Spaces of Territorialization in Fritz Lang’s Film Metropolis (1927)

Authors

  • Željka Pješivac

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i7.93

Keywords:

refrain, territory, territorialization, spaces of territorialization, shell-shock film, Weimar culture

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between film, architecture and the city in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis by analyzing and interpreting its spatial concepts as a text of Weimar culture. Locating the study in the context of philosophy, theory of text, and cultural analysis, the main hypothesis of this paper is that the urban and architectural spaces of Metropolis are based on the concept of territorialization (arborescent model of organization) of a totalitarian capitalist system through the reduction of real or fictional deterritorialization to a definitive and closed territory of totalitarianism. Developing this hypothesis with historical, comparative, and analytical methods, the aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between narrative, ideology, and space in Metropolis. How is the ideology of Weimar culture represented by spatial structures in Metropolis? What are the relations of acts of territorialization, narrative, and the rhythmical structures of spaces of modern culture in this film? How are social practices inscribed in the spatial structures of the film, marking the totalitarian system and its terrorist horror on one side, and resistance to the totalitarian system on the other, trying to abolish the active/passive dichotomy? These are the key questions of this study. Its theoretical starting point comes from the works of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Erwin Panofsky, and Rosalind Krauss.

Author Biography

Željka Pješivac

Vienna University of Technology, Vienna
Austria

Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Architecture Theory

References

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. “Industrija culture.“ Dijalektika prosvetiteljstva. Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša–Svjetlost, 1989, 126–172.

Benjamin, Walter. “Umetničko delo u veku svoje tehničke reprodukcije.“ Eseji. Beograd: Nolit, 1974, 114–149.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: A Harvest Book, 1968.

Kaes, Anton. Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400831197

Krauss, Rosalind. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 1985.

Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Form. New York: Zone Books, 1991.

Rawes, Peg. Irigaray for Architects. London, New York: Routledge, 2007. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203934180

Šuvaković, Miško. Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti. Zagreb, Horetkzy: Ghent, Vless & Beton, 2005.

After the end of Soviet hegemony and the fall of socialist regimes in Central and Southeast Europe, the consideration of the relationship between art and politics seems urgent. The experience of more than two decades of political and structural changes toward the development of institutions of global capital also contributes to this urgency. The debate over the (political) nature of art becomes necessary, taking into account that this question has been superseded by a marketplace wherein all designations and forms of Art are available. It shows (itself) to be the best vehicle for manipulation and instrumentalization towards the current doxa that ‘everything is possible’. Moreover, the issue of the political aspect of art has been complicated by the dominant intellectual opinion and denunciations that all forms of utopian and social dimensions of art, as in the case of revolutionary and emancipatory perspectives of the avant-gardes, are responsible for the horrors of totalitarianism and terrorism. The aim of this issue therefore is to address the question of how to constitute and affirm an active Art today without slipping into essentialism. Focus Issue Editor: Bojana Matejić

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Published

15.04.2015

How to Cite

Pješivac, Željka. (2015). Spaces of Territorialization in Fritz Lang’s Film Metropolis (1927). AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (7), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i7.93

Issue

No. 7 (2015): Issue No. 7, April 2015 - Topic of Issue: Art and Politics: Agency, Autonomy, Emancipation

Section

Articles

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