Remixing the Monster
In Jewish Folklore, a golem is an animate being created entirely from
inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word golem literally means
“cocoon”, but can also mean “fool”, “silly”, or even “stupid”. The
name appears to derive from the word gelem (גלם), which means “raw
material”.
The story of the golem in Jewish text may first have appeared as the
story of god forming Adam from clay. However, it is most popularly
associated with Prague where it appears in Jewish folklore. The story
concerns a village of Jews under the threat of the Holy Roman Emperor.
To protect the Jewish community a rabbi constructs thegolem out of
clay and brings it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. In
some versions of the folktale, the golem is a saviour, in others he
becomes increasingly violent, killing gentiles and spreading fear.
But is Wegener’s Der Golem (1920) anti-Semitic? As I watched the film
last night for the first time I couldn’t help asking myself that
question. Why would an early 20th-century German director decide to
film a Jewish legend? Is it merely coincidence that Wegener, who plays
the Golem in the film, earned an “Actor of the State” designation from
the Nazi party?
The film plays on some Jewish stereotypes. The rabbis are portrayed in
Orientalized wardrobe adorned with arcane symbols and inscrutable
magical scrawl, perpetuating the hoary Christian association of Jews
with sorcery. The Jews exploit the Golem for labor while the courtly
gentiles offer him flowers. In the end it is a gentile child that
shows the Golem kindness, but this kindness unwittingly becomes the
death of the Golem. To complicate things further, Wegener’s film
attributes tropes of greed and money-lending to the Emperor’s court,
not to the Jews in the Prague ghetto.
Making a black and white case for anti-Semitism in Der Golem is nearly
impossible. While there are Jewish stereotypes that can be pointed to,
there is also room for an interpretation of Wegener’s Golem story as
separate from Judaism and conforming more to a Faustian / Dr.
Frankenstein formula. In this interpretation of the story, the ethical
ambiguity of Wegener’s rabbi is closer to that of Goethe’s Faust—a
symbol of the artist and the the unstable implication of his
creation—than it is to familiar anti-Semitic stereotypes. The story of
an obsessive scholar who creates a homunculus and conjures the devil
to bring the figure to life is more universal than traditional Jewish
folklore.
The 1920’s was a significant period in the portrayal of ethnic and
racial stereotypes on the screen. In America, Der Golem was predated
by D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. This film, set during and
after the Civil War, was based on a novel called The Clansman and
provoked great controversy for its positive portrayal of white
supremacy and sympathetic account of the rise of the Ku Klux Clan. The
Birth of a Nation is also noted for its innovative technical and
narrative achievements, and its status as the first Hollywood
‘blockbuster.’ I bring up The Birth of a Nation to point out another
film which exists on one level as technically stunning while carrying with it a
complicated history.
Many of the Germans I’ve spoken to about Der Golem are unaware of its controversiality. It exists for them as a classic horror film, nothing more and nothing less. This might explain why on Saturday when Der Golem was set to a live score and remixed by the Swiss
band Less, that remix had no sense of irony to it. There was no subtext, no wink at the audience. Instead the film and the score seemed separated from any interpretation. Clips from the film were looped until they lost their original meaning and became merely rhythmic images. It was certainly impressive to see so many musicians working together and collaborating live with such an old and powerful film and maybe it is just my own hangup to want a direct dialogue with Der Golem.
-Sabrina
