Comments on: RWF: My Dream from the Dream of Franz Biberkopf http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/rwf-my-dream-from-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf/ ....................................................................."That bottle keeps its blink on its side red from horizon." Clark Coolidge...................................... Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:51:13 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Julian Myers http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/rwf-my-dream-from-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf/comment-page-1/#comment-448 Julian Myers Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:48:36 +0000 http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=299#comment-448 I think I may have been wrong when I said, above, "psychological – <i>as opposed to</i> political, moral, or ethical - terms. For of course there is no such opposition. As Stephen suggested in <a href="http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/14/even-an-oath-can-be-amputated/" rel="nofollow">week two</a> - and as Brandon, Cynthia and Elise have made clear above - it is the relationship between individual psyche and collective politics that matters most. For the record let me point to a book relevant to a psychological account of Mr. Beaverhead (a joke there?): Klaus Theweleit's wild two-volume study of the journals of the Weimar paramilitary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps" rel="nofollow">freikorps</a>, called <a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/T/theweleit_male.html" rel="nofollow">Male Fantasies</a>. I read <i>Male Fantasies</i> as a young punk and found it coming to mind often as I puzzled over Alexanderplatz. I think I may have been wrong when I said, above, “psychological – as opposed to political, moral, or ethical – terms. For of course there is no such opposition. As Stephen suggested in week two – and as Brandon, Cynthia and Elise have made clear above – it is the relationship between individual psyche and collective politics that matters most. For the record let me point to a book relevant to a psychological account of Mr. Beaverhead (a joke there?): Klaus Theweleit’s wild two-volume study of the journals of the Weimar paramilitary freikorps, called Male Fantasies. I read Male Fantasies as a young punk and found it coming to mind often as I puzzled over Alexanderplatz.

]]> By: cynthia Sailers http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/rwf-my-dream-from-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf/comment-page-1/#comment-441 cynthia Sailers Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:59:13 +0000 http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=299#comment-441 Elise, your post(s) captures something so nicely here (I just re-read it and can't get my mind around what it was entirely...maybe it is also a sense from the email you just sent), about the physicality of the film, how you've embodied it, the hunger, the sweat, the poetic aspects, the ways we hold each other accountable or not... Over the weekend, I also watched the Juliane Lorenz documentary. I had several reactions. Initially, that my responses had been too heavy handed over the last four weeks, trying to see some larger, group formation/identity issues and missing more of the subtleties of the film. I don't know, even as Julian noted the limitations of our psychological readings, I thought, how interesting, I felt like I was expanding my readings out, maybe too forcibly. I also thought of the physical aspects of the film as most of the actors discussed the embodiment of their characters. Hanna Schygulla forgets if it were she or Mieze who get pregnant in the film. She thinks it was Mieze. The mix-up explained as the whole "mine-yours" thinking. Günter Lamprecht (Franz) keeps talking about how he had to be fat for 11 months, having a horrible holiday break while the others got to relax and "be in the sun"; he had to stay pale and keep up his potbelly. Gottfried John (Reinhold) reveals his anxiety about the homosexual scenes, which I have to say felt somewhat homophobic. For example, would he still keep his lady if he played these scenes, etc. I'm sure all actors focus on the labor of the role, but I was still struck by the kinds of anxieties these actors talked about as foreground to other topics, working with Fassbinder, politics, aesthetics, etc. They seem deeply invested in their character. There are also wonderful bits from the costume designer, who looks like she was 19 when she worked on this film, and how she had to convince H.S. that she had to give up how she usually had a waist, waists were not in, in this period (something like that). And some of the thinking around where to place Franz's arm. One other part of the documentary I liked was Hanna Schygulla described the main characters in the film, how she remembered them. She describes Eva, a constant figure in Franz's life, a kind of motherly girlfriend; Reinhold as someone who just destroys things but doesn't know why; Mieze as someone with a screw loose, who can love anyone and everyone; and Franz's as someone who believe everything is good. I can't remember now if these were descriptions from Fassbinder or her own. They seemed simple, but capture some core of each of them, that I think my stabs over the past month, at say Reinhold's destructiveness felt overly complicated, foreclosing something more unknown, enigmatic, about him. Elise, your post(s) captures something so nicely here (I just re-read it and can’t get my mind around what it was entirely…maybe it is also a sense from the email you just sent), about the physicality of the film, how you’ve embodied it, the hunger, the sweat, the poetic aspects, the ways we hold each other accountable or not… Over the weekend, I also watched the Juliane Lorenz documentary. I had several reactions. Initially, that my responses had been too heavy handed over the last four weeks, trying to see some larger, group formation/identity issues and missing more of the subtleties of the film. I don’t know, even as Julian noted the limitations of our psychological readings, I thought, how interesting, I felt like I was expanding my readings out, maybe too forcibly. I also thought of the physical aspects of the film as most of the actors discussed the embodiment of their characters. Hanna Schygulla forgets if it were she or Mieze who get pregnant in the film. She thinks it was Mieze. The mix-up explained as the whole “mine-yours” thinking. Günter Lamprecht (Franz) keeps talking about how he had to be fat for 11 months, having a horrible holiday break while the others got to relax and “be in the sun”; he had to stay pale and keep up his potbelly. Gottfried John (Reinhold) reveals his anxiety about the homosexual scenes, which I have to say felt somewhat homophobic. For example, would he still keep his lady if he played these scenes, etc. I’m sure all actors focus on the labor of the role, but I was still struck by the kinds of anxieties these actors talked about as foreground to other topics, working with Fassbinder, politics, aesthetics, etc. They seem deeply invested in their character. There are also wonderful bits from the costume designer, who looks like she was 19 when she worked on this film, and how she had to convince H.S. that she had to give up how she usually had a waist, waists were not in, in this period (something like that). And some of the thinking around where to place Franz’s arm.
One other part of the documentary I liked was Hanna Schygulla described the main characters in the film, how she remembered them. She describes Eva, a constant figure in Franz’s life, a kind of motherly girlfriend; Reinhold as someone who just destroys things but doesn’t know why; Mieze as someone with a screw loose, who can love anyone and everyone; and Franz’s as someone who believe everything is good. I can’t remember now if these were descriptions from Fassbinder or her own. They seemed simple, but capture some core of each of them, that I think my stabs over the past month, at say Reinhold’s destructiveness felt overly complicated, foreclosing something more unknown, enigmatic, about him.

]]> By: Elise http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/rwf-my-dream-from-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf/comment-page-1/#comment-440 Elise Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:30:21 +0000 http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=299#comment-440 Well. I watched our grande finale saturday, and then went careening out into San Francisco's daylight for the dyke march, still nauseous from the interminable bender of Franz's dark night of the soul in the nut house. "And I turned and saw the injustice of everything" (final episode) "with eyes not made of sugar and dirt all mixed together" (epilogue). For me, the preoccupation of these last segments, the improvised dream-sequence of the epilogue in particular, turns not so much on work as on vision--Fassbinder's camera giving Franz a near-prophetic peek into the future where his own conflicts are writ large against and within those of the collective. In this sense I don't see the opposition of psychological verses political explanations/interpretations for the "wrong" that is being taken up and confronted here, rather I see the impossibility of extricating one from the other. Surely, as Julian so aptly put, Franz can act. (Thanks also Julian for that little utube clip of Fassbinder). The question rather, as it is for any social being, is to what extent can he (any of us) consciously choose our actions and what's more, consciously reflect on the consequence of those actions, not just for ourselves but for their impact on other(s). While this may be "work" I see it fundamentally as a task of vision. And so Franz's "job" that he gets in the end, described at first as "gate keeper" and then as "watchman" rests on his ability to use his eyes--not only to see, but to discern and understand. "I'll keep my eyes open now" says the voice-over. Emerging from his madness (which is actually what makes him sane) Franz will be put to the test in the world--Will he be able to see, that is to recognize and understand the evil coming toward him, as well as his own capacity for harming and murder? Did he learn from his confrontation with Ida's ghost that the violence he inflicted on her continues on as consequence of his act--or will he recognize the swastika that he once donned to sell newspapers, and discriminate its meaning in the world, beyond the utilitarian fulfillment of his own needs? He has grappled. But has he learned how to learn? This question brings me full circle-- "You have to be able to see the world and go toward it" Franz is told upon release of prision. "Hunger is how you're broken if you don't behave as you should" he observes at the onset. "It's not good to live in a human body," he observes at the end. And, "a man cannot exist without many other people." Yet his reckoning seems to turn around another realization--that his "crime" was in "safeguarding" (man's fearful desire). In Franz' prolonged struggle with his "madness" he attempts to wake from a childlike slumber of endless suffering. After his own punishment, he returns to stand as witness to Reinhold's crimes and yet forgives him. Does this forgiveness come from the inability to hold another accountable (he seems to feel that Reinhold couldn't help himself) or is it the result of his understanding his own and Reinhold's culpability and need of punishment? Has he learned to negotiate a world of risk that national socialism proposed to remedy with the final solution? "The black night is coming." The world is far from well. Will Franz keep his eyes open? Or, to quote Fassbinder's question to us--Will he (we) stupidly and unconsciously go along with it, like in the past? Well. I watched our grande finale saturday, and then went careening out into San Francisco’s daylight for the dyke march, still nauseous from the interminable bender of Franz’s dark night of the soul in the nut house. “And I turned and saw the injustice of everything” (final episode) “with eyes not made of sugar and dirt all mixed together” (epilogue).

For me, the preoccupation of these last segments, the improvised dream-sequence of the epilogue in particular, turns not so much on work as on vision–Fassbinder’s camera giving Franz a near-prophetic peek into the future where his own conflicts are writ large against and within those of the collective. In this sense I don’t see the opposition of psychological verses political explanations/interpretations for the “wrong” that is being taken up and confronted here, rather I see the impossibility of extricating one from the other.

Surely, as Julian so aptly put, Franz can act. (Thanks also Julian for that little utube clip of Fassbinder). The question rather, as it is for any social being, is to what extent can he (any of us) consciously choose our actions and what’s more, consciously reflect on the consequence of those actions, not just for ourselves but for their impact on other(s). While this may be “work” I see it fundamentally as a task of vision. And so Franz’s “job” that he gets in the end, described at first as “gate keeper” and then as “watchman” rests on his ability to use his eyes–not only to see, but to discern and understand.

“I’ll keep my eyes open now” says the voice-over. Emerging from his madness (which is actually what makes him sane) Franz will be put to the test in the world–Will he be able to see, that is to recognize and understand the evil coming toward him, as well as his own capacity for harming and murder? Did he learn from his confrontation with Ida’s ghost that the violence he inflicted on her continues on as consequence of his act–or will he recognize the swastika that he once donned to sell newspapers, and discriminate its meaning in the world, beyond the utilitarian fulfillment of his own needs? He has grappled. But has he learned how to learn? This question brings me full circle–

“You have to be able to see the world and go toward it” Franz is told upon release of prision.

“Hunger is how you’re broken if you don’t behave as you should” he observes at the onset.

“It’s not good to live in a human body,” he observes at the end.

And, “a man cannot exist without many other people.”

Yet his reckoning seems to turn around another realization–that his “crime” was in “safeguarding” (man’s fearful desire). In Franz’ prolonged struggle with his “madness” he attempts to wake from a childlike slumber of endless suffering. After his own punishment, he returns to stand as witness to Reinhold’s crimes and yet forgives him. Does this forgiveness come from the inability to hold another accountable (he seems to feel that Reinhold couldn’t help himself) or is it the result of his understanding his own and Reinhold’s culpability and need of punishment? Has he learned to negotiate a world of risk that national socialism proposed to remedy with the final solution?

“The black night is coming.” The world is far from well. Will Franz keep his eyes open? Or, to quote Fassbinder’s question to us–Will he (we) stupidly and unconsciously go along with it, like in the past?

]]> By: Dominic http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/rwf-my-dream-from-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf/comment-page-1/#comment-430 Dominic Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:44:32 +0000 http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=299#comment-430 To be honest, I can't quite recall how differently it plays in the film. Franz does also get a job in the film, as Brandon already noted... it's the same job, he's an assistant doorman, he parks cars. A few times in the last 50 pages of the book, Doblin telegraphs the rebirth to come, as if to say, hang in there, keep reading, our hero is about to be redeemed, just a few more pages... He was one of the major socialist writers of his time, but the redemption through work is so late, so quick and so slight that I can't help feeling that it deliberately lacks conviction. It's bathos, I guess. But if he's being straight with us, it's still the case that the 20s (and 30s, even the 40s and 50s) was a time when politics and labor were entirely intertwined. Nowadays that isn't so; and I don't think it was so for Fassbinder. I like your 'not working hard enough at not working'. To be honest, I can’t quite recall how differently it plays in the film. Franz does also get a job in the film, as Brandon already noted… it’s the same job, he’s an assistant doorman, he parks cars. A few times in the last 50 pages of the book, Doblin telegraphs the rebirth to come, as if to say, hang in there, keep reading, our hero is about to be redeemed, just a few more pages… He was one of the major socialist writers of his time, but the redemption through work is so late, so quick and so slight that I can’t help feeling that it deliberately lacks conviction. It’s bathos, I guess. But if he’s being straight with us, it’s still the case that the 20s (and 30s, even the 40s and 50s) was a time when politics and labor were entirely intertwined. Nowadays that isn’t so; and I don’t think it was so for Fassbinder. I like your ‘not working hard enough at not working’.

]]> By: Julian Myers http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/06/rwf-my-dream-from-the-dream-of-franz-biberkopf/comment-page-1/#comment-421 Julian Myers Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:33:53 +0000 http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=299#comment-421 Dominic, can you say why you found Doblin's ending hard to take? In the film this ending plays somewhat differently, doesn't it. For Fassbinder Franz's non-reconciliation with the world of labor is doomed, but also valiant (as in, "Ne travaillez jamais"). When he finally gets a job watching over a parking garage, it read to me as the ultimate nullity and defeat. Perhaps his tragedy is in failing to politicize his disinclination to work? In not working hard enough at not working. Dominic, can you say why you found Doblin’s ending hard to take?

In the film this ending plays somewhat differently, doesn’t it. For Fassbinder Franz’s non-reconciliation with the world of labor is doomed, but also valiant (as in, “Ne travaillez jamais”). When he finally gets a job watching over a parking garage, it read to me as the ultimate nullity and defeat. Perhaps his tragedy is in failing to politicize his disinclination to work? In not working hard enough at not working.

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