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German Expressionism roots
German Expressionism roots
German expressionism and the types and characteristics of german expressionism
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Metropolis is a silent film written by Thea Von Harbou in 1927, and directed by Fritz Lang. This film was very significant for its time. Although it had very mixed reviews by critics, it pioneered the work of the science fiction genre. The film also gained recognition by political leaders, such as Adolf Hitler, for recognizing the divides between the working class and the aristocracy. The divide between the working class and the aristocracy was the most significant idea I took away from this silent film. The divide between Jon Fredersen, the city master, and the lower class of underground-dwelling workers is a result of having nothing to prevent one another of gaining too much power. The result is a swing of power, where both sides experience the effects of having too much of it. Both Jon Fredersen, and the workers lose track of what is important while they have the power. Jon is unable to keep track of his son, Freder, who becomes upset after chasing his working class love into the underground, and seeing how workers have lost their lives as a result of his father’s conditions. Freder acts on an opportunity to fill the void as the mediator, switching lives with one of the workers in the underground. I also believe that Maria prophesized the arrival of the mediator who could bring the two classes …show more content…
Wells. In this novel the human race is split into the working class and the aristocrat’s in the far future. Elio of the upper class, are small and very unintelligent. Morlocks, of the underground act as the working class. Over time, however, the Elio had become a food source for the Morlocks. What makes The Time Machine different from Metropolis is that in The Time Machine there is no one to act as the mediator between the two classes. Because of this, much further in time, the human race is eliminated and all that stands are giant crabs, in a waste land that is earth on its death
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,
Culturally, the Stone Mountain Coal Company is able to maintain control over the residents of Matewan by promoting ignorance and fear of the unknown—“strike breakers,” races, and unions. Pitting Matewan’s resident workers against the incoming strikebreakers allows the Company freedom to raise competition levels for jobs that all the workers need to live, while lowering the amount of mone...
The world is advancing so rapidly today, it seems that it will never stop growing in knowledge and complexity. In the novel “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, The Time Traveler, as Wells calls him, travels hundreds of thousands of years into the future through time. He arrives at a world that, at first glimpse, is peaceful and clear of any worries. As The Time Traveler explores the world, he discovers that the human race has evolved into 2 distinct forms. Although the world appeared to be the Garden of Eden, it was, in reality, the Garden of Evil. Wells uses three aspects of the futuristic world to illustrate this: the setting, the Eloi, and the Murlocks.
Literature and film have always held a strange relationship with the idea of technological progress. On one hand, with the advent of the printing press and the refinements of motion picture technology that are continuing to this day, both literature and film owe a great deal of their success to the technological advancements that bring them to widespread audiences. Yet certain films and works of literature have also never shied away from portraying the dangers that a lust for such progress can bring with it. The modern output of science-fiction novels and films found its genesis in speculative ponderings on the effect such progress could hold for the every day population, and just as often as not those speculations were damning. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis are two such works that hold great importance in the overall canon of science-fiction in that they are both seen as the first of their kind. It is often said that Mary Shelley, with her authorship of Frankenstein, gave birth to the science-fiction novel, breathing it into life as Frankenstein does his monster, and Lang's Metropolis is certainly a candidate for the first genuine science-fiction film (though a case can be made for Georges Méliès' 1902 film Le Voyage Dans la Lune, his film was barely fifteen minutes long whereas Lang's film, with its near three-hour original length and its blending of both ideas and stunning visuals, is much closer to what we now consider a modern science-fiction film). Yet though both works are separated by the medium with which they're presented, not to mention a period of over two-hundred years between their respective releases, they present a shared warning about the dangers that man's need fo...
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.
According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that result. Like Williams, Don DeLillo calls attention to the economic and material relations behind universal abstractions such as aesthetics, love, and death. DeLillo’s White Noise brings modern-day capitalist societies’ incessant lifestyle disparity between active consumerists and those without the means to the forefront of the story’s plot. DeLillo’s setting uses a life altering man-made disaster in the suburban small-town of Blacksmith to shed light on the class conflict between the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat). After a tank car is punctured, an ominous cloud begins to loom over Jack Gladney and his family. No longer a feathery plume or a black billowing cloud, but the airborne toxic event—an event that even after its conclusion Jack cannot escape the prophecy of his encroaching death. Through a Marxist reading of the characterization of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged suburban college professor, it is clear that the overarching obsession with death operates as an...
The working class--the proletariat--must work to survive. Conversely, the bourgeois own the means of production and exploit the proletariat for their labor as well as the goods produced as a result (Ollman). The characters of Fuenteovejuna fit easily within this dichotomy. The townspeople exemplify Marx’s proletariat class, working tirelessly only to have the fruits of their labor--the crops they have harvested--taken by the Commander and the other nobles. Then, the Commander and his fellow nobles exemplify the bourgeois
Ruppert, Peter. “Technology and the Constructions of Gender in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” (2000) [Accessed 18 December 2012]
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Oppressed as he is, Joe fails to embrace the carnivalesque and so fail his family and his love ones. Only by escaping his place in the order and suspending the rules can he manage to make change.
Fritz Lang's Metropolis details the age old conflict between the blue collared workers and the white collared businessmen.
The idea of progress being inspired by the past is revisited in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis.
Fascism is the political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. The claim that Metropolis is a fascist movie is an interesting one just looking at the surface of the film one would not see it but digging deeper and looking at the definition of fascism I can understand how Siegfried Kracauer could see connections between Metropolis and Nazi propaganda I believe it is working towards fascism. Some would say it is working against fascism based on a few factors such as the use of technology as a jail for the workers and if they stop doing their job based on anything including exhaustion consequences occur that is deadly. An example of such is the explosion in the beginning that killed many workers then you see how the workers feel in the dream sequence they are just being fed to the machine which is technology and society. Looking deeply into the film we see how the workers rise up but don’t have
An obvious difference in these films is that the 1931 version played to a Depression audience and that the Coppola version played to a modern audience. (I am being extremely careful because, obviously, the 1931 audience was modern in 1931; however, we like to think of ourselves as being more modern than past generations. There are differences in the audiences which viewed the respective versions in their time, and I hope to prove this point as the paper unfolds.)
On the surface, Franz Kafka's 1916 novella, The Metamorphosis, seems to be just a tale of a man who woke up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect. But, a closer reading with Marx and Engel's economic theories in mind reveals an overarching metaphor that gives the improbable story a great deal of relevance to the structure of society. Gregor Samsa, the protagonist, signifies the proletariat, or the working class, and his unnamed manager represents the bourgeoisie. The conflict that arises between the two after Gregor's metamorphosis renders him unable to work represents the impersonal and dehumanizing structure of class relations. The metaphor of the story can be divided into three main parts (although they overlap within the story.) First, Kafka establishes the characters and the economic classes which they represent. Then, he details Gregor's metamorphosis and the way in which it impedes his labor. Finally, he describes the final results of the worker's inability to work: abandonment by his family and death. Although a man cannot literally be transformed into an insect, he can, for one reason or another, become unable to work. Kafka's novella, therefore, is a fantastic portrayal of a realistic scenario and provides us with a valuable insight into the struggles between economic classes.