ABSTRACT
I begin this chapter with Benjamin’s extraordinary suggestion that cinema, when considered in relation to masses, must aspire to the model of architecture. Benjamin advanced this thesis in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’ under the concept of ‘Distraction’, a concept that Siegfried Kracauer had introduced in 1926 in his essay ‘Cult of Distraction’. There Kracauer, observing the glittering culture of entertainment and movie palaces in Berlin, wrote that ‘Alongside the legitimate revues, shows are the leading attraction in Berlin today’. In this chapter I am mainly concerned with Section XV and the final section, the ‘Epilogue’ in the third version of the Artwork essay. In both sections there is a constellation of categories and concepts that I will discuss in relation to the central thesis regarding the exemplary model of architecture for cinema in the epoch of technology, and the impact of the new structure of experience in the newly emerging mass-mediated society.
