We started out in this course discussing stereotypes in films—using the short films Schwarzfahrer (Black Rider) and Ausstieg Rechts (Exit right)—and we continued this discussion on Wednesday (Jan. 15) while discussing Murnau’s Nosferatu, particularly through the lens of Jeffrey Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).”
Count Orlac arriving by ship
The first thesis, “The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body,” claims that monsters are specific to particular cultures—in other words, a particular socio-cultural moment in history. We discussed the cultural moment of Weimar Germany with help from the third thesis, “The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis.” This thesis explains how the monster defies categorization and, therefore, creates a crisis of meaning. The monster also appears at times of crisis to help explain, make sense of, or deal with the crisis. Weimar Cinema is sometimes termed “cinema of crisis” because it reflected the various crises of the time. We focused on two narratives: antisemitism and trauma. Following Siegfried Kracauer’s thesis in From Caligari to Hitler, Nosferatu can be read as a stepping stone along the path that led to Hitler. However, I warned against taking a teleological approach to history and introduced Anton Kaes’s thesis from Shell Shock Cinema as a counter-narrative. In this reading, Nosferatu is actually about the First World War, as Orlok means “war” in Dutch and the plague is a metaphor for the mass death and destruction of the war. These are, of course, only two cultural readings of the film.
Knock reading cryptic symbols while the intertitle associated him with money and greed.
We focused most of our time on thesis four, “The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference,” which emphasizes the alterity of the Monster—his condition as an outsider, as Other. We looked at this specifically with regards to the
Count Orlac reading the same cryptic symbols as he prepares to sign the contract
Jewish stereotypes portrayed in the characters Knock and Count Orlok. Not only the physical characteristics, but also the costumes, character traits (in particular greed), and the foreign symbols that both Knock and Orlok are seen reading designate them as Jewish. Additionally, the historical belief that Jews brought the plague to Europe is given form in the film when Orlok arrives on his ship filled with rats that brings the plague to Germany. Orlok is not only Jewish but specifically an Eastern-European Jew, reflective of the anxiety and racism of Western-European nations at the time. We can also read Count Orlok more generally as a foreigner and Nosferatu as a story about xenophobia and what happens when a foreigner takes up residence in a new land.
Finally, the seventh thesis, “The Monster Stands at the Threshold… of Becoming,” reminds us that we create the monsters who then force us to examine why. We connected this final point to the proliferation of Vampire and Zombie movies since Nosferatu. We zeroed in, however, on serial killer films and television shows as a genre, in which the serial killer, though based on real events and people, has been fictionalized and turned into a monster that is no longer human.
Ellen before her seduction
We also discussed the relationship between monsters and desire—in particular sexual desire—by examining the character of Ellen and her actions at the end of the film. Ellen embodies both a woman “pure of heart” and not. Does she have agency—did she have a choice in her own sacrifice? Is she a martyr?
For this post, please address one of these aspects of the monster as it relates to Nosferatu. In other words, analyze Nosferatu through the lens of one of the seven theses.
In the seventh thesis, “The Monster Stands at the Threshold…of Becoming”, of Jeffrey Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” it states that we create monsters that we must face and answer why we created them and our opinions of the world. One example of this is Ellen’s actions at the end of the film. Ellen allows herself to be seduced by Nosferatu and dies. Allowing Nosferatu to enter her bedroom and bite her is a metaphor for women giving into their sexual desires. Her death by giving into Nosferatu, and thus her sexual desires, is a warning to other women about the dangers of giving into their sexual desires. According to the seventh thesis also, monsters bring knowledge, either for better or for worse. Ellen is again an example of the victim of the knowledge that the monster brings. Before Hutter brought the book about vampires with him back hom, Ellen was innocent and did not know about the “Pure of Heart” woman. However, one everything happens between Nosferatu and Hutter, Hutter brings the vampire book home and Ellen becomes aware of the “Pure of Heart” woman after reading this book. Ellen then chooses to take the role of the “Pure of Heart” woman upon herself and chooses to allow Nosferatu to seduce her, and thus give into her sexual desires with the knowledge she now has.
Cohen’s first thesis on monster culture best fits Nosferatu in my opinion. While there are arguably antisemitic or otherwise xenophobic elements in the antagonist particularly, they do not necessarily convey the main theme of the film. I argue on the side of Anton Kaes in his book Shell Shock Cinema when he argues that Nosferatu is in fact about the First World War. In Cohen’s section titled “The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body”, he states that monsters are created out of “a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place” (page 4). In the context of 1922 Germany, just four years after the war, the event would still have been fresh in the minds of the German public. Count Orlok’s name is not the only thing that calls back to war, as the “Great Dying” that comes with him is symbolic of the large-scale dying brought about by such a “war” as Orlok’s name suggests. In this instance, the vampire is the embodiment of the World War as something that strikes fear into the hearts of the living public, something that resounds both in Germany and other nations suffering large casualties during the conflict. The vampire is feared and hated and serves as “that which reveals” a cultural condemnation of global conflict (page 4).
Thesis One: The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Theses). This thesis summarized is that the Monster’s birth and/or creation the very center of its being is the cause of certain or a specific event(s). The image of Nosferatu and the character Knock is that of a stereotypical Jewish male they have a long nose, bald head, and greed/deviant personality. This portrayal is probably due to Germany’s long history of antisemitism. Portrayed in the Brothers Grimm’s fairy/folk tales that were published before the creation of Germany. Even though Germany are not the first country/group of people to have hostility and/or prejudice against the Jewish people. Their country’s foundation has a speck antisemitism and speck grew into this cultural of antisemitism in Germany is probably the reason why the director of the film F. W. Murnau designed Nosferatu in a more ghoulish way instead of Bram Stoker’s idea/design of a vampire. Also at this point of time most Germany were suffering due to their loss in World War One. There lose and economic crisis were the fuel that was added to their antisemitism cultural. So they villainized their disliked to these people in certain portrayals. All what Nosferatu and Knock portrayals are the antisemitism cultural of Germany in a physical form.
Even with all the Jewish stereotypes that can be projected onto Nosferatu I believe that World War 1 was a stronger motivator for Count Orlac. WW1 brought death and destruction to Europe on a scale never before seen. With the invention of modern day weapons but the use of outdated tactics, such as trench warfare, absolutely decimated the armed forces of European countries. A new type of weapon was also being used during WW1 and that was the use of aerial bombs. This is important because now civilians away from the war aren’t even safe. A deadly force that comes from nowhere can destroy an entire city just like Count Orlac attempted to do in Nosferatu. Poison gas is another example of how warfare had advanced allowing an unseen force kill in waves. “The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place.”. In this excerpt, from Jeffrey Cohen’s Monster Culture Theses I, Cohen states that a monster appears only at a crossroad. Nosferatu was released only 4 years after WW1 had ended when the fear of what foreign countries had done to Germany were still very much alive.
The film and character of “Nosferatu” many of Jeremy Cohen’s theses on monsters but fits best in the idea of “The Monster [being] the Harbinger of Crisis.” Since Nosferatu was designed with the stereotypes of Eastern Jewish People from his hooked nose, pointy ears, and growing fingernails, it is for certain that this monster is a cultural body. Cohen clarifies that the monster is a “disturbing hybrid” which Nosferatu’s character is. As a film that was released just four years after the most deadly war that sent the generations living during that time in an Age of Anxiety, the filmmakers had a lot of fear to play with. Cohen continues that the monster in this theory “notoriously appears at times of crisis,” since the film had Nosferatu’s character bring the rats that brought the plague in Germany, this still stands. One issue I have with Cohen’s theory is that he specifies that the monster will always escape to the corners of the world from which he came from, as a conceptual point rather than literally geographic. I argue that in the case of Nosferatu, the “margins” he comes from are in Eastern Europe. Since the writings of John Mandeville, monsters have always been placed in the corners of the world, in a literal sense, to separate Catholics from other areas where there are different cultures and races, the locus can be conceptual and literal.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Monster Theory : Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayarti Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974).
Thesis three in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Theses) is called The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis. This thesis explains the concept that monsters were created because of fear. When people felt fear, they would come up with a monster and blame all of society’s problems on that monster, using them as a scapegoat. People were also afraid of the unkown. That is why the lochness, bigfoot, and vampires were created. When people were in troubling times, they did not want to think people within their society were causing them. This is seen in the film Nosferatu. One of the characters has the stereotype of looking like a Jew. Jews were used as scapegoats a lot in times of trouble. They thought this character was a vampire because he could read evil writing. Because there was a lot of fear at this time, and monsters were already a concept, this character was deemed to be a vampire during this crisis.