ABSTRACT
Jeffrey Di Leo is likewise concerned with how technology, which ought to be liberating, can also distort reality. In “The Purple Rose of Late Capitalism” he contrasts “the liberating dreams” of Walter Benjamin, who argued that the “loss of authenticity” in the mass reproduction of art has an “emancipatory political potential,” with Theodor Adorno’s contention that the aim of films and other mass-directed arts is “to produce, control, and discipline its consumers.” In this context, he examines Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) where Adorno’s condemnation of reproductive art is enacted when the film’s central character learns that her filmic lover—he jumps out of the film to woo her—and her real-life lover, both played by the same actor, were nothing more than a publicity stunt. Di Leo then connects this manipulation of reality through art with the actual events surrounding director’s lifestyle, autobiography, and the distribution of the film.
