K O D I K A S / C O D E Volume 43 (2020) · No. 3 - 4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen The Waltz in Film: Between Identity and Vanitas Mathias Spohr Abstract: Vanitas motifs are signs that emphasize the absence of a signified. The simplest expression of this is a picture or writing that captures something that is passing away: the intention of vanitas motifs is to draw attention to the fact that they could not prevent the passing away. They remain lifeless. Vanitas is media criticism using the media. The waltz came into being in the second half of the 18th century, when the European Enlightenment sought to reject or marginalize the traditional vanitas rhetoric. On the contrary, the waltz is used as a motif of vanitas overcoming: as a sign of unbroken joie de vivre or successful pioneering spirit and, above all, as a sign of the self-chosen yet enduring institution such as a couple relationship, a nation state or a company. The waltz is no longer a lascivious social dance that threatens to destroy relationships, but rather one that establishes them. This motif is often used ambivalently to make dramaturgical constructions interesting: identity as the overcoming of vanitas ( ‘ we have the same point of view and above all the same imagination ’ ) has the older vanitas as a threat in the background; triumph tips over into failure, self-created and asserted life into death. Other variants are suspended between these opposites. In the vanitas interpretation, a film waltz makes the viewer aware of the lack of a dance partner (because there is only a film and no people in front of him/ her). This constellation is usually repeated in the film as a character ‘ waltzing ’ with an inanimate object or with a merely imagined partner. Keywords: Waltz, film music, dance on film, identity, vanitas, history of technology, imagination, self-control. Zusammenfassung: Vanitas-Motive sind Zeichen, die die Abwesenheit eines Bedeuteten betonen. Der einfachste Ausdruck dafür ist ein Bild oder eine Schrift, die etwas festhalten, was vergeht: Vanitas-Motive sollen darauf aufmerksam machen, dass sie das Vergehen nicht verhindern konnten. Sie bleiben leblos. Vanitas ist Medienkritik mit Hilfe der Medien. Der Walzer entstand in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, als die europäische Aufklärung versuchte, die traditionelle Vanitas-Rhetorik zu verwerfen oder zu marginalisieren. Vielmehr wird der Walzer als Motiv der Vanitasüberwindung eingesetzt: als Zeichen ungebrochener Lebensfreude oder erfolgreichen Pioniergeistes und vor allem als Zeichen der selbstgewählten, aber beständigen Institution wie einer Paarbeziehung, eines Nationalstaates oder eines Unternehmens. Der Walzer ist nicht mehr ein lasziver Gesellschaftstanz, der Beziehungen zu zerstören droht, sondern etwas, was sie begründet. Dieses Motiv wird oft ambivalent eingesetzt, um dramaturgische Konstruktionen interessant zu machen: Identität als Überwindung der Vanitas ( “ wir haben denselben Standpunkt und vor allem dieselbe Vorstellung ” ) hat die ältere Vanitas als Bedrohung im Hintergrund; Triumph kippt ins Scheitern, selbst geschaffenes und behauptetes Leben in den Tod. Weitere Varianten sind zwischen diesen Gegensätzen angesiedelt. In der Vanitas-Interpretation macht ein Filmwalzer dem Betrachter das Fehlen eines Tanzpartners bewusst (weil er/ sie nur einen Film und keine Menschen vor sich hat). Diese Konstellation wiederholt sich im Film in der Regel als Walzer einer Figur mit einem unbelebten Gegenstand oder mit einem lediglich imaginären Partner. Schlüsselbegriffe: Walzer, Filmmusik, Tanz im Film, Identität, Vanitas, Technikgeschichte, Imagination, Selbstkontrolle. 1 Introduction The waltz promises opportunities, as does film. Dance can help to initiate relationships, and film brings distant worlds closer to the audience. By placing a waltz (as a concrete dance or as a musical symbol) in a film, the possibilities seem to reinforce each other. One medium contains another medium. Both the waltz and the film promise to make something distant present, alive, tangible, constant - either through a regulated sequence of images or steps. Can a film waltz keep this promise? 1 Vanitas motifs are intended to make it clear to media users that an object, such as a text, an image or a mechanism, cannot be a partner, and that the reactions of this object are merely imagined, as an echo or reflection of a reader or viewer. Music, like shadow and echo, is a traditional vanitas motif: 2 it symbolizes passing and fading, and thus also mobilizes the resistance of its performers and listeners to this transience. Such resistance manifests itself in media that, as objects - be they writings, devices or works of art - attempt to capture the ephemeral or generate life. 3 Vanitas motifs reached their zenith in the 17th century. Rather than pious modesty, however, they demonstrate the heightened self-confidence of (European) man at the time, allowing him to display his qualities and ambitions by modestly dismissing them as vanities. In vanitas still lifes, riches or products of art and technology are depicted next to skulls: in 1 The following volume has made a first contribution to the topic of the film waltz: Georg Maas, Wolfgang Thiel, Hans J. Wulff (eds.): Walzerfilme und Filmwalzer, Marburg: Schüren, 2022. 2 Cf. Mathias Spohr: ‘ Music und Vanitas. Das Musikensemble als Symbol der Institution ’ , in: Dissonanz/ Dissonance, no. 113, March 2011, pp. 12 - 17. 3 As a general introduction to the topic as presented here, see Mathias Spohr: ‘ Das Paradigma des Performativen und die Vanitas ’ , in: Kati Röttger (ed.): Welt - Bild - Theater, vol. 2: Bildästhetik im Bühnenraum, Tübingen: Narr, 2012, pp. 133 - 41. The Waltz in Film 327 the context of the message that all this is earthly and empty, you can show it off. This is the classic vanitas rhetoric: one may do something by admitting one ’ s sinfulness. Around the middle of the 18th century, the ‘ overcoming of vanitas ’ became apparent: human achievements no longer had to be seen as vanities. The emergence of a musical repertoire or of archaeology are signs of this historical change: instead of lamenting transience, the preservation and revival of a past is celebrated. The verdict of vanitas, on the other hand, is that media are only a deceptive substitute for social relations, and at best destroy them or make them impossible. This verdict could still be applied to techniques and procedures that have become established as means of sociability in the course of the rebellion against this tradition, such as ballroom dancing. The claim that dance does not lead to fornication but creates order and enables relationships has been enforced at the time of the creation of the waltz. Social dance is generally a vanitas motif - from the conservative (religious) point of view that it is an anonymous and repeatable coordination of limbs rather than a personal and distinctive social action, and that its purpose is to inflame passions, to make the participants interchangeable, and therefore has nothing to do with human relationships, but at most creates the fleeting appearance of relationship. Religious tracts warning against lascivious social dancing continued into the 19th century. People still danced, but with the explicit awareness that the dance event was just a world of sin and make-believe. These negative characteristics have been increasingly valorized since the 18th century: impersonal comparability, lifeless technical coordination, arousal of passions and imagined relationship are no longer sinful, but are shared by many media that serve as a framework for emancipatory activity, from sport to the use of smartphones. What led to the positive re-evaluation of so many vanitas motifs, and thus to the emancipation of these media? It is human self-awareness in the Western world. The waltz stood at a kind of fulcrum between vanitas and identity (as overcoming vanitas): on the one hand, it was seen as a sign of self-confident will and joie de vivre; on the other, it was seen as a sign of the self-established and enduring institution, from the private relationship of a couple or club to the company or the nation state. 4 Identity here means: belonging to a proudly claimed community. The older vanitas persists alongside the newer identity, especially in popular culture. In the case of ‘ violence in the media ’ , for example, the question is whether this violence is an attraction or a deterrent: the recommendation of a behaviour or the exposure of wrongdoing. Deterrence is the older but still present attitude. Depictions of violence are less a problem for the cautionary stance of vanitas than for the motivating stance of identity. The overturning of sociable activities into the vanitas of vain illusions, greed or aggression is a common stylistic device in horror films. When a film ’ s plot warns against Frankenstein ’ s hubris in daring to create a monster, this daring is transferred to the film producers and their audience, who visualize figures that are only appearances and shadows. The film warns of itself, of its imaginative power that could get out of control, and it justifies itself in doing so. 4 For the identity connotation of the Vienna waltz as opposed to the vanitas connotation of the historically earlier Nestroy couplet (which is also in three-four time), see Mathias Spohr, “ Raimund und Nestroy - der Vanitas-Überwinder und der Vanitas-Erneuerer? ” , in: Nestroyana 33(2013), H. 1 - 2, pp. 22 - 38, cf. p. 32 - 33. 328 Mathias Spohr Vanitas motifs basically show this recursivity. André Gide gave this rhetorical figure the name ‘ mise en abyme ’ . 5 Literally, it means ‘ put into the abyss ’ : a frame is put into a frame, or an inanimate image contains an inanimate image. Lifelessness, deception and impersonal effect are synonymous for the moralizing intent of the vanitas rhetoric. The blind but vivid-looking eyes in a portrait are among the clearest examples. The warning against them comes in the form of a revelation: the film contains, for example, mummies, machines or vampires that have come to life, thus on the one hand warning that it is not itself alive, and on the other hand stimulating the imagination of its viewers, who imagine the coming to life with the appeal and justification that it is a warning. From a vanitas point of view, imagination is a danger to reality because it can create an addiction to the unattainable, to the neglect of social relations. From an identity point of view, however, imagination helps to improve control. This principle is very familiar to us from melodramas and moritrades, in serious and ironic variants. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson ’ s Corpse Bride (2005), for example, combines the older vanitas symbolism of the fairy tale with the animated film, whose aim is to make dead objects appear alive. The groom makes his unique wedding ceremony reproducible through practice, to gain control over his actions, which is avenged by his loss of control over the animated dummy that comes between him and his bride like Pygmalion ’ s statue. 6 A trainable mechanism differs from a social action by its arbitrary repeatability and thus becomes risky: there is a risk of losing control. Control can fail or lead to addiction and thus become an asocial misbehaviour in the sense of vanitas. The sad and partnerless dummy will later challenge the protagonist (and the audience) with a piano waltz: ‘ make me alive ’ . 7 The piano is no partner for her, and the animated corpse is no partner for the observing protagonist either, who is only an animated character for his audience, too. The vital relationships of those who take the animation too seriously are in danger: with a film character there is no relationship; the apparent liveliness of the animation becomes a threat. The media seem to deceive their users, but the revelation of the deception maintains control. The audience plays along, convinced that it has insight into the deception of which it is a victim, and admires its success. The actors ’ pretence, for example, is justified by the fact that their play warns against impostors. 8 There was once a German television programme called Vorsicht Falle! (Beware of the trap! , ZDF 1964 - 2001) with re-enacted scenes of fraud - but even Molière ’ s Imaginary Invalid or his hypocritical Tartuffe are constructed on the same principle of revealed deception. Actors do not deceive their audience with malicious intent, but reveal something to them, just like the trickster in the circus arena. Or: the elaborate technology of animation and film sets is justified by denouncing the hubris of modern technology, which in disaster films leads to the brink of the end of the world. Enthusiasm for technology is lived out on the pretext of revealing its dangers. 5 Cf. Lucien Dällenbach: Le Récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme, Paris: Seuil, 1977. 6 Trailer: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=G9boDkpEyvc [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 7 Film excerpt: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=nuEOA9GbK6U [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 8 Cf. Mathias Spohr: ‘ Raimund und Nestroy: Der Vanitas-Überwinder und der Vanitas-Erneuerer? ’ , in: Nestroyana, vol. 33, nos. 1/ 2, 2013, pp. 22 - 38. The Waltz in Film 329 The traditional precept of modesty, according to which human achievement should only be presented as the failure of reprehensible intentions, is transformed in the course of modernity: the older exposure of unleashed greed and successful deception, whose vanity is avenged, is overlaid by a more modern interest in the loss of technical and social control, which is no longer seen as a vice but as a malfunction. Silent films that combine a biblical plot with a modern frame story, such as Michael Kertész ’ s Sodom und Gomorrah (1922), contrast the newer pattern of interpretation with the older one. The profit motive or the expenditure on decoration is justified by a warning as the ostensible intention of this film. Film as a luring and warning medium contains ballroom dancing as an equally luring and warning medium. Film had still not lost its reputation as a shady backstreet attraction. The negatively connotated dance scenes in this example remain controlled like the film projection, but as debauchery they are a foreshadowing of disaster. 9 The controlled loss of control is both interesting and reassuring. Media products are meant to appear alive, but not to be alive, in order to demonstrate control. The audience values their reliable functioning over unpredictable action. 2 Imagination and institution Frankenstein ’ s monster becomes an animated being in the film ’ s action, just as the film ’ s pictures ‘ learn to walk ’ . It is often said that the coordinated elements, be they the monster ’ s body parts or the film ’ s stills, become ‘ organic ’ to their viewers: mechanisms become actions in the eyes of their observers. The sinful arbitrariness of animation and the assertion that relations consisting only of the skilful coordination of ‘ loosely coupled ’ elements 10 are something real and permanent are closely related ideas, meeting in the concept of imagination, which is no longer seen as an antisocial conceit but as a world of opportunities for everybody. The revelation of cunning, magic and artifice no longer means: ‘ you are threatened, beware! ’ , but ‘ a know-how is shared with you, join in! ’ . As the most general concept of media, I prefer that of the ‘ opportunity for action ’ : media are opportunities for action. A ‘ fixed ’ coupling of elements as a ‘ form ’ of media, as Niklas Luhmann has put it, is not necessarily a deliberate action, even if the coupling is understood as a process, but perhaps something mechanical. For example, a metronome beat is not music, but a medium for music. The vanitas motif of the 17th century has the merit of making a clear, sharp distinction between inanimate objects and acting subjects (or between impersonal effects and personal social behaviour). A mechanism understood not as action but as automatism appears ‘ expressionless ’ according to this conception. Animating the models and mechanisms branded as lifeless with ‘ expression ’ has become common since the 18th century. 11 Jean Baudrillard has criticized the fact that the ‘ soulless ’ map (a common 9 Film excerpt: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=M8w78uyMruk [accessed 1/ 25/ 2023]. A waltz serves as the silent film ’ s incidental music here. 10 This is the definition of a medium in Niklas Luhmann ’ s systems theory, who took suggestions from Fritz Heider and Karl E. Weick for this. Cf. Niklas Luhmann: ‘ Die Form der Schrift ’ , in: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer (eds.): Schrift, Munich: Fink, 1993, pp. 337 - 48. 11 Musical expression is traditionally defined as ‘ deviation from the regular ’ (Carl E. Seashore: Psychology of Music, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938, p. 267) or similar. The individual deviation, however, is contrasted with 330 Mathias Spohr motif of vanitas) has since been prioritized over the ‘ animated ’ landscape. 12 Lifeless images of living things are made into models to be animated. The imagined institution in Thomas Hobbes ’ s Leviathan (1651) is a living organism, as visualized by the famous illustration on the title page of the first edition: the observed king ‘ on the stage ’ (as a head visible from the front), together with his observing subjects ‘ in the audience ’ (as bodies visible from behind), becomes the collective of the civil state, a form of organization that emancipates itself from authoritarian models of society by acting together, while authority, in the course of the next two centuries, gradually solidifies into a lifeless image, as did the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, immortalized in countless pictures and statues, at the outbreak of the First World War. The former authority had become an idol, an animated and therefore dominated role model. Models and rules only come to life through their interpretation: the veneration of a monument is welcomed as a controlled enlivenment, but the appearance of the depicted authority is feared as a loss of control. In the eyes of the revolutionaries, the mild and wise authority became a demonized power. The aristocrat rendered powerless as an elected and paid gigolo at the balls of the 1920s has become an icon. This nobleman remained under the control of his (male and female) observers. Authoritarian acts were replaced by functioning services. Benedict Anderson has spoken of Western nation-states as ‘ imagined communities ’ , with some influence on political theory. 13 In his view, imaginary communities are those whose members do not know each other personally because of temporal and geographical distances or because of their multiplicity, and who therefore need objects to embody their identity. Objects no longer lead to melancholy and loneliness, as in the vanitas motif, but define and unite a following. Like a chorus in front of these objects, the nation is always present, even if invisible: ‘ Nothing connects us all but imagined sound. ’ 14 A Leviathan of voices, be they the voices of voters or musical voices, is a sign of collective action, or in other words: a kind of observer ’ s perspective. This is illustrated here by the example of the waltz in the film. 3 Waltz The bourgeois waltz emerged in the second half of the 18th century, replacing the aristocratic minuet as the leading social dance. It is a central symbol of the overcoming of vanitas through rebellion against traditional vanitas motifs, and it symbolizes the birth of that social affiliation which today is called identity. What does this rebellion consist of? It has to do with the relationships that the waltz asserts. The couple ’ s dance is no longer meant to be a fleeting encounter, but to represent lasting relationships - not just couple the common conviction or solidarity of the performers. The musical avant-garde of the 20th century denounced ‘ expression ’ as a disguise for automations, but automations have taken hold on the widest possible basis today. 12 Jean Baudrillard: Simulacres et simulation, Paris: Galilée, 1981, p. 10. Karl May constructed the settings of his novels from maps and thus found an audience. 13 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, London: Verso, 2006. 14 Ibid., p. 145. The Waltz in Film 331 relationships, but relationships of all kinds, up to (and including) identity in the nation state. The ideology of the waltz is roughly as follows: the mechanism of the social dance does not destroy peaceful coexistence by replacing concrete relationships with wishful thinking or by making them interchangeable, but it makes relationships possible. The establishment of a relationship and the coming to life of visions are one and the same for the spectator: the sculptor Pygmalion in Jean-Jacques Rousseau ’ s seminal version of this motif (1762/ 1770) begins a relationship with his statue when it comes to life. 15 Johann Wolfgang Goethe should be mentioned in the history of the waltz. He approached the theme of vanitas cautiously. The overcoming of vanitas, which his contemporaries were working on, remains a hope and a premonition for him, but does not become a striking triumph. 16 The suffering young Werther (1774) waltzes with his chosen Charlotte, but this choice of partner does not prevail against the social constraints, and the protagonist stages his failure. The vision of great love does not last, but it continues to find its readers. Werther ’ s death was no longer a warning, like the fatal love of Romeo and Juliet in the moralizing novels of the late Middle Ages, but he found like-minded people, inspired a fashion and was partly responsible for a wave of suicides. It preoccupied Goethe throughout his life. The ‘ Werther effect ’ is still famous today, and is used, for example, as an argument against publicizing railway suicides. 17 The fact that the novel was not a morality tale (the waltzing Werther as a deeply fallen fantasist) but encouraged participation (Werther as a visionary who lives his love beyond death) caused problems for both the author and waltz. Of course, Goethe wanted to write texts that would motivate like-minded people rather than discourage them. To this end, he invented or developed the Bildungsroman. The waltz is caught between exemplary education and deterrent addiction. Unlike the minuet, which was invented for Louis XIV, the Sun King, the waltz was originally a folk dance and was also accepted as a court dance in Vienna, where it is still celebrated today as a historical consensus of all social classes. However, the Imperial Court in Berlin from 1871, a new institution, less firmly rooted in tradition, but eager to appear traditional, did not accept the waltz and, at the end of the 19th century, still required the nobility (against their will) to dance the Baroque court dances on official occasions. 18 Thus, for the first time, there was a broad social consensus in favour of the waltz, something that neither the courtly nor the popular dances possessed - which were equally branded immoral by the religious side. In its entirety, the waltz could not escape the moralizing accusation against the ballroom dances - that they were merely frivolous and ephemeral pleasures. In the late 19th century, however, the waltz became a symbol of the proudly selfassured couple, and a symbol of technological innovation that promised prosperity and 15 For more details see Mathias Spohr: ‘ Pygmalion ’ , in: Carl Dahlhaus, Sieghart Döhring (eds.): Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, vol. 5, Munich: Piper, 1994, pp. 464 f. 16 Cf. Mathias Spohr: ‘ Das Problem der Vanitas. Goethes Faust und das Faust-Sujet im populären Musiktheater ’ , in: Maske und Kothurn, vol. 45, nos. 3 - 4, 2001, pp. 71 - 91. 17 Walther Ziegler, Ulrich Hegerl: ‘ Der Werther-Effekt. Bedeutung, Mechanismen, Konsequenzen ’ , in: Der Nervenarzt, vol. 73, 2002, pp. 41 - 49. 18 Rudolf Braun, David Gugerli: Macht des Tanzes, Tanz der Mächtigen. Hoffeste und Herrschaftszeremoniell 1550 - 1914, Munich: Beck, 1993, p. 211. 332 Mathias Spohr comfort, 19 as numerous Strauss waltz titles show: ‘ Schwungräder ’ (flywheels), ‘ Spiralen ’ , ‘ Cycloiden ’ seem to give expression to the rotary movements in engineering technology. The communities that danced these waltzes at their balls demonstrated their mastery of this technology. Waltzing is a simple sequence of steps that can be automated, in contrast to the minuet, which is made up of refined, ever-changing combinations of steps. The automatism of the waltz, however, is thought to be more expressive. Its movements obviously have an order and an impact as long as they remain under control. Waltz dance makes automations socially attractive. It is a symbol of technology, a symbol of greed, but also a symbol of selfcontrol, and therefore a symbol of relationship. ‘ The perfect movement ’ , as Stanley Kubrick is said to have called the waltz, 20 links success with consensus. Expression and ‘ performance ’ in the technical or sporting sense are closely linked. In the popular music film of the first half of the twentieth century, dance, song, sport and technology of all kinds take on the same meaning in a striking way: they all serve equally as emancipatory media, which supposedly do not destroy relations (which would make them suspect) but establish them. 21 A promised taming of centrifugal force is at the forefront. A film in the Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mike Newell 2005) - in which ‘ school ’ is portrayed as an institution that combines success with consensus through the transmission of know-how - gives the waltz at the school dance a representative function. 22 Know-how emancipates when the question is no longer ‘ what you are ’ but ‘ how you do things ’ , without these actions being dismissed as dangerous sorcery. The film characters control their magic, and the readers or spectators control their books or playback devices at a safe distance from them. In contrast to social relations, which according to the old concept are not feasible but prescribed by authority, social dances depend on the ability and will of the participants and, from a conservative point of view, tempt people to fornicate. This vanitas connotation is still present in the film waltz: the symbolic exchange of partners in the waltz dance at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick ’ s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) gets temporarily out of control (or in a dream world), according to the pattern of the horror film, and leads to prostitution and occultism. 23 19 I elaborated on the thesis that the waltz is a technical medium in Mathias Spohr: ‘ Social Compatibility in a Two Gender Society. The Waltz as a Technical Medium ’ , in: Kodikas/ Code. Ars Semeiotica, vol. 26, 2003, pp. 217 - 23. 20 This statement by Stanley Kubrick, which is said to have come from an interview, was the title of the conference ‘ The Perfect Movement - Deconstructing the Waltz ’ held by the Austrian Embassy in London in 1999. Unfortunately, no conference report was published. 21 This link between society and technology could perhaps be explained as follows: since David Hume or Isaac Newton, a measurable ‘ great effect ’ can be a neutral scientific fact and is no longer inseparable from the controversial sensuality of power, wealth or numerous lovers. The emancipation of passions through the valorization of ‘ natural effects ’ was desired by large sections of the population. The promotion of technology could serve as an argument for this emancipation. Cf. in this context the Austrian musical film: Mathias Spohr: ‘ Austauschbar oder unverwechselbar? Person und Funktion in der Filmoperette ’ , in: Günter Krenn, Armin Loacker (eds.): Zauber der Bohème, Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria, 2002, pp. 415 - 34, on the waltz pp. 430 ff. 22 Note here the characterization of the waltz as ‘ well-mannered frivolity ’ , film excerpt: https: / / www.youtube. com/ watch? v=WdSi5UkbDfs, [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 23 See the trailer: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=FBrbQSDfh7Q, [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. The Waltz in Film 333 The (unrealized) couple ’ s dance 24 of the protagonists of Federico Fellini ’ s Ginger e Fred (1985), two once-famous imitators of the Hollywood screen couple, only shows that bygone times (and thus also the long since ended private relationship of the two characters) cannot be brought back. The ageing heroes sink into the visual and musical kitsch of the comeback show, which tries to assert the eternal presence of its stars, but can only offer a creepy cabinet of curiosities. Television viewers know that there are no people in front of them, only the screen, and that it is not Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire that they see, but their impersonators, and not even they appear, only their aged imitations (and from the point of view of the film audience, only actors playing ageing impersonators who, unlike their characters, have never had a private relationship). What appears as a fascinating production of proximity through the media (as a common opportunity for action) is, in Fellini ’ s interpretation, the potentiated distance of vanitas, the wistful glimpse into the past and the unattainable. On the contrary, the media of visualization produce a consciousness of absence. 4 Love and identity Since the 18th century, love (which, according to Niklas Luhmann, is one of the ‘ symbolically generalized communication media ’ 25 ) has been the legitimate medium of animation. Sensual love is no longer just destructive greed, but holds together a self-chosen relationship - in the face of the suspicion of parents and other authorities who prefer arranged marriages. The programme of love, generalized, is: ‘ Self-made or chosen institutions shall endure. ’ These imagined realities include relationships between two people, friendships, clubs, bands and cooperatives, companies and states - and with them, the observer perspective of a film on the screen, realized by its audience. In the ‘ Emperor ’ s Waltz ’ between Franz and Sissi from Franz Marischka ’ s hugely popular Sissi trilogy (Part 2, 1956), this is precisely the theme: the imperial couple have triumphed over social obstacles with their love. After Sissi ’ s political success in reaching an agreement with the Hungarians, they present their identity to the court, which joins the dancers in a waltz - not as a symbol of power, but as an exemplary stand for consensus. 26 Identity, I once suggested, is the counter-model to vanitas: 27 From the vanitas point of view, the waltz is only a substitute for a real relationship, the waltz song only a substitute for dancing, the instrumental melody only a substitute for singing, and the wordless melody only a substitute for speech, just as the sound of a musical instrument is only a substitute for the human voice and the feature film only a substitute for a real experience. According to an older view of art theory, they are all mere imitations of a living thing and must admit this to their shame. In the interpretive pattern of identity, on the other hand, the substitute acquires 24 After eight bars of prelude by the orchestra, the lights in the studio go out so that the dance cannot begin, see: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=SpV5bbYwyD8, [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 25 Niklas Luhmann: Liebe als Passion. Zur Codierung von Intimität, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994, on the subject of freedom see pp. 57 ff. 26 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=N5CAi_AzPSU, [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 27 See for example Mathias Spohr: ‘ Videoloops - Zeichen ohne Aura? ’ , in: Kodikas/ Code. Ars semeiotica, vol. 32, nos. 1 - 2, 2009, pp. 151 - 60, here p. 156. 334 Mathias Spohr the meaning of a model that can apply to everyone, and makes these substitutes a world of opportunities. 28 Thus, in the nominalist conception of money, it does not matter if it is a substitute for value, as long as it can be exchanged for values. 29 A description is an imitation or a substitute for the described. Music, which does not describe anything but can serve as a model for action, such as the waltz beat, is greatly enhanced for this reason. Many relationships can develop in waltz dancing, many couples can dance to the waltz song, and many people can sing a variety of lyrics to the instrumental melody. 30 Song or ballroom dance are opportunities for action through which reality can seemingly be produced - as concrete action within the framework of these models - so that it does not remain a wistful memory or a helpless imagination. There is a competition between a depicted world that remains absent and a world that is first created as the action of an audience: between ‘ diegesis ’ and ‘ performance ’ . 31 The recorded narrative functions as an afterimage of a lost or merely invented world, or, conversely, as a model for a present world that is only just emerging when perceived. The connection between a world of action and a world of observation, of which the audience is aware in front of the screen, is repeated in many plot constructions. This nesting stems from traditional mise en abyme structures. Whereas vanitas rhetoric asks ‘ what do you perceive? ’ at each level, noting a potentiated failure or absence, because the answer is always ‘ a deception ’ , identity rhetoric asks ‘ how do you perceive? ’ in order to reverse this perception. The question of how has since determined ‘ second-order observation ’ , as Luhmann has noted. 32 Sigrid Nieberle highlights the staircase in waltz films as a link between a space of observation and a space of action. 33 The staircase shows how a space of action is opened up, in contrast to the insurmountable boundary between the audience and the action of the film. The what of the actors is not accessible to them, but the how of their behaviour is conveyed: it is not possible to enter the film, but it is possible to sing and dance along. Sissi propagates the overcoming of historical, spatial and social barriers - in the direction of action to observation: identity is transferred from the dancing couple Franz and Sissi with their imagined relationship; one level of observation further to their spectators in the picture (the court in front of the imperial couple) and again one level further to the film audience outside the screen. Each imagines a community and wants to hold on to its reality. The court in time with the observed imperial couple looks like a moving variant of Hobbes ’ s Leviathan, and like an ‘ imagined community ’ beyond the time of its existence as a state: musical time is a 28 I once tried to describe this ‘ fractal ’ structure in the following essay: Mathias Spohr: ‘ Musikgeschichte ist Mediengeschichte ’ , in: dissonanz/ Dissonance, no. 56, May 1998, pp. 6 - 12. 29 On the parallel between money and dance in the early modern period, see Eric Achermann: Worte und Werte. Geld und Sprache bei Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johann Georg Hamann und Adam Müller, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997, p. 266. 30 Allusion to the early modern fashion of the vaudeville as a public retexting of melodies, cf. Herbert Schneider (ed.): Das Vaudeville. Funktionen eines multimedialen Phänomens, Hildesheim: Olms, 1996. 31 A distinction between image and music that goes in the same direction has already been suggested by Zofia Lissa.: ‘ Zur Theorie der musikalischen Rezeption ’ , in: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, H. 3, 1974, pp. 157 - 169. 32 Niklas Luhmann: Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992, pp. 312 f. 33 Sigrid Nieberle: ‘ Auf glattem Parkett. Ballszenen in der Literaturverfilmung ’ , in: Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, vol. 38, no. 2, 2013, pp. 427 - 42, here p. 434. The Waltz in Film 335 time beyond all times. The emperor as authority is no longer in the foreground, but the medium of the waltz, which promises freedom: everyone welcomes this opportunity to act and uses it to demonstrate consensus and control. The ‘ what ’ of the depicted but absent ruler is replaced with the ‘ how ’ of the rules of a dance or a song. In this way, the mise en abyme structure of the vanitas motifs is transformed into a vision of belonging and intimacy. The ruler can no longer rule, but the dance can be mastered. The spectators become the ‘ what ’ and thus replace anything portrayed. This seems to create a social framework or community. In all the examples of identity construction, as we shall see, this process is the same. State identity is revealed here as a mechanical coordination of couples, just as film itself is a mechanical coordination of images. Both are ‘ fixed ’ couplings of ‘ loose ’ elements, according to Luhmann ’ s technical-sounding but socially meant definition of a medium. When social constellations are replaced by mechanisms, it is not the loss of trust but the loss of control that appears as a threat. You need to trust the bank teller or the bus driver; you need to control the ATM or the car. But this development starts long before automation. Subordination to a mechanism was not a frightening idea anymore because mechanisms promised to be feasible and available - in contrast to traditional relationships and their associated expectations. In this way, the vanitas motif was re-evaluated: the wistful awareness of the unattainable became a controlled game with symbols of power that cannot harm. Mechanical submission to the tact of the imperial couple becomes something voluntary when the Ancien régime has disappeared and the glamorous tradition is merely a masquerade. As early as the 19th century, the subjects imagined, to the beat of the waltz, that it was love that bound them to the nation-state. Johann Strauss Jr. was one of the revolutionaries of 1848 - he would never have wanted to write a waltz for the emperor ’ s wedding, nor would he have been allowed to - and only reconciled with the court when this court had become a fiction of its own. The fantasy of freedom made citizens forget the absence of freedom. The combination of the actors Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Böhm to form the waltzing ‘ dream couple ’ was confirmed by its success, even though, or perhaps because, there was no personal relationship between these actors. The consensus of a common vision was more important than the knowledge that imitations are not real. 34 Imagination was not a threat to reality, but was meant to create reality. The disillusioning mise en abyme with its potentiation of absence ( ‘ it ’ s not a live broadcast, but only a recording, it ’ s not the imperial couple depicted, this couple has no relationship at all ’ - comparable to the plot construction of Ginger e Fred) turned into the opposite of fascinated enactment: 35 waltzing is easy to reproduce, unlike faraway lands and dead heroes. What-questioning only leads to an 34 The tradition of this sense of identity in the history of Viennese operetta has been traced by Moritz Csáky: Ideologie der Operette und Wiener Moderne. Ein kulturhistorischer Essay zur österreichischen Identität, Vienna: Böhlau, 1998. 35 I have tried to describe the reversal of the potentiated distance into fascinating proximity as ‘ fidelity of effect to cause ’ . Mathias Spohr: Das gemeinsame Maß. Ansätze zu einer allgemeinen Medientheorie, Salzburg: Mueller-Speiser, 2003, pp. 69, 297, 315. 336 Mathias Spohr awareness of deception, but how-questioning leads to a know-how, to a sense of feasibility. The latter exists outside the film, the former is unattainable. The Sissi film succeeds in the goal of backstage dramaturgies that the show in Ginger e Fred fails to achieve: the awareness of imitation is prevented by giving the audience the feeling of being present at a realization. The mise en abyme of a stage in a film usually means increased proximity, i. e. overcoming vanitas: a fascinating realization is taking place. 36 Waltzes seem to encourage this perception. In Géza von Bolváry ’ s film Two Hearts in Waltz Time (1930), the search for a lost waltz does not lead to traces of a past that cannot be retrieved (such as old photographs), but to a realization: the first performance of the recovered waltz on the operetta stage. Film audiences, for their part, were able to experience the brand-new technology of film sound as a premiere: a well-functioning technology overcame the sense of absence, i. e. the melancholy that this comedy declares war on at the beginning, when the female protagonist demands music that is not sad. From the perspective of vanitas, the casting of actors in roles or the grouping of dancers into couples is merely a mechanical assignment: the living gives way to a lifeless imitation. Compared to this traditional notion, the feasibility of relationships through media is fascinating. Good actors, dancers or musicians animate the mechanical with their expression, and relationships come alive. 37 This idea became established at the time when the waltz became the leading ballroom dance. 38 An enthusiastically applauded functioning of man and machine became established as a realization, in contrast to the older idea that only the living was real. Whereas vanitas declares the painter or sculptor a failed imitator of the unique, unrepeatable life, identity asserts that what is real is what ‘ works ’ in different cases: controlled animation is preferred to the living. From this period comes the idea that a skilfully manipulated musical instrument sings, rather than merely being a substitute for a singing voice. 39 In 16th century choirs, musical instruments still replaced missing voices, they were dummies. But in the 18th century, the traditional perception of the instrument as a substitute changed: a listener imagined the ‘ singing ’ of a musical instrument as an enlivening achievement rather than perceiving a lifeless imitation. The voice of an instrument could be a model for the voices of a community that seemed to be singing together. It no longer indicated the absence of a particular voice, but claimed to be an inviting model for all singers and listeners. The older aesthetics of imitation is an aesthetics of failure, because imitation cannot conceal the absence of the imitated. The newer 36 On mise en abyme and expression cf. Mathias Spohr: ‘ Wiederholung und Neugestaltung im Theater ’ , in: Maske und Kothurn, vol. 43, no. 4, 1997, pp. 19 - 23. 37 Walter Benjamin has circumscribed the unstable balance between vanitas and identity (according to my distinction) as the polarity of allegory and expression, cf. for example Suk Won Lim: Die Allegorie ist die Armatur der Moderne. Zum Wechselverhältnis von Allegoriebegriff und Medientheorie bei Walter Benjamin, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011. 38 Cf. Mathias Spohr: ‘ Noverres Lettres sur la danse, et sur les ballets (1760) aus mediengeschichtlicher Sicht ’ , in: Kodikas/ Code. Ars Semeiotica, vol. 26, nos. 3 - 4, 2003, pp. 209 - 16. 39 In the history of music and poetics, this is regarded as a change from imitation to expression aesthetics, cf. for example Marguerite Iknayan: The Concave Mirror. From Imitation to Expression in French Esthetic Theory 1800 - 1830, Stanford: California Univ. Press, 1983. The Waltz in Film 337 aesthetics of expression, on the other hand, is an aesthetics of success, because it conveys identity. 40 5 Choirs to overcome vanitas Instrumental music in films, which is not part of the action but seems to stand outside it, is a kind of chorus that helps the audience to imagine. It comes from the tradition of theatre orchestras, which could still be heard in cinemas as silent film orchestras in the 1920s. 41 In the 19th century, the theatre orchestra was often described as a chorus expressing wordless solidarity (as Ludwig Börne claimed 42 ) or preceding the vocal utterances of the audience (as Sören Kierkegaard described 43 ). It is only in passing that we mention Richard Wagner ’ s explanation that his orchestra replaced the chorus of ancient tragedy. 44 His idea of the orchestra can be linked to Benedict Anderson ’ s ‘ imagined community ’ . The instrumental music to a performed event is in a sense a Leviathan, a mechanism of many people with a common, wordlessly expressed goal. Music consists of coordinated voices that give the technical apparatus of the theatre machinery or the film projector the expression of a common perception. A polyphonic observer ’ s perspective here becomes the role for a community of spectators. The sound corresponding to the silent image is something of a metaphor for reading: the silent film audience knows that, as with reading intertitles or mouth movements, it is only with its own voice that it can make the characters speak. And wordless sound, like silent writing, must be read to become speech. Both are no longer substitutes, but models to be embodied. The audience ’ s actions are the only real thing when watching the film. 40 On the history of music, cf. Carl Dahlhaus: Musikästhetik, Cologne: Hans Gerig, 1976, pp. 28 - 38. 41 Mathias Spohr: ‘ Die theatralischen Wurzeln der Hollywood-Filmmusik. Ignorierte Traditionslinien städtischer Musikkultur ’ , in: Dissonanz/ Dissonance, no. 42, November 1994, pp. 11 - 15. Michel Chion took up this suggestion and elaborated on it with a cinematic expertise that I do not possess: see La musique au cinéma, Paris: Fayard, 1995, pp. 32 f. 42 ‘ In antiquity, it was the chorus which [ … ] presented the sensation and contemplation of the listener as a free work of art [ … ]. In our country, where the use of the chorus in tragedy was ineffective primarily because our monarchical public education made us shudder and close the shops if even three individuals from the people had the same will and the same opinion and dared to express it in the open air - in our country, only music can take the place of the chorus. ’ (In der Antike war es der Chor, welcher die Empfindung und die Betrachtung des Zuhörers [ … ] als ein freies Kunstwerk hinstellte [ … ]. Bei uns, wo der Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragödie vorzüglich darum wirkungslos bleiben würde, weil wir bei unserer monarchischen öffentlichen Erziehung in Schauer gerathen und die Kramläden schließen, wenn auch nur drei Menschen aus dem Volke den nämlichen Willen und dieselbe Meinung haben und sie unter freiem Himmel auszusprechen sich erkühnen - bei uns kann nur die Musik die Stelle des Chors vertreten.) Ludwig Börne: ‘ Die Waise und der Mörder ’ , in: Gesammelte Schriften, Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1862, vol. 5, no. 62, pp. 36 f. 43 ‘ there begins that other orchestra which does not obey the stick of the concertmaster but follows an inner drive, that other orchestra, the natural sound of the gallery ’ (da fängt jenes andere Orchester an, das nicht dem Stock des Konzertmeisters gehorcht, sondern einem inneren Trieb folgt, jenes andere Orchester, der Naturlaut der Galerie). Sören Kierkegaard: Die Wiederholung, Copenhagen, 1843, ed. by Hans Rochol, Hamburg: Meiner, 2000, p. 39. 44 More detail in Mathias Spohr: ‘ Filmmusik ’ , in: Daniel Brandenburg, Rainer Franke, Anno Mungen (eds.): Wagner-Lexikon, Laaber: Laaber, 2012, pp. 217 - 19. 338 Mathias Spohr On the theme of the chorus as an aid to imagination and orientation in connection with the waltz, a sound sample from a Swiss wartime film is apt: Menschen, die vorüberziehen (1942) by Max Haufler. A young woman from a circus dynasty tries to settle down into bourgeois life, but after the death of her father, the circus director, she nevertheless takes over the business. 45 The musical excerpt from the Anthology of Swiss Film Music accompanies the scene in which a circus director named Horn loses control and falls from the tightrope. He is seen on his deathbed shortly afterwards. As he falls, one hears a scream from the audience, as if from a single mouth, i. e. a ‘ living ’ , spontaneously coordinated community. This is accompanied by the rhythmic sounds of fireworks going off at the same time. The lifeless mechanics of the fireworks, with their festive gesture, remain motionless in the face of the tragedy unfolding, unlike the shocked spectators. The sounds of the fireworks form a ‘ lifeless ’ chorus as a backdrop to the ‘ living ’ but equally wordless chorus of the circus audience, doubling the situation of the film spectators in relation to the mechanics of the film on the screen: the fireworks are visible, the audience invisible, as if sitting in the space of the film screening. Film viewers identify with the chorus, which is not obviously coordinated with the image. Later, on Horn ’ s deathbed, in the presence of his daughter, ‘ his waltz ’ sounds, as he deliriously declares - now as a chorus of musical instruments. For the audience, there is frequent doubt as to whether this music is diegetic (music that belongs to the world of the action 46 ) or extradiegetic (music that comes from outside the action), since the waltz seems to be sounding in his head, not in his external world. Whether the daughter can hear the waltz is not clear, but the viewers, who know this waltz as the leitmotif of the film, ‘ sing along ’ . They identify with the inner world of the character. There is no longer a mother, but the character ’ s partnerlessness is not the issue, for the waltz functions as a symbol of the ideal of the unattached community of circus people. Its extradiegetic component has an illusionary effect. In the sense of a vision, the lifeless, impersonal voices of the musical instruments get the expression of a social ‘ harmony ’ , a wordless but sympathetic chorus, played with vibrato: a fine example of vanitas overcoming. The audience joins in and brings the narrative to life. After the death of the circus director, signaled by a fateful fanfare, there is a jarring transition to a mechanical music automaton in an inn, which plays the same waltz, but here as an unloved inanimate noise. The waltz music moves completely into diegesis, and vanitas overcoming becomes vanitas again: the music is merely a dance of death, without expression. An analogous effect would occur (in a silent film, for example) if waltzing circus performers were seen as a vision of the dying man and, after his death, this setting was superimposed on the mechanically coordinated dancing figures on a music box. Film or music draws attention to its lifelessness in the manner of the vanitas motif when it presents something lifeless. Loss of illusion seems to be loss of control. The audience is aware that the film is only a matter of moving shadows on the screen or sounds from the loudspeaker and that the gradations between a lively babble of voices, a 45 Mathias Spohr (ed.): Swiss Film Music. Anthology 1923 - 2012, Zurich: Chronos, 2015, p. 225. Online: http: / / swissfilmmusic.ch/ wiki/ Menschen,_die_vorüberziehen 46 Diegesis in the sense of Anne Souriau ’ s definition, cf. Anton Fuxjäger: ‘ Diegese, Diegesis, diegetisch: Versuch einer Begriffsentwirrung ’ , in: montage AV, 2/ 16/ 2007, pp. 17 - 37. The Waltz in Film 339 ‘ harmonizing ’ orchestra and inanimate musical mechanics are illusory. They do, however, help the audience to localize their observer ’ s perspective: depending on focalization 47 (or the degree of illusion), some components of the perceived voices and movements appear more vivid than others: on the level of the cinema, the audience can distinguish the living people from the mechanical screening of the film; on the level of the plot, it distinguishes the living audience reactions in the circus from the lifeless mechanics of the fireworks, or the waltz music as a witnessed dream vision of the dying man from the inanimate reproduction of the same waltz by the music automaton in the inn. In all these cases, an enlivened ‘ inner world ’ , in which the audience is supposed to participate, is distinguished from an ‘ outer world ’ of deceptive diegesis. At the end of the film, the daughter joins the circus people and their ideas of freedom, even though she had previously tried to gain a foothold in bourgeois life. Identity triumphs over the affirmation of vanitas: the father ’ s debauchery takes its revenge, but the daughter ’ s trust saves his enterprise. A self-chosen institution survives the death of the individual. The audience can identify with this idea, because the self-assertion of a private enterprise is counted towards the overcoming of vanitas. The circus in the film could be seen as a symbol for small and medium-sized enterprises (KMUs) in Switzerland, which had to struggle during the war. 6 Disillusionment Why is it often disillusioning when music (or even an accompanied dance) enters the diegesis, even though this makes it seem real? Conversely, music (or dance, e. g. as a ‘ dancing ’ camera movement or the imaginary dance of the audience to the film music) has an illusionary effect in the extradiegesis. The what in the diegesis is deceptive, whereas the how in the extradiegesis inspires the imagination. Models for action such as instrumental music are intended for the audience ’ s singing and dancing, even if it remains imaginary, and they are weakened by preceding realizations. The consensus of a shared experience can only emerge in front of the screen, and such a consensus is suggested by extradiegetic elements. The turning off of an apparently extradiegetic waltz by a character in the action, as noted by Michael Braun and Werner Kamp, 48 draws attention to the mechanics of the musical playback by revealing itself to be diegetic. The audience ’ s control is taken out of their hands, so that their empathy ends with a demonic or comic effect. The previous example shows 47 The word focalization belongs to the terminology of Gérard Genette ’ s narrative theory (Figures III, Paris: Seuil, 1972, pp. 206 - 11). However, the frequent coincidence of zero focalization and internal focalization in film music appears as a paradox that is difficult to resolve and can at best be described as metalepsis. Perhaps Erving Goffman ’ s Frame Analysis is better suited to differentiating frames through film music, because Goffman starts from social rules instead of mediated content, which correspond better to the choral nature of music: instead of the what of a perceived event, they establish a how of perceiving, an opportunity of action for the audience. (Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience, London: Harper and Row, 1974). Film music as a ‘ point of view made up of voices without text ’ is more likely to combine what Genette is trying to distinguish. 48 Michael Braun, Werner Kamp: ‘ Pathos im Kopf. Musik und Mindscreen in Stanley Kubricks Eyes Wide Shut (1999) ’ , in: Sandra Poppe (ed.): Emotionen in Literatur und Film, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012, pp. 267 - 80, here p. 271. 340 Mathias Spohr basically the same case: in the inn, a guest ’ s consensus with the now diegetic ‘ expressionless ’ circus waltz from the automaton is missing. The film spectators, who have befriended Horn ’ s vision, want to contradict the guest, although they can neither bring the circus director to life nor influence the scene. They feel disconnected. Consensus and control are not equally given. If the inn were full of happy dancing guests, the mechanical music of the automaton would sound expressive and lively. The dancing guests would form an enlivening chorus in front of the machine and this perception would influence that of the film viewers: together, they seem to master the mechanism. The audience turns away from the uncontrollable ( ‘ disillusionment ’ ) and prefers to imagine something controlled ( ‘ illusion ’ ). Wolfgang Thiel has pointed out that the mechanical-sounding waltz - whether played by automatons or interpreted without expression - is a genre of film waltz in its own right. 49 The mechanical waltz is in a sense neutral: depending on how it is perceived by the audience, it can evoke consternation in the sense of vanitas or give rise to empathy in the sense of identity. In the latter case, the lifeless coordination in the diegesis contrasts with the ‘ expressive ’ social harmony in the extradiegesis. The mechanism can be animated by expressive voices or dancing movements, like a naked musical metre that the listeners master. In horror films, on the other hand, the touching animation of dolls or music boxes can appear as a premonition of loss of control: mastery turns out to be an illusion. From the vanitas point of view, the human becomes technical; from the identity point of view, the technical becomes human. Disillusionment 50 also occurs in the courtly ball scene of Luchino Visconti ’ s Il gattopardo (1963). Dance and music are diegetic, in an exclusive space - the commoners with whom the audience sympathizes remain excluded. In front of a painting depicting the death of an ancestor, the protagonist fatefully senses his own death, despite the joyful sounds of the waltz. Within the lifeless film image, the character contemplates a lifeless image. Like the audience, he feels he has no control. Although it is a Verdi waltz, as a symbol of Italian independence, and not a Vienna waltz, as a symbol of Austrian foreign rule for the Italians, and although a relationship is initiated that transcends social barriers, this dance cannot demonstrate any Italian identity. As a dance of death, it spreads the melancholy of vanitas, while transient power consoles itself with escapism. The prince has no partner and his dance is a substitute, like the minuet, which is often dismissed as mechanical. He remains attached to vanitas and cannot participate in the modern principle of identity. Predictably, skeletons dance minuets, not waltzes. Class barriers are insurmountable from a vanitas point of view; the couple dance offers the prince no opportunity to enter into a relationship, but remains a frivolous game. The audience and listeners of a waltz, on the other hand, 49 Wolfgang Thiel: ‘ Kino im Dreivierteltakt. Die dramaturgische Funktion des Walzers im Spielfilm ’ , in: Ursula von Keitz, Philipp Stiasny (eds.): Der Tanz und das Kino, Marburg: Schüren, 2017, pp. 12 - 31, here pp. 17 f. The relationship of the mechanical carousel waltz to film has been investigated by Teresa Marlies Magdanz: The Celluloid Waltz: Memories of the Fairground Carousel, Ph. D. thesis, Univ. of Toronto, 2006. 50 Instead of Goffman ’ s not readily comprehensible terms ‘ upkeying ’ and ‘ downkeying ’ (cf. note 47), I use the analogous terms illusion and disillusionment (understood as the adoption of, or distancing from, patterns of interpretation). The Waltz in Film 341 expect to be able to participate in a relationship, rather than to remain on the outside looking in. Similarly, Ruth Beckermann ’ s documentary Waldheims Walzer (2018) attempts to play off the represented identity of the waltz and the vanitas of the politician portrayed against each other. With a waltz as background music, a parodic effect could easily have been achieved. But the film does not manipulate. The waltz promised in the title is missing - not only as a dance but also as music - as is the identity. In this film, the former president of Austria Kurt Waldheim does not become an imaginary partner. 7 Identity through control Social consensus in the style of the 1950s is depicted in Kurt Früh ’ s film Oberstadtgass (1957): the vocal waltz as the title melody presents the upper town of Zurich as a community to which one could and would like to belong, because happiness dwells in all the alleys. 51 The solo voice is followed by a chorus with the same lyrics, as if it were a chorus of the inhabitants, testifying to their consensus, and in which the film ’ s viewers can feel included as their adopted home, because, after all, ‘ all cities are the same ’ . This chorus is a model, a kind of Leviathan. The ‘ troubles ’ that mar this ideal world are exemplified in the film ’ s plot by the integration of a ‘ difficult ’ young boy into society. Eligibility and control are, as argued above, the main motivations for vanitas overcoming. More pronounced here than the electability of the relationship (which is foregrounded in the Sissi example) is the desire for social control: the fear of losing control is overcome, and the song is its expression. One could, of course, show the inhabitants of the upper town waltzing to this music. But this would leave us with the (diegetic) representation of a waltz dance: the ‘ realization ’ of the waltz is to be reserved for the audience, which is supposed to share the expression. The waltz song ‘ Edelweiss ’ in the film musical The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) moves in a similar direction of overcoming vanitas. The edelweiss is not personalized, although it is about a ‘ love song ’ , as the singing character explains before the reprise. The motifs of the missing partner and the transience of the flower are linked. The song could be staged in the style of 1930s revues as a choreographed crowd scene with dancers in Austrian costume. This is avoided here by the concept of the children ’ s father reluctantly and awkwardly singing the song to the guitar as an expression of love for home and family, 52 which expresses his motives more credibly. He is not a patriarch, but a helpless lover. Technically awkward animation can succeed if it has the consensus of its audience, as in Merian C. Cooper ’ s King Kong (1933), where the consensus is motivated by the intended effect of the awkward puppet trick through Max Steiner ’ s orchestral music: the musically motivated performance of the observers outside the film overcomes the clumsy performance inside the film. The audience ’ s trust in the filmmaker ’ s vision heals the threat of losing control of the monster ’ s shaky animation. Within the film, control seems to be lost over the monster as a symbol of revolting nature. 53 In the form of the partnerless monster, 51 Spohr: Swiss Film Music. Anthology (cf. note 43), p. 234. Online: http: / / swissfilmmusic.ch/ wiki/ Oberstadtgass 52 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=8bL2BCiFkTk [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 53 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=zct1tPK1Zk0 [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 342 Mathias Spohr nature rises up against civilization, and the spectators are on nature ’ s side, because it is only a harmless animated figure, and the animation is the audience ’ s achievement. Control defines an observer perspective, even on the subject of loss of control; in fact, it is the audience ’ s discipline that brings nature to life. In the end, the monster turns out to be a helpless lover. Kong is not a king, but a Leviathan. In the more private film scene from a fictional Salzburg, a very similar consensus is suggested by the empathy of the singing family and the guests. An extradiegetic string choir, as a no less simple device, serves as a model for the audience ’ s singing along. The singers ’ partnerlessness is offset by the solidarity of the spectators; the failure of the diegesis becomes an extradiegetic success, transferred from the spectators inside the action to the spectators outside the film - mediated by extradiegetic music. It is not the edelweiss that is animated, but the community of an audience: the flower is a natural symbol for it. Because of the pseudo-political reprise at the end of the film, the song is often mistaken for the Austrian national anthem by overseas tourists who expect to see the world of this film in Salzburg. 54 An eternally resounding song should never let love die - thus putting the programme of identity as a vanitas overcoming into simple words. When the loss of control over the voice threatens, first the family choir, then the Leviathan of the theatre audience and, in parallel, the film audience show solidarity with the singer: trust heals loss of control. Their trembling along in the hope that Austrian identity will come into harmony with the Trapp family ’ s love of nature is discreetly anticipated by an extradiegetic choir of mandolins. 55 The dying of the individual voice is drowned out by the ‘ infinite melody ’ of an observing chorus. This ‘ you are not alone ’ message is central to the rhetoric of identity - even if it is only imagined, because a character is not left alone by his/ her invisible viewer, and the viewers want to lull themselves into the same security of not being left alone. The image of the singer, which apparently looks at its audience head-on, is not blind, even if the actor has died in the meantime. A global community seems to look out of his eyes and take over his voice, as a shared role. Even more clearly than in the Sissi films, Austria is made into an ‘ imagined community ’ beyond state and historical borders. This construction of identity has the quality that its success cannot be abused ideologically. There is nothing inappropriate about the Ländler that Julie Andrews dances with the children ’ s widowed father as the nanny in this film, and it leads, as expected, to a relationship - initiated by the temporary loss of control that the observers notice, and which causes the dance to break off in a similar way to the waltz song in the recapitulation. 56 Loss of control appears here in the form of falling out of the role. ‘ Trust heals loss of control ’ is again the meaning of this process, which courts empathy and solidarity. Here, as there, the staged loss of control serves to avoid the suspicion of vanity, deception or a claim to power. 54 On this Heinz Drügh: ‘ Overstanding Robert Wises The Sound of Music. Überlegungen zu Österreichs berühmtesten Film-Exilanten ’ , in: Ulrich Meurer, Maria Oikonomou (eds.): Fremdbilder. Auswanderung und Exil im internationalen Kino, Bielefeld: transcript, 2015, pp. 87 - 105. 55 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=z6-P3pFhmQI [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 56 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=qUfWRBGQkz0 [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. The Waltz in Film 343 Loss of control (or the tension that accompanies its avoidance 57 ) has one thing in common with expression: a mechanism proves that it does not remain an automatism by requiring observers to intervene helpfully, and to identify with a rescued individual (which is more a common role than a living being) by forming a chorus of solidarity. Individual deviations from an automatism confirm the possibility and necessity of its control - and make the automatism attractive. Control is a common thing. 8 Return of the vanitas Dance music does not imitate anything, but serves as a model of action: one can distinguish its mechanism of movement (as what) from its visual and musical design (as how). What can only be heard ‘ in the head ’ of the characters and the audience belongs to the how: the music to the waltz between Natasha and Andrei in Sergei Bondarchuk ’ s Woina i mir (1966) is too complicated for a ballroom dance. 58 It oscillates between diegetic dance music (What do they hear? ) and Natasha ’ s inner experience, which is shared by the film ’ s audience (How does she hear it? And beyond that: how is the ball event perceived? ). The ‘ expression ’ of her situation is superimposed on the simple pattern of real dance music. 59 The viewer identifies with Natasha ’ s perspective because he or she feels as anonymous and unnoticed by the film ’ s characters as Natasha did before Andrei asked her to dance. The autism of her wishful thinking points in the direction of vanitas: contact with Andrei will never really come about, it helplessly remains in her imagination. A real partner is missing. But the experience of absence is what the character has in common with the film audience. A shared experience of vanitas leads to identity: the audience brings this character to life, as an imaginary partner or alter ego. In the perception of identity, the ‘ how ’ puts the audience in the perspective of the mirror: they replace the missing person with themselves. The Swiss film Dällebach-Kari (1970) by Kurt Früh presents a Bernese original from the time after the First World War: the hairdresser Kari, who falls unhappily in love with the bourgeois daughter Annemarie, becomes addicted to alcohol and kills himself. The waltz as an unfulfilled vision of freedom of choice beyond social barriers has a similar function here as in Goethe ’ s Werther. The ‘ Annemarie Waltz ’ as the leitmotif of the film is heard both at Kari ’ s dance with Annemarie and as a wistful memory in retrospect after the relationship has failed (music excerpt 3 in the Swiss Film Music Anthology 60 ). As with many film waltzes, 57 In Peter Wuss ’ s formulation, this corresponds to the second variant of narrative tension: ‘ the possibility of the protagonists to be able in bringing the course of events under control by certain forms of conduct ’ . ( ‘ Narrative Tension in Antonioni ’ , in: Peter Vorderer, Hans J. Wulff, Mike Friedrichsen (eds.): Suspense: Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations, Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996, pp. 51 - 70, here p. 52.) The suggestive solidarization of observers to avoid a loss of control is added as an essential moment. 58 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=k30OO5_nEWY [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 59 On the thesis of expression as composed individualization, see Mathias Spohr: ‘ Wirkung ohne Ursache. Richard Wagner zitiert Pierre Joseph Proudhon ’ , in: Thomas Betzwieser et al. (eds.): Bühnenklänge, Munich: Ricordi, 2005, pp. 139 - 45. 60 Mathias Spohr: Swiss Film Music. Anthology (see note 44), p. 247. Strictly speaking, above the straight-beat variation of the waltz melody in the score is the designation ‘ Schnellpolka ’ . Online: http: / / swissfilmmusic.ch/ wiki/ Dällebach_Kari. 344 Mathias Spohr there is a march version of the same melody that accompanies a race with Annemarie. The waltz is an elegant salon waltz, representing Annemarie ’ s upper-class surroundings. In Swiss films in particular, a simple country dance would also be conceivable, which would characterize Kari ’ s rural or petit-bourgeois origins without disdain (as is often heard in Franz Schnyder ’ s films as a ‘ Swiss-German identity ’ , for example in the opening credits of Heidi und Peter, 1955 61 ). In the sense of vanitas, however, a symbol for the distant unattainable is chosen here. Kari must atone for his vision, although his audience makes him live forever, but Annemarie will not return for him. The remembered melody is a wistful substitute for the long-gone waltz dance. Repetitions ‘ do not realize ’ this waltz because it was only possible with one particular person. 62 The prelude and postlude of the waltz in the music excerpt accompany Kari ’ s longing and alcoholism in the present of the frame story, thus sounding ‘ in his head ’ (and in that of the viewer), the waltz in between serves as diegetic dance music in the flashback without acoustic demarcation, it accompanies the failed. In the manner of the turbulent 1960s, this film emphasizes social differences rather than suggesting a consensus. A more modern example is the bridge scene in Chan-wook Park ’ s Oldboy (2003): the protagonist remembers being unable to prevent his sister ’ s suicide. The audience in front of the screen shares his perspective. 63 The extradiegetic waltz music makes it clear to both the protagonist and the audience that they can neither hold on to what they have seen nor bring it to life. They all lack a dance partner; they are faced with the question of whether the vision of an immortal community will console them for their concrete solitude. A relationship between the siblings was impossible and hopeless. The shutter of the camera in the internal plot, like the closing of the lift door in the frame story, signals to the viewer an insurmountable separation from the person portrayed. Conversely, the music as an extradiegetic chorus stands for the vision of a love that transcends death, rather than the irretrievable in the sense of vanitas. Both a deterrent or an exemplary perception of this scene are possible: the lovers had to atone for their vision - or, on the contrary, they triumphed heroically over the adverse circumstances. Hans J. Wulff cites two film examples in which a character ’ s dance partner is replaced by the controls of a vehicle, 64 mirroring the situation of the film viewer who, instead of a dance partner, has only the controlled mechanics of the film in front of him and cannot intervene at the moment of loss of control. From a vanitas perspective, vehicles, musical instruments or weapons are not partners, but lifeless functional entities, just like the film that plays before its viewers. In Berlinger (Alf Brustellin, Bernhard Sinkel, 1975), the protagonist voluntarily steers an aeroplane to his death to the sound of waltzes. In Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur, Henri Georges Clouzot, 1953), a lorry driver has a vision of a dancing ball to the sound of waltzes on the car radio, in joyful anticipation of his return home, and ‘ dances ’ with his 61 Ibid., p. 233. Online: http: / / swissfilmmusic.ch/ wiki/ Heidi_und_Peter. 62 On the question of the meaning or meaninglessness of repetitions, cf. Victoria von Flemming, ‘ Das Neue: Vanitas als Wiederholung, Wiederholung als Vanitas ’ , in: Victoria von Flemming, Julia Catherine Berger (eds.): Vanitas als Wiederholung, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022, pp. 1 - 30. 63 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=ur31IcG-1qg, [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 64 Hans J. Wulff: ‘ Textsemantische Grundlagen der Analyse von Musikszenen und musikalischen Inserts ’ , in: Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung, vol. 9, 2013, pp. 224 - 92, here p. 234. The Waltz in Film 345 lorry until he loses control of the vehicle. The driver perceives the journey as a ball, but it is not a ball. Radio music can at best create the atmosphere of a ball. No trust of the audience can heal this lonely loss of control, just as the driver cannot help the fainting woman in the dreamed dance scene. The ‘ vision of freedom beyond death ’ in the sense of identity and the ‘ punishment for wantonness ’ in the sense of vanitas meet. The idea of being a player who played hard but lost everything seemed bearable for the generation of war returnees. An animated film is nominally not a representation of fact, but pure fantasy. Aware that what is being depicted is missing anyway and that there is therefore no competition for newly designed worlds, viewers, stimulated by extradiegetic music, imagine a world of their own - just as a child gives a doll its own voice, or a viewer reads comic-book speech bubbles. As in silent films, musical voices act as placeholders for the voices of an imaginary audience singing or dancing along. Here is an example: in Valse à quatre mains (Supamonks Studio, 2016) 65 , two girls play a piano waltz for four hands and sadly reject a suitor. After he improvises on the violin outside the window to their piano playing, they pluck up the courage to meet him. They turn out to be Siamese twins. The small castle in which they live is filled with vanitas attributes, such as art objects or taxidermy next to a skull. On closer inspection, they all embody the identity of the Siamese twins. Lifelessly, the clock ticks, and the film works with the traditional vanitas attributes of the performing arts: reflection, shadow - and echo: the doubling of the pianist is only revealed just as she begins to play. The piano is not a partner, but only a mirror. The audience is aware that they are being shown a culmination of what is technically possible, with computer-assisted movements, camera movements and shadows for everything that can be calculated: the potentiated absence of a living being or the fascination of how? For the lonely characters, playing the piano is an instrumental substitute for dancing the waltz in convivial company. The waltz itself would be a substitute for relationships from a vanitas perspective, and the instrumental waltz is a substitute for this substitute. This is the traditional structure of the mise en abyme, potentiating the unattainable or inanimate. The Siamese twins are a symbol of the musical voices of the piano waltz: they are coupled by beat and harmony, but the coupling constitutes neither an individual nor a community. It is only the foreboding of a chorus in front of the inanimate object of the musical instrument, for a dance partner is missing. The failure of two hands to play the piano and its resumption conveys the suggestive message: ‘ trust heals loss of control ’ . Keyboard instruments can ‘ sing ’ to a lesser degree than melodic instruments, their singing remains a wistful wish. In the tradition of melodrama, both the mute figure and the textless piano sound seem to say to their audience: ‘ read me, so that I may come alive through your voice ’ . 66 The instrumental 65 Film: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=jYu2kY2vcjA [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 66 In the melodrama Yelva, ou l ’ orpheline russe (1828) by Eugène Scribe, the mute protagonist acts to well-known melodies. Her utterances are made intelligible to the audience by remembering the words of the melodies. This ‘ reading ’ was also possible for the illiterate members of the audience. If what is perceived is not real ( ‘ melodies are not language, just as a waltz only heard is not a dance ’ : arguments of vanitas), then it is made plausible as writing, and the ‘ reading ’ of this writing is realization (singing along to the remembered text or waltzing to the melody: arguments of identity). Like the letter or the musical note, the silent figure mutates from a sign of its lack of voice into a model of action for readers who supplement this voice. Melodrama asserts: ‘ Everything is writing ’ , and promises the legibility of the world. In the guise of the mute character, writing is presented as the most natural, immediate means of expression. On this tradition, which has passed from theatre to film, see 346 Mathias Spohr sound becomes the precondition for one ’ s own speech, the animation the precondition for one ’ s own movement - a substitute becomes an opportunity for action. The violinist anticipates what is expected of the film audience: as an observer, he enriches the mechanism of piano playing with the expression of an expected relationship. Speaking or dancing, on the other hand, is reserved for the audience. In the context of this film, the chorus of instrumental voices, like the animated porcelain figurines, remains an ‘ undead ’ monster that, like Frankenstein ’ s monster, cannot find a social connection as an artificial figment. The audience, which merely watches the lifeless mechanics of the animated film instead of engaging socially, sees itself reflected in it, even as it defiantly wants to animate what it sees. 67 Like the rejected suitor of the piano players at the beginning, they see no counterpart in them, but only their own shadow on the glass of the screen, with which they all become Siamese twins. The line of sight from the observation space to the action space only leads to mechanics and absence: vanitas. Technical coordination, on the other hand, makes it possible for people and institutions that cannot see or know each other to work together, symbolized by the admirer playing together outside the window with the pianists inside. The scenery brightens and the music moves into the extradiegetic: it turns from the what of a perceived to the how of perceiving, animating an illusion or vision, and the awareness of absence becomes expectation. The direction of perception ‘ from outside to inside ’ , which encounters insurmountable obstacles, is followed by a hopeful path ‘ from inside to outside ’ . A meeting of the unequal pair only comes about on the way ‘ from inside to outside ’ , through the encounter with observers. Identity succeeds when the encounter leaves the film and leads to a chorus of moving spectators. The line of sight from the action space to the observation space leads to a living reality. 9 Coexistence of identity and vanitas The naively conceived Swiss film ’ s Margritli und d ’ Soldate by August Kern (1941) shows how the vanitas of a waltz melody, as a reminiscence of an unfulfilled couple ’ s relationship, can be diverted into a successful national identity. The waltz, which has become well known in Switzerland, is sung by soldiers in praise of their idol Margritli (literally: little daisy). As mobilization for war takes the soldiers away from their private lives, they all hope for a relationship with Margritli even if it remains an unfulfilled longing for the time being. The children ’ s choir, which sings the song in a setting of artificial daisies that break down the name into a typographical combination of letters, detaches the common goal from any desire that would not be harmless, and includes women and children in the perspective. 68 It Mathias Spohr: ‘ Melodrama - technische Medien, stumme Figuren und die Illusion des Ausdrucks ’ , in: Claudia Jeschke, Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer (eds.): Bewegung im Blick. Beiträge zu einer theaterwissenschaftlichen Bewegungsforschung, Berlin: Vorwerk, 2000, pp. 258 - 73. 67 Walter Benjamin laconically called the ‘ reading ’ of the ‘ mute creature ’ ‘ salvation through the signified ’ . The reflecting viewers and readers are in fact the signified. According to him, it is the mourning of the mute object that motivates this empathy. This is still true for the animated films discussed here. It is the same procedure that I call ‘ Trust heals loss of control. ’ Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991, vol. I, 1, p. 401. 68 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=Piduz-wTUrs [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. The Waltz in Film 347 is clear to the film ’ s audience that Margritli does not exist, only an actress portraying her. Margritli remains an allegory. There is no waltz with Margritli for anyone, so the waltz, like ‘ Edelweiss ’ from The Sound of Music, remains a vocal waltz. In the sense of mise en abyme, the unattainability is intensified: Margritli is a missing partner with the name of an ephemeral flower. After a drum roll, the camera first shows the shadow of a dummy, an absence within an absence or, conversely, a model within a model. The letters, the fake flowers (as well as the bouquet of real daisies), the sung name, the actress, all are not the signified, and the film as a whole is only an image - but this is not lamented either. Margritli ’ s inaccessibility is a freedom, because it deprives the fictional idol of any authority. Margritli appears as an authority only in the sense that she is constructed by the Leviathan of her observers: words are formed by a community of letters, as shown in the film scene with extras in the role of animated letters, who give these letters iconic meaning by moving their petals. All these dummies do not remain inanimate, they become embodied models through their players. Margritli is a symbol of power without force, because the power of her observers prevails. Switzerland knows no queens. The ‘ what ’ here (like the waltz beat itself) is not an afterimage and postscript of something unattainable, but a model and recipe for something that can be shaped and enlivened, an opportunity for action. Everyone can represent Margritli and admire themselves in the process, without competing with an original. The coupling of the elements in the medium of the alphabet is itself a chorus that signals consensus by creating a meaning. This explains the paradoxical correspondence between vanitas and the overcoming of vanitas in these examples: failure is success, because the lack of a real authority enables an identity as a shared vision. To put it more theoretically: the intradiegetic lack of a relationship partner is compensated by his/ her unifying extradiegetic imaginability. The original waltz melody of a film is often transformed into a march, as here. Two types of movement give the same identity. At the end of the film, the goal of the singers ’ and dancers ’ common longing becomes more concrete: the Margritli melody is synchronized with the rhythmic march of the mobilized army. 69 The perspective offered to the audience is a simple variant of Leviathan: a motivated and obedient army as a model for the ‘ imagined community ’ of its viewers. The memory of Margritli (or rather a vision of Margritli, as a triumph of unfettered imagination) complements the mechanical grid of the march with the expression of the music. The unfulfilled couple ’ s relationship becomes a common experience and success, as when a male choir sings ‘ Ännchen von Tharau ’ (a song about a girl in slow waltz time popular with German male choirs): the audience constructs a fictitious partner. When the relationship between admirers of an idol is more important than their relationship to the idol, then any reality behind the idol becomes dispensable. 70 69 Spohr: Swiss Film Music. Anthology (see note 43), p. 223. Online: http: / / swissfilmmusic.ch/ wiki/ 's_Margritli_and_d'Soldate. 70 The American audience ’ s empathy with the unfulfillable desire for a relationship between the prince and the waitress in the waltz song ‘ Deep in My Heart ’ from the operetta The Student Prince (Sigmund Romberg 1924, filmed by Richard Thorpe 1954) is also a triumph over the failure (or the ‘ decadence ’ ) of these characters, because this empathy arises from a consciousness of superiority: the (apparent) American overcoming of European class boundaries. In this variant of the ‘ sad film paradox ’ identity is formed as a triumph over reproduced failure. Love is an opportunity for action for the world of the audience, as opposed to the world of the characters. 348 Mathias Spohr The teen film Twilight (2008) by Catherine Hardwicke strives for an even clearer coexistence of vanitas and identity: the vampire Edward refuses to take the viewer, in the form of the girl Bella, into the undead realm of the film characters with a bite during a ‘ waltz ’ , because the imaginary relationship should continue as before. 71 This means that she or he can be satisfied with controllable objects such as films, music or fan posters before getting serious about eroticism. Neither the viewer nor the character has a real partner, although a couple is shown dancing. Self-control is maintained: Edward ’ s inaccessibility is desired, despite the desired closeness. There is no relationship to the image of a monster, but it doesn ’ t bite either. If Bella ran off with him and the relationship went wrong, the film would be a morality tale. Edward is an available symbol of power for the viewer, without power. An object or mechanism has no intentions; this can be lamented as the absence of a loving attention (vanitas), but welcomed as the absence of destructive intent, combined with the possibility of controlling the uncanny (identity). Edward ’ s image is a substitute for a partner, and perhaps a model for future partners outside the film. In the interpretive pattern of vanitas, the frame structure ( ‘ observation within observation within observation ’ ) is perceived from the outside in: between the film spectators and the film characters is the insurmountable boundary of the screen. This boundary is repeated on another level between the film characters and their idol. In the interpretive pattern of identity, the same frame structure is viewed from the inside out, and the boundaries seem to dissolve. The desperately desired relationship is with the characters inside the frame, and the possible relationship with the observers outside. A circle of admirers can form around Margritli or Edward without the need for a personal relationship with the idol. Rather than admirers, they are all actors in a role model, because the visualization seems more real than any depicted reality. This fan community, in the form of a film audience, can expand without temporal or geographical barriers: one can sing or dance to a film melody at any time and any place, imagining the realization of a relationship. This way, music motivates an action outside the film, the performance of its audience. 72 Identity 71 Film excerpt: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=eDblDj6BISo [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. The music is straightbeat, although the closed dance here is often referred to as a waltz, unlike the dances that precede it. 72 A thesis may be added here: The deliberate ambiguity as to whether a piece of music sounds diegetically, but only ‘ in the head ’ of a character, or extradiegetically, strives for ‘ identity ’ , because an extradiegetic script (such as subtitles) would be read by the audience in their own voices just as much as a diegetic one (such as a letter from a character). The musical voices, therefore, as a symbol or model of this reading, are not limited to one level and are intended to assert immediacy: reading crosses borders, as it were, as a sign of solidarity between the ‘ first ’ and ‘ second ’ order observers. ‘ I am in the head and looking at the head ’ is the situation when looking in the mirror, reading monological subtitles referring to figures in the picture, or listening to their thoughts realized as off-voices. An observer ’ s perspective is presupposed in the observed. The ideas that writing addresses its reader or the mirror image looks at its viewer are equivalent and can transcend all framings. External reference and self-reference have comparable media, or: the action depicted and the action of an observer overlap. Two opposing types of action belong to diegesis: an imitated action and an action that arises in the perception of this imitation, which can take on a life of its own as a performance. Readability creates presence. Speech act theory distinguishes between facts that are described and facts that emerge through the act of performance. As far as I can see, there has been no productive continuation of this approach in film theory. Wolfgang Iser has made an effort with the concepts of identity, fiction and imagination, see for example ‘ Ist der Identitätsbegriff ein Paradigma für die Funktion der Fiktion? ’ , in: Odo Marquard, Karlheinz Stierle (eds.): Identität, München: Fink, 1979, pp. 725 - 29. Judith Butler has criticized the determination of The Waltz in Film 349 asserts the reality of such a world of visions, and dance is no less a ‘ realization mechanism ’ than the experienced film projection. The feature film, and even more so the animated film, stimulates the audience ’ s imagination because fiction does not have to be compared to fact. In Walt Disney ’ s Sleeping Beauty (1959), the animation of the cartoon is further enhanced by the fact that the animal figures together simulate a dance partner for Sleeping Beauty, who is addressed as an acquaintance in the song lyrics, although the observing prince who embodies this doubly animated and doubly absent partner in the course of the dance is still as unknown to her as the film audience. 73 Sleeping Beauty ’ s expected animation by the prince at the end of the tale is anticipated by her imagination of the prince. It is not the absence of a dance partner that is made painfully clear to the character and the spectator with the waltz song, for there is an illusion in illusion, but the mirrored spectator is supposed to believe that he or she is the missing reality. The singing of the word ‘ you ’ embodies the you rather than emphasizing its absence. Sleeping Beauty ’ s direction of perception ‘ from outside to inside ’ , which encounters insurmountable obstacles, is followed by a successful path ‘ from inside to outside ’ , i. e. from the action space to the observation spaces. The prince ’ s trust heals her loss of control while dancing, and the audience agrees. One ’ s own reflection appears as a partner, not with ridiculous or demonic effect, but with touching effect. At the end of the scene, the music entirely moves into extradiegesis. The image no longer shows a broken song or a failed dance, but a chorus of observers takes over the power of interpretation, and the fictional camera shows a wide shot: a relationship is imagined by shifting dance and song into the auditorium. The animated animals as dance partners and later observers illustrate the Leviathan model very vividly. 10 The vanitas of propaganda Might ‘ identity ’ , as the waltz implies, not be a relationship but merely the illusion of shared control? A prime example of an ‘ imagined community ’ is Nazi Germany in propaganda films. In Rolf Hansen ’ s 1942 war film Die große Liebe (The Great Love), a famous singer and a military pilot find their way to each other because, or despite, being a pawn in the hands of those in power, which permanently separates them. Repression and emancipation become compatible, because obstacles only intensify love, and the shared experience of unfulfilled longing can be transferred to the anonymous community of the dictatorship. Loving couples and sworn party comrades turn against an impersonal fate, in unison and heroically, and at the same time come to terms with their situation, because the defiantly asserted duration of love promises prospects for the future, even beyond death. Destiny, determinism and teleology appeared united in the model of the film, which reliably unwinds before the eyes of its audience like an eternal waltz. Determinism seemed to be freedom. The love of the unattainable is seen here not as the fleeting illusion of vanitas, but as the enduring vision of identity. An ideological proximity to contemporary fundamentalist identities with the help of speech act theory in: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 173 ff. 73 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=TXbHShUnwxY&list=RDTXbHShUnwxY [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 350 Mathias Spohr suicide bombers cannot be denied: in this context, Talal Asad emphasizes ‘ collective immortality ’ as an idea of identity without a specifically religious background. 74 For those who act together, death is not the warning end of autonomous action, but its triumph. An ideal and fictive timeless community whose members need not know each other (Benedict Anderson ’ s criterion for an ‘ imagined community ’ ) is preferred to living, real but finite relationships. 75 A self-chosen, defiantly asserted institution survives individual death. In the animated film Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008), the killing spree is exposed as an apparent liberation in the vanitas sense. 76 The soldier shooting wildly to a Chopin waltz lacks a dance partner. This is replaced by the medium of the controlled weapon - in which the film audience sees itself mirrored, with no living counterpart but only the lifeless mechanism of the film in front of it. A waltz with Bashir, as promised in the title, is not possible for them. The controlled loss of control of the rampage as a helpless way out for this character (in the tradition of the ‘ mad scene ’ , as it were) seems to retain a trace of the visionary, because the brutal reality of the mechanical clatter falls silent in the face of the dainty idleness of the piano waltz: 77 the narrator, the spectator and perhaps even the person portrayed no longer perceive the acoustic reality. The ‘ how ’ of the waltz triumphs over the ‘ what ’ of the gunshot. Instead of identity, however, the loss of reality is transferred to the viewer: the waltz music that remains of the acoustic events of the internal plot is merely a substitute. It is not a vision that is expressed, but, on the contrary, the impossibility of adequately reproducing the events - analogous to the replacement of optical reality by animated drawings. Image and sound are equally a substitute, not a model. Failure of imagination shows the incomprehensibility of the real, which can only be clumsily imitated. This representation does not find the strength for a triumphant experience of identity, nor should it. Like Bashir, the audience has no control. We cannot imagine all this. Propaganda stands in sharp contrast to this: in Die große Liebe, Zarah Leander sings the fast waltz ‘ Davon geht die Welt nicht unter ’ (The world will not end from this) in front of swaying Wehrmacht soldiers in Paris. 78 This waltz remains a song and becomes only an imaginary dance of the film audience, as an observer of her observers. The slow waltz in the film, performed in a theatre in Berlin, has a similar programme and escalates into the visionary: ‘ Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehn ’ (I know, a miracle will happen one day). 79 A choir reinforces the refrain. The unhappily-in-love conductor has no partner, just like the observed singer and the observing film spectator. But the will to persevere expressed in the waltz beat is vanitas overcoming par excellence: not only love but also 74 Talal Asad: On Suicide Bombing, New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2007, p. 96. 75 The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 as an identity experience ( ‘ vision of freedom beyond death ’ ), while its impact unfolded as a vanitas symbol ( ‘ punishment for arrogance ’ ). Cf. for example Arthur Engelbert: Global Images. Eine Studie zur Praxis der Bilder, Bielefeld: transcript, 2014, p. 22 ff. 76 Cf. the analysis by Hans J. Wulff: ‘ Der Schock des Realen: Einige Bemerkungen zur ästhetischen und politischen Wirkungsdramaturgie von Ari Folman ’ s WALTZ WITH BASHIR ’ , in: Tà katoptrizómena - Magazin für Kunst, Kultur, Theologie und Ästhetik, vol. 61, 2009, Online: https: / / www.theomag.de/ 61/ hjw9.htm [accessed 1/ 30/ 24]. 77 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=AjsSJcf32p4, from about 01: 40, [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 78 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=p8D126NPTrU [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 79 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=xp6l59mZojM [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. The Waltz in Film 351 dictatorship assert their permanence as conspiratorial communities in self-chosen coercion, even if no relationship is established beyond these utopian notions. This is reminiscent of the merely imagined freedom of the waltz in the 19th century: a substitute for freedom poses as a model of freedom. The unattainable partner promotes self-control in the sense of an ideology. The fundamentally socializing quality of self-control is called into question, and the sense of identity dissolves. Today, a vanitas interpretation of the film is closer than the intended one of identity; imagined heroic deeds turned out to be real misdeeds. The filmed singer seems to look the audience in the face, at any time and in any setting, but her image remains blind. Like a baroque vanitas still life, the film seems to warn of its perfected imaginative power - which one nevertheless admires. 11 Zero focalization and the illusion of control In Stanley Kubrick ’ s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the illusion of control that is part of identity is taken to extremes. There is neither waltzing nor singing of a waltz song. The ‘ Danube Waltz ’ by Johann Strauss Jr. as the famous music of this film 80 remains extradiegetic because it cannot sound in a vacuum. The screen doubles the demarcation of the human world from the airless, hostile universe. The boundary between extradiegesis and diegesis stands here in the greatest generalization for the differences between the living and the lifeless, between the how and the what of what is perceived, or between expression and mechanism. No image is shown clumsily, but a common vision is propagated. Its realization takes place outside the film: in the cinema or television room, which, as concrete spaces, fit into the placeholder of this sound space, 81 and appear as dominating outer worlds of the boundless. Celestial bodies seem to dance to this music like horses in a circus, although the waltz is not really their model. 82 People were as proud of the success of the first moon landing as they were of the film ’ s special effects. In this vision of freedom, consensus and control, it is not just a dancing couple but a global human community that conquers space, as some science fiction works around 1970 propagated as an identity and alternative to the discord of the Cold War. The medium of the waltz seems to replace an unattainable partner in the distance of space as a pure opportunity for action ( ‘ the medium is the message ’ , as Marshall McLuhan put it 83 ) and can become a triumph for an ‘ imagined community ’ : apparently, we can do everything. The notion of vanitas overcoming, as is particularly clear in this example, seems to be related to the omnipotence of a supra-individual perspective. It connects the seemingly largest community with the seemingly largest control. If, on the other hand, the waltz music 80 Film clip: https: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v=q3oHmVhviO8 [accessed 1/ 25/ 23]. 81 According to the proposed interpretation, an extradiegetic chorus is perceived as a (social) space: as a model or merely a stage direction for the community of an audience. 82 In the circus, too, the music has to follow the horses in reverse, cf. Reto Parolari: Circusmusik in Theorie und Praxis, Winterthur: Swiss Music, 2005, p. 30. 83 Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, London: McGraw-Hill, 1964, pp. 7 - 28. What and how shift by one level in the transition between imitation and expressive aesthetics: in an imitation, the thing imitated is the what and the medium of its representation is the how. Here, on the other hand, the medium is the what, and its use is the how. In place of an absent world, there is a model that can be embodied: the viewer or listener enlivens the ‘ what ’ . 352 Mathias Spohr were to sound ‘ diegetic ’ on board the spaceship or inside the astronaut ’ s helmet, it would merely be part of a ridiculously small inner world facing a gigantic lifeless outer world. The collapse of the omnipotent zero focalization (according to Gérard Genette) into an extremely limited internal focalization (that of a lonely human being in space) is the dramaturgical principle of the film ’ s music, which draws attention to the contradiction between the intoxication of power and actual powerlessness - similar to the music of Kubrick ’ s A Clockwork Orange (1971), with Beethoven as the proverbial vanitas overcomer. A solitary diegetic illusion lacks consensus, whereas a shared extradiegetic illusion claims reality as a vision. Loss of control is the theme of the film, as the controlled technology comes to life and the on-board computer HAL rebels against the astronauts (which could also be a delusion of the hero, who has to live in the spaceship without communication, and also mirrors the situation of the viewer, who cannot talk to the film and its characters). Relationship partners are out of reach for the astronaut on his heroic mission, and technology is not a communicative counterpart, but can at best be controlled. The waltz music mutates in retrospect from a vision of boundless community to a symbol of the missing dance partner, from identity to vanitas. What would be the answer to the question posed at the beginning? The filmic waltz is a dance without a real partner: the ‘ waltz ’ of the spectator with the film is repeated in the action of the film as the ‘ waltz ’ of a character with an object. The absence of a partner can be perceived as an opportunity for action, but this absence is only cancelled out when the music is taken from the film and used by the singing and dancing audience to realize relationships. Performance, as a shared expression, thus triumphs over diegesis without remaining imaginary. However, control is then no longer guaranteed. Why is this principle of perception present in all media? Because we have to learn and practise it like the grammar of a language. This behaviour is not trivial or self-evident. While older vanitas rhetoric warns of a loss of social relations, with viewers losing themselves in the illusions of lifeless records and mechanisms, newer identity rhetoric values the unifying control that such illusions allow. The partnerlessness of the film waltz can put off the viewer or, on the contrary, encourage him or her in a defiant way, because control is a promise of power. The promise ‘ you may imagine ’ is crucial to the sense of identity. It reflects the shared power of a community. Readers or viewers imagine a reality and mirror themselves into what is missing. References Achermann, Eric 1997: Worte und Werte. 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