The Mass Ornament. Siegfried Kracauer
Image: Tiller Girls (from military parades to mass ornament), Connie Mendoza, 2007
Siegfried Kracauer- The Mass Ornament
1
The position that an epoch occupies in the historical process can be determined more strikingly from an analysis of its incospicuous surface-level expressions than from that epoch’s judgements about itself. Since these judgements are expressions of the tendencies of a particular era, they do not offer conclusive testimony about its overall constitution. The surface-level expressions, however, by virtue of their unconscious nature, provide unmediated access to the fundamental substance of the state of things. Conversely, knowledge of this state of things depends on the interpretation of these surface-level expressions. The fundamental substance of an epoch and its unheeded impulses illuminate each other reciprocally.
2
In the domain of body culture, which also covers the illustrated newspapers, tastes have been quietly changing. The process began with the Tiller Girls. These products of American distraction factories are no longer individuals girls, but indissoluble girl clusters whose movements are demonstrations of mathematics. As they condense into figures in the revues, performances of the same geometric precision are taking place in what is always the same packed stadium, be it in Australia or India, not to mention America. The tiniest village, which they have not yet reached, learns about them through the weekly newsreels. One need only glance at the screen to learn that the ornaments are composed if thousands of bodies, sexless bodies in bathing suits. The regularity of their patterns is cheered by the masses, themselves arranges by the stands in tier upon ordered tier.
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