Metropolis and Perspectives Create a rubric-driven critical summary of this chapter of Metropolis. The following screenshots all come from the second-last chapter on the Metropolis DVD. The action summarised goes from the point where Grot berates the workers for abandoning their children to the death of Rotwang.

The Rubric: In this elective, students compare the content and perspectives in a pair of texts in order to develop their understanding of the effects of context, purpose and audience on the shaping of meaning. Through exploring and comparing perspectives offered by a pair of texts, students examine the ways in which particular social, cultural and historical contexts can influence the composer’s choice of language forms and features and the ideas, values and attitudes conveyed in each text. In their responding and composing, students consider how the treatment of similar content in a pair of texts can heighten our understanding of the values, significance and context of each. In your summaries, focus on the highlighted rubric point: where are the similarities in terms of content? How does a comparison of this text and 1984 consequently heighten our understanding? There is a model of this process after the first slide.

Grot berates the workers - Model Violent, civil disturbance was a feature of the lives of Berliners in the 1920’s. In February, 1927, there was a violent confrontation between Nazis and Communists in Wedding, for example. Both sides of politics had paramilitary groups ready to oppose the other without much thought for the consequences. Grot’s reminder to the workers who have just smashed up the Heart machine that they should think of the children is a criticism of this feature of Lang’s society: casual violence without a sense of consequence has an attraction but cannot provide answers to political problems in the long term.

2. In 1984, violence is still part of the emotional landscape. The description of the behaviour of citizens during the ‘Two Minutes’ Hate’ is evidence of this: ‘A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic’ (16) But in Oceania, violent outbursts have moved from being resistance to the apparatus of the state to an integral mechanism of control. The unorthodox nature of Orwell’s dystopian vision is evident in the comparison of the way violence is represented in both texts.

False Maria at the Yoshiwara Club Possible points for discussion: Sex and sexuality in the ‘Golden Age’ of the Weimar Republic Comparison with 1984: Winston and Julia: ‘Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.’ (p. 69) Orientalism and exoticism embraced Hedonism and excess

Rotwang and Hel Possible points for discussion The contrast in character: Rotwang and O’Brien. Rotwang’s growing insanity leads him to mistake Maria for Hel. His characterisation links him to the mythologised excesses of Rasputin during the end of Tsarist rule in Russia. The giant face of Hel is superficially similar to the giant face of Big Brother.

For discussion The selection of slides here does not cover all of the features of the chapter. There is no shot of Rotwang’s pursuit of Maria, for example, nor is there a shot of the traffic jam setting for the street riots. Would you include these shots in your summary? Which shots would you replace if you were to include them? What other shots do you see as being crucial to an understanding of the texts?