ABSTRACT
A i l s scholars search for the meaning of the Holy Grail, speculating on the multiplicity of points of origin, pondering the mysteries of the Eucharist, struggling to explain the ineffable, they, like the protagonist of so many romances, often neglect to ask a crucial question: “Whom does the Grail serve?” The failure of the Grail knight to ask this question-which within the structure of romance seems almost rhetorical-results in the continued suffering of the Wasteland. The failure of scholars to ask the question — which within the structures of ideological exchange is by no means rhetorical-restricts discussion of the Holy Grail as a political instrument. When the knight finally makes his inquiry, the Holy Grail seems to become stabilized as a signifier, as the means by which the community is healed and restored. Scholarly inquiry serves to demonstrate that this signifier is never completely stabilized;"it suggests that
the Holy Grail contains not only a lifegiving elixir but also varied —and oftentimes competing-ideological agendas of authors and their audiences. In Parsifal Richard Wagner attempted to empower the Holy Grail as a symbol of German nationalism and Aryan Christianity; he feared that Jewish contact with his music drama would disempower this sym bol. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Steven Spiel berg, a Jewish-American film director, transforms the Holy Grail into a weapon to be used against forces of perverted nationalism and religious prejudice, to be used in the war against Nazism.
