The Golem in the era of technical reproducibility: filmic apparatus, modern man and representation

Abstract

Approaching Walter Benjamin to the expressionist movement in its cinematic form and its subversive attitude, this article proposes to consider the automaton's image as an allegory in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Thus, starting from the ideal expressionist as cinematographic technique and plot, and going through the Benjamin's Theses "On the Concept of History", as well as going through the various ideas contained in the work of the German philosopher concerning the work of art in the twentieth century, we will see the Golem, mystical character of the Jewish tradition represented by the figure of a giant, made from inanimate matter, coming to life in this text-screen. Life that has come to interrupt the course of a History which presents herself as a continuous line reporting only the history of the winners, ie, of the holders of political and / or social power, and ignoring the history of the subdued men, that is, of the until now obedient men. And such irruption should not only be the work of a mythical being, but also work of the man, as a proletarian in the capitalistic system, and of the cinematography as apparatus and representation.