Essay Question

"Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text"

 

 

 

To answer our essay question I think I may look at the 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis. This is because I'm a fan of the German expressionist style that Lang uses in the film, but I'd like to investigate it further to see if the style is being used to convey anything about the characters/ time period. Especially as the story already seems to have socialist leanings of everybody working together to make an ideal world. I'd like to study as well the gender roles in the film and their depiction, because the main female in the film is equally seen as a motherly and a flirtacious figure. Critical discourses that I could also look at may be the use of costume, lighting, camera angles and sets.

 

By looking at how camera angles, sets, lighting, style etc is used in the film and for what purposes, hopefully this will benefit my own work by allowing me to judge the style based choices that I make and their relevance to the message of the film.