The role of the intellectual in the modern, media-saturated world: Ardent & Benjamin

             The role of the intellectual in the modern (twentieth century), media saturated world certainly seems to have changed from the nineteenth century. The proletariats, as Ardent and Benjamin refer to them as (although I see this as somewhat pompous and outdated), suddenly have access to mass media. There is an increase in leisure time because the vast majority of individuals no longer have to partake in hard labor in this period, which opens up time for entertainment. This sudden, and shocking revelation in the 1930’s must have been somewhat upsetting for the educated intellectuals of the time, especially those unfamiliar to the American culture.

            Both Ardent and Benjamin talk about the destruction of a high form culture and art in mass society. There is a dialectic principle here. The principle that a certain bourgeois quality of art must merge with mass production of lower quality entertainment (the antithesis), to eventually synthesize into something new. Ardent states that the role of the intellectual loses a certain aspect of quality in place of a very rapid speed of production. That is, the consumer is no longer interested in a message or lesson within art, rather they are interested in pure entertainment, which may be completely cliché at times. I find it amusing that Ardent uses “My Fair Lady,” a film now considered a great American classic, as a lower form of art to contrast against Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” This argument outlines certain flaws in capitalism because of the high demand of newness, which lowers quality in place of speed. This inspires the intellectuals, as producers, to spit "trash" out quickly to make a profit. The role of the intellectual (although well educated) is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order” to make them suitable for low cognitive functioning human beings (Ardent, 284).

            Benjamin expands this idea of a synthesis with the proletariat. The author (intellectual) as producer will discover her “solidarity with the proletariat, but also with her solidarity with other producers who earlier seemed scarcely to concern her” (Benjamin, 87). He uses music as a metaphor; this is a perfect example for today as well. Benjamin argues that the need for experts diminishes as a result of jukeboxes for mass entertainment. Today we don’t even need singers to sing, in place of a voice, we have synthesizers to put their voices into tune.  Furthermore, we don’t even need new music, rather the intellectual now identifies popular and successful music from a few decades ago and re-organizes them into, perhaps, a pop-rap song with an Annie Lennox tune in the background. Essentially, mass production has significantly hurt the quality of our culture and left the intellectual in mass-media as a re-organizer, rather than a creative mind.