So right off the bat, Joh Fredersen, or papa Fredersen as I like to call him, is like God. He is the most powerful person in Metropolis. He rules over them all from up at the top of his tower. His power is absolute and nigh-unquestioned (even Maria doesn’t promote rebellion – she just wishes for a link between the top and bottom class).
The Devil – the opposing force to God – is Rotwang. He was once close to Joh but they had a parting of ways, and now Rotwang despises Joh, trying to subvert him and bring about his downfall through use of the machine-man.
Lil’ boy Freder, son of papa Fredersen (God), must then represents Jesus. Indeed, the resemblance is clear. Freder sees the plight of the poor workers and sympathizes. He is horrified by the explosion that he witnesses in the factory and gives up his rich lifestyle to try to help the workers. He is an advocate for the poor and unfortunate, just as Jesus was. He becomes the connection between the brain (papa Frederson/God) and the hands (the workers/humanity) just as Jesus is seen as the connection between man and the divine.
Maria, I am not quite as sure about. The name Maria sounds a lot like Mary, so I’m inclined to compare her to Jesus’s mother. Except Freder and Maria get all lovey-dovey touchy-feely kissy and such, which doesn’t exactly seem like the right kind of relationship. Although, I have to admit that I’m not exactly a Biblical scholar. In fact I don’t know all that much about it at all, so perhaps there’s another figure that Maria represents that I just can’t think of or don’t know.
We also have the Tower of Babel which quite obviously is represented by the Tower of the Sons: man’s hubris, torn down by the unwitting masses in a fit of rage. The seven deadly sins are mentioned explicitly as well, and the Whore of Babylon is shown in Evil-Maria pretty clearly.
I guess that it’s pretty hard to miss that the film is pretty heavily biblically related, and I’m sure that there are plenty more parallels that I’m missing, but I thought it was cool just how deep it goes.
** credit to Kaili for his paper giving me the idea for this post
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ReplyDeleteUgh! This is annoying to post on here. It posted my comment twice so I deleted one and it deletes both of them. Anyway, I also read Kaili's paper and thought the Biblical references in Metropolis was an interesting topic to explore. I knew there were some references to the Bible in the film, but after reading his paper I realized there were a lot more than I had thought. But before I read the paper, I also thought that Maria symbolized the Virgin Mary due to her similar name and the fact that as she preached peace to the workers' there was a backdrop of crosses behind her. And each time she stepped foot into a scene there appeared to be a bright light that shined down on her as if it were a halo and her expressive eyes always spoke of innocence. Another clue that made me think she was "the holy mother" was when she was first seen in the film surrounded by children.
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