The age of industrialization has ushered in new ways of disseminating and creating art. Along with technological innovation come the anxious reservations of aesthetic purists. These reservations arise from distrust of the dehumanizing effect of mechanical reproduction and a sense of powerlessness towards the work of art in its mediated form. After the advent of printing, writers and artists struggled to understand this new phenomenon and its effects on the creation of texts. Two texts, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility" reflect this towards technology and its effects on the art of writing. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In his essay, Benjamin focuses on how the form of art and its reception have changed in an era of technological reproduction. It also evaluates the effects of this new artistic medium on an increasingly evolving audience. Simply put, mechanical reproducibility has enabled the proliferation of art copies. This has dissolved the validity of the concept of originality referred to in the art. There is a rejection of the traditional functions of art in favor of new and more expansive functions. Art is now a product intended for mass consumption and loses its uniqueness, its "aura". Benjamin's discussion of authenticity is interesting for what it implies about the power of an original. He begins by stating that "the presence of the original is the prerequisite of the concept of authenticity." (220) Authenticity, then, depends on the existence of an original, a starting point from which all other reproductions can measure themselves. All authority derives from this authenticity. This is how art has traditionally been valued. This reliance on the original for authority has implications in terms of the "authenticity" of art that bears no original. The implication is that once the original is lost or destroyed, so is the authority. The definition of authenticity also depends on the assumption of history and tradition. "The authenticity of a thing - explains Benjamin - is the essence of everything that is transmissible from its beginning, from its substantial duration up to its testimony of the history it has lived". (221) Authenticity is linked to the lifespan of the work of art. This is the "testimony" it bears of its lasting quality. In this sense the work of art is an artefact, a relic of bygone eras, which carries with it combinations of the historical and social contexts it has survived. The characters in Dracula share a similar view regarding delegating authority to an original. If Dracula can be seen as the original, then Mina and the gentlemen who help her destroy Dracula represent mechanical reproducibility. Their insistence on eradicating Dracula despite the risk involved brings out a raw faith in the power of the original. They believe that once Dracula is destroyed, they will rid the world of evil and the numerous vampires he has spawned. It is the original "auratic"; once destroyed, so will its authority and authenticity. In describing the need to kill Dracula, Van Helsing emphasizes his uniqueness. “With this, all the occult, deep and strong forces of nature must have worked together in some wonderful way.” (319) This vampire, more than any other of the "Undead", has managed to survive for centuries thanks to combinations of the "occult" forces of nature. He is the original who carries in his blood all the signs of history and tradition. Its authority comes from its authenticity and the "witness" of its history in its existence. The hunters ofVampires are determined to eradicate their authentic origin. Their methods involve technology and the reproduction of texts. According to Benjamin, authority is based on tradition. Two processes lead to the "shattering of tradition" (221), the replacement of the original with copies and the bringing of the spectator closer to the reproduction. Both of these developments undermine the traditional functions of art. This break from tradition appears to be a good thing. He describes it as "a renewal of humanity." (221) By compiling and reproducing texts about their adventures, Dracula characters replace Dracula with copies. In the same way that technological reproduction usurps the authority of the original by virtue of its medium, so do vampire-hunters. Benjamin's label as "renewing tradition" is also how Van Helsing defines their mission. The value of art, therefore, is based on the public's perception of it, as art increasingly detaches itself from its tradition, it becomes more and more attached to its audience. This is because in this era of technological reproducibility something is lost: the "aura" of the object. He does not give a definition of this term, but rather describes it as part of an experience of the "unique phenomenon of distance", however close it may be." (223) Aura is the desire for proximity of a work of art. art while maintaining a distance. Therefore the aura is a product of distance, or the perception of distance by the audience. Distance is caused by the uniqueness of the object. uniqueness has dissolved. Similarly, Dracula's characters dissolve Dracula's uniqueness by creating a text about him and subsequently copying this text. They bridge the gap between this figure and their lives by replacing it with a text of themselves their voices, not that of Dracula, which the reader gets to know through the text. The aura, and Dracula, are lost because there is no longer a distance and the characters in the book are given power through mechanical reproduction of the aura is a product of what Benjamin sees as the evolution of the audience. In this sense, his observations have been labeled "anthropological" rather than philosophical. Label this audience the “masses.” Modern audiences don't care about preserving authenticity. The "masses" want to bridge the differences created by uniqueness. It is "the desire of the contemporary masses to bring things closer together spatially and humanly, as ardent as their tendency to overcome the uniqueness of everyday reality by accepting its reproduction". (223) The “masses” want instant gratification. They no longer appreciate the distance that a work of art offers them. By accepting its reproduction, they overcome the uniqueness represented by distance. The withering of the aura also has another benefit for the public: the increased opportunity to participate in this new medium. In relation to the press and the participation it entails, Benjamin writes. With the growing reach of the press, which brought new political, religious, scientific, professional and local bodies before readers, a growing number of readers first became writers, the occasional ones. It all began with the daily press which opened up space to its readers for "letters to the editor". And today there is no European who has a paid job who cannot, in principle, find the opportunity to publish somewhere? The distinction between author and audience thus risks losing its fundamental character. (232)The printing press made it possible for anyone from the educated intellectual to the "gainfully employed European" to become an author. The proliferation of printed texts has led to this blurring of distinctions between public andauthor. The reading public now becomes the writing public. By abandoning tradition, humanity has "renewed", but at the expense of the aura. The press destroyed the aura but also generated the energy to write for an audience that was denied access to artistic creation for other reasons. These characters are a good example of this phenomenon. Jonathan Harker more than deserves the title of "gainfully employed European". His diary, written in shorthand, the most technical form of English, forms the basis of the text. The characters also blur the distinctions between author and audience because each character plays both roles. They compose the text and are the only readers. I am their audience. Stoker problematizes this relationship with the printed text. Dracula celebrates these new techniques of disseminating and organizing information, but those who use them seem comical in their almost religious zeal to use these tools. Mina, the embodiment of this phenomenon of compulsive writing and copying, observes: "I feel so grateful to the man who invented the 'travel' typewriter and to Mr. Morris for getting me this one. I should have felt rather out of touch doing the would work if I had to write with a pen." (350) She writes this while she and Van Helsing are in the middle of Dracula's exotic, foreign country. It is full of superstitious natives and lacks the trappings of any kind of technological innovation. His only joy is the use of a machine, this "travel typewriter", the only vestige of the thriving manufacturing industry that conquered Europe and transformed Western culture. A pen, itself a medium for human presence, would have made Mina feel "rather off track." The only way to organize and transmit information is through the use of this machine. The dependence on mechanical production for the dissemination of information is a fetishism for Mina and, by extension, for modern culture. Benjamin describes this dependence on producibility as the genesis of an era in which art will never be the same again. The loss of the aura may be a “renewal of humanity” but it is not a good development for art. Stoker addresses this fear in this passage. Mina, in the process of losing her humanity and becoming a vampire, relies so much on the typewriter and its dehumanizing effects. The pen, despite being a mediated form, shows the uniqueness of the human presence in writing. Humanity then begins to mirror the mechanisms of production, becoming systematic and exact. This reflects the influence of modernity on writing. Relics of modernity litter the novel: there are Kodak cameras, cyclists, messengers carrying telegrams, Winchesters, etc. Technology is a pervasive force in their world. They appreciate it for their destructive purposes, but they also stand in awe of it. These vampire hunters feel the need to record everything as accurately as possible. By recording these supernatural events through these mechanical instruments, these English characters maintain control over a force that makes them feel increasingly powerless. Seward at one point says, "Jonathan Harker asked me to make a note of this, as he says he is certainly not up to the task and wants an exact record kept." (329) Harker, like Mina, venerates the act of recording and organizing information. This desperate attempt to keep an "exact record" seems like the only way to conquer Dracula. Like the original, Dracula must be destroyed through the means of technology, methodically recording and systematizing his movements and history of events. Vampire hunters seem to desire and encourage this disembodied communication. They don't think twice beforeto use all these new and advanced gadgets. The letters between Lucy and Mina, the diaries, Sewards's mechanically reproduced voice, are all collected into a single text. Mina, in the name of expediency and noble cause, assimilates all these traces of human presence in numerous copies of a typed manuscript. Their words, now in the form of uniform typefaces, are devoid of any sign of individuality or human origin. Mina is the printing press and Dracula is its text, both literally and figuratively. Reflecting ambivalence towards modernity, Dracula also resists any kind of careful analysis. The text itself is multi-layered and ambiguous, forcing the reader to see both perspectives of this phenomenon. In "Vampiric Typing: Dracula and His Media" Jennifer Wicke comments on Dracula's use of modern media to both compose and destroy himself. “What makes this text so modern,” he explains, “is that it knows it will be consumed, it stages the very act of its consumption and problematizes it.” (491) The book is a very conscious text. He knows he is the product of mass reproduction, but he can also maintain a critical vision of the process. Stoker's very act of writing the book and the events of the book seem like an endorsement of technological reproducibility. It is the group's meticulousness and their undying faithfulness to recording the text that helps them destroy and eradicate Dracula. The text addresses the fear of technology but also affirms the need to technologize information. When Dracula attempted to thwart his hunters by burning the diaries and phonograph recordings, they are relieved to learn that there is still a copy of the manuscript in the safe. Regarding this episode, Wicke writes, "this fortuitous reclamation of one's work, and also of the text held in the reader's hand, derives all too ironically from a copy. If copying is the inevitable destiny of the mass produced, then it is also salvation." (490) The reader must now recognize that his text is a copy of a copy. The originals have been destroyed, but somehow the text still retains its authority. The existence of the text as a copy of the recording of a methodical group of Englishmen is a tribute to their tenacity as writers and recorders. If Dracula is the original who possesses the aura, this text is the modern version, which possesses its own auratic qualities. In his essay Wicke shows that there is a connection between "the sexy act of vampirism and the oh-so-prosaic work" of typing. (467) In the same way that a vampire sucks the life out of its victims, typewriters blend all the human voices of the text into one uniform, dehumanized form. Count Dracula is analogous to the social force of mass culture "the development of media technologies in its many forms, such as mass transportation... the production of images and mass-produced narrative." (469) The text speaks to the consumption and use of these new media, however vampiric they may be, in the production of texts. Mina, through her use of new media, consumes Dracula through the text and becomes its author. Wicke comments that after Dracula bites Mina, she too "consumes him but without lust, without desire and with her cognitive faculties intact". Ever the sane woman that she is, Mina still retains an awareness of herself in the midst of consuming and Dracula. In fact, she seems to have a deeper insight into Dracula's whereabouts and is given more authority in the text. Wicke comments that "Mina increasingly becomes the author of the text; she takes charge of large tracts of the narrative, she is responsible for providing her fellow vampire hunters with all the information about Dracula's whereabouts." (485) Since Mina has entered the kingdom of.