This chapter advances a thesis about how to make progress on “the problem of sacrifice.” What is the problem of sacrifice? Emerging from a long history of learned discussion, the problem of sacrifice centers on the notion that sacrifice in its many refractions carries some deep and perhaps universal power. The problem for the researcher comes in attempting to evaluate and to explain this notion. Paradigmatically, the question would take the following form: How does the seemingly straightforward and even mundane act of killing an animal in a religious context exhibit this power? Even though grain and plant offerings were much more common than animal offerings, and one did not kill the cakes or grain, the question has typically focused on animals, and thus often death. Thinkers have proposed many explanations for its power. Is it a deep meaning, a symbol, a psychological transformation, a power of social cohesion and social transformation or one of many other proposals?

Any critical interrogation of this “problem” must involve noticing that that the idea seems to have arisen in the ancient Mediterranean. This discussion will find its examples there, especially with the abundant Greek examples. Central facts must include that sacrifice was the focus of the Judean temple and that Christians came eventually to describe Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, and in the Medieval West also the Mass. But sacrificial practices were ubiquitous across the Mediterranean and West Asia. And there was mutual recognition. Judeans, for instance, readily identified what Romans, Syrians, Lydians, Romans and Libyans did with plants and animals in relation to gods as in the same category as what they did in their Judean temple. Romans and the others also recognized the Jews as sacrificers.

When the study of religion as part of the study of other cultures developed, missionaries and anthropologists found that numerous cultures around the globe had sacrificial practices, offerings to gods and ancestors. Some of these Europeans saw the ubiquity of the practices as the proof of an original true monotheistic religion recorded in the Bible that had degenerated into polytheism. Others interpreted the ubiquity as the sign that a kernel of an innate religiosity implanted by God in human nature had survived. How did the sacrificial practices relate to the kernel of truth?

When Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) was originally released, round about Christmas 1942, no one was in any doubt about its meaning. Warner Brothers, in a magazine advertisement late in 1942, explicitly linked the film to the Allied landings in North Africa on 11 November of that year and spoke of Casablanca as a ‘symbol of the American way of living’, that is, as a film committed to democracy. A film trade magazine of the time wrote that:

In 1942–43 it was impossible to view Casablanca as other than inseparably locked into the Second World War and the film's central meaning as other than the moral choice of the individual to be passive in the face of or actively resist fascism. In certain respects, the composite figure of Rick/Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) became the emblematic anti-fascist hero of the time, initially reluctant to make a commitment but driven by human decency into an active stance against fascism. Indeed, this is the kind of role Bogart would also play in Across the Pacific (Vincent Sherman and John Huston, 1942), Action in the North Atlantic (Lloyd Bacon, 1943), Passage to Marseille (Michael Curtiz, 1944) and, perhaps most famously of all, To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944).

In 1992, Casablanca was re-released. To mark its half-centenary, a special commemorative poster was issued with the figure of Rick/Bogart at the centre of the composition as the forward point of a triangle which unites him with Ilse/Ingrid Bergman (1915–82) and Sam/Dooley Wilson (1886–1953), the black singer/piano player. The meaning is clear – Casablanca is a film about a love affair between Rick and Ilse, with Sam tying them together through the playing of ‘As Time Goes By’.

So far, in this book, the role of political narratives in politics has mostly been studied through the Turkish case, except for Chapter 4, which discusses the Turkish case in comparison with Austria and Hungary. The aim of the current chapter is to broaden the focus and to discuss the role of narratives in other contexts and to further the possibilities of future research of key issues of politics through the analysis of political narratives. In showing how political narratives can be used in understanding political dynamics not limited to the Turkish case, it will particularly focus on the discussion of the crucial role political narratives can play in countering populism and the way studies of democratic backsliding can incorporate the study of political narratives.

The relationship between political narratives and political regimes is a key issue that needs to be tackled. This, we can understand in multiple ways. The most prominent concerns seem to be the relationship between political narratives and the political system on the one hand, and the relationship of such narratives with the citizenship regime of the country, on the other. Both points, though analytically distinct, need to be thought of in conjunction however, as most authoritarian leaders, and in its most current form, right-wing populism, attack liberal democracy and the more inclusive and pluralistic aspects of citizenship simultaneously. I will first briefly discuss how political narratives influence institutions and policies, which is relevant to the prospects of not only the characteristics of the political regime, but also to the future of the citizenship and identity policies of the countries. I will then move on to the discussion of illustrative examples in the rise of political narratives that aim to justify exclusionary and authoritarian institutions and policies, and even politically motivated violence. I will particularly focus on the most popular far-right narrative, especially in the West, namely the political narrative called ‘The Great Replacement Theory’. The remainder of the section will lay out debates with regards to how to best tackle such narratives and the role narratives can play in this struggle.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between narratives of economic development and prospects for democracy. It does so by tracing the political speeches of high-ranking Turkish government officials and journalists close to them to show how they use narratives of economic development as a tool to politically legitimise interventions to liberal democracy. The chapter first illustrates the dangers caused by these stories of economic development to democracy by looking at the Gezi protests of summer 2013. It shows how demands for pluralism and respect of different lifestyles – which are indeed crucial aspects of a liberal democracy – were instead framed by the government as chaos created by agents of the so called ‘interest rate lobby’ and provocations caused by those who want to stop Turkey's economic development from within and from without.

The chapter analyses the Gezi case in comparative perspective with presidentialism debates and the corruption scandal of December 2013. It detects a similar pattern in these cases as well, such that demands for democracy, transparency, checks and balances are pitted against economic development. Citizens are made to choose vaguely defined promises of economic development over demands for democratisation. The chapter thus tries to shed light on the impacts of economic development narratives on democratic backsliding, which is a serious threat not only valid for Turkey but for other developing countries as well. The chapter also delves into the question of how institutional settings and structural conjectures provide opportunities for certain political narratives to thrive. In particular, it shows how the economic, social and political transformations that led to the rise of neopopulism were also greatly responsible for the expansion of economic narratives at the expense of democracy and human rights.

Narratives of Economic Development

In understanding the role economic development narratives play in the fate of democracy, a refreshment of our discussion of public narratives and meta-narrativity will be useful. These concepts will help us situate individual economic development narratives into the broader context in which they are utilised. Somers (1994, 619) defines public narratives as ‘narratives attached to cultural and institutional formations larger than the single individual, to intersubjective networks or institutions, however local or grand, micro or macro’.

Advancing a position unpopular in contemporary Scotland, Fred Halliday (1946–2010) permits himself a volcanic eruption of principled feeling about nationalism in an otherwise sober essay based on his Ernest Gellner [1925–95] Memorial Lecture:

In both quoted extract and full essay alike, Halliday probes the implicitly and explicitly normative claims of nationalism on a number of fronts: national self-determination, the national in relation to the supranational, nationalism's moral agenda, and its uses of history. In all these areas Halliday poses substantial questions: whether national self-determination is always worth the cost in terms of social upheaval (Kosovo is his most recent example); whether it always delivers more humane state formations (Chechnya being a case in point); whether the national, as a given, should invariably trump the supranational (the routine flouting of the United Nations charter and aims by national interests, nuclear proliferation argued on the basis of national defence); whether loyalty to the nation state should always supersede other loyalties (class, gender, faith); and whether nationalism's relaxed attitude to its own diverse ‘imaginings’ needs to be challenged (Ernest Renan [1823–92]'s famous belief that ‘Getting your history wrong is part of being a nation’).

Halliday's timely reminder that nationalism is not a natural but a historical phenomenon challenges those in Scotland and elsewhere who would regard scepticism about nationalism as tantamount to treason. His piece should be read as a backdrop to this essay, which is about some of the cultural dimensions of the collective turn to nationalism of a significant section of the Scots intelligentsia. In particular, this essay emphasises the silences and deformations that this turn imposes on them with regard to their position on certain popular Scottish cultural phenomena, most notably, what has come to be known as Tartanry or Highlandism.

A century has passed since the birth of Nosferatu (1922), and as we stand in the shadows of this haunting milestone, we find ourselves reflecting upon the metamorphosis of cinema – a peculiar process that I propose is a devolution, rather than an evolution. The 1920s was an era of cinematic innocence when the moving image was a force unto itself, eloquently conveying stories and emotions with an otherworldly, hypnotic majesty.

Throughout the vast expanse of human history, the image has been our ultimate storyteller, transcending time and culture. It has spoken to us through the ancient inscriptions of Hammurabi, the hieroglyphs of Egypt, and the enduring masterpieces of the Renaissance. However, as the curtains closed on the 1920s, so too did the silent era of cinema. The arrival of sound and dialogue initiated an insidious transformation – a vampiric assault on the lifeblood of the moving image.

In my eyes, the true vampire of cinema is the very sound and dialogue that has drained the image of its profound, hypnotic power. Nosferatu, then, serves as a dark harbinger of the changes to come. These ruminations laid the foundation for my film, Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a lamentation of the silenced image and its lost power to evoke the unconscious and the contemplative.

Over time, dialogue has relegated the moving image to a lowly servant of rational thought, robbing it of its enigmatic essence. Gary Rhodes's book revisits the haunting world of Nosferatu, celebrating the uncanny dread and beauty that still echoes through its images. In doing so, it draws us back to the primordial allure of the vampire, an ancient symbol embodying the cyclical, devouring nature of life itself.

The vampire, in all its seductive and horrifying forms, has ensnared our collective imagination like no other mythic creature. It serves as a vessel to explore our deepest desires, fears, and moral quandaries. In this book, we delve into the murky depths of the vampire's cinematic history, shedding light on the cultural significance and undying allure of these enigmatic beings. Embrace the darkness and join us on this exploration of the vampire's eternal grip on the silver screen, as we rediscover the evocative power of the moving image that once held us in a state of mesmerized wonder.

To regain consciousness

To recover one’s sense

Staunch, undismayed, fearless

Determined, firmly resolved

To fly into a rage, become furious, flare up

To revolt, rebel, rise against

To be triggered, break out

Shrewd, sagacious, sharp-witted

Sharp-eyed

For the second time, once more, again

Maintenance of s.th., adherence to

To fix one’s eyes on, gaze at

To stand a critical test

To hold one’s own against s.o., assert o.s. against s.o.

To gain a foothold

To exist definitely, be certain, proven

The official determination of the beginning of a lunar month

Confidence, self-esteem

To train, educate s.o.

To burden the budget

To load, burden, encumber s.o. or s.th.

Hard of hearing

Unpleasant, disagreeable (person)

Dull (person)

Hard of hearing

Insufferable, repugnant, unpleasant, disagreeable (person)

Slow-witted, slow of understanding

He is a burden to them

To topple a throne, overthrow

Thrice as much, threefold

Triangular

It snowed, was snowing

Defamation

A gap that cannot be closed, an irreparable loss

There, there is

He turned his glance on him

He galloped off

From time to time

Embellished garments

May God reward him

Curable disease

To do s.th. consistently

Orphanage

Mint

The hereafter

Court of justice, tribunal

Library

Medina

The whole house

War broke out

To suffer adversities

An Islamic preacher

A peace activist

To defend one’s opinion

To defend someone

To defend his interest

A powerful incentive

Encyclopedia

Electoral district

An official authority

Doubt crept into him

The enemy tanks

To write a poem

To arrange matters

To conduct the course of business

To hatch a plot

To hatch a plot

Sound of footsteps

To arm s.o. to the teeth

Monthly income

To involve oneself in the war

To enter a new world

To come to the point

To belong to, to fall under

To belong to the past, be no longer existent

To become effective, come into force

Steady income

Low income

He entered through the gates

Prayer time has started

Free admission

Foreigner, outsider

A drama taken from real life

Melting point

Freezing point

University degree

Centigrade (thermometer)

To conspire

To slip s.o. poison

To inaugurate a university

Desist! Stop!

Not to speak of, let alone . . .

To advocate for Islam

To call for peace

He called him to account

To be run over by a car

Stop that! Cut it out!

A government subsidy

Financial support

Let’s not talk about it! Enough of that!

Let’s go!

Let me alone!

Military proceedings

Civil proceedings, civil action, civil suit

Air defence

Self-defence

Defending one’s interest

Defence of the faith

Defence of the country

The defence of Egyptian territory

To pay wages

To pay the bill

Payment in instalment

To race along, dash along

To pay for one’s crime

Advance payment

A step in the right direction

All at once

Formal plea

To clap one’s hands

The niceties

Sensitivity, sensibility

Sensitive

Finely worked

Introduction

There was a major reorganisation and development of the paramilitary formations in Turkey in the early 1990s. Between 1991 and 1996, the Turkish security forces sought to improve their irregular warfare capacity by implementing the low-intensity conflict doctrine. While the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire in March 1993, and some steps were taken by state representatives toward a democratic solution of the Kurdish question, the leadership of the Turkish army remained adamant that it could only be settled by military means. This, it was convinced, required a transformed organisation and development of paramilitary forces.

Three aspects distinguished the political and military atmosphere in Turkey in the early 1990s from the previous period. The conditions before 1990 were: (1) Kurdish civilians were not made direct targets of the war, (2) the public space in Turkey had not yet been made supporter of the war by the nationalist political parties and the state, and (3) the violence used by the paramilitary forces was lower than in the 1990s and the paramilitary formations were smaller and predominantly intelligence groups. These military, political and ideological features began to change from the beginning of the 1990s. First, the war was not only between the security forces and the PKK, as in the previous period, primarily since the state authorities adopted a more complex war doctrine that also targeted Kurdish civilians, politicians and human rights advocates. Almost all the security and paramilitary forces were reorganised structurally and numerically within the framework of this doctrine. Second, the ideological propaganda of Turkish nationalism was heavily used; political parties became the cornerstone of the war with this nationalist campaign and the protectors of certain paramilitary formations. Finally, particularly intensive types of violence (unsolved murders, enforced disappearances, burning of villages, etc.) were put into effect, intimidating and threatening Kurdish civilians, whether they were pro-PKK or not. The violence of paramilitary groups was unrestricted and went out of control. This chapter addresses the question of how these paramilitary forces developed and reorganised and which were the causal factors in this transformation.

Roland Barthes (1915–80) asserted that no text is a closed, stand-alone structure but rather a ‘tissue of quotations’ endlessly open to connections with other texts. Put another way, every text is overdetermined, made as it is by other texts as much as (and perhaps even more than) by the conscious effort of its author. Barthes might have added that this multiply diverse parenthood extends also to institutions. Looking back over the essays in this book, I am struck by how heavily overdetermined many of them are. Within the period 1968–84, when I worked for the British Film Institute, the three institutional sites I concentrated on were the BFI itself (both in terms of policy and administration), the Council for National Academic Awards (1965–93), which, through its diverse subject boards, validated degree proposals from (mainly) the British polytechnics that would go on to join the new universities from 1992, and the socialist newspaper Tribune, on which I was film critic from 1972 to 1978. The ideas and interventions underpinning these essays were rehearsed across the terrain of those institutions.

This book's first piece, on Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958), was written somewhat earlier, in 1966. While I was a student I had seen Andrzej Wajda (1926–2016)'s graduation film from the Łodz Film School, A Generation (1955), and been overwhelmed by it. This response was replicated by Lindsay Anderson (1923–94): British culture's taking-up of Wajda's work, and Polish cinema more generally, was greatly enhanced by Anderson's celebration of it, most notably in the New Statesman. When I joined the Education Department of the BFI in 1968 there was already a strong commitment to Polish cinema in that milieu, especially from Paddy Whannel (1922–80) and Bołeslaw Sulik (1929–2012), who, himself Polish, was not a member of the department but very closely involved with it. That commitment would result in a publication I edited for the department in 1970, Andrzej Wajda: Polish Cinema. As to the actual critical method deployed in the Ashes and Diamonds essay, as a student I had been very much influenced by American New Criticism and its formalist attention to literary effects.

Dracula was not Hungarian. Bela Lugosi, who famously portrayed the title role in Tod Browning's Dracula (Universal, 1931), was born in Hungary, but Dracula was not.

Vlad III, also known as Vlad Drăculea (Vlad Dracula) and Vlad Ţepeş (Vlad the Impaler), remains a hero in Romania. As Voivode of Wallachia for three separate reigns during the fifteenth century, he was at times at war with Hungarians, at times allied with them. But no one mistook Vlad III's heritage, not even the Germans, his greatest detractors in the years after his death.

Bram Stoker's Dracula recounts his own complicated history with Hungarians in the 1897 novel:

Histories fiction and histories nonfiction reside in a similarly complex place: Dracula was not Magyar; he was not Hungarian. And yet he was never far from the country and its people, including in the cinema.

In the late twentieth century, a few historians discovered that F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (Prana-Film, 1922) was not, as long believed, the first time that a filmmaker adapted Stoker's Dracula for the screen.

A Western Passion

The Alhambra, the celebrated palatial structure of the Nasrid dynasty located in the last Arab capital of the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, was (re)discovered during the first half of the nineteenth century. Let us immediately note that this discovery was essentially Western: French, British and, later, German. Its genealogy is complex and convoluted, but it is marked by milestones consisting of texts and images produced by authors who have greatly contributed to the construction of one of the major myths of romanticism. Already in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794) introduced his Gonzalve de Cordoue ou Grenade reconquise (Gonzalo of Cordoba, or Granada Reconquered) with a ‘historical summary on the Moors of Spain’, a section of which was devoted to a ‘description of the Alhambra’. In it, the author described the contrast between the palace's chaotic exterior and its lavish apartments, dwelling at length on the Court of the Lions – the famous patio de los Leones – and its alabaster fountain. In a guidebook for travellers dated 1805, more than half of the description of Granada was devoted to the Alhambra, ‘one of the most complete and most magnificent edifices built by the Moors in Spain’. Between 1807 and 1818, Count Alexandre de Laborde (1773–1842) published his monumental Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Espagne (Picturesque and Historical Travels to Spain). True to the passion for the ‘picturesque’ that had invaded travel literature during the past few decades, Laborde's work included lavish plates of the palace, its main halls and courts, inscriptions and other decorative elements, and a section on the Court of the Lions.

And yet, although it is true that the French and the British figured prominently in this discovery in the first decades of the nineteenth century, one needs to do justice to the role the Spaniards played in this process, most notably through the realisation of a major project involving the drawing and documentation of the monument as early as the mid-eighteenth century.

Author's note: Underworld U.S.A. was written at a moment of transition in British film culture. Auteurism was still dominant, though, if not totally called in question, inflected to take account of other determinations on cinematic meaning, most notably, genre. It is therefore a ‘broken-backed’ book, the first four chapters written from a genre perspective, the succeeding nine devoted to directors who produced distinguished work in the gangster film and film noir: Fritz Lang (1890–1976), John Huston (1906–87), Jules Dassin (1911–2008), Robert Siodmak (1900–73), Elia Kazan (1909–2003), Nicholas Ray (1911–79), Samuel Fuller (1912–97), Don Siegel (1912–91) and Jean-Pierre Melville (1917–73). The extract reproduced here consists of the book's first two chapters, the first arguing for the centrality of genre in Hollywood cinema, the second describing the recurrent overlapping iconography of the gangster film and film noir, plus a summary of the two succeeding genre chapters.

Chapter 1: Genre

In order to reach the reality of American cinema one must first confront the notion of Hollywood. If an audience, even (or perhaps especially) an educated and sophisticated one, were asked what Hollywood means to them, their replies would very likely include the words ‘glossy’, ‘glamorous’ and ‘escapist’. They would probably offer the polar opposition that Hollywood movies equal ‘entertainment’, European movies equal ‘art’; with the addition that discussion of Hollywood should therefore be the province of the sociologist rather than the film critic. This view is held most widely in the United States itself. It is still difficult to find an educated American who takes Hollywood movies seriously. American undergraduates rush to see the latest Godard or Bergman, but if they go to see American movies at all it is usually in the spirit of viewing a lovable piece of kitsch, like the young Vassar girl in a recent novel who went to the Museum of Modern Art to take in a Bogart retrospective.