Theme 2 Pre

Theme 2: Critical media studies

1.    Dialectic of Enlightenment

a.     According to the author, the enlightenment can be described as liberation of human thought to advance in order to gain freedom to get rid of fear of superstitious things and instead install them as masters of their own fears and thoughts. In addition, enlightenment also seeks an answer for anything in logical point of view, because anything which cannot be resolved into number can be grouped as illusion.

b.    The dialectic is discourse between two or more problem about things that having different points of view about a subject, and try to establish the truth of the matter guided by reasoned arguments.

The author tries to distinguish between the myth and the knowledge. This is important, because a world in the Middle Ages where myths and religion decides what is right and what is wrong does not encourage curiosity, progression or scientific development. With this dialectic, people begin to change and control their fear, because they now know knowledge about nature and process.

c.     Base on Wikipedia, nominalism is rejecting the existence of abstract object or entities such as myth, and accepting the existence of concrete object or entities. The importance of nominalism in the text is to make a separation between the myth and the reality in this world by analyzing anything with science. It is no matter when people use rationalist or empiricist method do verify this matter, because the goal has always the same, to gain new knowledge.  

d.    A myth is the completely different thing with enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer’s state that “Hence, for both mythical and enlightened justice, guilt and atonement, happiness and misfortune, are seen as the two sides of an equation”. The myth tries to explain about the event that occurs at certain times, which cannot explained by existing knowledge, but in the reality this judgments only hides the real truth to the people.

For the example in the old Greek mythology, they believe lightning is created by their God (Zeus). In that time people acknowledge Zeus as supreme God and fear about his abilities. However, with science we can prove that this is the wrong idea and only a myth, lightning created by discharge of electrical energy that has built up inside a thundercloud.

2.    "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

a.     Substructure is base of society, it consists of the economic-political system, and the superstructure is builds upon the base, it is like activity that people do, for example: social, culture and ideology. In the Marxist point of view, it describes that substructures changes more quickly than the superstructure, for the example the government might change from one regime to another, but people’s way of life remains more constant. Nevertheless, Benjamin argued about this perspective, because at present superstructure no longer left behind the substructure, therefore we cannot ignore creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery.

b.    Yes, the culture can become revolutionary potentials. For example, within the reproduction of film and photography, it is easier to publish and reach a lot of people. Because of this, it is possible to influence them about art, news and ideology. In the end with these technologies, the culture will be change slightly and in some extend it can make a revolution on its own. The perspective is rather different between those two, Benjamin think that with the reproduction it will demolish the aura of the art, however Adorno and Horkheimer embraces to use this method to spread art easier.

c.     Naturally perception is the perception that people have after receiving through his sense, this perception may differ between them since people will react independently from the experience they have. Historically perception is the perception that affected by condition at that time, like the political and social environment at that time. For this reason, the experience will be differ from time to time according to the history. For example, the perception of an ancient statue of Venus between the Greeks and cleric of Middle Ages.

d.    Aura is the uniqueness of the object that emanates to the observer and give them a certain feel about the object.

Aura in natural object is the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. For example, when seeing mountain range you can feel the enormous feeling about this mountain, this is what called aura that you receive from the mountain.

Aura in art objects will give unique temporal spatial existence to the object based on historical and physical properties that cannot copied by making a replica. Because it give unique temporal spatial, then this aura can interpret as different things in the history of mankind, for the example the interpretation a statue of Venus.