Similarities Between Metropolis And 1984

Utilised as communication mechanisms, texts inherently manifest contextual concerns and the zeitgeist of each composer’s respective milieu. Elucidating philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s postulation that ‘We come what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us’ it is through an appreciation of intertextual perspectives, in which the inextricable influence of context in shaping and emanating key ideals is explored. Yet the question beholds, how does a comparative study of Fritz Lang’s 1927 Silent film noir Metropolis and George Orwell’s dystopian satire Nineteen Eight Four explore common premises? Indeed, both composers lived during periods of social, political and cultural unrest, enticing them to create textual forms with a strong
Inspired by the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin and his ‘great purges’ in Soviet Russia, and Adolf Hitler’s eradication of ‘inferior’ races in Nazi Germany, Orwell presents a significantly bleaker and more pessimistic prophecy. Indeed, Orwell emphasizes the omnipresence of the ‘Thought Police’ to mirror the contextual dominance of the Russian KGB and Nazi Gestapo in facilitating psychological and physical repression of the populace to an extent where ‘Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull’. In doing so, he foreshadows the repercussions of political ignorance, epitomized through the dismissal synecdoche of ‘a boot stamping on a human face – forever’. However, whereas Lang presents oppression as a by-product of capitalism, Orwell conveys the role of oligarchical party members such as O’Brien whose violent betrayal of protagonist Winston Smith is indicative of Stalin’s political brutality in the Kirov Decrees and the Nazi Party’s violent suppression of the political opposition. Consequently, O’Brien mandate ‘power is not a means, it is an end’ thereby condemns the motives of fascist governments, reminiscent of Fredersen’s exploitation of Cyborg Maria to ‘claim the right to use force’. Nonetheless, disparate to the social progression achieved in Metropolis however, Winston holistically submits to repression via the phenomenon of ‘double think’, resulting in him sacrificing his individual autonomy through his incongruous submission that ‘two and two makes five’. Ultimately, Orwell’s tragic depiction of resistance elucidates the impact of WWII in shaping his pessimistic representation of human weakness in the face of oppressive