Golem in popular culture

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For more stories and characters named "Golem", see Golem (disambiguation) and Category:Fictional golems
The Pokémon Golem.
The Pokémon Golem.

In Jewish folklore, a golem, is an animated being which is crafted entirely from inanimate material.

Probably as a result of the popularity of Gustav Meyrink's work The Golem, the golem concept has found its way into various elements of popular culture. Examples include:


Contents

[edit] Books, Comic books

  • In a 1970s issue of Marvel Comics' The Hulk, the ancient legend is capsulized and the story then segues into The Hulk taking on the Golem's role to protect people living under a dictatorship
  • Edward Einhorn's Golem Stories appearing in his book of plays entitled The Golem, Methuselah, and Shylock includes a golem that has the soul of a young man who was the fiance of the Rabbi's daughter.
  • Also inspired in part by the story of the Golem of Prague, Ted Chiang wrote a short story Seventy-Two Letters which explores the role of language in the creation of golems. The story won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2000. It can be found in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others.
  • Piers Anthony's popular Xanth novel series includes tiny Golems as characters. A golem named Grundy is the lead character in Golem in the Gears (The Magic of Xanth, Book 9 (1986)).
  • 1966 saw the U.S. theatrical release of the low-budget horror film, "It," aka "Anger of the Golem" aka "Curse of the Golem," starring Roddy MacDowal as a man who commands an indestructible golem."
  • In the Final Fantasy series, golems appear several times. One example is the Golem Esper in Final Fantasy VI, which serves to protect the party, and mitigate damage taken from enemies.
  • The science-fiction novel Kiln People by David Brin features short-lived duplicates of people created from mud, and a character named Maharal.
  • The series Apprentice Adept by Piers Anthony features many characters as golems made by the Brown Adept. The main character in the world Phaze has a significant other who is a golem. Golems also make various appearances throughout Anthony's Xanth series.
  • Stel Pavlou uses multiple golems created from carbon based nanotechnology as the guardians of Atlantis in the novel Decipher 2001.
  • Roger Zelazny uses the golem metaphorically as an android sparring partner, literally called a golem, in the novel This Immortal.

This is possible because the Golem in many historical versions of the tale had been animated using the Hebrew word "emet" written on its forehead. When one wipes off the aleph which is the first letter that spells "truth" (emet) in Hebrew, the word then becomes "met" (also pronounced "mayt" and "mays," depending upon one's accent) and "met," "mayt" and "mays" in Hebrew and Yiddish mean both "died" and "a dead one."

Likewise, the Marvel superhero Moon Knight, a Jewish-American hero infused with mystical powers while in Egypt, defeated a golem enacted by his father. In Manhattan Guardian, this tactic simply makes the golem inactive.

  • Golem, a novel by Greg Vilk, tells the story of a U.S. Rangers commando fighting a malicious Golem-like entity brought to life in a remote Nazi base in Greenland. The book features an invented "ancient alphabet" used to control the Golem.
  • A story by writer Steve Gerber and artist Pablo Marcos in Marvel Comics' black-and-white horror-comics magazine Monsters Unleashed #4 depicts a rabbi revitalzing the congregation of an empty synagogue by creating golems out of corpses from a morgue.
  • Golem is Monster in My Pocket #54. In this comic book by Dwayne McDuffie, he is allied with the good monsters. He is able to speak, though his only line is, "Watch out!", spoken in the third issue. His appearance is roughly similar to that of the Paul Wegener likeness, particularly in the first issue, illustrated by Ernie Colon. In subsequent issues, he appeared more like the toy in the artwork of Gil Kane, with a much more streamlined head, looking more like it bears a hood than a wig. His most important act in the comics is to help Vampire transport Cheerios, which Frankenstein's Monster mistakes for bagels until he tastes them. In addition, several panels feature reaction shots from Golem that suggest a cynical personality.
  • In 2005, the story of the Golem was returned to its Jewish roots, as a new comic strip in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth depicted the Golem as a government-funded superhero protecting Israel from its domestic and existential difficulties.
  • In the Dreamhunter Duet by Elizabeth Knox a young dreamhunter replaces her missing father with a golem.
  • The author A.M. Homes collaborated with the music group One Ring Zero on a story about a golem, and called simply Golem, featured on the album As Smart As We Are.
  • In her book The Puttermesser Papers, Jewish-American writer Cynthia Ozick has a story entitled "Puttermesser and Xanthippe" in which an aging female lawyer unintentionally creates a golem.
  • A golem most commonly in the shape of a hobo is used by a psychic evil doer to intimidate and kill its victims in the novel Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz.
  • In the second of the Bartimaeus series of books, The Golem's Eye, golems are controlled by a human magician behind a magical crystal. This crystal allows a first-person viewpoint through a crystalline "eye" in the centre of the golem's forehead. Its instructions are written in blood on a piece of parchment placed in its mouth and if the parchment is removed, the golem returns to its master, progressively losing more and more of its clay mass along the way.
  • A golem sculpted from modelling clay is a recurring character in the online webcomic Beaver and Steve.
  • Golem is used as a term referring to androids designed to look like humans in Neal Asher's Polity universe of science fiction stories.
  • Harry Turtledove's short story "In This Season", published in the 2002 anthology "Counting Up, Counting Down" describes a Jewish family's encounter with a golem that aids them in their escape from Nazi-occupied Poland.
  • In Steve Niles' "Feat of Clay" one-shot comic, Cal McDonald investigates a masterless golem.

Note: The only similarity between the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and a golem is in the name.

[edit] Films and TV

  • The first trilogy of movies about Rabbi Judah Loew and his golem were Der Golem (1915), the Golem and the Dancing Girl (1917), and Der Golem, wie er in die welt kam (1920) Directed by Paul Wegener. Only the last film, which is a prequel, has survived, though stills exist of the earlier films.
The Golem in It!
The Golem in It!
  • The British film "It!" showcases the Golem of Prague constructed by Rabbi Judah Loew in the mid 16th century. It is evoked (brought to life) by a mad assistant museum curator, Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowell), and proves to be indestructible. The American expert in the story discusses the reason for the golem's construction, i.e. to protect the Jewish community, but warns of the possibility that the Golem could run amuck as he states it did in the past.
  • In the anime series RahXephon, the main weapons are called "Dolems". Like golems, they are made from clay and may be difficult to control. The name "Dolem" comes from a mixture of "Do-Re-Mi" and "golem".
  • The Batman Beyond episode "Golem" featured a robot call the Galvanic Lifting Machine, which is set upon a teenager's tormentors.
  • In the anime series Slayers, golems are summoned to do the spell caster's bidding. One of the main characters, Zelgadiss, is a chimera made of a human, golem and demon/mazoku. In the third Slayers movie, Slayers Great, golems are featured prominently.
  • In the anime series Monster Rancher, one of the main characters is called Golem, and seems to be made of large stones and boulders which he can split apart to attack.
  • In the Superboy television-series episode "The Golem", a golem was created to attack anti-Semites. Whilst doing so it accidentally killed its own creator.
  • The Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer depicts a golem in his film Faust. The main character, while in an alchemist's studio, animates a clay infant by placing a shem in its mouth. The shem is a scroll or slip of paper containing the tetragrammaton.
  • In the French-Canadian movie Le Golem de Montréal, a young boy creates a golem with snow instead of mud, and sees him as a surrogate father.
  • In Stranger than Fiction, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) consults literature Prof. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) in order to change his fate which is being written and narrated by the author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Prof. Hilbert reads off a list of appearently incoherent questions to narrow down the book genre Harold might be a character of. After ruling out that Harold is not apart several genres, including Horror, Prof. Hilbert asks “Aren’t you relieved to know you’re not a golem?” To which Harold sarcastically replies, “Yes...I am relieved to know that I’m not a golem.”

[edit] Golems in modern games

Golems also appear as a popular feature of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games and are almost ubiquitous in the many fantasy computer and card games inspired by it, such as NetHack, Jade Empire, the Dragon Quest, Warcraft, Diablo series, and Magic: The Gathering. In these games the word is generally used as an umbrella term to refer to automata and simulacra from many mythologies. The convention is that they are named after the material of construction. Examples include clay golems (most like the original Jewish golem), flesh golems (reminiscent of Frankenstein's monster), iron golems (animated metal statues), and a host of others including (but not limited to) gold golems, stone golems and paper golems. The Pokemon Regirock, Regice, Registeel and Regigigas are loosely based on Golems, Another one, Golem was named after said creature.

In the Tecmo's Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 JRPG Enchanted Arms artifact creatures are called "Golem". Some very powerful golem generated an ancient struggle called The Golem War, which caused entire civilizations to crumble.

There is a long list of other games which have creatures called "golems", made of clay, or are animated by writing on them, since the golem has become part of the generic stable of game characters.


[edit] Other media

In America, the opera 'The Golem' by Abraham Ellstein retells in 20th-century harmonic language the centuries-old tale of a creature fashioned from clay and brought to life by kabbalistic spells who ultimately threatens the very people he was intended to serve. Selections are available on disc from the Milken Archive of American Jewish music. Another opera with the same title has been written by British composer John Casken.

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