Modernism as Reaction to Modernity in Film and Art
This paper examines whether modernism can be fairly described as a reaction to modernity, drawing on Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's 1928 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, Walter Benjamin's essay on surrealism, and Ken Burns' jazz documentary. The paper argues that modernist aesthetics — characterized by fragmentation, free association, and the subversion of linear time — emerged in direct response to the depersonalizing forces of industrialization and secularization. Through close readings of surrealist imagery and the improvised jazz riff as parallel aesthetic forms, the paper traces how modernist artists articulated the psychological and social disorientation of living between collapsing old orders and an alienating new one.
- Introduction: Modernism and the Modern Condition: Modernism defined as reaction to industrialized modernity
- Surrealism, Jazz, and the Fragmented Modern Mind: Benjamin on surrealism, juxtaposition, and jazz as parallel forms
- Between Two Epochs: Old Order and New Secularism: Modernism positioned between religious and secular orders
- Time, Memory, and the Integrity of the Body: Film's treatment of time, memory, and bodily integrity
- Language, Anti-Commercialism, and the Modernist Aesthetic: Adorno, anti-commercialism, and the subversion of regimented order
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a concrete, well-chosen primary text — Un Chien Andalou — as its central analytical object, grounding abstract claims about modernism in specific cinematic images and sequences.
- It productively synthesizes multiple theoretical voices (Benjamin, Adorno) with artistic examples (Dalí, Buñuel, jazz), showing how different modernist practices share a common anti-regimentation impulse.
- The analogy between the surrealist film image and the jazz riff is an original and illuminating comparison that gives the argument a distinctive conceptual thread.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading in dialogue with theory: it doesn't simply describe Un Chien Andalou but interprets specific shots and narrative choices through the lenses of Benjamin and Adorno, showing how theoretical frameworks can illuminate formal artistic choices and vice versa.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by defining modernism and introducing its central analogy (surrealist film as jazz riff). It then situates the Dalí–Buñuel collaboration within Benjamin's account of surrealist consciousness. A third movement addresses the historical position of modernism between religious and secular orders. The fourth section performs a close reading of specific film sequences to examine modernism's treatment of time and memory. The final section applies Adorno's aesthetic theory to the film's anti-commercial, visually dominant form, closing with a synthesis of the argument.
Introduction: Modernism and the Modern Condition
Modernism is often defined as a chaotic, pastiche-style rendering of the difficulties of modern, industrialized life. The attempted regimentation of modernity becomes, in modernism, exposed for the absurdity it represents — through surrealist and other modernist aesthetics such as the improvised jazz riff. For example, in the 1928 film Un Chien Andalou by the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and the surrealist director Luis Buñuel, the pace of the film's absurd depiction of life is harsh, fragmented, and full of confusion. It seems to exist in no certain time or place, nor within a conventionally identifiable range of historical or social images, and is thus coherent with the impersonal nature of modern life. It is, to cite Ken Burns' documentary on music, like a "jazz" riff on the modern mind rendered through images rather than sound.
Works Cited
Un Chien Andalou. Directed by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, 1928.
Benjamin, Walter. "Surrealism and Adorno." In Critical Theory and Society. Edited by Bronner and Kellner.
Jazz: A History of America's Music. Directed by Ken Burns, 2002.
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