Written by: Sobhan Rezaee
Abstract:
Georg Lukács is one of the most important thinkers of twenty century. He wrote in many fields, but in this essay, we want to receive an analyzing for mass media commodification, by his ideas. In his important work, “The Soul and the Forms”, an idea was proposed which define the relation of context (Form) and content. He believes that the Forms exist as priori factors and they are static and eternal. In other hand, the contents are created by the time circumstances. Therefore, with this intellectual preference, we began our work with reviewing Lukács himself-context, their related works, his dividing and defining literary books, as the most contiguous Form to our area: Mass media; and his ideas about commodification process. Then we use Lukács’s opinions to analyze the mass media commodification. In this way, we indicate to “Magnolia”, a 1999 drama film which written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is an extraordinary commercial product, which confess, and explain the commodificational role of mass media.
Keywords: Georg Lukács, Literature, Commodification, Mass Media
Biography:
Georg Lukács was born in Budapest on 13 April 1885 as the second son of Josef Lukàcs, a wealthy Jewish banker. His mother, whose maiden name was Wertheimer, was brought up in Vienna and learned Hungarian after her marriage. Therefore, the family language is German and most of Lukács books were originally written in German. The Hungary in which Lukács grew up was still part of the dual monarchy of Austria and Hungary, with a king who resided in Vienna and a Parliament suited in Budapest. He Studied Jurisprudence at the University of Budapest between 1902 and 1906. (Parkinson, 1977: 1-3) He got his PHD on Philosophy at the same University but continued his education at Berlin university under the influence of Georg Simmel (1911) and then with the guidance of Max Weber in the University of Heidelberg. (Edwards, 1972) His First book is “A History of the Development of Modern Drama” which published in Hungarian language at 1911. However, at the same time, Lukács was affected by neo-Kantian school, which can be traced in his primary works such as “The Soul and the Forms” and “The Theory of the Novel”. (Parkinson, 1977: 3-4)
In 1918, Lukács joined the Hungarian Communist Party. Moreover, in the Communist Government Kun Béla, he accepted the position of commissar for culture and education, but after the overthrow of it in 1919, he moved to Vienna, where he remained for 10 years. He edited the review Kommunismus and was a member of the Hungarian underground movement. During this period, he wrote History and Class Consciousness (1923), in which he developed a unique Marxist philosophy of history and laid the basis for his critical literary tenets by linking the development of form in art with the history of the class struggle. (Britannica, 2006) but this book cause to dismissal him from membership of Communist Party and editorial of Kommunismus.
After empowering Hitler, he migrate to the Russia and begin his work at Marx-Engels Institute (1930- 1931) and then in the Institute of Philosophy (1933-1944).
After the World War 2, he returned to Hungary, became one of the members of his country parliament, and appointed as the professor of Aesthetics in university. In the Government of Imer Nagy, he was the minister of Culture, but after the defeat of revolution of Hungary, he was arrested and deported to Romania. (Edwards, 1972) In 1957, he was allowed to return to Budapest. Then he continued his Aesthetic works until his dead in Budapest at 4 June 1971.
Lukács’s Works in Literature:
Lukács wrote in all of his life courses, pre-Marxist thinking, Communist Leadership and De-Stalinization. Therefore, he publish more than 30 books and hundreds of essays. However, in this issue, we want to concentrate on Aesthetic and literary works of him, and review his theories and scales for studying the works.
The Soul and the Forms:
This book consists of ten essays, which published before. Most of them are literary criticism for the works of writers such as Theodore Storm, Stefan George and Lawrence Sterne. In this work, Lukács define the essay by these words: “A struggle for truth, for embodiment of life, which someone as read out of a man, an age, a form; but it depends entirely on the intensity of the work and of the vision, whether we derive from what is written a suggestion of this life.” (Lukács, 1974: 16-17)
Lukács wrote in all of his life courses, pre-Marxist thinking, Communist Leadership and De-Stalinization. Therefore, he publish more than 30 books and hundreds of essays. However, in this issue, we want to concentrate on Aesthetic and literary works of him, and review his theories and scales for studying the works.
The Soul and the Forms:
This book consists of ten essays, which published before. Most of them are literary criticism for the works of writers such as Theodore Storm, Stefan George and Lawrence Sterne. In this work, Lukács define the essay by these words: “A struggle for truth, for embodiment of life, which someone as read out of a man, an age, a form; but it depends entirely on the intensity of the work and of the vision, whether we derive from what is written a suggestion of this life.” (Lukács, 1974: 16-17)
Therefore, he treats the essay as a life experience, which used for embodiment of living. In this book, he believes that the Forms exist as priori and do not create after presence of the artistic works. The Form is static and eternal. So what is changed is the time circumstances which cause to changing the contents of artistic works. However, this work is belong to the pre-Marxist course of his thought and published three years before the beginning of the World War I include a pessimistic approach to modernity that continued to his later book, “The Theory of the Novel”. He defines the Modernity as the lack of any "existent and constitutive meaning" and therefore concludes that no artist can discover utopian structures of perfectly meaningful community within the modern life described by novels. (Lukács, 1971: 142-143) So, he assumes the Modernity as a suitable context for the birth of the Tragedy.
The Theory of the Novel:
As said above, Lukács in his previous work was affecting by neo-Kantian thoughts, but in this book, he take a transition to Hegel. It represents the abandonment of the idea of timeless forms and a move towards what Lukács called ‘a historicizing of aesthetic categories.’ (Lukács, 1971: 15) In this work, Lukács regards the novel as a form of what he calls ‘the great epic’; it is, as he puts it, one objectification of the great epic. (Parkinson, 1977: 24-25)
This book consists two parts. The first, which includes of five essays, studying the novel from several aspects: (I) integrated western civilization that arguing the western culture and civilization from its Greek initial point to the modern age. In other hand, his accent in reviewing the history is completely philosophical. Furthermore, he use a very difficult and compressed text to proposes a deterministic approach to social phenomena: “For man does not stand alone, as the sole bearer of substantiality, in the midst of reflexive forms: his relations to others and the structures which arise therefrom are as full of substance as he is himself, indeed they are more truly filled with substance because they are general, more ‘philosophic’, closer and more akin to archetypal home: love, the family, the state.” (Lukács, 1971: 33)
In other four chapters of first part, he pays attention to Tragedy, Epic forms, Means of expression, Totality, Objective structures, Types of hero, inner aspects of novel and historical and philosophical conditioning of the novel. But at the second part, he attempts to form a typology for novels by reviewing several works of Writers such as Balzac, Jacobsen, Novalis, Goethe, Tolstoy…
However, when Georg Lukacs returned to this work in his old age, criticize this book and wrote, it "founded on a highly naive and totally unfounded utopianism," a "romantic anti-capitalism" on which we "have every right to smile." (Lukács 1971, 12, 19-20) “Suffice it to point out that novelist such as Defoe, Fielding and Stendhal found no place in this schematic pattern, that the arbitrary ‘synthetic’ method of the author of “The Theory of the Novel” leads him to a completely upside-down view of Balzac and Flaubert or of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky etc., etc.” (Lukács 1971, 14)
Studies in European Realism
This book consists of nine articles, which were written in the period of 1938-1939, but it published in 1948. These issues studying writers such as Balzac (Chapter 1 & 2 & 3: “The Peasants” and “Lost Illusions”), Stendhal (Chapter3), Gorky (Chapter 7), Zola (Chapter 4), Tolstoy (Chapter 6 & 8).
The work belongs to the Marxist period of Lukács and obviously based on Marxist ideas. For example, he said, “The Marxist philosophy of history, analyzes the human as a whole and treat the history of his evolution as a whole, too. (Lukács, 1972: 6) “Marxism is an index for history which shows the arrow of moving the history. The Confidence that is offered by this guidance is the evolution of the human will not and cannot arrive to absurdity.” (Lukács. 1972: 5)
The main question of this book refers to the importance of litterateurs: “Balzac or Flaubert, which are the greatest and typical novelist of 19 century? The responding of it is not the problem of tastes and preferences, but it contains all the aesthetic issues of the novel. It is coming from the question that do the greatness and the importance of a novel relate to the unification of inside and outside worlds or relate to the separating them.” Do the peaks of the modern novel is Gide, Proust or Joyce or it was received by Balzac and Tolstoy, before?” (Lukács. 1972: 3)
Lukács answers the question with these words: “The real heritors of excellent French novel of 19 century is not Flaubert or Zola, but they include Russian and Scandinavian authors of second half of this century. Therefore, this book is my studying about French and Russian Realist authors… (Lukács. 1972: 7)
The Literature:
The Importance of Lukács main question on “Studies in European Realism” is designing a distinction between two paradoxical philosophies for history. He identifies the novel as the dominant form of modern culture of bourgeoisie. (Lukács. 1972: 3) So recognizing the correct form from these aesthetic understandings causes to comprehension of the orientation of whole of the literature and may be the Culture.
Lukács in his book, “The Meaning of Contemporary Realism” (1963), divides the modern literature in three areas: (1) Avant-garde (2) Socialist Realism (3) Critical Realism.
According to Lukács, the Avant-garde approach to literature is based on idealism and in front of human situations is static. In other hand, Socialist Realism is dogmatic and its view about the paradoxes of social life is very naïve.
However, critical realism is on the peak of Lukács thought. Because, social changing and evolution are reflected on the works of its members, such as Thomas Mann and Bernard Shaw which are the real heritors of the great realist of 19 century, he mean Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy.
Literature Forms:
As we said above, Georg Lukács believes that the Forms exist forever and the contents are changed by time circumstances. He defines the Forms as the static constituent and the content as the dynamic component of the literature. In this part of issue, we want to pay attention to different forms by Lukács opinion:
The Theory of the Novel:
As said above, Lukács in his previous work was affecting by neo-Kantian thoughts, but in this book, he take a transition to Hegel. It represents the abandonment of the idea of timeless forms and a move towards what Lukács called ‘a historicizing of aesthetic categories.’ (Lukács, 1971: 15) In this work, Lukács regards the novel as a form of what he calls ‘the great epic’; it is, as he puts it, one objectification of the great epic. (Parkinson, 1977: 24-25)
This book consists two parts. The first, which includes of five essays, studying the novel from several aspects: (I) integrated western civilization that arguing the western culture and civilization from its Greek initial point to the modern age. In other hand, his accent in reviewing the history is completely philosophical. Furthermore, he use a very difficult and compressed text to proposes a deterministic approach to social phenomena: “For man does not stand alone, as the sole bearer of substantiality, in the midst of reflexive forms: his relations to others and the structures which arise therefrom are as full of substance as he is himself, indeed they are more truly filled with substance because they are general, more ‘philosophic’, closer and more akin to archetypal home: love, the family, the state.” (Lukács, 1971: 33)
In other four chapters of first part, he pays attention to Tragedy, Epic forms, Means of expression, Totality, Objective structures, Types of hero, inner aspects of novel and historical and philosophical conditioning of the novel. But at the second part, he attempts to form a typology for novels by reviewing several works of Writers such as Balzac, Jacobsen, Novalis, Goethe, Tolstoy…
However, when Georg Lukacs returned to this work in his old age, criticize this book and wrote, it "founded on a highly naive and totally unfounded utopianism," a "romantic anti-capitalism" on which we "have every right to smile." (Lukács 1971, 12, 19-20) “Suffice it to point out that novelist such as Defoe, Fielding and Stendhal found no place in this schematic pattern, that the arbitrary ‘synthetic’ method of the author of “The Theory of the Novel” leads him to a completely upside-down view of Balzac and Flaubert or of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky etc., etc.” (Lukács 1971, 14)
Studies in European Realism
This book consists of nine articles, which were written in the period of 1938-1939, but it published in 1948. These issues studying writers such as Balzac (Chapter 1 & 2 & 3: “The Peasants” and “Lost Illusions”), Stendhal (Chapter3), Gorky (Chapter 7), Zola (Chapter 4), Tolstoy (Chapter 6 & 8).
The work belongs to the Marxist period of Lukács and obviously based on Marxist ideas. For example, he said, “The Marxist philosophy of history, analyzes the human as a whole and treat the history of his evolution as a whole, too. (Lukács, 1972: 6) “Marxism is an index for history which shows the arrow of moving the history. The Confidence that is offered by this guidance is the evolution of the human will not and cannot arrive to absurdity.” (Lukács. 1972: 5)
The main question of this book refers to the importance of litterateurs: “Balzac or Flaubert, which are the greatest and typical novelist of 19 century? The responding of it is not the problem of tastes and preferences, but it contains all the aesthetic issues of the novel. It is coming from the question that do the greatness and the importance of a novel relate to the unification of inside and outside worlds or relate to the separating them.” Do the peaks of the modern novel is Gide, Proust or Joyce or it was received by Balzac and Tolstoy, before?” (Lukács. 1972: 3)
Lukács answers the question with these words: “The real heritors of excellent French novel of 19 century is not Flaubert or Zola, but they include Russian and Scandinavian authors of second half of this century. Therefore, this book is my studying about French and Russian Realist authors… (Lukács. 1972: 7)
The Literature:
The Importance of Lukács main question on “Studies in European Realism” is designing a distinction between two paradoxical philosophies for history. He identifies the novel as the dominant form of modern culture of bourgeoisie. (Lukács. 1972: 3) So recognizing the correct form from these aesthetic understandings causes to comprehension of the orientation of whole of the literature and may be the Culture.
Lukács in his book, “The Meaning of Contemporary Realism” (1963), divides the modern literature in three areas: (1) Avant-garde (2) Socialist Realism (3) Critical Realism.
According to Lukács, the Avant-garde approach to literature is based on idealism and in front of human situations is static. In other hand, Socialist Realism is dogmatic and its view about the paradoxes of social life is very naïve.
However, critical realism is on the peak of Lukács thought. Because, social changing and evolution are reflected on the works of its members, such as Thomas Mann and Bernard Shaw which are the real heritors of the great realist of 19 century, he mean Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy.
Literature Forms:
As we said above, Georg Lukács believes that the Forms exist forever and the contents are changed by time circumstances. He defines the Forms as the static constituent and the content as the dynamic component of the literature. In this part of issue, we want to pay attention to different forms by Lukács opinion:
The Epic:
Lukács similar to Hegel defines the epic with Homer’s Works: The Iliad and the Odyssey. And understand them by Greek World which prepare a suitable context for the birth of the epic: “The Age of the epic is typified by the fact that it does not yet have any conception of an inner world, or any conception of the soul’s search for itself. It is also an age in which the divinity is just as familiar and close to man and Just as incomprehensible, as a father is to small child. Modern life, at the same time as it has immensely enlarged its world, has also established a gulf between the self and the world, which did not exist in the era of the epic. We have destroyed the meaning of Greek life, which was totality: a totality, which was all-inclusive, there being nothing which pointed to a higher reality out side it. (Lukács. 1971: 30) In other hand, “the modern man, unlike the man of Homer’s epoch, is not at home in the universe; and the literary form which expresses this ‘transcendental homelessness’ is the novel. (Lukács. 1971: 36- 41)
The Tragedy:
In Lukács’s thought system, Tragedy is begun with Greek civilization and continues to the modern world. This form of literature is very interesting. The author creates a hero, describe him/her, empower him and then kill him/her. So, in this process, the distinction is killing. I mean the sudden elimination of hero in this special narrative cause to form the Tragedy. When Achilles is killed at the end of the Iliad, the Homer’s epic convert to the Tragedy. Lukács said: “Tragedy places its heroes on the stage as living human beings in the midst of a mass of only apparently living beings. So that a clear destiny may gradually emerge incandescent from the condition of the dramatic action, heavy with the weight of life – so that its fire may reduce to ashes everything that is merely human, so that the inexistent life of mere human beings may disintegrate into nothingness and the affective emotions of the heroic figures may flare up into a blaze of tragic passion that will anneal them into heroes free of human dross. In this way the condition of the hero has become polemical and problematic; to be a hero is no longer the natural form of existence in the sphere of essence, but the act of raising oneself above that which is merely human, whether in the surrounding mass or in the hero’s own instincts.” (Lukács. 1971: 43- 44)
The Novel:
According to Lukács, Novel is the most important literary Form of the modern world. The Novel, Lukács says, is the epic of an age in which the extensive totality of life has ceased to be sensuously given, but which still has a ‘disposition towards totality’. (Lukács. 1971: 56) The basic intention of the novel is given objective form in the psychology of its heroes, who are seekers. Lukács similar to Hegel says that the hero of the epic is the community. Now, the community is an organic totality, whereas the hero of the novel is an individual, and arises out of modern man’s estrangement from the external world. (Parkinson, 1977: 26)
Lukács in his genealogy of novel relate it to a special phenomenon: Mass Experiment of History. He thinks that the age of enlightenment, conquering of Napoleon in Europe, modern wars that need to satisfied the mass society… caused to construct a form of literature which used by the mass and report the social changing. (Lukács, 1973: 134, 139, 140) He describes the novelist as the historian of the bourgeoisie society. (Lukács, 1973: 134)
The Commodification:
In the first step, the commodity is an interpersonal relationship, which is formed between people, but in the next stage, the commodity reproduces itself in social communications and constructs the commodification. Commodification is a kind of commercial modification that discovered by Marx, for the first time.
Lukács in some of his important works such as “History and Class Consciousness” and “Studies in European Realism” discusses this process and develops the Marx’s concept. According to Lukács, social relationships, activities and human worth are increasingly defined in terms of an alienating and objectifying monetary value- a process known as commodification. (Smith, 2001: 38; cited from Lukács, 1971 B: 92) However, as Habermas said in his book, “The Theory of Communicative Action”, Lukács based his argument on a part of “the Capital”:
A Commodity is therefore a mysterious thing simply because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character of the products of that labor, as social natural properties of these things; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their labor appears to them as a social relation among objects, a relation existing outside of them. Through this quid pro quo, the products of labor become commodities – things which are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible to the senses, social things… It is only a definite social relation among men that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation among things. (Habermas, 1984, Vol 1: 357; cited from Capital: 83)
Lukács in explanation his theory, defines the current science as a component of the society of bourgeoisie and relates it to the paradigm of producing the commodities. (Lukács: 1971 B: 136-137) In other hand, when he reviews the “Lost Illusions” which written by Honoré de Balzac, the famous French novelist of 19 century, pay attention to it as a mean for describing the process of commodification in the Literature. He believes that “Lost Illusions” is a Comic-Tragic Epic, which its centre is the conversion of literature to a kind of commodity. All things are purchasable: articles, poems, novels, Theaters, cyclic publishing… Lukács points to a key sentence that was said by “Venon” in the novel: “Are you believe to your writings?” Then continues: “but we are the merchants of the words… those articles which are read nowadays, will be forgotten, tomorrow. However, we give our royalties and there are no means, else.” (Lukács, 1972: 60- 61)
Mass Media Commodification:
Every normal trade takes worthy Commodities and sell them to get some profits. However, in the world of media, we have no worthy naive commodity which can indicated them as ordinary purchasable things. Therefore, Media use from a special process to convert non-purchasable things to purchasable and also profitable things: The Commodification
It has a central role in media developing. Advertising, Celebrating, Humiliating, Making Superstars … are part of this process. Media need some special factors to made people for give money to them. They use mass broadcasting to Celebrating or Humiliating a subject, give good or bad worth to them and at last, sell them to their audiences. Hereto, media create salable things, which can bring money for their inventors. Films, News, Face-to-Face Discussing, and Games… are expensive ways and commodities, which are formed in this area.
However, some media products such as “Magnolia” confess media roles of commodification. We want to continue our essay in analyzing this artistic exception and dissecting the Mass Media Commodification.
Magnolia is a 1999 drama film which written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It includes several-separated story, which are linked together with an invisible line of destiny. It has many aspects, but we want to focus on the commodification.
A Scene from "Magnilia" where Stanley was protesting to the commodification of a TV show
The central point of the film is a Television Show that contains a game in the name of “What do Kids Know?” It is a very famous program, which attract many audiences. It is constructing between three adults and three teenagers. One of the teens is a Quiz Kid (Stanley) who is won at seven courses and if he can be success at eighth game, break the record and achieve the final victory. Nevertheless, this last cycle confront with a basic problem: The Media Hero need to go to the bathroom.
This is very interesting, which shows the media compression that cannot suffer any abnormality. This tension cause to change Stanley’s mind and disturbing a 30 years old TV Show. In other hand, the camera focuses on a previous hero of “What do Kids Know”: Dannie Smith who won the play at 1968, but nowadays he is a bankrupt that other people never accept him. However, he want to take a beauty surgery on his teeth.
But at the current game, when Stanley made to piss in his trousers and experienced some humility, every thing is changed. Then Stanley passes the buck and ignores to continue the game. He asks from famous showman of the game, Jimmy Gator: “What is funny? What is Interesting? Do you see, what are your ideas about us? Am I a toy for you? I am not a doll. To you, we are some pretty tiny teens. Why? Because I am converted to an odd being? Because I answer to the questions? because I am clever. Or because I want to go to the bathroom? What is the answer, Jimmy? What is the answer? Now, I ask you?” Then Jimmy says: “I don’t know.” Stanley continues his speech: “I am not a pretty and stupid doll. I am genius, not a funny man whom is seen by the people and my intellect would be their hobby. I know. I know very much. I know. I know. For example, I know that I should go to bathroom, but you don’t allow me.”
After this extraordinary speech, the program producer made to finish the show…then Stanley escapes from the Studio.
Yes, as Stanley find out, mass media convert their subjects to toys and dolls, which can purchasable. In that example, Stanley converted to a toy that entertains people in an entertainment media. With Lukács opinions, we can say, in modern world, all things melted to commodity, to be controlled, purchased and to be come to nothing… If any one want to break the cycle, must escape from their studio…
This is very interesting, which shows the media compression that cannot suffer any abnormality. This tension cause to change Stanley’s mind and disturbing a 30 years old TV Show. In other hand, the camera focuses on a previous hero of “What do Kids Know”: Dannie Smith who won the play at 1968, but nowadays he is a bankrupt that other people never accept him. However, he want to take a beauty surgery on his teeth.
But at the current game, when Stanley made to piss in his trousers and experienced some humility, every thing is changed. Then Stanley passes the buck and ignores to continue the game. He asks from famous showman of the game, Jimmy Gator: “What is funny? What is Interesting? Do you see, what are your ideas about us? Am I a toy for you? I am not a doll. To you, we are some pretty tiny teens. Why? Because I am converted to an odd being? Because I answer to the questions? because I am clever. Or because I want to go to the bathroom? What is the answer, Jimmy? What is the answer? Now, I ask you?” Then Jimmy says: “I don’t know.” Stanley continues his speech: “I am not a pretty and stupid doll. I am genius, not a funny man whom is seen by the people and my intellect would be their hobby. I know. I know very much. I know. I know. For example, I know that I should go to bathroom, but you don’t allow me.”
After this extraordinary speech, the program producer made to finish the show…then Stanley escapes from the Studio.
Yes, as Stanley find out, mass media convert their subjects to toys and dolls, which can purchasable. In that example, Stanley converted to a toy that entertains people in an entertainment media. With Lukács opinions, we can say, in modern world, all things melted to commodity, to be controlled, purchased and to be come to nothing… If any one want to break the cycle, must escape from their studio…
Conclusions:
1. “The Soul and the Forms” consists of ten essays, which published before. Most of them are literary criticism for the works of writers such as Theodore Storm, Stefan George and Lawrence Sterne. In this work, Lukács define the essay by these words: “A struggle for truth, for embodiment of life, which someone as read out of a man, an age, a form; but it depends entirely on the intensity of the work and of the vision, whether we derive from what is written a suggestion of this life.” (Lukács, 1974: 16-17) In this work, he believes that the Forms exist as priori and do not create after presence of the artistic works. The Form is static and eternal. So what is changed is the time circumstances which cause to changing the contents of artistic works.
2. In “The Theory of the Novel”, Lukács regards the novel as a form of what he calls ‘the great epic’; it is, as he puts it, one objectification of the great epic. This book consists from two parts. The first, which includes of five essays, studying the novel from several aspects: (I) integrated western civilization that arguing the western culture and civilization from its Greek initial point to the modern age. In other four chapters of first part, he pay attention to Tragedy, Epic forms, Means of expression, Totality, Objective structures, Types of hero, inner aspects of novel and historical and philosophical conditioning of the novel. But at the second part, he attempt to form a typology for novels by reviewing several works of Writers such as Balzac, Jacobsen, Novalis, Goethe, Tolstoy…
3. “Studies in European Realism” consists of nine articles, which were written in the period of 1938-1939, but it published at 1948. These issues studying writers such as Balzac (Chapter 1 & 2 & 3: “The Peasants” and “Lost Illusions”), Stendhal (Chapter3), Gorky (Chapter 7), Zola (Chapter 4), Tolstoy (Chapter 6 & 8). The work belongs to the Marxist period of Lukács and obviously based on Marxist ideas.
4. The Age of the epic is typified by the fact that it does not yet have any conception of an inner world, or any conception of the soul’s search for itself. It is also an age in which the divinity is just as familiar and close to man and Just as incomprehensible, as a father is to small child. Modern life, at the same time as it has immensely enlarged its world, has also established a gulf between the self and the world, which did not exist in the era of the epic. We have destroyed the meaning of Greek life, which was totality: a totality, which was all-inclusive, there being nothing which pointed to a higher reality out side it.
5. In Lukács’s thought system, Tragedy is begun with Greek civilization and continues to the modern world. This form of literature is very interesting. The author creates a hero, describe him/her, empower him and then kill him/her. Therefore, in this process, the distinction is killing. Lukács said: “Tragedy places its heroes on the stage as living human beings in the midst of a mass of only apparently living beings.” However, the sudden elimination of hero in this special narrative causes to form the Tragedy. When Achilles is killed at the end of the Iliad, the Homer’s epic convert to the Tragedy.
6. According to Lukács, Novel is the most important literary Form of the modern world. Lukács similar to Hegel says that the hero of the epic is the community. Now, the community is an organic totality, whereas the hero of the novel is an individual, and arises out of modern man’s estrangement from the external world. (Parkinson, 1977: 26) Lukács in his genealogy of novel relate it to a special phenomenon: Mass Experiment of History. He describes the novelist as the historian of the bourgeoisie society.
7. In the first step, the commodity is an interpersonal relationship, which is formed between people, but in the next stage, the commodity reproduces itself in social communications and constructs the commodification. According to Lukács, social relationships, activities and human worth are increasingly defined in terms of an alienating and objectifying monetary value- a process known as commodification. When Lukács reviews the “Lost Illusions” which written by Honoré de Balzac, the famous French novelist of 19 century, pay attention to it as a mean for describing the process of commodification in the Literature. He believes that “Lost Illusions” is a Comic-Tragic Epic and its centre is the conversion of literature to a kind of commodity.
8. Every normal trade takes worthy Commodities and sell them to get some profits. However, in the world of media, we have no worthy naive commodity which can indicated them as ordinary purchasable things. Therefore, Media use from a special process to convert non-purchasable things to purchasable and also profitable things: The Commodification. They use from mass broadcasting to Celebrating or Humiliating a subject, give good or bad worth to them and at last, sell them to their audiences. Hereto, media create salable things, which can bring money for their inventors. Films, News, Face-to-Face Discussing, and Games… are expensive ways and commodities, which are formed in this area.
9. However, some media products such as “Magnolia” confess media roles of commodification. Magnolia is a 1999 drama film which written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It includes several-separated story, which are linked together with an invisible line of destiny. The central point of the film is a Television Show in the name of “What do Kids Know?” It is a very famous program, which attract many audiences. It is constructing between three adults and three teenagers. One of the teens is a Genius Kid (Stanley) who is won at seven courses and if he can be success at eighth game, break the record and achieve the final victory. Nevertheless, this last cycle confront with a basic problem: The Media Hero need to go to the bathroom.
10. But at the current game, when Stanley made to piss in his trousers and experience some humility, every thing is changed. Then Stanley pass the buck and ignore to continue the game. He asks from famous showman of the game, Jimmy Gator: What is Interesting? Do you see, what are your ideas about us? Am I a toy for you? I am not a doll. To you, we are some pretty tiny teens. Why? Because I am converted to an odd being? Because I answer to the questions? because I am clever. Or because I want to go to the bathroom? I am genius, not a funny man whom is seen by the people and my intellect would be their hobby. I know. I know very much. I know. I know. For example, I know that I should go to bathroom, but you don’t allow me.”
11. As Stanley find out, mass media convert their subjects to toys and dolls, which can purchasable. In that example, Stanley converted to a toy that entertains people in an entertainment media. With Lukács opinions, we can say, in modern world, all things melted to commodity, to be controlled, purchased and to be come to nothing… If any one want to break the cycle, must escape from their studio…
References:
1. Habermas, Jurgen, 1984, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, Translated to English Thomas McCarthy, Beacon Press, Boston
2. Lukács, Georg, 1971 B, History and Class Consciousness, Translated to English by Rodney Livingstone, Merlin Press, London
3. Lukács, Georg, 1971, The Theory of the Novel, Translated to English by Anna Bostock, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
4. Lukács, Georg, 1972, Studies in European Realism, Translated to Farsi by Akbar Afsari, Scientific and Cultural Publisher, Tehran
5. Lukács, Georg, 1973, Marxism and Human Liberation, Delta Book, New York
6. Lukács, Georg, 1974, “The Soul and the Forms”, Translation to English Anna Bostock, Merlin Press, London.
7. Parkinson, G.H.R, 1977, Georg Lukács, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
8. Smith, Philip, 2001, Cultural Theory, Blackwell Publishers
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