Gustav Hübener claims that “the fight against demons is found among all peoples” and that “what we would nowadays call mental disease” was previously explained by people “as a demonic obsession.” Hübener's decidedly universal definition of exorcism is left at “the expulsion of obsessions” from the soul or psyche with the addition that “the preliminary condition for obsession is fear.” Hübener goes on the state that “the idea of obsession can even lead to dissociation of personality, to the identification of personality with a demon or several demons.” This dissociation is a possessing fear that has gained supremacy over the consciousness, which according to Hübener, can result in a hallucination. I would like to add the stipulation that Peter Brown provides, namely that exorcism “is worked out as a controlled explosion and interchange of violence” because already by Late Antiquity, “violence had long been articulated in terms of the demonic,” making violence a necessary part for the existence and exorcism of an obsession.
[...] This illegal exorcism and its violent manifestations present in both M and Fury is the “visible token” of Hübener's “purely psychic” exorcism.[18] Hübener provides the example of a argued Germanic custom of mutilating the corpse of a suspected ghost, “rendering the corpses harmless by burning them or cutting off the limbs.”[19] However, these mutilations were not done out of spite or “blind hatred, but in cool calculation of the best way possible to protect oneself against the vengeance of the ghosts.”[20] Explored in this light, the lynch mob in Fury is less concerned with intentional cruelty and more interested in ridding their community of the publically determined evil while also, by destroying the physical representation of that evil (that is, Joe), protecting themselves from any legal repercussions or vengeful retaliations by their victim. [...]
[...] Collins Collins Hübener Collins Collins, 119-120. Hübener Hübener [...]
[...] Both bring about a type of “dream-world” in which the individual is cut-off from traditional standards of behavior and morality and the impulses succumbed to while in this dream-world are inevitably illegal.[17] The organized criminal element of society in M provide “justice” to the determined killer in the guise of a play-court in an abandoned building instead (furthering the parallels between the criminals' illicit and the police's lawful investigations and capture in the film) of turning the killer over to a legitimate court for judgment while the mob in Fury resorts to good, old-fashioned lynching. [...]
[...] This is the time that widespread feeling of tension .centered on the fear of the enemy” is developed by the group.[10] The basic provocation in both M and Fury is the kidnapping and murder of children and the subsequent suspicion of who might be responsible acts as the motivator. The development of group fear is evident in the behavior of the individuals and groups throughout M. Lang shows the audience scenes of apparent acquaintances, while having a drink in the bar and reading the latest article on the murders, accusing one another of being the killer as well as masses of people violently singling out and attacking a lone person with little or no legitimate rationale or evidence supporting the action. [...]
[...] Joe's revenge is satisfied after Katherine tells him that his retribution is worse than the wrong originally inflicted upon him and only after he experiences a “hallucinatory reproduction of the memory which was of importance in bringing about the onset of the hysteria.”[28] Joe's hallucination in Fury consists of “marching steps and shrill music reminiscent of the mob's march to the county jail” combined with the voice of Katherine and the faces of the twenty-defendants, all of which chase Joe until he reaches home, “gasping and frantic.”[29] It is Joe's reliving of his trauma in addition to vicariously experiencing it by his infliction of punishment on his (technically) innocent enemies that exorcises him of his possessing rage and fear. Conclusion: The Necessity of Violence The numerous parallels Fritz Lang's films M and Fury both bear to Hübener's admittedly medieval “Germanic Exorcism,” Breuer and Freud's hysteria, and the modern definition and discussion of mob violence provided suggest that the purging of an appointed ill that occurs on behalf of individuals, as well as society as a whole, is a necessity and one that has been present in society since antiquity. [...]
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