Angry Inch Vs Metropolis

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The relationship between film and stage has long been a complicated one. Supporters of both mediums each have their own reasons for preferring one over the other. Regardless of which is objectively superior, it is undeniable that a film adaption and a stage adaption of the same source material have numerous differences due to the utilization of different resources. Stage performances have existed for far longer than film has, but film has become exponentially more popular in recent times, largely due to its accessibility. Using Metropolis and Hedwig and the Angry Inch as my primary examples, I will explain how certain aspects of plot are better portrayed using one medium verses another. Metropolis works far better as a film rather than a play …show more content…

In this subgenre of art, “German expressionist painters typically distorted colour, scale and space to convey their subjective feelings about what they saw” (“German Expressionism”). Lang uses these motifs to enhance his idea of the future, creating a bleak and grand atmosphere to show his own personal views on dystopia. While this film was in black and white and a stage production would be able to use color to emphasize the German expressionism designs, without the ability to distort space, live theater would not be able to recapture the ambience Lang had in mind. One may even view the lack of color as a distortion as well, showing the true despair of the future presented in Metropolis: “Even in this new millennium, Metropolis offers us a disturbing parallel universe that pits tomorrow’s unknow reality against machines and artificial intelligence” (Havis 10). Since Lang’s original vision was to have Metropolis on film, it is easy to assume that no other medium would do his vision justice. It is difficult to preserve the atmosphere of watching this film, the feelings of small and inconsequential in the bigger scheme of the world, when adapting it to the stage, which is evident in the theater adaption’s altered ending …show more content…

Potentially a commentary on the terrible conditions of factory employees, the severity of the surroundings that the workers in Metropolis live through is undeniable. They struggle with the heavy machinery, with machinery more often than not winning against human effort. A notable scene featuring this struggle between man and machine involves Freder finding his way to the underground, somewhere he has never been before, and witnessing a man, so overcome with physical exhaustion, collapse dead mid-turn of the giant wheel. Freder sees the machine explode, killing all the other workers, and the brutal efficiency at which all the dead workers are collected and new ones ushered in to replace them. The way machines are portrayed in the film, large and looming and numerous, would not be well duplicated onstage. Because the monotony of the workers’ lives is crucial to the overall theme and message of the film, changing that would thus change the meaning of Metropolis. Lang employs several shots of the laborers diligently performing the same task over and over again at enormous machines, many of them working at different aspects of the same machine. The idea that workforce is comprised of little people contributing towards the bigger picture is emphasized. Such imagery

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