Kiss, Robert James (2000) The Doppelgänger in Wilhelmine cinema (1895-1914) : modernity, audiences and identity in turn-of-the-century Germany. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The Doppelganger is a celebrated motif of German silent cinema that has been
seen by art and literary historians as a filmic descendant of German Romanticism,
and by psychoanalysts as a concretisation of human beings' fears regarding their own
potentially fragmentary nature and mortality. This research builds on such
interpretations by suggesting that - in the case of German cinema before World War
One, at least - the Doppelganger can be read as a signifier of modernity as it was
experienced by members of various social groupings.
Returning to primary sources, some 203 films are identified that featured a
Doppelganger and were released in Germany between 1895 and 1914. This corpus is
broken down both by genre (into detective films, comedies and art films), and in
terms of the polarities of identity about which the figure of the Doppelganger is
constructed (high yersus low class, female versus male, and black versus white).
From here, individual chapters address the Doppelganger as a fantastic representation
of shifting class, gender, sexual and ethnic identities in Wilhelmine society. Each
chapter draws in particular on contemporary sources relating to the various frames of
identity under discussion, and suggests possible readings available to Wilhelmine
spectators of the Doppelganger in individual films and genres. In this way, meaning is
located at the intersection of the filmic text and contemporary discourse, and the
'Doppelganger film' can be regarded as a conduit for exploring issues of shifting
identity within modernity, with particular regard to perceived new identities
constructed 'between' supposedly stable binary oppositions of class, gender, and so
on. These include the 'new woman' (perceived as a female incursion into the male
sphere), the nouveau riche (moving between low and high class identity), the 'sexual
intermediate' (constructed between male and female sexuality), and so forth.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Doubles in motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Germany -- History -- 20th century, Germany -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Official Date:	June 2000
Dates:	Date Event June 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of German Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Carter, Erica
Sponsors:	British Academy. Humanities Research Board
Extent:	558 leaves
Language:	eng

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