Core Texts - Animation - Lecture 9/11/2016

Marx concept of base/ superstructure

                          Determines content & form of it
                          /                                              \
                         /                                                 \
                      Base                                    Superstructure
                         \                                               /
                          \                                             /
                            Reflects form & legitimises

The Frankfurt School
Dialectical materialism + culture as an industry - formulaic production without purpose or integrity - homogenous and predictable

• Deceived masses - caught in a circle of manipulation & retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger - people depend on it
• Satiates superficial needs, which prevents the formation of more fundamental designs

Fordism - factory style churning our faster and faster - lose the capability to know what you're even making - instead of one person making a car, thousands of people make one bit of a car each over and over again

Adorno:

Standardisation - to conceal this - pseudo-individualisation - easy to produce, easier to consume = social cement

Creates passivity - rhythmically obedient and emotional types - popular music industry is a pacifying agent to keep people obedient and too passive to know what's happening

Promotes psychic adjustment to the prevailing power structure

PASSIVE CREATION

(Dancing to the rhythm of your own oppression) 

Nobody is encouraged to do anything new or risky because the public are too stagnated and ignorant to accept it (I'd like to say these are the views of Adorno, I aren't ranting (I am a little) )

Adorno believes people conform because there is no other option 

Marcuse:

Popular culture vs Affirmative Culture

Culture affirms & conceals the new conditions of social life

Authentic culture: 

• Real
• Multi-dimensional
• Active consumption
• Individual creation
• Imagination
• Negation
• Autonomous
  
  TV, Films, music, art - can be all these things

Walter Benjamin:
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - 1936
The culture of the masses CAN be meaningful

The message of something is not determined by its production but by its consumption - we can resist to change and play with what we take in - a form of rebellion

Liking things for personal creative reasons - role reversal, irony, mockery, rebellion, playfulness, FUN

Dialectical materialism - changes in the substructure (advancements in technology, print methods etc) have radically changed the superstructure 

AURA = Presence, Authenticity, Authority

AURA:

• Creativity
• Genius
• Eternal value
• Tradition
• Authority
• Authenticity
• Autonomy
• Distance
• Mystery

KEY CONCEPTS:

• Aura
• Culture Industry
• Dialectical materialism
• Technology
• Originality
• Cult Value
• Exhibition Value
• Auratic culture to democratic culture

"I'm sorry I'm so worthless and you're so great" - art gallery and museum thinking - gives way to Fascist acceptance
The fact we can alter and change existing art gives us power over it - laughs at its supposed authority & take back control for ourselves (by drawing devil horns on the Mona Lisa)

The work of art reproduced becomes made for the purpose of REPRODUCTION - art/feeling as a commodity

Art responds as art - becomes abstract + spiritual

Filmmaking is collaborative - always involves a team - can create creative methods of consumption - rebels against social authoritarianism