Beyond Francis's individual circumstances, the use of the narrator's perspective in "Dr. Caligari" can be seen as reflective of a worldview of the screenwriters. Mayer and Janowitz were pacifists opposed to what Eisner described as the willingness of Germans to commit themselves to the dark forces, such as demoniac magic and supernatural powers, that led to death on the battlefield. Although he does not think it possible to reduce the narrative or the film to the beliefs of its makers, Eisner claims Francis can be seen as embodying the politics of Expressionism's anti-naturalism, through which a protagonist does not see the world objectively, but has "visions" that are abstracted from individuality and psychology. The framing device of an insane asylum, for Eisner, has a broader connotation as a statement on social reality in the context of the "state of exception". Here, Eisner claims, the militarist and imperialist tendency of monopoly capitalism is combined with what Sigmund Freud would later refer to as the longing for protection by a tyrannical father figure, or what Kracauer characterized as "asocial authority".