Aesthetic legacies and dashed political hopes: Caspar David friedrich motifs in Roland Emmerich's post-9/11 popcorn message movies

Germanic Review

Volumn 88, Issue 4, 2013, Pages 400-417

  Pirro, Robert ^a  

^a GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Caspar David Friedrich; dashed hopes; disaster; Roland Emmerich

Indexed keywords

EID: 84889802405     PISSN: 00168890     EISSN: 19306962     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00168890.2013.842876     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Blackfilm.com, "The Day After Tomorrow: An Interview with Roland Emmerich," http://www.blackfilm.com/20040528/features/rolandemmerich.shtml (accessed June 1, 2010).
2. Christian Thomsen, "9/11: Before and After," Hollywood: Recent Developments, ed. Christian Thomsen and Angela Krewani (Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, 2005), 9-27, here 23.
3. Vinzenz Hediger, "Making Movies Is Like Making Cars, Only More Fun," Hollywood: Recent Developments, ed. Christian Thomsen and Angela Krewani (Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, 2005), 56-62, here 60.
4. See Michael Rogin, Independence Day, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Enola Gay (London: BFI, 1998). The engagement with political anxieties is inadvertent, according to Rogin, because the film's makers, Emmerich and his co-writer/co-producer Dean Devlin, "comfortably inhabit the closed [Hollywood] world of visual self-referentiality" and are much more interested in the "history of film" than in U.S. political history (28, 29).
5. Christine Haase agrees with Rogin, asserting that "the point of reference for Emmerich's U.S. films is the two-dimensional world of Hollywood cinema as opposed to the empirically-existing nation of the United States of America." See Christine Haase, When Heimat Meets Hollywood: German Filmmakers and America, 1985-2005 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007), 101.
6. See Peter Kr̈amer, "Drei Deutsche in Hollywood: Patriotismus, historisches Trauma, und 'harmlose' Unterhaltung," Die Spur durch den Spiegel: Der Film in der Kultur der Moderne, ed. Malte Hagener, Johann N. Schmidt, and Michael Wedel (Berlin: Bertz, 2004), 132-145, here 140.
7. Thomsen 9; Martha Bayles, "Closing the Curtain on 'Perverse Modernism,"' Chronicles of Higher Education 48, no. 9 (October 26, 2001): B14-B15.
8. Jeffrey Melnick, 9/11 Culture (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 51.
9. Wade Major, "Invasion USA," interview with Roland Emmerich, Box Office (July 1996), 26.
10. For all of his major Hollywood film projects, excepting the 2000 Mel Gibson vehicle, The Patriot, Emmerich has been extensively involved in story development, script writing, and special effects design, in addition to fulfilling the traditional duties of director. Emmerich's wide-ranging influence in the making of his films has been facilitated by his long-time use of a core team of German film technicians and managers, including cameraman Karl Walter Lindenlaub, visual-effects supervisor Volker Engel, production designer Oliver Scholl, and sister Ute Emmerich who has been a co-producer and partner in his film production firm Centropolis Entertainment. See Robert Pirro, "Luftkrieg and Alien Invasion: Unacknowledged Themes of GermanWartime Suffering in the Hollywood Blockbuster Independence Day," European Journal of American Culture 30, no. 1 (2011): 19-42, especially 27-28, for an in-depth discussion of Emmerich's many-sided involvement in generating the story and look of Independence Day (196).
11. See also Jo Müller, Roland Emmerich: Eine Werkbiografie (K̈oln: VGS, 1998); exemplifying Emmerich's insistence on auteur-like control over his films was his decision to walk away from Hudson Hawk and Die Hard 2 because producer Joel Silver wanted to use him as a "glorifizierter Kameramann": Das paste mir überhaupt nicht. Auch bei der Auswahl der Crew und des Teams war es so, dass alle Leute, die ich vorgeschlagen hatte, einfach abgelehnt wurden. Ich sagte: Wenn ich nichte meinen Kameramann, meinen Austatter und alle anderen Leute, mit denen ich zusammenarbeiten muss, selbst bestimmen kann, warum bin ich dann der Regisseur? (81)
12. For a discussion of Independence Day as a presidential action hero film, see John S. Lawrence's "The 100 Million$ Men: Presidential Action/Adventure Heroes of Independence Day (1996) and Air Force One (1997)," Hollywood's White House: The American Presidency in Film and History, eds. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 223-233.
13. Wieland Schmied, Caspar David Friedrich, trans. Russell Stockman (New York: Harry Abrams, 1995), 109.
14. Helmut B̈orsch-Supan, Caspar David Friedrich, trans. Sarah Twohig (New York: George Braaziller, 1974), 140.
15. Schmied 110; See alsoHansDickel, "Eiszeit der Moderne," Idea; Jahrbuch derHamburger Kunsthalle 9 (1990).
16. Dickel connects what he sees as Friedrich's religiously themed treatment of the subject to the traumatic loss of his brother who drowned while trying to save him after Caspar fell through the ice. "Das gefrorene Wasser ist vor dem Hintergrund eines fast sakralen Blaus inszeniert wie ein Altar. Seit dem Tod seines Bruders, der ihn vor dem Ertrinken im Eis retten wollte, dabei aber selbst ertrank, hatte das Eis für Friedrich eine besondere, vermutlich traumatische Bedeutung" (232).
17. Jost Hermand, "Dashed Hopes: On the Painting of the Wars of Liberation," Political Symbolism in Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of George L. Mosse, eds. Seymour Drescher, David Sabean, and Allan Sharlin (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1982), 216-238.
18. Gerd Spitzer, "Cross in the Mountains: Tetschen Altar (1807/08)," From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden, eds. Ulrich Bischoff, Elisabeth Hipp, and Jeanne Anne Nugent (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2006), 34-35, here 34.
19. William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 96.
20. Andreas Kilb, "Independence Day - Lautstark im Weltraum," Zeit Online, 39.
21. Blackfilm.com. See, for another example, Emmerich's exchange with an interviewer from Focus Magazine, "Dass passt Bush überhaupt nicht," Focus Online May 19, 2004, www.focus.de/politik/ausland/emmerich- film-aid-82664.html (accessed June 30, 2011): FOCUS: Ist es nicht Ironie, dass Sie als jemand, der stets mit seinen Filmen gegen das deutsche Politkino gek̈ampft hat, jetzt via Hollywood mit so einer Art Message-Kino zurückkommen? EMMERICH: Ich habe versucht, es so wenig wie m̈oglich wie Message-Kino aussehen zu lassen. Aber natürlich, die Story selber hat eine gewisse Botschaft. Da kann ich mich nicht verstecken.
22. Todd McCarthy, "History Lessened," Variety (March 10-16, 2008): 34-37, here 34.
23. Sam Wigley, "10,000 BC," Sight & Sound (May 2008): 88-89, here 88.
24. Andreas Wirwalski, "2012," filmecho / filmwoche 45 (November 6, 2009): 22.
25. Mike Beilfuss, "2012," film-dienst (November 19, 2009): 21.
26. Henry K. Miller, "2012," Sight & Sound (January 2010), 78-80.
27. Brigitte Steinmetz, "Hausbesuch bei Roland Emmerich," Merian (November 2009), www.merian.de/magazin/los-angeles-roland-emmerich.html (accessed July 7, 2012), my translation.
28. Agnes Bretting, "Little Germanies in America," trans. H. K. Bonning, Germans to America: 300 Years of Immigration, 1683-1983, ed. Günter Moltmann (Stuttgart: Eugene Heinz, 1982), 145-151, here 146.
29. Lekan (145, 145, 146) paraphrases Albert Faust's 1909 survey history, The German Element in the United States.
30. See Thomas Lekan, "German Landscape: Local Promotion of the Heimat Abroad," The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness, ed. Kristin O'Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 141-166.
31. Kyle Bishop, "Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance," Journal of Popular Film and Television 37, no. 1 (November 2009), 16-25, here 22.
32. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsets and the Politics of Memory (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003), 149.
33. See "LGBT Hold Fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at Roland Emmerich's Hollywood Home," www.4seasonsphotography.com/event hillaryclinton.html (accessed August 18, 2012).
34. Wolfgang Petersen, "Einmal voll zuschlagen," interview with Martin Wolf, Der Spiegel (October 5, 2004): 158-159, my translation.
35. Robert Pirro, "Homer's Lies, Brad Pitt's Thighs: Revisiting the Pre-Oedipal Mother and German Wartime Father in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy," Of Muscles and Men: Essays on the Sword & Sandal Film, ed. Michael G. Cornelius (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 104-123, here 116.
36. Vaughan 96
37. see also Hermand 228.
38. George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1971), 15.
39. Thomas Mann, "The Tragedy of Germany," Treasury for a Free World, ed. Ben Raeburn (New York: Arco, 1945), 186-189, here 186.
40. Victor. Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, 1998), 165, my translation.
41. Julia Hell, "Introduction," Ruins of Modernity, eds. Julia Hell and Andreas Scḧonle (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1-14, here 2.
42. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995), 122-123.
43. Elisabeth Hipp, "Paintings from the Galerie NeueMeister at the J. Paul Getty Museum," From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden, eds. Ulrich Bischoff, Elisabeth Hipp, and Jeanne Anne Nugent (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2006), 15-32, here 19.
44. Tim Masters, "Anonymous: Roland Emmerich Stirs Up Shakespeare Debate," BBC News, October 28 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ entertainment-arts-15291816 (accessed January 3, 2013).
45. "Gespr̈ach mit Roland Emmerich," www.spielfilm.de/special/ interviews/894/2012-gespraech-mitroland-emmerich.htm (accessed July 3, 2012), my translation.
46. Michael Kohler, "Anonymous," filmdienst 23 (10 November 2011), 27, my translation.