out, a movie, for example, that is brilliant, it stands out among all the others. That’s what makes something special.