Looking at War

Looking at War: Photography's view of devastation and death

by Susan Sontag

First and foremost I must confess to you that I do not like The New Yorker. I find it’s content stuffy and while intellectual it is far more snobbish in it’s use of said intellect. Everything I have read from The New Yorker (and I have read a few articles from them) has sounded like a highfalutin inside joke, constantly condescending to any and all that might read without prior knowledge of this “tight knit community.”

I had interest in this however before even reading it because of who wrote it: Susan Sontag. This was the first piece I have read by her and my first experience with her own particular flavor (having only previously known the name from watching Rent repeatedly) and I find it terribly unfortunate as a first impression. Because it is an article designed to appeal to the audience of The New Yorker it is written in a style that I abhor.

HOWEVER, let’s move on to the substance of the article shall we?

At once I find Sontag’s claims about men, people in general, and war unfounded and idiotic, not to mention her butchery of Virginia Woolf's essay Three Guineas which she refers to as "unwelcome". Speaking as a practicing Quaker (the very faith to which two of Woolf’s early female mentors belonged) it is both possible and probable that there is a massive contingent of human beings that believe war should be and CAN be “abolished.” Going deeper into the writing however I can see (somewhat) where she is making these claims, this being that in today’s world (or even a world of the 1960’s) images of war, death, and destruction really do NOT hold the same shock and horror value they would have in Woolf’s day.

So while I disagree with Sontag*1 I can at least understand her claims once reading all the way through her (overly long) article.

Also deeper within the depths of the article*2 Sontag makes her points about photography and it’s uses in war times to at first convey the horrors or war, but later to simply inform the public of the goings on in other countries. Her belief, near as I can figure, is that the images of brutalization no longer hold the same sway that they once did (in Woolf’s time) because we are so used to them.

Cutting my analysis short as I feel I am only going to start talking in ever shrinking circles, Sontag’s article is NOT one worth reading for the very simple reason that it was designed for The New Yorker and thus will not read the same as an article, essay, or book written by Sontag independent of the over-arching “sound” of a given publication. In fact I know for a fact that Sontag wrote other pieces that are much better examples of her opinions and it would be these that I would recommend as her perspective is truly one to appreciate.

*1 And please do keep in mind I hold little love for Virginia Woolf so while I may be in disagreement with Sontag, I am also equally disagreeing with many of the things Woolf said as well because I think she was a egotistical, oversexed idiot in a lot of respects.

*2 The redundancy of terms was totally intentional. I find this article insanely long given it’s content value. I mean seriously, was she trying to win a prize for longest windbag statement? Or was she simply being paid by the paragraph?

California Girls

California Girls (video)

by Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg

Candy boobies! (Nothing more can be nor need be said of this video.)

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin, 1936

Hooo boy had I not been simultaneously reading "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf when I began this article I think I may have thrown myself off a couch so extensive was the muddiness of the writing.

(Seriously, Woolf does not just bead around the bush in her writing, she dances around the entire freaking garden before settling to delve into the given shrubbery that is her main point.)

In this article written by a German artist and art critic during a most volatile time for such folk, we are given a lengthy exposition on the pitfalls of what Benjamin refers to as "mechanical reproduction." That being reprinting of famous works of art so that those unable to view them in their original setting at whatever highfalutin museum, may still appreciate them from the comfort of their own homes.

I feel I had a great advantage in reading this article because I had previously learned of the plight of artists in Nazi Germany. For those who do not know, artists were widely persecuted in Nazi Germany and took refuge in artists' colonies out of which some of the most influential artists of that time emerged (names escape me at the moment I'm afraid, but that's what Google is for) -- provided they survived of course. Having this prior knowledge really sheds new light on the often confusing opinions(rants) from Benjamin in this article.

Benjamin's main point in this piece (so far as I can surmise) can be summarized thusly*1:

"The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity." And that works of art have an aura that is made up not only of the medium of the work (paint, wood, marble, etcetera), the format of the work (painting, sculpture, architecture, etcetera), but also the manner, place, and time in which it is viewed. ". . . which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction. . . [which] substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence."

Now this all makes perfect sense to me. As an artists and an art student I can completely understand that there is a tremendous difference in seeing something on a computer screen and seeing the physical piece in a museum or collection. Now being a citizen of the internet I feel equally strongly that the sharing of art and the making of fine art assessable to ALL is critically important in today's society, so I disagree with Benjamin there but that is not the last of my disagreements with him.

Leaving off his paragraphs (and there are multiple) about film and whether it is art or not (which I am honestly not clear on), what I disagree with and dislike about the article is the sneaky way politics emerge in the writing. In this it reminds me of the excerpt I was forced to read of Mein Kampf for another English course. That being that it takes pages and pages for Jews to even emerge as a subject of Hitler's writing. In this same subtle way do politics and the reign of Fascism find their way into Benjamin's writing.

In this very excerpt -- and I know it to be an excerpt because of the editing squidgieness evident in the text -- it takes until the end of the seventh paragraph (on page two) for him to even elude to politics as a player in this work. And it is a whole four pages later before the real political commentary begins. However once Benjamin starts in on Fascism and Communism and it's effect on art he really gets into it hardstyle. In between philosophical metaphors and illusions to Homer Benjamin states that ". . . through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way," and "Communism responds by politicizing art."

It is here however that it becomes so important to remember the frame of mind of a German artists during this era and no that there is a reason behind his otherwise meaningless ramblings about war and politics and their destruction of art and the artistic aura that exists in the natural world.
In all the article is an interesting one and one that will be of interest to those who have studied the arts and who are already privy to the tragic lives of German artists during the Führer’s regime. Otherwise it’s dry, dense, and generally uninformative. Not for the layman.

*1 Yes I really honestly did arrange that sentence just so I could use the word “thusly,” sue me.