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The [[life ]] and [[work ]] of Leni Riefenstahl, who died on Monday at age 101, seems to lend itself to a [[mapping ]] of a devolution, progressing toward a dark conclusion. It began with the early “mountain films” of the 1920s that she starred in and later began directing as well, which celebrated heroism and [[bodily ]] effort in the extreme [[conditions ]] of mountain climbing. It went on to her [[notorious ]] [[Nazi ]] documentaries in the ‘30s, celebrating bodily [[discipline]], concentration, and strength of will in sport as well as in [[politics]]. Then, after [[World ]] War II, in her photo albums, she rediscovered her [[ideal ]] of bodily beauty and graceful [[self]]-[[mastery ]] in the Nuba African tribe. Finally, in her last decades, she learned the difficult art of deep sea diving and started shooting documentaries [[about ]] the strange life in the dark depths of the sea.<br><br>

We thus obtain a clear trajectory from the top to the bottom: We begin with rugged individuals struggling at the mountain tops and gradually descend, until we reach the amorphous teem of life at the bottom of the sea. Is not what she encountered down there her ultimate [[object]], the [[obscene ]] and irresistibly thriving eternal force of life itself, what she was searching for all along? And does this not apply also to her [[personality]]? It seems that the [[fear ]] of those who are fascinated by Leni is no longer “When will she die?” but “Will she <i>ever</i> die?” Although rationally we [[know ]] that she has just passed away, we somehow do not really believe it. She will go on forever.<br><br>

This continuity of her career is usually given a fascist twist, as in the exemplary [[case ]] of the famous Susan Sontag essay on Leni, “Fascinating [[Fascism]].” The [[idea ]] is that even her pre- and post-Nazi [[films ]] articulate a fascist [[vision ]] of life: Leni’s fascism is deeper than her direct celebration of Nazi politics; it resides already in her pre-[[political ]] [[aesthetics ]] of life, in her [[fascination ]] with beautiful bodies displaying their disciplined movements. Perhaps it is [[time ]] to problematize this topos. Let us take Leni’s 1932 [[film ]] <i>Das blaue Licht</i> (“The Blue Light”), the story of a village [[woman ]] who is hated for her unusual prowess at climbing a deadly mountain. Is it not possible to read the film in exactly the opposite way as it usually is [[interpreted]]? Is Junta, the lone and wild mountain [[girl]], not an outcast who almost becomes the [[victim ]] of a pogrom—there is no [[other ]] appropriate word—by the villagers? (Perhaps it is not an accident that Béla Balázs, Leni’s lover at that time who co-wrote the scenario with her, was a [[Marxist]].)<br><br>

The problem here is much more general; it goes far beyond Leni Riefenstahl. Let us take the very opposite of Leni, the composer Arnold Schönberg. In the second part of <i>Harmonielehre</i>, his major [[theoretical ]] manifesto from 1911, he develops his opposition to tonal [[music ]] in [[terms ]] which, superficially, anticipate later Nazi anti-Semitic tracts. Tonal music has become a “diseased,” “degenerated” world in [[need ]] of a cleansing solution; the tonal [[system ]] has given in to “inbreeding and incest”; romantic chords such as the diminished seventh are “hermaphroditic,” “vagrant” and “cosmopolitan.” It’s easy and tempting to [[claim ]] that such a messianic-apocalyptic attitude is part of the same “spiritual situation” that eventually gave [[birth ]] to the Nazi final solution. This, however, is precisely the conclusion one should avoid: What makes [[Nazism ]] repulsive is not the [[rhetoric ]] of final solution <i>as such</i>, but the [[concrete ]] twist it gives to it.<br><br>

[[Another ]] popular conclusion of this kind of [[analysis]], closer to Leni, is the allegedly fascist [[character ]] of the mass choreography of disciplined movements of thousands of bodies: parades, mass performances in stadia, etc. If one finds it also in [[communism]], one immediately draws the conclusion about a “deeper solidarity” between the two “totalitarianisms.” Such a formulation, the very prototype of [[ideological ]] [[liberalism]], misses the point. Not only are such mass performances not inherently fascist; they are not even “neutral,” waiting to be appropriated by [[left ]] or [[right]]. It was Nazism that stole [[them ]] and appropriated them from the workers’ movement, their original site of birth. None of these “proto-fascist” elements is per se fascist. What makes them “fascist” is only their specific articulation—or, to put it in Stephen Jay Gould’s terms, all these elements are “ex-apted” by fascism. There is no fascism <i>avant la [[lettre]]</i>, because it is the [[letter ]] itself that composes the bundle (or, in Italian, <i>fascio</i>) of elements that is fascism proper.<br><br>

Along the same lines, one should radically reject the [[notion ]] that discipline, from self-[[control ]] to bodily [[training]], is inherently a proto-fascist feature. Indeed, the very term “proto-fascist” should be abandoned: It is a pseudo-[[concept ]] whose function is to block [[conceptual ]] analysis. When we say that the organized [[spectacle ]] of thousands of bodies (or, say, the admiration of sports that [[demand ]] high effort and self-control like mountain climbing) is “proto-fascist,” we say strictly [[nothing]], we just express a vague [[association ]] that masks our [[ignorance]].<br><br>

So when, [[three ]] decades ago, kung fu films became popular, was it not obvious that we were dealing with a genuine [[working]]-[[class ]] [[ideology ]] of youngsters whose only means of success was the disciplinary training of their bodies, their only possession? [[Spontaneity ]] and the “let it go” attitude of indulgence belong to those who have the means to afford it—those who have nothing have only their discipline. The “bad” bodily discipline, if there is one, is not the one of “collective training,” but, rather, jogging and [[body]]-building as part of the New Age [[myth ]] of the realization of the self’s “inner potentials.” (No wonder that the [[obsession ]] with one’s body is an almost obligatory part of the passage of ex-[[leftist ]] radicals into the “maturity” of pragmatic politics: From Jane Fonda to Joschka Fischer, the “period of latency” between the two phases was marked by the focus on one’s own body.)<br><br>

So, back to Leni: What all this does <i>not</i> mean is that one should dismiss her Nazi engagement as a limited, unfortunate episode. The [[true ]] problem is to sustain the tension that cuts through her work: the tension between the artistic perfection of her [[practice ]] and the ideological [[project ]] that “ex-apted” it. Why should her case be different from that of Ezra Pound, William [[Butler ]] Yeats, and other modernists with fascist tendencies who long ago became part of our artistic canon? Perhaps the [[search ]] for the “true ideological identity” of Leni Riefenstahl is a misleading one. Perhaps there is no such [[identity]]: She was genuinely thrown around, inconsistent, caught in a cobweb of conflicting forces.<br><br>

Is then the best way to mark her [[death ]] not to take the risk of fully enjoying a film like <i>Das blaue Licht</i>, which contains the possibility of a political [[reading ]] of her work totally different from the prevailing view?

* [[Learning To Love Leni Riefenstahl]]. ''In These [[Times]]''. September 10, 2003. <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/102/>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan]].com''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizekleni.htm>.