Tempo and Bodily Rhythm in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
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This paper examines Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to demonstrate that the film’s allegorical message that “the mediator between [the] head and [the] hands must be the heart” can be read as a mediation between multiple new temporalities introduced by modernity. Metropolis showcases a dystopic industrialized modern world in which the class division between the elite and the proletariat visually separates their dwelling areas. In the film, the city master’s son Freder with the help of a saintly figure, Maria, tries to mediate such a vast division. In this vein, critics have studied the film relative to the capital/labor conflict and the anxieties provoked by technology. My reading of Metropolis, however, attunes our attention to the divided groups’ differentially lived temporalities and rhythms in the fast-paced modern world. I view the relationship between the head and the hands as an allegory of tempos and propose that the film shows modern life’s complex temporal structure and the modern subject’s struggles to mediate the industrial age’s preoccupation with speed and efficiency. Therefore, this research focuses on the paradoxically highlighted temporality of slowness, which is a fresh approach to the film, to ultimately argue that the representation of a slow tempo plays a role in highlighting agency in time that frees people from the speed-up time bind. The contribution of this research builds on and expands the discourse on cinematic time and rhythm in film criticism. Overall, this paper demonstrates how Metropolis underlines the inequality predicated on maintaining the dominant accelerated life that needs mediation in temporal disconnection.
Abstract
This paper examines Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to demonstrate that the film’s allegorical message that “the mediator between [the] head and [the] hands must be the heart” can be read as a mediation between multiple new temporalities introduced by modernity. Metropolis showcases a dystopic industrialized modern world in which the class division between the elite and the proletariat visually separates their dwelling areas. In the film, the city master’s son Freder with the help of a saintly figure, Maria, tries to mediate such a vast division. In this vein, critics have studied the film relative to the capital/labor conflict and the anxieties provoked by technology. My reading of Metropolis, however, attunes our attention to the divided groups’ differentially lived temporalities and rhythms in the fast-paced modern world. I view the relationship between the head and the hands as an allegory of tempos and propose that the film shows modern life’s complex temporal structure and the modern subject’s struggles to mediate the industrial age’s preoccupation with speed and efficiency. Therefore, this research focuses on the paradoxically highlighted temporality of slowness, which is a fresh approach to the film, to ultimately argue that the representation of a slow tempo plays a role in highlighting agency in time that frees people from the speed-up time bind. The contribution of this research builds on and expands the discourse on cinematic time and rhythm in film criticism. Overall, this paper demonstrates how Metropolis underlines the inequality predicated on maintaining the dominant accelerated life that needs mediation in temporal disconnection.
참고문헌 (22)
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