Phillip K. Dick “The Man in the High Castle.” Chapter 5; and Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art"

Remember Walter Benjamin’s point of view in that overrated “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, about the “aura” of the original work of art? This is how Dick handles the issue:

“ Well, I will tell you,” he said. “this whole damn historicity business is nonsense. Those Japs are bats. I’ll prove it.” Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down in the coffee table. “Look at these, look the same, don’t they? Well, listen, one has historicity in it. “ He grinned at her. “Pick them up, go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty of fifteen thousands dollars on the collector’s market.”

The girl gingerly picked up the two loghters and examined them.
“Don’t you fill it,” He kidded her. “The historicity?”
She said “What is historicity?”

“When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of these two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing, can you feel it?” He nudged her, “You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There is no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.” (Ibid 57).

Phillip points out, the placement of the market value of an item is not located in his physical quality but on the amount of history or tradition it carries with it. A work of art such as Andy Warhol’s “Green Electric Chair” sells in the auction house for half hundred million dollars not because its embodiment of artistic genius or aesthetic qualities but because of the history and art historical tradition it carries within.

The difference between a successful artist and one that is not lies not so much on his/her capacity for innovation or talent as on his/her ability for creating a historical narrative of his/her being and of the products that embody that being. That’s why Joseph Beuys needs to concoct a story about falling down from the sky in his airplane and be saved by a Caucasian tribe with fat and felt; not fortuitously his preferred working materials. The trick has been used and perfected throughout the 20th Century by artistic movements and figures such as Dada, who put the emphasis on scandal and noise; Picasso and his picturesque women; Modigliani's erratic behavior; Yves Klein dragging his naked females across the floor; Jeff Koon having sex with Cicciolina and more recently Banksy and the street artsy packsy playing clandestine urban guerrilla.

The problem with Walter Benjamin's concept of the original, unique work of art, and its "aura" on one side; and the democratic, pedestrian reproducible image on the other side, is that any massively printed or distributed object can be infused with "aura" and made a cultural fetish by way of manipulation and aggregation of meanings and connotations. Take for example the most distributed image in the world; that of Che Guevara, imbued with meanings that go beyond the auratic and reach the religious. Or take Leni Reinhfesthal "Triumph of the Will"; images that have been used to exhaustion for propaganda purposes and imbued with aura and all the attributes of the authoritarian work of art. Because as Phillip K. Dick says:

" Its all a big racket; they are playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if hadn't, unless you know. It's in here." He tapped his head. "in the mind, not the gun..." (Dick 57).

The "aura" is neither in the original work of art nor in the mass reproduced photography or film. The "aura" is in the mind of the beholder. And what is in the mind of the beholder you should be able as an artist or psychological manipulator, to upload (...Will continue).

Work Cited:

Dick, Phillip K. The Man in the High Castle. The Library of America, 2007.