Theme 2: Reflection

During week 38, I have read the two texts ”The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity” by Walter Benjamin and ”Dialect of Enlightenment” by Adorno and Horkheimer in addition I have also participated on this weeks seminar, where we discussed the questions from the preparation. Unfortunately I had to miss the lecture because I hade a mandatory lecture in another course.  I found it a bit harder to understan this weeks theme because of it, but I feel the same as last week, it was after the seminar I understood the theme. 

This week I have learned that when Adorno and Horkheimer talks about enlightenment and mass media, connection. When they brings up the cinema, they are talking about the actors are playing ordinary people and behave as they are. The movies are showing the social situation of how it is now. By constant feeding people with those same pictures, people will repeat, and part of society will stay the same. Adorno and Horkheimer talks about nominalism, and that they see nominalism as something bad. How we register what is and will never get a vision of what might be.   

At the seminar we also talked about Benjamin, how he is more positive than Adorno and Horkheimer about media technology might change. We talked about, our neighborhoods. We know them well, and they might not loger be so interesting since we walk there every day. If someone suddenly makes a movie in your neighborhood, they might capture the neighborhood from another point of view, and you might experience it different. This is an example of how media technology can change how we look upon things, change our perception. 

We also discussed what revolutionary potential means in todays society. We discussed trends and other things that happens very fast. One example we thought of was smartphone, they have established in our society and have become a part of our everyday life.