Monday, July 22, 2019
The Image of the Cyborg as it Appears in Metropolis and Blade Runner Essay Example for Free
The Image of the Cyborg as it Appears in Metropolis and Blade Runner Essay The appearance of the â€Å"cyborg†in science-fiction cinema began with the emergence of the dystopian science-fiction film both events started with Fritz Lang’s silent film â€Å"Metropolis,†released in 1927 in Weimar Republic Germany, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Lang’s film, made as political allegory, shocked audiences with its complex plot, special effects, and political and religious themes. â€Å"Lang described Metropolis as a battle between modern science and the occult a kind of romantic fatalism that became the directors trademark in later works–[] scene after scene depicting a mechanized world gone madwhich influenced countless other filmmakers. †(Roberts 33)             Among these filmmakers was Ridley Scott, whose 1982 film Blade Runner (based on Philip K. Dick’s novel â€Å"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) stands as an accomplished descendent of Lang’s pioneering work. While neither film features traditional cyborgs (which are beings created from a synthesis of biological and robotic components) each film features the concept of technologically engineered, sentient life, which closely resembles human life, as a central symbol for the exploration of spiritual and moral themes.            Central to Lang’s dystopian vision is a â€Å"mechanized world gone mad,†personified by the creation of a robotic double for the film’s heroine, a Christian leader named Maria, who is opposed by an evil scientist, Rotwang. The opposition of science and religion indicated by the character’s conflict demonstrates Lang’s intention to use themes which inject modern concerns (robotics and science) into the ages-old debates that had historically been associated with religion and philosophy. Lang’s vision is of a robotic construction of artificial life, whereas Ridley Scott, in Blade Runner used genetically engineered â€Å"replicants†as an example of artificially created life. The image of the â€Å"cyborg†is, for Lang, part-human and part-The Image of the Cyborg as it Appears in Metropolis and Blade Runner                         Page -2- mechanized, a mechanical recreation of human form; for Ridley Scott, â€Å"replicants†are the image of the cyborg, being genetically altered, genetically specified humans designed by a corporation. For both film-makers, the image of the â€Å"cyborg†resulted in an image of evil and danger for humanity.             The very inclusion of modern technologies, or technologies which are closely extrapolated from existing technologies, presents a deviation from the hitherto prevailing â€Å"classical†visions of the Church. â€Å"Dystopia is very much part of the late twentieth-and early twenty-first-century mindset. We see it in films and adverts that dwell on dank futuristic images from a world where the last vestiges of individualism are slowly being expunged and machinery is our enemy.†(Mourby)            The enemy in â€Å"Metropolis,†as personified by Rotwang’s â€Å"evil†robotic doppleganger, presents a new hazard in the modern landscape: if human beings can create sentient life, what are the repercussions of this god-like power and for what purposes will this power be unleashed? The mission of Rotwang’s creation is to vilify and destroy the saintly Maria and in doing so, obfuscate her vision and her message of self-liberation to the oppressed laborers of Metropolis. Rotang aims to â€Å"ruin Maria by creating a robot in her imagea mechanical evil twinto deliver false testimony.†(Roberts 33)            Lang’s use of the robot as a symbol of oppression and of deception marks his prosecution of the film’s religious allegory: the robot facsimile of Maria is intended as an ironic variation of the Creation myth, the Biblical notion of the creation of Adam and Eve. Rotwang functions as an inversion of God the Creator, and as Man the Creator â€Å"his main evil act is creating a false robot copy of a Christian leader, Maria. In other words, he gets his minion to pass as a Christian. He The Image of the Cyborg as it Appears in Metropolis and Blade Runner  -creates the robot to foment riots which will lead to the dictatorship of the master of Metropolis†(Tratner). In â€Å"Metropolis†the robot looks and appears as human, though it is actually a mechanical construction; in Ridley Scott’s later film â€Å"Blade Runner†the replicants are indistinguishable from human beings without a sophisticated series of psychological and neurological tests.            The concept of robotics functions, for Lang, as a direct inquiry into the moral bearing of humanity and what significance human ethics play as the role of technology expands in society. If robots can be constructed so cleverly, so efficiently that they can â€Å"pass†for humans in society, then what societal consequences arise from this technology? In â€Å"Metropolis†the robot is envisioned as a minion of perverse human will; its likeness to humanity presents a special problem of evil int hat the robot, programed with foul intentions, can walk among humanity undetected for what it really is as in the (particularly Hebrew) legends of the golem. However, the robot in â€Å"Metropolis,†while being similar to the golem myth, is a distinctly modern conception and one which carried the ancient Biblical connotations of Creation Myth and the human will to power, which in both traditional Christian terms and in the context of the film â€Å"Metropolis†is portrayed as â€Å"sinful.†           Lang’s strategy, as revealed in â€Å"Metropolis,†is to contrast the human will-to-power as illustrated by the mad scientist, Rotwang’s, efforts to gain the power of Creation, with the human will-to-individuality and liberty, which is portrayed via the workers’ struggle and Maria’s spiritual vision. In the end, Joh and Rotwang’s scheme â€Å" backfires as the socialites debauch and the workers revolt, unleashing a flood that nearly drowns a horde of innocent children. In the end, Freder and Maria prevail, reconciling Joh with the workers with the slogan, The mediator The Image of the Cyborg as it Appears in Metropolis and Blade Runner between brain and hands must be the heart. (Roberts 33)            Lang’s ground-breaking film influenced untold subsequent film-makers and artists in all mediums; among them, Ridley Scott, whose dystopian science-fiction film â€Å"Blade Runner†incurs much debt to Lang for not only the visual and thematic ideas of â€Å"Blade Runner,†but for- the film’s central theme of genetically engineered human life-forms, which, like Lang’s treatment of robotics in â€Å"Metropolis,†comprises a symbol for ethical and religious themes.            Scott’s genetically engineered life-forms are called â€Å"replicants†and, as such, they are dissimilar from Lang’s robot in that replicants are biological, rather than mechanical, beings with physical, emotional, and mental characteristics selected and engineered by human scientists. The central premise of the story is that a number of the replicants, having discovered that they were engineered to have only 3 year life spans, escape from their assignments in the off-world colonies and become renegades on earth in search of their creators, in search of life-extension.            While Lang’s film asked â€Å"What would happen if man could create a perfect robotic likeness of man and program it to do malevolent things?†Scott’s film asks â€Å"What moral decisions would artificially engineered beings make once they realized they were alive?†The resulting narrative, with its dystopian overtones, presents a variation on the Biblical Satan-as-God’s-Enemy. Satan, being the most glorious of God’s angels, rebels against his Creator, God, because of his great pride. In â€Å"Blade Runner†the replicant, Roy, is received by his creator Tyrell as the â€Å"prodigal son;†he then proceeds to murder his creator, Tyrell, because of his existential angst, being a mortal creature with merely his subjective experience in three years as â€Å"eternity.†           Scott’s take on the â€Å"man against machines†paradigm is a near-future vison for humanity, severed from superstition or magic (where there are traces of occultism in â€Å"Metropolis†) and The Image of the Cyborg as it Appears in Metropolis and Blade Runner lodged firmly within the capitalistic, technology-driven society that is our modern experience. The idea of hostile machines seems all-too-familiar and in fact plays a central thematic role in mid-to-late twentieth century American medai: this innovation might result in  the creation of machines that would one day prove intelligent enough to attack us, an idea that lies behind such classic dystopian films as Metropolis, Bladerunner and the Terminator trilogy. (Mourby)            â€Å"Blade Runner’s†replicants evolve the notion of apocalypse as being human engineered, rather than as the will of God. Humanity will bring about its own apocalypse, and part of this apocalypse are the replicants themselves, a symbol, not of man (or Satan’s) vanity, but of his greed. For Scott capitalism and greed take the place of â€Å"evil†and â€Å"sin†in Biblical reference. Where previously men had imagined: â€Å"The end would occur when the Divine Being had finally had enough of us and it would all be pretty nasty for all except those who had managed to get on the right side of him†man must now manage (by Scott’s reckoning) to throw â€Å"off its glum medieval certainties†and dare, like Lang, to speculate â€Å" about what life might hold in store for us long term.†(Mourby)            For both film-makers, the image of the cyborg, robot, or replicant offered a glimpse into the negative capacities of technology and scientific knowledge. Because in each case, the â€Å"cyborgs†closely resemble human beings, the image of the artificially created life-form is viewed as both negative and dangerous to humanity. The lesson of the images seems to be that the act of the Creation of life, though possible for humanity, is better left to God or Nature than to mankind. Works Cited Mourby, Adrian. Dystopia: Who Needs It? Adrian Mourby Shows That the Nightmare Scenario Can Be Both Dire Warning and Escapist Fantasy. History Today Dec. 2003: 16+. Roberts, Rex. Auld Lang Syne: A Restored Print of the Silent Classic Metropolis Includes Footage Not Seen since 1927. Insight on the News 5 Aug. 2002: 33. Tratner, Michael. Lovers, Filmmakers, and Nazis: Fritz Langs Last Two Movies as Autobiography. Biography 29.1 (2006): 86+.
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