Walter Benjamin believes that when an artwork is reproduced it loses its aura and thus its potential as a dynamic and influential piece. Benjamin sees the movement towards reproductive art is a negative transition that will diminish the meaning and power of art. Benjamin gave this critique in his paper, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” over eight decades ago. What would he say today in the world of the Jpeg and YouTube, a world almost controlled by “low-art”? What would he say of the state of the aura of a song like “Jai Ho” from the movie Slumdog Millionaire that is not a reproduction of an original, but the reproduction of a cultural concept? “Jai Ho” was created only for the movie, but is altered to appear as a traditional Indian Bollywood song. “Jai Ho” attempts to inhabit the aura of a “victorious” Indian culture, and whether the song achieves this, but undeniably the song is popular. Through the success of the song and the mechanism of YouTube an imagined reality becomes passed on worldwide. While aura as seen by Benjamin is not present, an aura of unification and imagined culture is clearly present and is actually strengthened when the song and dance is reproduced.
The song has been recreated numerous times on YouTube. These recreations are, while at one time just clips, but can also be considered as imagined reality as discussed by Arjun Appadurai article “Global Ethnoscape”. Appadurai states that because of globalization and new technologies there is an increased imagined life. This imagined life is without a doubt is presented in the following four clips recreating the song “Jai Ho”. The “Official Jai Ho Music Video” presented on YouTube is actually not the original footage from the movie, but a recreation that emphasizes “slumdog” culture and Bollywood dance. An imagined unified Indian culture is imagined.
The next clip to consider is the “Karan Khokar and Divya Ikara- Jai Ho Dance- Tamil Sneham – Tampa, Florida”. Here, again, an imagined Indian culture is created, but also the audience, in Tampa, Florida originally, and now worldwide imagines an exotic location to which the now have access. This access is a central issue concerning Appadurai, and he states that through globalization foreign locations and foreign lifestyles become closer and more attainable. The Internet and imaged ethnoscapes allow for access to an imagined culture.
A further example of imagined community is present in the clip “Slumdog Millionaire Dance Jai Ho”, where a white couple re-enacts the entire song and dance of “Jai Ho” in their Western looking living room. Here, the “actors”, not the audience, imagine inhabiting a different culture. However, by posting their clip onto YouTube, making it viewable to many people all over the world, these creators are able to elicit imagined culture in their viewers and possible spur the viewers own recreation of “Jai Ho”.
Finally, “Jai Ho” becomes further Westernized with the Pussycat Dolls recreation of the song. The very American girl group, Pussycat Dolls, not only take the song of “Jai Ho”, but also dress in Indian style. Here the culture of India becomes a commodity that the Pussycat Dolls want their viewers to consume, like they themselves have consumed. This final clip does show that the Benjamin art has become an object for consumerism and politics. However it can be viewed that a new aura can be considered, an aura of imagined ethnoscapes.
References Cited:
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Pp. 48-65. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Benjamin, Walter
1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935-1938. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.
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