Journal Article

Exploring Utilitarian Myths and Power Discourse in Fritz Lang's Metropolis

Aberkane, Ali

2024

Overview

Metropolis is a science-fiction and silent film written by Thea von Harbou and directed by Fritz Lang. Originally premiered in 1927, the film footage remained missing for many years until its discovery and reassembly in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2008. The restored version portrays the tumultuous fate of Freder, the son of the all-powerful businessman Fredersen, within a highly industrialized city. The film mainly deals, in a dystopian manner, with the devastating mechanisms of highly utilitarian societies and sheds light on the challenges posed by a largely rationalized, fascist regime in a pre-World War II context. Fritz Lang's Metropolis delves into a ''semiotics of 'Loss'' (Grayson/Scheurer 2021: 43) featuring transhumanist aspects, which are constitutive parts of an illusionary teleology of total control over human nature. All these narrative elements articulate simultaneously the critical discourse of the Austrian film director. They vividly highlight totalitarian ideologies in a visionary and allegorical manner, exposing their control and power mechanisms (cf. Foucault 1966/2005: 414), which constitute the main subject of the present article. The aim is to deconstruct utilitarian myths as ideology (cf. Rosen 2003: 42) and discourse of power as well.

• Publisher: جامعة الجزائر 2 - كلية اللغة العربية وآدابها واللغات الشرقية
• Subject: الأفلام السينمائية / الخيال العلمي / خطاب السلطة