Joe May's Indian Tomb

Claudia Breger Performing Violence: Joe May’s Indian Tomb (1921) The article investigates the productivity of performance-theoretical approaches for the study of violence in German cultural history. My case study for this undertaking is Joe May’s popular Das Indische Grabmal [The Indian Tomb] (1921), through which I connect the theoretical argument to film-historical debates on Kracauer’s gene- alogies of fascist violence in Weimar cinema. Different approaches subsumed under the “performative turn” concur in the notion that performance wins its critical force by subverting narrative and representation. My close reading of the film begins by discussing two epistemologically divergent versions of this argument (performance as the presencing of the real vs. performance as the theatricalizing of representation). While building on the latter argument, my own reading of Das Indische Grabmal nonetheless demonstrates that the complex workings of performance are better under- stood by reconceptualizing it as a force of (critical) re-contextualization, acting not necessarily against, but in and through narrative. Analyzing the film’s aesthetic of narrative performance ennables a reading of it as an artistic “Kritik der Gewalt” [“critique of violence”] (Benjamin), which, however, remains equivocally embedded in trans/national discourses of imperialist and racist violence. With roots in theater studies, linguistics, and anthropology as well as the aesthetic discourses of twentieth century avant-gardes, notions of performance have taken center stage throughout the humanities in the last decades. Perhaps too neatly summarized as “the performative turn”, this shift has foregrounded theoretical paradigms associated with diverging disciplinary as well as epistemological and political ideas; arguably, the notion “performance” can be defined only as an “essentially contested concept”.1 Throughout this hetero- geneous field, however, a prominent theoretical motif is the idea that performative forms of articulation – be it linguistic or bodily – present a challenge to representation and narrative. In various ways, performance has thus been conceptualized as a force of critique or subversion vis-à-vis the coherence of ideology, hegemonic discourse or socio-symbolic regimes of discipline. In this article, I investigate the theoretical productivity of several of these performative approaches for the historical analysis of violence in German culture. My case study is the 1921 film Das Indische Grabmal [The Indian 1 Marvin Carlson: Performance: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge 1996. P. 1. (in reference to Mary S. Strine, Beverly Whitaker Long, and Mary Frances Hopkins.) See also Shannon Jackson: Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004. Pp. 8–15. 200 Tomb], a two-part epic directed by Joe May and written by Fritz Lang in col- laboration with Thea von Harbou, based on her novel of the same title.2 This choice leads us onto charged terrain with respect to national histories of violence. Weimar film in general, but especially its expressionist scenarios for which Lang and Harbou stand in as representative figures,3 have been closely associated with the rise of fascism ever since Siegfried Kracauer’s famous verdict regarding the link between Caligari and Hitler. To be sure, Kracauer himself discusses Das Indische Grabmal only briefly as a film of “secondary importance”, an example of the sensational adventure genre marked by imperialist fantasy without the “introvert tendency” of expressionism.4 But one could certainly make a case for fully including the film’s Orientalist narrative, with its motifs of charismatic tyranny and unconditional submission, into Kracauer’s filmic “procession of tyrants” (77), be it based on Lang’s and Harbou’s involve- ment in the film5 or on more general critiques of the dichotomy between popular and art film in Weimar Germany. Furthermore, we could highlight the central importance of imperialist scenarios for the violent, anti-democratic figuration at stake in Kracauer’s account of a cinema “[r]eplete with authoritarian figures” and “fables that offered protofascist solutions”.6 Arguably more relevant, however, are questions about the validity, and con- tinued relevance, of Kracauer’s larger point. Throughout the last decades, film scholarship has seriously challenged his verdict on Weimar film, taking issue with the underlying assumptions about the national character of film history, as well as Kracauer’s methodological strategies for establishing it.7 In an article specifically relevant to my context, for example, Christian Rogowski 2 Decades later, Lang directed a post-war remake which is quite radically different in both aesthetics and plot: Der Tiger von Eschnapur [The Tiger of Eschnapur]. Das Indische Grabmal [The Indian Tomb]. Dir. Fritz Lang. CCC Filmkunst [Berlin], Rizzoli Editore, Régina, Critérion Film [Paris] 1959. DVDs 2003 Fantoma Films. For biographical information on May, see Joe May: Regisseur und Produzent. Ed. by Hans-Michael Bock and Claudia Lenssen. München: edition text ϩ kritik 1991. 3 Thomas Elsaesser qualifies this misperception, emphasizing that Lang never iden- tified himself as an expressionist filmmaker. Thomas Elsaesser: Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary. New York: Routledge 2000. P. 145. 4 Siegfried Kracauer: From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film Ed. by Leonardo Quaresima. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2004. (Rev. and exp. edition.) Pp. 56–57. 5 See Thomas Elsaesser: Filmgeschichte – Firmengeschichte – Familiengeschichte. Der Übergang vom Wilhelminischen zum Weimarer Film. In: Joe May. Pp. 11–30. 6 Elsaesser: Weimar Cinema. P. 145. 7 For a summary of these criticisms see Leonardo Quaresima: Introduction, Reread- ing Kracauer. In: From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. By Siegfried Kracauer. Ed. by Leonardo Quaresima. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2004. (Rev. and exp. edition.) Pp. xv–xlix..

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