Comparing Dehumanization In Metropolis And Nineteen Eighty-Four

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The expression of values which surpass temporal boundaries and transcend through their contemporary relevance are shaped and moulded by a composer's context. Specifically, the differences between the dystopic perceptions represented in Fritz Lang's expressionist film Metropolis (1927) and George Orwell's politically critical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) captures the manner in which a shift in compositional milieu can influence composers' perspectives on the degradation of human agency through the dehumanisation perpetuated by the rise of technological use within society. The alterations in values reflect the shift in context from the culturally flourishing but socially hierarchical Weimar Germany to the fear of totalitarian control in …show more content…

As opposed to the dehumanising power of post-war industrialisation represented in Metropolis, Orwell attributes the Party's capacity to strip individuals of their identity to propaganda's capacity to degrade and alter thoughts. Indeed, the creation of Newspeak encloses people in an orthodox pseudo-reality through the denotation of language, demonstrated through Orwell's historical parallelism between the "whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words" and Stalin's policy to only allow artists to create art that fit under "Socialist realism." This system with "reduced complexity and few abstractions" [Paul Chilton] can therefore only evoke raw primal emotions, as seen through Winston's asyndetic restropection "there were fear, hatred, and pain[…], no deep or complex sorrows", from which only simple rationale arises. This decentres Winston, metaphorically transcending into a "guardian of the human spirit", framing him as an Existentialist operating within societal conformity. His inevitable indoctrination by the Party hence underscores Orwell's perspective regarding the futility in overcoming the subjugation and dehumanisation of prominent political systems. Ergo, both composers explore how individuals are debased, whether caused by oppression, Modernist pursuits or the lack of independent thought, reflective of their respective

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