Abstract:

A study of recent citations or references to Benjamin' s theory by such researchers as Miriam Hansen, Leo Oufan Lee, Yingjin Zhang and Zhen Zhang can find the fact that Benjamin' s arguments on film have a strong penetration to the modern theory of film arts. While his arguments perform a current significance to this theory, for which our research is still far from enough, they display the limitation both of his own and his times. It is helpful to have an investigation of his contribution and make an analysis of his contradictory discourse. In this way, we can, by the context of current situation, give a reflection on how to go beyond Benjamin' s theory, so as to provide a reference for expanding our horizons of research. From an academic perspective, Benjamin emphasizes the commerciality of film and probes into this question in terms of ontological level of film, thus challenging the classic film theories of André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer. And his "ruins" argument focused on postmodern image text foresees the modern culture and film theory. Although he claims the commerciality of film, he opposes the capital control of film, and, therefore, recommends the film experience of the former Soviet Union against the commerciality of film, which produces the paradox in his argument for film commercialization. Since film is considered as a commodity, it cannot avoid controlling by capital. But, however, in view that the creation of film is different from the production of general commodity, that is to say, being a complicated labor participated by scriptwriters, directors, cameramen, actors and so on, capital cannot control every initiative filmproducer, thus supplying with many possibilities his breakthrough of capital and his challenge of the awareness of commodity fetishism. Therefore, by virtue of progressive filmproducers, the political function of film can be performed within the commercial mechanism of film. What' s more, the inherent requirement of the intellectual elite identity inevitably makes his discourse display such cultural anxieties as digestion, fragmentation and planarization although he is convinced of the inevitability of popular culture such as film in the modern society, which reflects Benjamin' s vacillated attitude toward popular culture. Under the context of globalization and diversification, Benjamin' s dilemma between such severe conflictions as the elite and mass, and the elegance and popularity, has basically been gone beyond. And the rise of oriental culture has produced a way to get out of this dilemma. Also the Zhuang and Zen philosophies in the Chinese culture can provide a reference for the cultural problem that seems to be hardly resolved by Benjamin, even by so many theorists in the Western countries.

Key words: Key words：  Benjamin; modern film theory; popular culture; commerciality of film; elites