ABSTRACT
Aesthetic aura persists not despite but precisely because of instruments of mechanical reproduction; this, at least, has become retrospectively clear at the moment of mechanical reproduction’s eclipse by digital media. Though mechanical reproduction, as Walter Benjamin argued, may strip an artwork of its aura in the sense of its originality or uniqueness, not even this now seems assured. Consider the prices that mass-produced Bauhaus “originals” now fetch on the contemporary artmarket. Consider, too, the way in which mass reproductions of an artwork often serve only to add to the luster of the original, such that the production of a million ten-dollar Mona Lisa posters is inseparable from the ongoing worship of the Mona Lisa and even – more intriguingly – of Warhol’s Mona Lisa (Colored). Moreover, even when mechanical reproduction strips the uniqueness of an artwork, it may create a wholly new ritual function for it. As we saw in the last chapter, the mass reproduction of Disney products, across the full scope of available media, is inseparable from the mythological role they play in American society; each Disney character functions simultaneously as logo, franchise, artwork, and archetype, linked symbolically and commercially to the pilgrimage site that is Disneyland.
