Renationalizing the Werebear: The Postcolonial Stakes of ‘Lokis’ (Prosper Mérimée, 1869) and Lokis (Janusz Majewski, 1970)

This article addresses the adaptation of the 1869 French novella ‘Lokis’,by Prosper Mérimée, as a feature-length film in Poland in 1970 by JanuszMajewski, from a postcolonial and cognitive cultural perspective. Theproduction marked the story’s hundredth anniversary, but also fellwithin the so-called ‘Small Stabilization’ under the authoritarianGomułka regime. A foreign literary adaptation was ‘safe’ material forcoded messages, as is typical of Socialist-era Polish cinema as well as ofthe Gothic. The figure of the werebear can be a foil for discussing defec-tive masculine heroism in a familiar Polish nationalist mode, but alsofor recuperating a changing concept of Lithuania, where the story isset, as adapted from the pro-Polish, French-origin source material in aself-orientalizing process. This adaptation thus bespeaks a hidden andspecifically cultural imperialism. Struggles over the origins, member-ship, and ownership of Polish culture are visible through certain inno-vations in Majewski’s work, including both new literary inclusions andthe film’s English subtitling. While the film as received in Polish is not anunalloyed national self-projection, on Poland’s part, as a nuance-freehistorical subject, its packaging for global Anglophone audiences atleast tries to suggest otherwise.