Perfect technical reproduction makes any intended meaning in film sound false

Evidence

The less dense reproduction of reality in naturalist literature left room for intentions: in the unbroken duplication achieved by the technical apparatus of film every intention, even that of truth, becomes a lie. The word that is intended to impress on the audience the character of the speaker or even the meaning of the whole, sounds, compared to the literal fidelity of its reproduction, ‘unnatural’. It justifies the world as having been itself similarly meaningful, before the first deliberate fraud, the first real distortion was committed. No-one talks, no-one moves like this, whereas the film unceasingly urges that everyone does. One is trapped: conformism is produced a priori by meaning in itself, no matter what the concrete meaning may be, while it is only by meaning something that conformism, the respectful reiteration of the factual, could be shaken. True intentions would only be possible by renouncing intention. … It is ambiguous. It refers without distinction to the organization of the subject matter as such and to its communication to the audience. This ambiguity is, however, no accident. Significance designates the point of equilibrium between reason and communication. It is both right, in that the objective figure, the realized expression, turns outward from itself and speaks, and wrong, in that the figure is corrupted by counting in the interlocutor. Every artistic and even theoretical work must show itself able to meet the danger of such ambiguity. Significant form, however esoteric, makes concessions to consumption; lack of significance is dilettantism by its immanent criteria. Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 164

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that fidelity of reproduction itself converts every deliberate intention into a lie, and that true intention requires renouncing intention, is a dense, self-resisting dialectic worth long reflection.
• XREF: Connects directly to Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ and the whole Frankfurt-school debate about film and the aura. — connects to: Technical perfection in postmodern film substitutes tactical values for meaning. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 165; Commercial recordings aim for plausibility, not authentic reproduction; Recorded audio is engineered for plausibility, not faithful reproduction of reality — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1801 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Recorded audio is engineered for plausibility, not faithful reproduction of reality #qualifies (0.80) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1801
• Commercial recordings aim for plausibility, not authentic reproduction #qualifies (0.78)
• The uncanny quality of mass-produced objects springs from repeating the unrepeatable #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 126
• Hyperreality is the cinema converging on both the real and itself #qualifies (0.72) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 168