Home to a futuristic society, Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang, presents a city in which society has been physically divided to achieve perfection. According to Norden “With its motifs and its portrayal of workers as machinelike automatons (they even move about mechanically), 'Metropolis' unmistakably bears the mark of Futurism” (Norden 109). This society is divided into two classes: the thinkers who are the wealthy rulers of the city, and the workers, who work literally underground to provide for the city. Living in opulence, the audience is introduced to the ruler of the city Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel) and his son Freder Frederson (Gustav Fröhlich). One day while indulging in his wealth at the Pleasure Garden, Freder catches sight of a beautiful women named Maria (Brigitte Helm). Freder becomes infatuated with Maria and decides to follow her into the underworld where the workers are. Freder quickly discovers that Maria is part of the working class and that she has been calling for unity between the workers and rulers of Metropolis. Enchanted by the cause, Freder attempts to help the workers, however, his father discovers the plan and attempts to sabotage it. To avoid the destruction of the tightly constructed social classes, Joh unites with an old colleague and nemesis, Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge). Together, Rotwang and Joh imprison the real Maria and they develop a robot version of Maria who encourages the workers to rebel against their ruler. The film ends with a climatic scene where Freder, in attempt to save the real Maria from Rotwang, pushes Rotwang from a cathedral roof where he falls to his death. Freder then returns to the city where he is finally able to unite the workers with the rulers, serving his purpos...
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...ber where the workers perform their duties. The scene alternates to a dimmed shot of the workers marching as if they were soldiers. Quickly, the scene changes to a reaction shot of Freder’s worried face when he notices that one of the workers is tiredly working at the Heart Machine of the city. Freder approaches the man he calls “Brother” and from exhaustion, the man fall in Freder’s arms. The man tries to free himself from the hands of Freder and then, there is a mid-shot of the worker agitatedly stating to Freder that someone has to stay on the machine. Seeing the level of distress in which the worker was, Freder agrees to work at the machine. The shot then dissolves into an intertitle in which Freder tells the worker “Listen to me... I want to trade lives with you!”. The scene ends in minute 31:22 with a mid shot of Freder working the Heart Machine of the city.
The presence of an overwhelming and influential body of government, dictating the individuals of contextual society, may potentially lead to the thoughts and actions that oppose the ruling party. Through the exploration of Fritz Lang’s expressionist film, Metropolis (1927), and George Orwell’s politically satirical novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), the implications of an autocratic government upon the individuals of society are revealed. Lang’s expressionist film delves into the many issues faced by the Weimar Republic of Germany following the “War to end all wars” (Wells, 1914), in which the disparity between the upper and lower classes became distinctively apparent as a result of the ruling party’s capitalistic desires. Conversely, Orwell’s,
Changes tend to be negative because people don’t like change or don’t know how to respond to a change, so they panic. The three texts “From Simplexity”, Our Town, and Awake all have important changes and show how people react to those changes.
Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a very powerful movie with various underlying meanings that allow the viewer to determine for himself. The movie itself is extremely difficult and hard to follow, although the essay "The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang's Metropolis" written by Andreas Huyssen provided many helpful insights to aid in understanding the movie. Many of Huyssen's idea's are a bit extreme, but none the less the essay is very beneficial. His extreme views include ideas of castration and how it relates with the female robot, and sexulaity and how it relates technology. Although these ideas are extreme he does also provide many interesting ideas.
Ruppert, Peter. “Technology and the Constructions of Gender in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” (2000) [Accessed 18 December 2012]
2. "I felt like an explorer who had discovered an untouched nirvana. It was as though, in the chilled early morning hush, we were the only souls on the planet" (286 Horton).
New York. Towards the end of the clip tension is built up by the music
Fritz Lang's Metropolis details the age old conflict between the blue collared workers and the white collared businessmen.
Overall, both of these concepts relate to the film Metropolis. We see Marx’s concept of capitalism ingrained in this dystopian city. The workers supplying the power to the towers are known as the proletarians and Joh Frederson is the capitalist. In the other hand we see Weber’s concept of a religious leader in Maria. She was the one who was called to make a difference in this capitalistic society. In the end we see that both of these concepts distinguish the different social classes between workers and owners in this dystopian city.
“Metropolis” simply passes as one of the original science fiction movies in the world, and it has vivid imagery in it. Its’ main themes revolve around cultural exploitation and political issues facing the citizenry. It is set in Germany and tells the story of a metropolis where there are two classes of individuals who are the thinkers and the workers living side by side yet oblivious of each other. The city is run by a business dictator whose son falls for a lower class lady. The son called Freder has been brought up in luxury but later discovers the dehumanizing conditions in which the workers living down under are experiencing. To get access to the lady, he seeks help from a friend who is a demented genius, where he exchanges his place as a thinker with that of a worker. The workers adore him, seeing him as a liberator sent from above. The young lady named Maria is also liked by the workers since she is charismatic, and speaks about peace, and patience. The movie talks in general of an embryonic world where a few individuals control all means of production and the majority are left to languish in poverty as they work for the rich.
Foremost is the polarization of classes; the film depicts a sprawling city where hundreds of thousands of people could live, however we only see the lives of a few of this people, namely the magnates and their workers. While multiple classes could exist, Lang only shows the two, emphasizing that society in Metropolis is comprised of two diametrically opposed classes like Marx and Engels depict in The Communist Manifesto, “Society has a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps” (220). The class struggles in the film are not nearly overt as Marx and Engels depict; they cannot be because the magnates and workers are physically separated. However, Frederson indicates that for months he has been finding evidence of plans of a rebellion in his workers’ clothes, and when given the chance, the workers show no hesitation in revolting against the machine. When the workers do revolt, instead of storming the upper city where the magnates reside, they destroy the machines which keep them alive, as Marx and Engels foretold, “[t]hey direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves” (CM 228). There are some discrepancies, however for the most part, until the end of the film where the workers and magnates reconcile, Marx and
In literature the protagonists who are usually the most interesting characters in texts are the flawed ones. They help us understand ourselves as humans, but also the ideas of the text. The protagonists in both A streetcar Named Desire and The Metamorphosis are flawed in some way. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennesse Williams gives the main characters of the story tragic flaws, which ultimately bring them down. Blanche DuBois own tragic flaws joined with Stanley Kowalski’s, which eventually lead Blanche to her downfall. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor both as a man and an insect he accepts the hardships he has to face without complaint. When he has first transformed into an insect, he does complain about his condition, he rather quickly accepts that he has become a bug and tries to continue his life normally in his new condition.
Wood has been used and adapted by human science primitive society. From early Paleolithic time to present, wood is our important and primary material for building and construction. The Forbidden City is great architecture masterpiece of ancient China, and is also the largest and the most complete existing wooden structure ancient building in the world. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace where include 980 buildings located in the center of Beijing, China. In order to incarnate the supremacy of imperial power, Chinese imperial architecture often adopt the layout of an axial symmetry, with the buildings on the central axis tall and splendid while the rest rather small and simple. It was as ancient Chinese government for 500 years
and the machine stops workings. He narrates the hardships he had to face because of the exploitation. He is the factory worker:
From a scholarly point of view, the film accurately depicts the lifestyle of a factory worker in the timeframe. Workers would stand on an assembly line and repeat the same action day in and day out. The film also depicts the transition of the human dependency of machines very well. The workers would work at the pace of the machines. The film also had metaphors of humans being controlled by machines when the main actor was sucked into the pulley system of a machine. The film also has a scene where there is a machine that automatically feeds humans.
I step out of my apartment, no car keys in hand. I watch the 11:49 MTS route 44 bus drone loudly away as I continue to stand at the top of my stairs, having just locked my door behind me. Rather than sit and wait for another to come down Linda Vista in thirty minutes, I head out on my journey, depending on my feet to take on travel. I walk along the sidewalk with many others coming in and out of the line of stores parallel to the main road. The speed of the cars whipping up the flaps of my jacket and strands of my hair as I make room for other passerbys, and notice a consignment and massage store tucked behind my regular tasting room, and was shocked I’d never seen them before. Across the street I go, my footsteps matching the beep beep beep