| Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) has been regarded as a margin to the Frankfurt School for a long time. Nevertheless, Walter Benjamin has aroused a continuous interest among scholars from various disciplines ever since his works were collected and brought into print by Theodor Adorno in the 1950s.Walter Benjamin and his thoughts are complicated, covering wide range of topics from linguistics, art of translation, aestheticism, literary criticism, cultural criticism to philosophy of history. Formerly the research on Walter Benjamin was centered on his concept of language, his understanding of the philosophy of history and his insight into literary criticism. In recent years Walter Benjamin's criticism on earlier culture industry has been rediscovered and caught the attention of cultural critics. His incisive analysis provides contemporary scholars with an effective methodology of media culture discourse.Walter Benjamin's research on culture industry can be divided into three categories, his idea of audience reception, his "aura" theory and his view about the politics of art. Although his ideas are sometimescontradictory, they were and still are avant-garde. His assumption not only pre-describes the modern life of information-age, but also pictures the cultural scene against a postmodern environment characterized by globalization, decentralization and new-colonialism.This paper attempts to look into Walter Benjamin's study on culture industry from the three aspects mentioned above. Accordingly, the thesis is grouped into four chapters. In the introduction are included both a brief review of the research on Walter Benjamin so far, and the approach where my argument are raised.Chapter One traces the origin of culture industry as a concept and as a cultural phenomenon. The schools and future trend of culture industry research are also discussed in this part.Chapter Two is focused on Walter Benjamin's idea of audience reception. On the one hand, Walter Benjamin believes that the audience, or called consumers sometimes, plays an active role in the process of consuming culture industry products. On the other hand, Walter Benjamin worries about the loss of moral concern, which is brought about by the audience's ceaseless exposure to the media. His paradoxical attitude gives a dialectical seeing to his successors, who have developed those two orientations in Walter Benjamin into reader response theory and media morality respectively.Chapter Three approaches Walter Benjamin's study on culture industry from an angle of aestheticism. Walter Benjamin's opinion about the aesthetic function of culture industry products is best illustrated in his "aura" theory. "Aura" is a rather complex concept put forward by Walter Benjamin. It involves politics, arts and philosophy of history. Walter Benjamin uses the term to signify the property of the pre-culture industry art works and the social life in which those art works are created. He points out the loss of "aura" is the main characteristic of culture industry products. As paradoxical as Walter Benjamin always is, he has two minds toward the loss of "aura". He claims that the loss of "aura" legitimizes mass culture, whereas, he still feels nostalgic toward the "aura" of a lost age. His duality has been carried down into contemporary cultural theories. One is Fredric Jameson's postmodern cultural theory - analyzing post-aura art works and social life, and the other is new aura-ism - reconstructing new "aura" to the commodity in a commerce culture.Chapter Four deals with Walter Benjamin's understanding of the politics of art. Benjamin regards the interplay between mass media and politics unavoidable and progressive. But he more or less neglects the anesthetic effect of culture industry and its intrinsic culture hegemony. Very fortunately, Theodor Adorno's notion of culture industry can makeup the shortcomings of Walter Benjamin's. Benjamin and Adorno together give us a wholesome look on the political function of culture industry. This function still counts in an...
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