Metropolis (novel)

Hey! What's up everybody? Its been quiet on this page the last couple days because I've been pretty tired and I took a night off from my work (reading) so I was behind with my readings. Now I'm all caught up, as I've already finished another novel, this time Metropolis written by German female intellectual Thea von Harbou. Metropolis is also the name for the movie that was made and inspired by this book. The book came first, and the movie thereafter.

The story of the book follows closely the movie so rather than rehash what I already wrote about you can get the gist of the plot from my movie synopsis, which can be read here. There's actually not much information on this book on the Wikipedia page for it but it should be known that the end of this book concludes with Freder's father realizing that his dead wife will be with him till the ends of the Earth (she died and left a letter for him). Lets focus on the literary style and high art that is this novel.

The novel is a short two hundred and fifteen pages but the writing style can be hard to wrap your head around. This is high German art language and Thea von Harbou was quite the intellectual, you can tell by the English translation of her writing. Don't get me wrong, its not dense by any means but there's a sense that you have to really understand everything you're reading because its so highly stylized. One sentence that describes a simple thing could turn into a whole page affair but she does it in a way that you want to read more about that one thing, without making it boring or trivial. Its quite something, I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this, its a powerful novel.

The film omits references that the book made to the occult. There's tons of references and images to the occult here but because I'm not familiar with that realm I didn't see it as particularly offensive or foul by any means. I learned about some evil things I suppose but its nothing that's going to make me wet the bed at night (lol). Besides, the pentagram beside the machine-woman is pretty evil enough for 1927.

In addition, the film omits moral motivation for certain actions by the main characters. Yes, the book differs quite a bit from the movie's characters, which are more black and white. In the book the characters are much more detailed, much like real people. We don't necessarily see things as good or evil, there's all these gray areas that are quite apparent.

This book is great! I would recommend the book to any science fiction readers, women that want to get into science fiction, and people who like really old books. I liked it so much I might read it again much sooner than expected, I could see myself reading it again in a few months or so, just to see if it still has that same poetic fire and intensity from the first read through. Definitely check this book out.

HEAD and HANDS need a mediator. THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!

Metropolis

Metropolis is a science fiction film from 1928 that's inspired by the book of the same name written by Thea von Harbou, an actress (who plays Maria, a working class prophet) in the film and also Fritz Lang's wife. Where do I start with this film? There's so much going on, much of it is open to interpretation from the viewers. Here's a basic synopsis.

The story follows Freder, the son of the city's (Metropolis) ruler and Maria, a poor worker. They try to overcome the societal differences between the poor that live beneath the city and the rich who (live above ground) wear white shirts and shorts and play tennis. The movie is said to have Communist ideas, I can see that but to me its not overtly pronounced. I see the film more for its beauty, to find that common ground between the rich and poor.

So Freder is hanging out in some sort of garden relaxing and Maria comes in with a bunch of poor kids to show them how the rich live. "Look at them. These are your brothers," Maria says. Maria and the kids get sent away but Freder follows her to a machine room. He sees an explosion that kills some workers and experiences a hallucination. In the hallucination he sees workers being fed to the Machine, a sort of Aztec sacrificial ceremony, at least that's what I thought when I saw it.

Freder tells Fredersen, his dad (and ruler of the city) but his indifference towards the treatment of the workers leaves him cold, so Freder decides to help the workers in any way he can, in an attempt to help the poor and disenfranchised. There's a lot of stuff that happens in between this as the movie is about two hours and twenty-eight minutes long but for the sake of a shorter blog post I'll summarize things more briefly.

Later, we see Maria is prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can unite the working and ruling classes together. There's a mad occult scientist who uses this machine-woman (robot) to create another version of Maria, who goes on to sow discord within the working class, creating many problems and dissent.

The workers end up destroying the Heart Machine, which the false Maria told them to do. This causes the city to flood, and all their children are left to drown unless somebody saves them. The real Maria and Freder end up saving them. The working class burn the false Maria at the stake as a witch and find out that it was just a robot, as the fire burns through to the metal. There's a fight between Freder and the mad scientist Rotwang but Rotwang ends up falling to his death. In the end Freder fulfills his role as mediator between the working class and ruling class by uniting hands with the foreman (in charge of the working class), his father, and himself, a sort of male triangular unity, perhaps even referencing the Holy Trinity, the father, son, and holy spirit.

So that's it. If you think about it and see the movie, the plot is quite simplistic. Its the ideas that go within them that's open to interpretation, which is where a lot can be said of the movie. First, I would like to point out the fact that there's a lot of science fiction based on this: the idea of a political break between the rich and poor. The poor trying to 'get whats theirs', a sort of futurist communism, although in this movie the Marxism is probably very high by today's science fiction standards, but at that time I would say its not quite as pronounced. I might be wrong on that though. So yes, the idea of social construckts, government, poor living underground, and the rich living above ground is something seen in tons of science fiction. Its quite a common trope.

Then there's the idea of love between Freder and Maria. They obviously love each other and find romance in each other. They ended up saving all the children of the underclass together, becoming surrogate parents to an entire generation. That's love for sure. One could say that Freder might have even become interested in following Maria to the Machine Room because he was interested in her, interested in a woman who wasn't from his social class. In doing this he opened up to the world around him, and found love in the process, a sense of discovery.

Then there's the ideas of science and the occult, another common idea in sci-fi. Rotwang, the mad scientist is a true screwball who planned on using the Machine-woman (named Hel) to take over Metropolis. In the scene where we first see the Machine-woman we see a giant pentagram symbol at the foot of her body. This signified a sort of luciferian procreation. Metropolis the book has more occult associations than this movie, which makes sense because its easier to do that in a book than in a movie that will be showed to thousands of people.

The science part was pretty cool. In Rotwang's lab we see all sorts of potions, tubes, lights, bells, and whistles. It was a cross between a 15th century laboratory and a science physics lab from the year 2000. Something like that. It was quite something. That was a cool scene indeed.

In the end we find that Freder has fulfilled his destiny as a mediator between the rich and poor. One could say he was swayed and perhaps even chosen by Maria to be the guy to do this. This shows us that perhaps leaders in government have to be certain kinds of people, come from certain places, have a lot of money, and perhaps be chosen for and by the people, much like the systems we have in place today for our political elections and office.

For example, if Freder wasn't the son of the guy ruling the city he wouldn't have as much power or sway over government. If he wasn't the son of the ruler Maria might not have come to him with the children. This ending gives me a lot of ideas about government and power. Can politicians come from anywhere, be anyone, and still be elected into high positions of power? I'm not so sure. I think it works in some cases and other cases it doesn't. There's a gray area for sure.

Take for example Donald Trump. He's been a media highlight for a long time and he didn't come out of nowhere. He was the son of a rich guy, thus making him rich. He started talking about government and the poor white working class of America voted him into the Presidency. It could not have happened if he didn't have those other traits: being born rich, using that money to political advantage, and using his political platform to speak to the poor white working class.

This movie makes me think about things like that, why certain politicians get elected into power. However, its probably more important to think of this movie as a great example of German expressionist art, of which it is a wonderful example.

You can watch the film here.

HEAD and HANDS need a mediator. THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!