In the beginning of the film, we can see two classes, the wealthy class and the poor class. The wealthy class (upper-world) is full of brightness, leisure and comfort. The poor class (underground world) is full of darkness and sorrow. However, there is a same point obviously that people appearing are almost all men, except the women flirts with Joseph. This reflects that Metropolis is a city of men, women are excluded form the public area, invisible in the production and consumption of technological power. There is a clear boundary between men and women. Men dominate women and also men dominate both the upper world and the underground world.
In the middle of the film, Maria is converted into a robot, called “coborg”. Then, the robot Maria incites the workers against Ferderson, leading the workers in a revolt. Here, the director arranged the wives of the workers to join the rebellion deliberately. And, this is the first time that women, other then Maria and the woman flirts with Joseph, appears in the film. In this revolt, Maria even acts as a leader to rebel Ferderson. We can see the director dissolves the boundary between women and men deliberately. There is no contrast between women and men.
At the end of the film, Ferderson makes agreement with the workers and set up a good relationship with workers through heart. For the arrangement in photography, there are all men in Metropolis again, except Maria. Joseph acts as a mediator and leads his father shaking hands with the workers’ leader. Maria stands off to the side, next to Joseph, losing her leading role. The workers’ wives also disappear. The boundary between women and men is firmly back in place. Men dominate the society again.
In conclusion, men still act as dominate part in Metropolis and omen are only complementary. Although the status of women increases greatly at a time, men will take the control at last!
The plot
From the plot of the story, we will analysis the image of female, the liberation and the oppression of feminism, the deprecation of female and the expectation of male on female in Metropolis.
The image of female in the Metropolis
The image of the female in Metropolis can be classified into two types:
One is pure, kind and peaceful, just like the St. Mary in the Bile. The film clearly shows this by arranging Maria, the working girl, to become popular among the workers and to be loved by Frederson. The second type is sexual, evil but fantasy. We can prove this by the cyborg Maria. The male audiences welcomed her sexual dancing and her sexy became the main reason why the society thought that the synthesis of the cyborg Maria was a success. From these two types of image, we can conclude that in the men’s mind in Metropolis, the role of the women is being a wife (kind and peaceful, controlled by men) or being a sexual object for entertaining and appreciation.
The liberation of feminism
Through different images of Maria, the film shows that female can also have a great influence to the society, even to the position and power of male. Although Metropolis is a male-dominated city and female do not take an important role in the society, by the popularity of Maria, she can become the spirit leader among the workers. This frightened the male-dominated management class of the society. This shows the men’s worry on the feminism and afraid that the female can take over of the male one day. They believe that the men should be the only one who can control and manage the city. This leaves a question to the audience that whether women can have ability to control.
The oppression of feminism
Fritz Lang seems to agree the liberation of feminism but actually he strongly disagrees that and thinks that feminism should be oppressed. He points out that women can have but should not have the ability to control. The destructive of the cyborg Maria imply that feminism may have negative effect to the society. Thus, it should be oppressed. This strongly shows that women should not have too much power. Otherwise, it would adversely affect the society. We can prove this by the scene of robot Maria irrationally agitating the emotion of the workers and leading to the flooding and even the destruction of the city. And, these problems can only solved by men in last.
The deprecation of female
The filmmakers designed that the robot has the identity of female. It shows that the cyborg and the female are indifferent in the men’s eyes and the cyborg can take over the role of the female. This greatly deprecates the female and imply that female is only an object without any knowledge, self-thinking and rational mind. It can only be controlled by men and takes action of the men’s orders.
The expectation of male on female
In the film, Maria is turned into a cyborg. A cyborg is asexual and a neuter and do not need to be “born” by female. In the synthesis of the cyborg, the men can create a new “life” by themselves. This strongly defies the mother role of female in the society and the characteristics of female, which is their reproductive ability, seem to be useless. The replacement of female with the cyborg and the ability of the male to create a “life” imply that the men in the Metropolis has a strong desire to take a complete control of the women and have all the power. This shows that men are the most important and women should not have any power.
Psycho
Background
Hitchcock’s Psycho, hailed today as a masterpiece, has actually received critical rejection upon its release in 1960. This is mainly because Hitchcock violated many conventions in the film. Competing with the growing popularity of television, the majority of films produced in that period used color to attract movie attendance; however, Hitchcock filmed Psycho in black and white using his television crew. Also, he made an unprecedented decision to kill the heroine, Marion, during the first half of the film. Despite all these, the most controversial was Hitchcock’s undermining of gender roles: the film on the one hand seemed to work against hegemonic gender roles, but on the other hand it is frequently supporting this idea. In the following paragraphs we will examine how did Hitchcock support and repress this ideology and his reason of doing this.
The plot
There are a few sequences in which Hitchcock expressed his acknowledgement of the feminist theory. Marion in the story was portrayed as a woman with a career, her own financial ability, though it is just enough, and even her own car. She lived virtually an independent life. At a sequence where Marion went to have her car traded, the salesman gave an evidence of this idea. He commented that Marion “can do anything she has a mind to, being a woman, she will”. This defeated the conventional idea of women as powerless. Actually, the character Norman Bates himself was also evidence showing the disintegration of gender identity. Hitchcock has made Norman special by bring out his dichotomous personalities of the mother (a female) and the son (a male) at war within him. Who is the dominant gender then? Hitchcock did not obviously point this out, but we can see that the portrait of Norman’s mother is strong, assertive and forceful, which that of Norman is docile and domestic.
On the contrary, Hitchcock’s film has always been fiercely criticized by feminists. As the feminist activities in France prospered at that time, many feminist see his film to be undermining women’s status, associating women to be victims, or even threats (fatal women). Hitchcock was also famous for his voyeuristic style of filming; this further added to his view of women as ‘sex object’, and being inferior as compared to the opposite sex. Although this film plot is revolved around the heroine, Marion, her fate is not as good as one would expect, because she was murdered in the middle of the story. Marion herself was not leading a happy life too, her socio-economic situation impeded her happiness. Although she hand her work, but she could not get what she wanted: she loved Sam but then she must wait until Sam agreed to marry her and provide for her. Moreover, Marion was to die in the film; she is the heroine and the victim at the same time. Hitchcock has well planned her death, even from the name of the characters, we can expect Marion’s downfall. Marion Crane and Norman Bates. ‘Crane’ is a kind of bird and ‘Bate’ was taken from the word ‘bait’. Norman loved to stuff birds and that exactly portrayed the special relationship between the ‘bird’ and the ‘bait’: the bird would eventually fall into the trap and be killed because of the luring bait. Perhaps Hitchcock was trying to show that the consequence of women’s quest for empowerment is a good deal of suffering. Eventually, women failed to attain the same as men.
Comparison of the female status between Metropolis and Psycho
Similarities
Both of the film stress on that the men will dominate the society lastly. Men is dominated part of the society. For examples, Metropolis is a city of men and the male character of Psycho controls the fate of the female character
Both Metropolis and Psycho have the idea that Men will dominate Women or Men have wants to control women. In Metropolis, Maria is converted into cyborg and it reveals men have the want to replace the reproduction ability of women and further control women completely. In Psycho, the character of Norman has been dominated by his mother. The result is that Norman commits schizophrenic psychosis and he kills his mother, her lover and also Maria. This shows that women cannot control men otherwise the result is terrible.
The power and the dramatic proportion of female character are so important in both of the films. In Metropolis, Maria acts like who is supported by the workers in the first part. And then, Maria becomes a robot that leads the workers into the revolt. The character of Maria is the key for the plot of the film. In Psycho, the role of Marion links the whole story. Both films show an idea that men treat women as a “sex” object. There is a screen that Maria plays an erotic dance in public and the director focuses on the male gaze towards Maria and it shows that men’s wants on women. In psycho, the shower screen of Marion shows the idea of voyeurism. This shot is filmed in the way that Norman spies Maria through a hole and then Marion takes the shower. And the director treats this screen as a kind of recreation by showing the female’s body.
Differences
The degree of objection towards the feminism is different in two films. The idea is that men should dominate the society but women can still act as a preliminary role. However, it is greatly disagreed with the feminism and all the fates of women are very bad and they are almost killed by men.
To the theme of movie, Metropolis and Psycho have different direction. Metropolis is rather theoretical and the director expresses many components in the file. The main expressed idea is the capitalism, Industrialism and also feminism. The expressing way is rather direct and the idea on the status of females is also more obvious. For Psycho, the genre is a horror film and the way of expression is story-telling. The director uses a rather direct way to reflect the status of female. In conclusion, the views on the status of females are rather obvious in Metropolis and passive in Psycho.
Huma012
T7
Group Report
The role of female in Metropolis and Psycho
Group members: Leung Hoi Ying, Genie
Wu Ka Yan Dorothy
