How would you compare the ideas, values and attitudes reflected in Metropolis and 1984?
Humanist concerns usually stretch across time and this is apparent in my comparative study of the attitudes Fritz Lang and George Orwell have towards certain ideas and values. These composers present ideas of individual oppression and values towards personal freedom and love through their specific textual form — the film Metropolis and novel 1984.
Influential of Lang’s concerns during Weimar Republic in Germany regarding the rise of capitalism, Metropolis is reflective of the idea of individual oppression towards the lower class. German Expressionism in the film becomes apparent through high angled long shot depicting the workers dressed in black, marching …show more content…
After Winston obtains his diary, he imparts his personal thoughts towards being “vaporised” through a stream of consciousness, “theyll shoot me i dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother…” The conflicting notion of fear through the repetition of “theyll shoot me,” overrides with his apathy in “i don’t care.” This difficulty in conveying his thoughts fluently depicts the extent of the Party’s control over the individual and the values that define them. Party consolidates and strengthens their power through “newspeak”, evident in Syme and Winston’s conversation through the rhetorical question, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” By limiting the amount of words, thus, “range of consciousness,” it also represses their ability to commit “thoughtcrime”, as the people can’t express themselves with more versatility. Thus, Orwell wrote 1984 as a political statement, to warn the public of the perversions in Communism and Fascism and defend the right to one’s own thoughts, expressed as Winston writes in his diary: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.” Orwell’s envision of surveillance in 1984 was greatly aided through their technological advances. This contextual difference is evident through consistent invasive surveillance of the telescreen which had “no way of shutting it off completely.” The high modality highlighting the futility of the Party members of no privacy. This kind of individual control through surveillance corresponds in Metropolis, where the Thin Man monitors Freder’s movements by stalking him. But yet again, the Thin man is physically limited as the long shot of him searching Josaphat’s room, show less precision than the Party’s continuous monitoring of the
Humanist concerns usually stretch across time and this is apparent in my comparative study of the attitudes Fritz Lang and George Orwell have towards certain ideas and values. These composers present ideas of individual oppression and values towards personal freedom and love through their specific textual form — the film Metropolis and novel 1984.
Influential of Lang’s concerns during Weimar Republic in Germany regarding the rise of capitalism, Metropolis is reflective of the idea of individual oppression towards the lower class. German Expressionism in the film becomes apparent through high angled long shot depicting the workers dressed in black, marching …show more content…
After Winston obtains his diary, he imparts his personal thoughts towards being “vaporised” through a stream of consciousness, “theyll shoot me i dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother…” The conflicting notion of fear through the repetition of “theyll shoot me,” overrides with his apathy in “i don’t care.” This difficulty in conveying his thoughts fluently depicts the extent of the Party’s control over the individual and the values that define them. Party consolidates and strengthens their power through “newspeak”, evident in Syme and Winston’s conversation through the rhetorical question, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” By limiting the amount of words, thus, “range of consciousness,” it also represses their ability to commit “thoughtcrime”, as the people can’t express themselves with more versatility. Thus, Orwell wrote 1984 as a political statement, to warn the public of the perversions in Communism and Fascism and defend the right to one’s own thoughts, expressed as Winston writes in his diary: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.” Orwell’s envision of surveillance in 1984 was greatly aided through their technological advances. This contextual difference is evident through consistent invasive surveillance of the telescreen which had “no way of shutting it off completely.” The high modality highlighting the futility of the Party members of no privacy. This kind of individual control through surveillance corresponds in Metropolis, where the Thin Man monitors Freder’s movements by stalking him. But yet again, the Thin man is physically limited as the long shot of him searching Josaphat’s room, show less precision than the Party’s continuous monitoring of the