The visuals in Robert Wiene’s German expressionist film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) are known for their influence on goth and horror aesthetics. References to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are not uncommon, appearing anywhere from Rob Zombie music videos to the terrible yet sexy vampire movie, Queen of the Damned (2002). One film that takes these allusions to the extreme is Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise (1974). Phantom of the Paradise is a rock musical film that is extremely referential to other films while also adapting its story from several literary inspirations such as Phantom of the Opera, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and Faust. This essay will examine the characters of Caligari and Cesare as well as their shadows in Phantom.

I will argue that Caligari acts as a controlling masculine force to Cesare, a character who pushes the boundary lines on autonomy and gender. So much so that when Cesare’s image is replicated through allusions in other films then his ambiguity is as well. These boundaries are further troubled in Phantom because of the implications of the glam rock music genre. When the visual aesthetics of Cesare’s character are directly recreated as part of glam rock musical numbers, it is a deliberate performance that reveals greater themes of the characters, stories, and music industry as a whole.

In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Caligari controls the somnambulist, Cesare. Caligari uses Cesare as a sideshow spectacle where he wakes Cesare to have him predict the audience’s fortunes. In Cesare’s introduction, he is in an upright casket-likebox which Caligari opens to unveil him to the crowd. Cesare tells the fortune of a man saying that he will die at dawn then that man is shown to have been murdered, just as Cesare predicted. Later in the film, it is shown that Cesare is the murderer and he is killing different people in town. The trick is that Cesare is forced to kill this man by Caligari and he will make Cesare kill again.

Cesare exists as a boundary figure in his lack of autonomy which extends to performance and vulnerability. Caligari controls Cesare to make him perform at the fair and enact violence. Cesare operates unconsciously, literally sleepwalking, only appearing to break his trance once to reveal the vulnerability and sorrow underneath, before returning to unconsciousness and ultimately completing his task. Through Caligari’s forceful spell, Cesare is submissive and vulnerable which complicates his gendered roles. Cesare’s depiction as a killer would place him in a dominant and masculine position however he is also a victim of Caligari’s control making him a feminized subject. Cesare’s visual aesthetic also plays into gender ambiguity. His slinky all-black attire and heavy makeup make him androgynous compared to other characters in the film. Gender is only further complicated when Cesare is depicted in Phantom because it introduces the gender complexities of the glam rock genre.

There are two allusions to Cesare in the Phantom. One appearance is as a band, the Undeads, performing the song “Somebody Super Like You.” The Undeads are a glam rock band whose costumes and makeup look like a cross between Cesare and KISS with the set of their performance designed in a German expressionist style. The other appearance is earlier with the introduction to Beef, a glam rocker who is presented at a press conference in a coffin akin to Cesare’s introduction in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Both Beef and the Undeads act as glam rock spectacles which allow the music executive, Swan, to achieve financial success.

The visual aesthetic links between the Undeads’ performance and Beef’s entrance have been noted by Barry Keith Grant in The Hollywood film musical however Grant did not dive into the genre and gender complexities of these allusions. As Cesarecharacters, the Undeads are ultimately submissive. In their performance, they demonstrate fake acts of violence as part of the show while singing a song about needing a man. Their gender enters a complex space as the masculine act of violence contradicts their queer vocal expression. It is suggested that the man they are singing about is Beef because they are his supporting act, another detail suggesting submission, but as established earlier, Beef is also a Cesare character. Swan is the one to open the coffin in Beef’s introduction exactly like Dr. Caligari opened Cesare’s box.

Swan acts as the Caligari character in the film. As the executive, he is in control of the artists signed to his label. Much like Caligari, Swan dictates the performance of the musicians. He changes how the Undeads appear and sound throughout the film. Before the Undeads were the Undeads, they appeared as rock and roll greasers, the Juicy Fruits, and surf rockers, the Beach Bums. They change to whatever genre and form of masculinity generates the most profit for Swan, the further they evolve the more they lose their control. The band’s evolution into glam rock best represents the ambiguity of the characters because when they are most vulnerable, it cements them in a genre with complex gender identity.

A key element of glam rock’s aesthetic is androgynous performance. While the Undeads’ earlier iterations are different representations of masculinity, their appearance as glam rockers is androgynous. As a genre, glam rock challenged the assumption that gender is natural by constructing androgyny (Auslander 40). Beef also represents this challenge. He only ever appeared in the film as a glam rocker and Swan encouraged him to develop his gothic glam rock persona. In the song “Life at Last,” Beef even moves on stage while thrusting his guitar like a phallus at the audience, a move seen in Mick Ronson (Auslander 141). This display of dominant masculinity becomes entangled with Beef’s feminine makeup, clothing, and stereotypically queer-coded mannerisms displayed in the rest of the film. The adoption of a German expressionist aesthetic for the set design is also a trend in glam rock as David Bowie used a similar set in his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.Phantom of the Paradise’s Cesare characters exist in a gray area of gender which reflects their level of control. The Undeads and Beef have voluntarily surrendered control to Swan. Throughout the film, it is shown that Swan deals in Faustian bargains where he obtains control through the seduction of the musicians’ free will. Even if Swan ultimately maintains control, the artists in Phantom of the Paradise are not unconscious which generates a new form of horror. Even though they are also bound to perform like Cesare, they willingly submit in hopes of gaining success for themselves. They have enslaved themselves to a capitalist machine in the form of the music industry. While they may be the face of the performance and bring audiences in, Caligari and Swan are the masters who profit.

Bibliography

Auslander, Philip. Performing Glam Rock : Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. University of Michigan Press, 2006.

Grant, Barry Keith. “Phantom of the Paradise (1974)” in The Hollywood film musical. 1st ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Filmography

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari]. Directed by Robert Wiene, Decla Film Gesellschaft Holtz & Co., 1920.

Living Dead Girl (music video). Directed by Joseph Kahn and Rob Zombie, Geffen Records, 1999.

Phantom of the Paradise. Directed by Brian De Palma, Harbor Productions, 1974.

Queen of the Damned. Directed by Michael Rymer, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2002.