The Beast of History: Human to Animal and Animal to Human Transformations in Polish Horror Films
Agnieszka Jeżyk
Publication: Volume 3 Issue 4
Abstract
This essay presents a comparative analyses of four Polish horror films—two from the communist period: Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach (1970) by Janusz Majewski, and Marek Piestrak’s The Return of the She-wolf (1990), and two recent works: The Lure (2015) by Agnieszka Smoczyńska and Werewolf (2018) by Adrian Panek. In the context of the marginal popularity of the horror genre in Poland, the essay finds their focus on human to animal or animal to human metamorphosis intriguing, and studies it as a symptom of repressed national fears. It argues that what is subjugated in particular through this type of narratives is the anxiety of political, ideological, and social change. In this interpretation of the seemingly non-historical films, the essay will demonstrate that these surprisingly common depictions of transformations of subjectivity serve as vessels that expose the problematic approach of collective Polish consciousness to history. Some of the theoretical concepts used in the essay are Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of becoming as well as their demonic animal, Jacques Derrida’s, Alexandre Kojève’s, and Georgio Agamben’s insights on human and non-human subjects and language, Freud’s uncanny, and Žižek’s interpretation of the Radical Evil in the context of Holocaust.
Keywords: Metamorphosis, Transgression, Subjectivity, Polish Horror Films, Cinema of Dread, Polish History, Animal Studies
Agnieszka Jeżyk (agnieszka.jezyk@utoronto.ca) is Assistant Professor of Polish Language, Literature, and Culture at the University of Toronto, Canada, where she teaches an array of undergraduate and graduate courses in Polish and Central and East European culture. She earned a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago for her work on excessive matter in Bruno Jasieński’s poetry. She specializes in European avant-gardes; everyday life during the Cold War; and objecthood, animal studies, and biopolitics in the interwar period Poland.