Aftershocks Exploring ‘Intertextual Perspectives’ in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Phil Turnock (St Aloysius’ College) and John Tzantzaris (Shore School)

Comparative Study of Texts and Context

What have we learnt so far…?

•  The comparative (or ‘appropriation’) study is primarily led by the responder, rather than the composer.

•  The length of temporal gaps between texts do not determine the ‘legitimacy’ of the study.

•  ‘Values’ are the real discriminator – our ability to evaluate/differentiate a textual relationship is crucial to our argument.

•  Integrating contextual references (as opposed to ‘chunking’) continues to reveal itself as a key skill.

Elective 2: Intertextual Perspectives

How comparable is this to ‘Texts in Time’…?

•  The notion of ‘time’ (temporal space between texts) is given less primacy.

•  The term ‘similar content’ has been retained, suggesting that texts continue to be deliberately paired according to key narrative similarities.

•  This is augmented, however, by widening the scope of ‘similarity’ beyond simply ‘content’ into ‘content and perspectives’.

•  A reminder is given that ‘times and contexts’ (‘Texts in Time’) most often translates to ‘social, cultural and historical’ contexts.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis & George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Metropolis & Nineteen Eighty-Four

First impressions on this pairing…

•  Political and industrial landscapes/dynamics appear to be central to the study.

•  The brief temporal gap between the texts would seem to ‘condense’ our contextual analysis (in other words, the two contexts would seem to almost ‘overlap’).

•  Amidst the masculinist tones of both texts, possibilities for gender analysis/discourse (particularly through ‘Maria’ and ‘Julia’) clearly emerge

•  History teachers will become an invaluable resource (or, more formally, strong cross-curricular links)!

Metropolis & Nineteen Eighty-Four

Conceptual framework

•  Both texts appear to express a ‘dystopian’ concern for the threat of an unmediated concentration of power as accelerated by an escalating industrial capacity – and, by extension, the implicit threat to individualism.

•  More specifically, the sense of economic crisis precipitated by the capitalistic excesses of the earlier text can be seen to initiate an inter-war ‘totalising’ solution as depicted through the ‘nightmare state’ of the subsequent text.

•  Paradoxically, however, the similarly catastrophic threat to individual autonomy posed by this so-called ‘solution’ can be seen to expose the inherent fallacy on which conventional distinctions between industrial capitalist (Lang) and ‘totalising’ collectivist (Orwell) models are built.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Mapping context…

•  Reflects the Weimar Republic’s preoccupation with post WWI reconstruction/reconfiguration

(‘The Mediation of Technology and Gender: Metropolis, Nazism, Modernism’ – R. L. Rutsky, 1993)

•  Implies an idealisation of the American metropolis (Lang’s fascination with the US) – one that anticipates the devastating impact of ‘Black Tuesday’ on the Republic

(Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War – Anton Kaes, 2009)

•  Manifests the growing tension between idealism and progress central to ‘Machine Age’ (late-Industrial Age) Germany

(From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film – Siegfried Kracauer, 1947)

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Scene #1 – the ‘Moloch’ (0.12.55–0.16.58)

•  Freder’s descent into the ‘real world’ of the metropolis – the ‘machine halls’ – becomes the catalyst for his divorcement from the industrial supremacy of his father

•  The movements of the workers are ‘contrived’ and abstract – mechanised (in a balletic way)

•  The gigantic machine at the centre of the shot breathes fire and steam, before…

•  Transmogrifying (in Freder’s mind) into the…“MOLOCH!” – appropriating the Old Testament legend into an image of humans being sacrificed to the gods of technology and industry

•  Reality is re-instated as we witness Freder’s ‘expressionistic’ response to the industrial blast

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Scene #2 – the ‘Tower of Babel’ (0.50.29–0.54.35)

•  Maria ‘preaches’ to the workers in the ‘catacombs’ of the metropolis on community and humanity

•  Her message allegorised through the ‘Tower of Babel’ legend – a series of tableau-like chapters

•  Initial shot of workers subserviently ascending the tower – in the ordered configuration of a ‘hand’ – later juxtaposed with low-angle shot of workers ‘storming’ the tower (proletarian uprising)

•  Intertitles propel the narrative – reinforced by the juxtaposition of grand, sweeping orchestral tones (for deification) with pulsating rhythms (for the masses), culminating in the chaotic crescendo of ‘the revolt’

•  Allegory ultimately informs Maria’s didactic message: ‘The Mediator between Head and Hands must be the Heart!’

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Scene #3 – the ‘Whore of Babylon’ (1.25.30–1.30.40)

•  In an hallucination of Freder’s, the inventor Rotwang presents the mechanised (anti-) Maria as a dancer at the Yoshiwara nightclub

•  The voyeurism of the scene is enhanced by both the close-ups of the transfixed male audience and, more specifically, the montage of their penetrating eyes

•  Maria's increasingly eroticised dance precipitates the intensifying of Freder’s dream as the Apocalypse is invoked – culminating in Maria’s ‘Whore of Babylon’ tableau

•  Score transforms from the jazz tempos of the Yoshiwara context to the more hymn-like terror of the Judgement Day climax

•  Freder’s closing confrontation with a personified Death (replete with scythe) confirms the conceptualisation of his personal ‘humanitarian’ crisis as theological hyperbole

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Mapping context…

•  Critiques the ambitious ‘collectivism’ of the inter-war Soviet Union as a precipitator of the WWII ‘war on fascism’

(‘Nineteen Eighty-Four: context and controversy’ – Bernard Crick, 2007)

•  Reflects the residual post-war nuclear capacity of the world’s ‘superpowers’, and its implications for ‘global authority’

(‘Afterword: Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984’ – Raymond Williams, 2007)

•  Hyperbolises the post-war division of territories, as implicit to the ‘Tehran Conference’ and its outcomes

(‘Introduction’ to BoS prescribed edition – Thomas Pynchon, 2003)

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Extract #1 – ‘Doublethink’ (Part I, Chapter III)

•  Winston reflects on family and then dreams of the ‘Golden Country’ – and the girl that “tore off her clothes and flung them aside disdainfully” (36)

•  “With its grace and carelessness [her gesture] seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought…” – indicative of the more intuitive, reflective tone of Winston’s narration in these earlier stages, as opposed to the invasive sterility that otherwise pervades the narrative

•  Subjugation of intuition – “Winston woke up with the word ‘Shakespeare’ on his lips.”

•  Reflects on ‘doublethink’ – “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies…consciously to induce unconsciousness…” (40-41)

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Extract #2 – ‘If there is hope, it lies in the proles’ (Part I, Chapter VII)

•  Winston offers due recognition to the ‘proles’ – “if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, [they] would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies.” (80)

•  Identifies their paradox: “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” (81)

•  The ‘Party textbooks’ – “The Party claimed to have liberated the proles from [being] hideously oppressed by the capitalists…”

•  A children’s history textbook: “before the glorious Revolution…[the] capitalists owned everything in the world and everyone else was their slave…They were fat ugly men with wicked faces…” (83-84); one of the many forms of (Orwellian) ‘treatise’ that punctuates the narrative (most notably, the Goldstein ‘treatise’ of Part II)

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Extract #3 – ‘He loved Big Brother’ (Part III, Chapter VI)

•  Reclaimed by the Party, Winston sits at the ‘Chestnut Tree’ café anticipating a “special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace” (331) – his resistance seemingly exorcised by the horrors of ‘Room 101’ [“burnt out, cauterised out” by O’Brien]

•  A perfunctory exchange with co-conspirator and former ‘lover’ Julia confirms the crushing defeat of the Party – “Sometimes…they threaten you with something…And then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to…so-and-so’…And perhaps you might pretend…that you…didn’t really mean it…But that isn’t true.” (336)

•  “All you care about is yourself,’ he echoed – the inexorable weight of ‘Big Brother’ vanquishes the spirit of resistance

•  The bleak (post-war) inevitability of the final chapter – “He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother” (342) – provides an interesting counter-point to Lang’s attempt at (inter-war) optimism

Metropolis & Nineteen Eighty-Four

Final thoughts…

•  The ‘Metropolis’–‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ study lends itself to either a basic comparative analysis of how industry and politics inter-relate, or…

•  A more complex study of the political/economic fallacies that characterise early 20th-century power discourse.

•  As always, ‘economy’ will be important – the Module A study traditionally requires enormous ‘editing back’ of what is achieved in the classroom…

•  This will prove a particular challenge for a text pairing (like this one) that requires so much contextual analysis.

THANK YOU

We hope you enjoy the ‘Metropolis’–‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ study.

Phil Turnock and John Tzantzaris