Benjamin & Chaplin

“For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”

I chose this quote because it reminded me a lot of a theme that I developed on in my last blog entry.  It is interesting because Junger and Benjamin come from completely different backgrounds and met completely different ends; Junger was a early Fascist supporter and glorifier of war while Benjamin was a Marxist in the Luxembourg-type. But here, I think they strike a similar chord in the duality of civilization and barbarity.  

In this quote, Benjamin opines in this contradictory push and pull of civilization and barbarism.  We look at the pyramids and wonder at the greatness of man; one could argue that the pyramids, created thousands of years ago, is the apex of human civilization.  But think about the lives that it took to build the massive object and it was of course built by slave labor.  In other words, in the sheen of civilization there lies a large dose of barbarism, of the worst instincts of human behavior.  

Regarding the Chaplin movie, I didn’t see a lot of similarities with Dada, which is interesting because Benjamin argues the ultimate goal of Dada was what turned out to be film.  I think the biggest difference is the fact that the Chaplin film has a purpose.  Dada artists said that that since life was inherently ugly and futile, the art that should reflect that as well.  Contemporary art did not reflect the realities of life, which was war, misery, and social failure; art was seen a way to tear down society, which was rotten to the core.  The Dada art had no “message”.  But the Chaplin film is quite preachy and certainly does have a message.  In the film’s final scene, Chaplin gives a speech about human respect, love, and freedom.  He drops the Hitler imitation to give a heartfelt speech that he doesn’t want to rule over everybody; what society needs now is human kindness. Such sentiment would certainly not be given by a Dada artist.    Not only this, the goal of Dada was to make ugly art, “anti-art”.  But in the Chaplin film, even an ameteur can see the incredibly hard work that Chaplin puts into his films.  Chaplin was not making a mockery of art; he was embracing it to create the best possible work possible.

Art

“One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial – and literary – means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.”

This is a quote from one of the last sections of Benjamin’s essay.  Here, he contends that art is essentially ambitious.  It tries to reach for something that it can’t do.  All art is trying to reach for the stars but it can’t because of technological limitations.  He cites the example of Dada.  He is a great critic of Dada and says it unleashed many “barbarities”.  But what Dada was inherently trying to do was make art move and give it life, color, energy.  What accomplished this was not Dada - which Benjamin argues was a terrible form of art - but film.  Film accomplished what Dada was trying to achieve.  But Dada couldn’t because the technology was simply not there.  

I don’t know whether I agree with Benjamin here.  Most likely though, I don’t.  At this point, I think the current trend in art - if there is one - is to actually try to relive the past in a lot of ways.  For example in music, songs are perpetually recycled; the same choruses and hooks have been used in rap music from the disco era.  I remember we watched a music video of the band Franz Ferdinand, who were trying to re-create Dada imagery in their work.  So I think the opposite is true.  Art today is not trying to reach for something it can’t because of limitations,  but it is trying to re-create something that was lost from the past.  

Junger

“Since the War’s end, the denial of pain as a necessary as a necessary facet of life has experienced a late revival.  These years display a strange mix of barbarity and humanity; they resemble an archipelago where an isle of vegetarians exists right next to an island of cannibals.  An extreme pacifism side by side with an enormous intensification of war preparations, luxurious prisons next to squalid quarters for the unemployed, the abolition of capital punishment by day whilst the Whites and the Reds cut each other’s throats by night - all this is thoroughly fairytale-like and reflects a sordid world in which the semblance of security is preserved in a string of hotel foyers.”   - 10

I chose this passage because I think it’s very relevant to our time.  Right before this passage, Junger talks about this cult of reason, that reason is leading us to a better world.  I liken it to this mentality that people have of “look, how far we’ve come!  Look how great everything is!” We point to our smartphones or our social media and claim that we’ve reached the highest point of humanity.  But at heart, the world is as barbaric as ever.  The idea of civilization is just a glossy sheen on an old product, perhaps one that is as worse as ever.  

And here is where the Junger passage is so important.  He says that since the end of World War I, the denial of pain - the truth - has become a necessary ingredient of living.  There is so much pain and so much brutality around us that the only way man doesn’t go crazy is by desensitizing himself to it.  He lists a variety of social malaises that we tend to ignore - squalid quarters for the unemployed.  It reminded me of when we see homeless people on the street in New York City.  These days, we barely even flinch, let alone give money to beggars because they’re everywhere.  I remember a friend visiting me from Sweden and she was so shocked at how many poor people we have here and her instinct was to give something; I barely noticed the beggars.  She, clearly, was not dehumanized as Junger would put it.  Her ability to fathom pain was not as well-attuned as mine at the moment.  

The world that Junger is describing is very relevant to our own.  Going back to my point, we have here in the US such amazing achievements:  technologies, skyscrapers, everything we could imagine.  We look at these things and think about how much we have achieved, that we’re the greatest country in the world.  But do these things truly matter?  Who are we as a society?  Beneath this so-called progress is much inequality, division, ignorance.  But we’ve been able to ignore these because I think the ability to stomach pain is highly prevalent in American society.