Rashomon and "Reproduction"

While I was initially discouraged by the 20 pages of reading and the hour and a half long movie, I actually enjoyed the entirety of Rashomon and the way that Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” was very cohesive with the movie. Benjamin is focusing on the idea of how a recreation of something never gives quite the same effect as its original. All of us can attest to this as many of our favorite books are turned into movies. A work is created in a specific way for a reason, a book isn’t meant to be watched and a stage play isn’t set up for the big screen. This isn’t to say that recreations can’t work out in the right context, because I can appreciate a play turned into a good movie or a book turned blockbuster. So, I don’t think Benjamin’s ideas should be the end all be all of all forms of recreations. However, if Rashomon had been remade today in English, it would lose a lot of its meaning. As non-Japanese speakers, we as an audience probably lose a lot of the intended meaning in translation. However, if we were to take away the original performances of the actors as the original director had intended, the movie would be much less effective. Well, maybe not “much less” effective, but definitely effective in a different way. Essentially, a recreation isn’t always just a copy of its original; it becomes an entirely separate work of its own.