Epigraph.
"Mittler zwischen Hirn und Handen muss das Herz sein!"
[The mediator between the Head and the Hands should be the Heart!]
epigraph to x. f. "Metropolis", passing through it by refrain, 1927
“The Fuhrer saw your Nibelungen and Metropolis films and said: here is a man who can create National Socialist cinema!”
Dr. J.P. Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, in an interview with director F. Lang, presumably April 1933
"Vote with your heart!"
poster agitating for B. N. Yeltsin, 1996
Common sense teaches us: a thin world is better than a good enmity. When this judgment of common sense is transferred to the field of politics, a theory of class peace arises, also called the theory of the third way: not left and right. There are many such theories, but, in essence, there is only one way, since any form of political centrism ultimately turns into a victory for the right camp. Consequently, in politics, a thin world still leads to good enmity, but only on less favorable conditions for the oppressed class. This is true for any class formation, but one can clearly observe the unanimity of all concepts of the class world in the history of developed capitalism: there are only two classes in pure capitalism, which greatly simplifies political calculations. Under capitalism, the third path means exactly one thing - a class world between big capital and workers, a corporate state, fascism. Speaking of fascism, we usually mean the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary circles of finance capital, but let's not forget that such a dictatorship is called fascist precisely because it is ideologically shaped in terms of the class world. So, by no means well-being is brought to the people by a peace-loving song, those who sing it are not peacekeepers, but instigators of war; not benefactors, but robbers and thieves. The peoples of the Soviet Union experienced the consequences of abandoning the class struggle, even if bourgeois ideologues made enormous efforts to confuse people's heads. It would be desirable, however, to hope that the German experience will remain unsurpassed in this respect for a long time.
Before continuing this and without that abstract reasoning, I need to stop at the concept of culture. Under the culture usually understand the experience accumulated by mankind, spiritual and material. With such an approach to culture, its every subject should be viewed in a historical context as a definite reflection of all human development. The manufacture of lampshades from human skin, as well as the design of gas chambers, is part of human culture. You can say, of course, that culture includes negative experiences. But only in order for this experience to become negative, you need to counter it with something that excludes the possibility of its repetition, at least on a social scale. Otherwise we are dealing with an unauthorized logical synthesis. We here, of course, narrow the concept of culture to the spiritual, namely - the figurative and ideological culture. The layer of the ideosphere, which is more or less professionally engaged in the development and reproduction of such a culture, to avoid the word forms, the culture-sphere and culture-sphere consciousness, will also be called culture.
It may be wrong to transfer substantial responsibility for what happened to the German creative intelligentsia, to the German culture. But it would be strange to say that she is not at all responsible for what happened to her after the Nazis came to power, especially since in key positions she became pro-Nazi even before they came. Therefore, if we do not want to transform the experience of this culture into a positive one, we should carefully look at what was circulating in it at the end of the Weimar Republic.
Fritz Lang's film provides excellent material for this.
The nodal metaphor of the film is the Tower of Babel - through it, the film itself is transferred to the space of the biblical parable, and Metropolis itself is identified with Babylon, and the image of the harlot from Revelation John gets rather unexpected connotations, which are described below. This metaphor in the film is reproduced literally: the bright human head conceived to build a tower high in the sky, for her this tower - Babylon - was a joyful hymn to humanity creating the world, but to build a tower, she had to find Hands - a crowd of very ugly hired slaves - their work was so hard and ungrateful that for them the very word “Babylon” became the most terrible curse. So people stopped understanding each other, speaking the same language. But if the Heart were an intermediary between the Head and the Hands, then everything would be completely different. In short - this is the content of the film.
(omitted detailed consideration of the plot of the film)
Fritz Lang's film is a characteristic product of its era. It is unlikely that the authors deliberately created anti-communist and pro-fascist agitation, rather, they just wanted to tell romantic stories with acute social overtones.
"Mittler zwischen Hirn und Handen muss das Herz sein!"
[The mediator between the Head and the Hands should be the Heart!]
epigraph to x. f. "Metropolis", passing through it by refrain, 1927
“The Fuhrer saw your Nibelungen and Metropolis films and said: here is a man who can create National Socialist cinema!”
Dr. J.P. Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, in an interview with director F. Lang, presumably April 1933
"Vote with your heart!"
poster agitating for B. N. Yeltsin, 1996
Common sense teaches us: a thin world is better than a good enmity. When this judgment of common sense is transferred to the field of politics, a theory of class peace arises, also called the theory of the third way: not left and right. There are many such theories, but, in essence, there is only one way, since any form of political centrism ultimately turns into a victory for the right camp. Consequently, in politics, a thin world still leads to good enmity, but only on less favorable conditions for the oppressed class. This is true for any class formation, but one can clearly observe the unanimity of all concepts of the class world in the history of developed capitalism: there are only two classes in pure capitalism, which greatly simplifies political calculations. Under capitalism, the third path means exactly one thing - a class world between big capital and workers, a corporate state, fascism. Speaking of fascism, we usually mean the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary circles of finance capital, but let's not forget that such a dictatorship is called fascist precisely because it is ideologically shaped in terms of the class world. So, by no means well-being is brought to the people by a peace-loving song, those who sing it are not peacekeepers, but instigators of war; not benefactors, but robbers and thieves. The peoples of the Soviet Union experienced the consequences of abandoning the class struggle, even if bourgeois ideologues made enormous efforts to confuse people's heads. It would be desirable, however, to hope that the German experience will remain unsurpassed in this respect for a long time.
Before continuing this and without that abstract reasoning, I need to stop at the concept of culture. Under the culture usually understand the experience accumulated by mankind, spiritual and material. With such an approach to culture, its every subject should be viewed in a historical context as a definite reflection of all human development. The manufacture of lampshades from human skin, as well as the design of gas chambers, is part of human culture. You can say, of course, that culture includes negative experiences. But only in order for this experience to become negative, you need to counter it with something that excludes the possibility of its repetition, at least on a social scale. Otherwise we are dealing with an unauthorized logical synthesis. We here, of course, narrow the concept of culture to the spiritual, namely - the figurative and ideological culture. The layer of the ideosphere, which is more or less professionally engaged in the development and reproduction of such a culture, to avoid the word forms, the culture-sphere and culture-sphere consciousness, will also be called culture.
It may be wrong to transfer substantial responsibility for what happened to the German creative intelligentsia, to the German culture. But it would be strange to say that she is not at all responsible for what happened to her after the Nazis came to power, especially since in key positions she became pro-Nazi even before they came. Therefore, if we do not want to transform the experience of this culture into a positive one, we should carefully look at what was circulating in it at the end of the Weimar Republic.
Fritz Lang's film provides excellent material for this.
The nodal metaphor of the film is the Tower of Babel - through it, the film itself is transferred to the space of the biblical parable, and Metropolis itself is identified with Babylon, and the image of the harlot from Revelation John gets rather unexpected connotations, which are described below. This metaphor in the film is reproduced literally: the bright human head conceived to build a tower high in the sky, for her this tower - Babylon - was a joyful hymn to humanity creating the world, but to build a tower, she had to find Hands - a crowd of very ugly hired slaves - their work was so hard and ungrateful that for them the very word “Babylon” became the most terrible curse. So people stopped understanding each other, speaking the same language. But if the Heart were an intermediary between the Head and the Hands, then everything would be completely different. In short - this is the content of the film.
(omitted detailed consideration of the plot of the film)
Fritz Lang's film is a characteristic product of its era. It is unlikely that the authors deliberately created anti-communist and pro-fascist agitation, rather, they just wanted to tell romantic stories with acute social overtones.
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