Authority

In many different areas of study people may take from the past to gain a better understanding of the present or what is to come in the future. It has been debated if originality can stem from prior poets to their contemporaries, originates from the individual or the aura given of a work of art. The idea of authorship and originality are defined in T.S Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” through compare and contrast, Bloom’s “The Anxiety of Influence” through philosophies from Freud and Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in Mechanical Reproduction” through film and photography.

Eliot believes that originality can stem from “tradition” unlike the popular thought, which believes only a separation from tradition can create originality. Poets are praised for their individual work towards finding originality. According to Eliot, these poets are being praised for the wrong notion. Eliot says “but the most individual parts of his own work may be those in which dead poets, his ancestors assert their immortality most vigorously.” The most “individual” portion of a poet comes from their appreciation and the influence from past poets. He also says to truly judge a poem as a great work and to gathers its creativity; there must be a comparison and contrast of the works that came prior. Eliot has a dynamic idea of tradition. To Eliot, tradition is constantly changing and becoming different. Writers from the past guide the writers of the present. The writers of the present have the ability to modify the past.

Comparing and contrasting the work of the past is not to see if the poem is bad or not but for analysis. When comparing and contrasting a work of art one should not judge the poem based on the criteria of the p...

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...lm actors do not have to change their faces due to excitement of the audience like a stage actor. The audience cannot interact with the film actor. Benjamin points out that a loss of authority can be totalitarian because it does not allow the viewer to choose which side of the story to believe. In actuality it leads the viewer to a specific side of the story leaving other sides of the same story out. This is negative because it clouds the audience’s view of the work of art and does not give the full experience of seeing the work of art in person. When looking at a painting there has to be full concentration to grasp the understanding of a painting as oppose to a film. A film does not require as much concentration as a painting. Benjamin says art and film are “exceptional distractor” into creating habits. However film can cause movement among large groups of people.