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Comparing Metropolis And George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Fritz Lang's German expressionistic film Metropolis (1927) and George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) portrays psychological manipulation to emphasise the loss of individuality induced by the power and control that totalitarian systems hold. Metropolis shows the loss of individuality and freedom from the division of labour in Weimar Germany, a socially corrupt capitalist society. 1984 conveys the dangers associated with absolute political authority in an age of advanced technology. Both texts explore contextual fears of the loss of human values due to the influence of state control. Both Metropolis and 1984 illustrate the clear power divide between two classes and the use of rebellious mindsets to illustrate the future of contextual societies. Fritz Lang employs film techniques to illustrate the clear power divide between the workers and the rich. The workers are introduced as faceless, their heads hung down and walking in a uniform line in the bleak underground city, symbolising their lack of freedom and individuality. …show more content…

By getting rid all emotion and purpose, the Party is the one 'who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past’. By creating a past that was a time of slavery and misery through the manipulation of media, citizens have no purpose to rebel as they do not want to return to those times. Therefore, by controlling the history of the past, the Party has ultimate control over what happens in the future. Winston is aware of the manipulation of media and his desire to deviate from conformity gives him a rebellious mindset. However, his encounter with Room 101 eradicates his rebellious mindset and he starts to ‘love’ Big Brother. Therefore, unlike Metropolis, Orwell portrays only the inability to change the future through rebellion in the rise of totalitarian

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