Themes Of Metropolis

The most prevalent themes in the book are centred on the modern city and concern its architecture, street life, spaces and the daily routines of its inhabitants. He saw the arcades as a microcosm of the macrocosm. The whole world can be viewed through this miniature lens by simply entering and analysing the Arcades of Paris. They made shops into wondrous marvels visited by tourists that wished to bask in their enormity beauty. The arcades paved a way for new building and iron technology as the architectural form was long passages through blocks of buildings which were lined with shops and other businesses.

Benjamin recognised the metropolis as the locus of myth and the cult of the commodity. For Benjamin, Paris is the home of the Phantasmagoria,

People worship and go to praise all that they have to offer. It is the adoration of the goods of the arcades. It is the manipulation of sexual desires and the obsessive need to acquire the commodities. This is another main aspect of the modern city. Fetishism is that condition in which “…the sexual is as at home in death, as in living flesh” (Benjamin, 1999).

The ‘maschinenmensch’ (German for "machine-human") ‘Maria’ from the film

‘Metropolis’, the science fiction film produced in Germany in 1927, is a social metaphor for the transformation one goes through in the modern city. The Fritz Lang directed film is set in a futuristic utopia that is divided into two classes: the workers and the thinkers. The film describes the clash between the two. Metropolis describes a society where the “New World

Order” has already taken effect and the few selected elite live a luxurious lifestyle while a dehumanized mass work and live in a highly monitored hell. This is similar to nineteenth century Paris and indeed society today. A place divided by social class, with those who do the hard labour and those who reap the rewards. Benjamin noted this and predicted this would continue into the

Through Walter Benjamin’s book ‘The Arcades

Project’ we are given a lens to which when we look through in reading the book are transported back to Paris in the nineteenth century that does not look all that different to the cities we have today. Undoubtedly our cities today can only dream of achieving the architectural beauty and haute couture fashions that were the essence of Paris. But our understanding of the city is contained within the pages of this book. Benjamin perfectly encapsulates the brilliance of the city and describes scenes and behaviours that can still be seen today. He realised modernity is a constantly evolving process, and nothing lasts forever.

The memories of the Arcades live on and through the centuries life has not changed as much as one would first think. Of course technology and fashions change and as a society we are economically and politically becoming more efficient. The essence of the city hasn’t changed, a centre where people come to be transported to another realm of shopping and people watching. The city remains a source of joy and intoxication for people.