The Golem: How He Came Into the World

This film (drama)Also known asDer Golem，is aGermanyProducerwomen sex，At1920Released in year 。The dialogue language isSilent Film，Current Douban rating7.9(For reference only)。

Representative work of German Expressionism 　　A 　　The Talmud, a Jewish legal text from the 4th century, mentions Rava's creation of a golem. Rava's full name is Rabbi Abba ben Rav Hamma, and he created a "man" who could not speak. He presented this "man" to Rav Zera, and since it did not respond to questions, Zera said, "You must have been created by one of my colleagues. Return to dust." (Sanhedrin 65b) In a religious sense, only those created by God are complete human beings and can speak, while Rava's creation is not a true person. According to Jewish tradition, at that time, the rabbis and sages could create either human or animal golems, and it was not particularly unusual. 　　B 　　The legend of the golem gradually changed; in the 17th century, Rabbi Loew from Prague created a golem to protect the Jews living in the Jewish quarter from anti-Semitic violence. To avoid trouble, the scholar in the story always turned the golem back into lifeless clay after it completed its mission. One day, Rabbi forgot to revert the golem back to dust, and when all the townspeople had gone to worship, the golem became angry and destroyed the entire city. This story structure continued to appear in literary works into the 19th and 20th centuries, most famously in Gustav Meyrink's "Der Golem," which was widely read in 1915. It is worth exploring that such novels coincided with the era of the industrial revolution, reflecting people's fears about the ethical challenges posed by technology. 　　C 　　The classic silent film "Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam" (The Golem: How He Came Into the World), directed by Carl Boese and Paul Wegener in 1920, is adapted from Gustav Meyrink's novel. This film showcases the characteristics of German Expressionist art and had a significant influence on directors like Fritz Lang. It ingeniously designed a series of lighting effects using lanterns, oil lamps, and torches to express the characters' psychological states and create the film's atmosphere. This expressive use of lighting ultimately developed into a major characteristic of all forms of German cinema, also providing experience for the depiction techniques in horror films. 　　D 　　The legend of the golem is also one of the sources for Mary Shelley's famous science fiction novel "Frankenstein." However, there is a difference: the golem in the legend is clumsy and reckless, unaware of its own strength and ignorance; while in Mary Shelley's narrative, the creature created by Victor Frankenstein, though reckless, is capable of learning and is very human, understanding pain, sympathy, compassion, affection, remorse, and other human emotions, even more mature than the young Frankenstein himself. The Enlightenment of the 18th century progressed from advocating rationalism to a later stage where reason began to suppress human emotions, turning rationalism into a cold and rigid entity. Thus, a romantic movement arose in Germany opposing the Enlightenment, and in the early 19th century, romantic literature swept through Europe and America, with Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" born in this context. However, the anti-rational and anti-science tendencies in popular literature often seem somewhat excessive; the images of science and scientists are simplified and flattened. This portrayal of the "scientific monster" flourished in silent German Expressionist films and continued in many mediocre Hollywood sci-fi films (characterized by continuously producing increasingly poor sequels). 　　E Contemporary philosophy of science research has a hot direction known as the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), which involves delving into the specific research processes of science, meticulously examining every aspect, such as funding and paper publication, to study how scientific knowledge is constructed, emphasizing the role of social factors in the construction process. A representative figure in SSK, Collins, along with Pinch, published a popular pamphlet in 1993 titled Golem, translated as "Golem: What Scientists Should Know." Collins candidly stated that he wanted to use the "golem" to explain "science," saying, "We are trying to prove that it is not an evil creature, just a little daft. Don't blame the golem for the failures of science; it is us humans who make mistakes. If the golem tries to do its own thing, it should not be blamed. But we cannot expect too much. Despite being powerful, the golem is a creation of our culture (art) or our craft." SSK is often criticized as having anti-scientific tendencies, but it is clear that it is fundamentally different from the anti-scientific tendencies of the Romantic era. It depicts a rich and fleshy image of science, and its so-called "anti-science" is merely an effort to strip away the layers of imposition on science and give it a true face, far from the simple rejection and denigration of science in the 19th century.