Doctor Mabuse

Dr. Mabuse is a villainous fictional character, created by Norbert Jacques, but made most famous by the three films German director Fritz Lang made about him over a period of almost forty years. Though the character was designed to deliberately mimic pulp-style villains in the mold of Dr. Fu Manchu and particularly Fantômas, the latter of which was a direct inspiration, Jacques' aim was both to capture the commercial success of such pulp tales and to make political comment on the establishment of the day, in much the same way that the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had done just a few years previously.

Description

As befits his pulp influences, Dr. Mabuse is a master of disguise like Fantômas and a master of 'telepathic hypnosis', not unlike the hypnotist Dr. Caligari. Like Fu Manchu, Mabuse commits very few of his crimes in person, instead operating primarily through a network of agents acting out schemes he has laid down for them. Mabuse's agents range from career criminals following him for money, to innocents blackmailed or hypnotized into cooperation, to dupes so successfully manipulated that they do not realize that they are doing exactly what Mabuse planned for them to do.

Related Topics:
Master of disguise - Telepathic - Hypnosis - Blackmail

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There are other things, however, which makes Mabuse unusual among pulp-style villains. One of them is that his identity changes; that is, one 'Dr. Mabuse' may be defeated, the human being bearing that identity going to an asylum, a jail, or a grave, only for a new 'Dr. Mabuse' to later appear, with the same methods, the same powers of hypnosis, and the same criminal genius. There are even suggestions in some installments of the series that the 'real' Mabuse is some sort of spirit that possesses host after host.

Related Topics:
Spirit - Possesses

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Another trait that separates Mabuse from similar characters is the self-destructive bent to his personality and his plans. (Some have even suggested that Jacques took the name Mabuse not, as he claimed, from the painter who used that pseudonym, but from a pun: M'abuse is French for I abuse myself.) Several times Mabuse's plans are foiled only because he himself interfered with them, as if trying to bring down on himself his own downfall. This dovetails with another important distinction about Mabuse: whereas Fu Manchu aims to conquer the world, then rule it, Mabuse makes clear more than once that his intent is to destroy the world -- and then rule the ashes. This may explain why the character is regarded in Germany almost more as a horror icon, akin to Dracula or Frankenstein, than as a criminal mastermind of adventure tales akin to Fu Manchu.

Related Topics:
The painter who used that pseudonym - Germany - Dracula - Frankenstein

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