Between mask and uniform

This paper proposes an analysis of the film 'The Captain' (2018) by Robert Schwentke through the lens of mimetic theory. In Schwentke’s film, based on historical facts, a deserter of the German army (Willi Herold) finds a captain uniform and, disguised as such, returns to camp. Thus, Schwentke presents us with a meditation on the power of the uniform that allows for a comparison – and a differentiation – between Herold and actors, or artists in general. If artistic practice is the intensification of mimetic processes, it is also where the double properties of mimesis become most critical. Myths are created by artistic means, and Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy have shown us (The Nazy Myth, 1990) just how pernicious the instauration of a myth can be if appropriated by political powers. However, the artistic experience is also the moment in which myths (as rigidified structures designed to shape identities) can be dissolved, for the creative process reveals and intensifies our essential plasticity. This plasticity is a pharmakon, in the sense proposed by Derrida: it is both a poison and a cure, depending on how we wear it, for the artist’s mask can always turn into a uniform. (Paper presented at the workshop ‘The Mimetic Condition: A Transdisciplinary Approach’, organized by HOM – Homo Mimeticus: Theory and Criticism, at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium).