Walter Benjamin and the dialectical interpretation of the cinema

Abstract

This article focuses on Walter Benjamin’s dialectical interpretation of mass culture and, specifically, of cinema. First, we will analyze Benjamin’s thesis concerning the crisis of the aura in developed industrial societies, pointing out the consequences that this crisis has for the artistic world. We will deal with the way in which Benjamin relates artistic techniques with the historical transformations of social experience. This will make it possible to address the central question of our work: the way in which Benjamin interprets the effects of cinema on the experience of society as a whole. To conclude, we show how this kind of interpretation of culture is being productively continued by the most important cultural critic of our days: F. Jameson.