Metropolis's potrayal of gender and technology

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The 1927 film Metropolis co-written and directed by Fritz Lang, director of M and Dr. Mabuse, It was the most expensive silent film ever created costing 5,100,000 Reichmarks which would equal to $21,420,000 in 1927. Its innovative cinematography and the use of technology to create another world unlike anything that had been contributed to the world of film at the time. . In the first part of my essay I will summarize Fritz’s Metropolis and his use of technology to elaborate on man’s fantasy of creating a machine-man, but I will be discussing Friz’s use of a woman shaped machine rather than a man. There is a quite apparent correlation between the use of story creating Adam and eve and Rotwang’s robotic being, it is creation without a mother. It is not only established the basis for science fiction movie’s in the future it established an idea of an image of the future and how technology will help us progress and advance but also can be a hazard and burden on the human race. Machines are either helpful or they are a hazard. As displayed in the film the above ground Metropolis is a beautiful lush city of advancing technology and the drones that are slaves to the very technology that they thrive upon. The lack of female presence other than Maria in the movie is a point I will be establishing upon will relate to the interesting correlation between sexuality, femininity, and technology that is established through the creation of the machine man. Fritz has displayed in his film. Maria, at a time, acts like the mother to all of the men down underground promising them salvation and freedom from the torment of the catacombs and tiny houses that they suffer and work to the bone in day in and day out. Maria is almost like a savior, but th...

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...oward ever greater technological domination of nature, Metropolis’ master-engineer must attempt to create woman, a being which, according to the male’s view, resists technologization by its very “nature.” (Huyssen, 220) Technology represents man’s ability to create outside the realm of nature compared to the woman’s ability to biologically reproduce. In the construction of the Machine man and developing it into a perfect copy of Maria’s physique the need for biological creation is unnecessary. Rotwang’s creation is the representation of using the sexual desires of man and the innate power behind the technology to present dominance over the workers in the depths of Metropolis. The machines in Metropolis “run” the workers, since technology is a male dominated subject creating a machine in a woman’s image is a way of feminizing them through the use of a “male tool”.

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