After reading the article on The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin, it gives a lot of things to think about art these days and how it should be, whether the thinking of Walter Benjamin is relevant to our age of society these days is a different part of the story but how he interprets art in the article is a totally different thing, so let us view a bit about his article. “Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it …show more content…

This shows that what Liu and Walter thinks have similarities.

The next thing I noticed that is similar about the movie and Walter’s article is when Liu tried to attract people to see Shadow Magic themselves and said that seeing is believing. The interesting part is when a man says, “Is it magic?”. It totally goes hand in hand with this quote by Walter:

“This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art.”

There was also a scene when a servant told his master that the master’s profit has dropped because of the reproduction of Shadow Magic by the westerners. It loses its ‘magic’ feeling after the reproduction by the westerners; just like what Walter had said, early civilization thinks that art is some kind of magic, by reproducing it, it loses its aura, its magic.

A good quote from the movie would be,

“We cannot escape what derives us”.- Shadow Magic.

To me, there are a lot of things that Walter says is true and relevant but upon seeing the movie and trying to compare them both, I cannot help but to put this quote as a reminder to myself that although I agree with Walter, I cannot go against what this new age of era has brought to me. No matter how, we must embrace new things and make use of what it bringing to