Today’s guest post written by John Dias of Misandry Review
I subscribe to a service called Netflix, and with it I am able to receive online streaming video to my TV set. Today I saw a video from the year 1931, entitled “M”, by film maker Fritz Lang. It was set in Germany, and was one of the first “talkies,” i.e. films with sound. The movie is subtitled in English, and is available on Youtube (see below).
The movie depicts an entire urban community in the grip of mass hysteria and fear as they struggle to track down and identify a child murderer. The police throw their full resources into finding the killer, but after eight months they still have nothing to show for their efforts. One of the problems that the overworked police force faces is a deluge of false allegations from a hyper-frightened public. In one poignant scene, a man who is walking down the street is approached by a little girl and asked what time it is. He gives her the time, but this act alone incites a mob of accusing onlookers, screaming that this man must be the child-killer and culminating in the police hauling him off to be questioned. Another scene shows a group of men sitting around a table in rapt attention as one reads them a newspaper article. That article prompts one of the paranoid men to accuse the one sitting directly across from him of being the killer. Threats between them ensue.
This movie was released prior to the rise of the Nazis in Germany, but in historical hindsight I think that it’s easy to spot the ominous precursors of collective hysteria that had suffused the public mind in Germany at that time. In some ways, I see the same influences pervading our own culture today. In terms of gender, note that in the film all of the victims were little girls. Somehow the director of this movie knew that of all the possible victims that could evoke a visceral reaction in the viewer, it was little girls that would resonate more strongly than any other. That resonance — the depiction of female vulnerability — is just as palpable today. What disturbs me about it is the way that such a visceral reaction can so easily be used as a political tool to manipulate masses of people. Female vulnerability can be used as a political tool to manipulate masses of people. Netflix’s description of this movie indicated that the Nazis went on to promulgate this movie as State propaganda in an effort to show the dangers of sexual deviance — namely, male-perpetrated sexual deviance against helpless girl victims. Do we not see the same undercurrent of fear about men throughout our culture today? Aren’t our laws and public response to crime reflective of that fearful feeling?
The uniquely male role of protector of the vulnerable was — in fact — illustrated at the very beginning of this film. Seeing it almost felt quaint. In an opening scene, a little girl was about to cross the street but was startled by an oncoming car. A nearby policeman spotted her and took her by the hand, escorting her safely across the street. When I saw that, I wondered, “Why in our culture don’t we see positive depictions of male uniqueness like that anymore?”
As the film approaches a climax, a crime syndicate decides to organize the city’s homeless population into a block-by-block network of informants who report suspicious activity back to the crime syndicate (the syndicate’s activities have been impeded due to the intensity of the police manhunt, and they want the killer stopped so that their “business” can resume as usual). The crime syndicate finds the killer and ultimately prosecutes him in their own secret criminal-led court, where an audience of criminals screams out demands for the killer’s execution. The killer makes an impassioned plea, describing his mental illness in wrenching detail, but is nevertheless shouted down by the crowd which demands execution as the only permanent and effective solution. At the last minute, the police break in and apprehend both the killer and also all of the members of the crime syndicate, who silently put up their hands in surrender.
What a compelling movie. Watch this, people. Watch it as a looking glass through time, almost 80 years into the past. See if you can spot the cultural parallels between our current paradigm, and the time, place and culture where this movie was released. As you watch, remember what became of that time and place — Germany — less than a decade after this 1931 movie was published. The scary thing is that these people were all urban sophisticates — civilized. But watch it all unravel, a foreshadowing of things to come.
– John Dias
