Gender and the City: Lola rennt
Andrew Webber (Cambridge) p.1-16
2003 Issue 1
Abstract
This paper considers Tykwer’s 1998 film Lola rennt in relation to the mythological constructions which have been applied to Berlin in the twentieth century. While Lola rennt appears to project a distinctly contemporary picture of life in the new German capital, it in fact operates through a complex network of mythical and historical references. A key part of this network lies in the treatment of gender. I see the gender performances in the film as conditioned by hysteria, which afflicts both male and female leads. This hysterical conditioning is related in its turn to the histories and mythologies of German and international film traditions, principally Sternberg, Fassbinder, and Hitchcock. Gender in Lola rennt is understood as produced through citational practices, after the model developed by gender theorist Judith Butler, and the performance of Lola as a mythical fantasy of the new woman running the new city is accordingly shown to be a continuation of old forms of gender trouble in Butler’s sense.