DESMA 9 E1- Emilie Wouters

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EVENT 1: Watch Party of Metropolis (1927) 


    The 1927 film Metropolis left quite a mark, as it encompasses several ideas and beliefs I hold. I’ll only mention a few. This film highlights the downfall of industrial capitalism as it relates to classism. I recommend going and reading a summary of the film if you haven’t seen it. Though it’s a futuristic dystopian story, it is fully indicative of how society works, and the dangers of keeping the classes so incredibly separate. The themes in this film are reminiscent of the movies The Platform, Snowpiercer, and Us. It’s also very close to a few Black mirror episodes about robotics and class systems. 


  
Lower class                                                                                                                  Upper class
Snowpiercer train class differences

    Snowpiercer is a film in which there are passengers on a train they can’t leave. The front of the train holds the rich high class citizens who do nothing, and the back holds the lower class citizens who do all the work. The front does everything possible to keep the back in their place. Not many people know how the other half lives. The back realizes they’re getting fed bugs, and stages a bloody revolution to get to the front. They’re shocked to see just how incredibly large the wealth gap is. This is very similar to the film we watched.



Movie poster for Us

    In the movie Us, everyone in the world has a clone that was forced to live underground, though the original people are unaware of their counterparts, much less the terrible living conditions they endure. One above ground girl gets switched with a below ground girl, and must see how her other half lived. Underground people try to go aboveground.






Wealth distribution disparity

     As you can see, there are a few similarities between all these films. This begs the question: why? We’ve been approaching class consciousness for so long. For as long as we’ve has class systems. What will be the final straw? Because in history textbooks we see the huge difference between the high class and the low class, with the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution’s insanely big differences. We look back and are like ”wow that was bad, I’m glad it’s better now.” It’s not. In fact, the divide is as big as ever. But I digress. I find it interesting they used a robot clone, though perhaps they just thought that that was just super futuristic. It has almost come true, we are quite close with AI and robots like Sophia.




References:


Wealth distribution graph https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Wealth_distribution_by_percentile_in_the_United_States.png/400px-Wealth_distribution_by_percentile_in_the_United_States.png Image.


Bruenig, Matt, et al. “The Top 1 Percent Owns Nearly Everything in the US. We Need to Seize Their Wealth.” Jacobin, 10 June 2020, www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/united-states-class-based-wealth-distribution. 


Recurring wealth distribution crisis https://www.history.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_768/MTU3OTIzNjYwNjczNjU2Nzgy/are-we-living-in-the-gilded-age-20-s-featured-photo.jpg Image.


Train Line Drawing, https://clipartix.com/train-clipart-image-2757/  Image.


Front of Snowpiercer train https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieCFRMdLE5RAe6wnb1wZ8Wg8dDF93Ib5dtKnseqa7MLMb__qIrUmOhKV6ZRXCEJQTG6D_w_1YKLeDokXqWbDSnXr-59YQVDun4-rL5jmn7mJ5CVIGy3lQ1C4f-WiUpsiIRwFTkUR-FMOg/s1600/Snowpiercer+party.jpg Image.


Back of Snowpiercer train https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/06/15/arts/15SNOWPIERCER2/15SNOWPIERCER2-master675.jpg Image.


Us movie poster https://media.comicbook.com/2019/02/us-movie-poster-2019-lupita-nyongo-1157198.jpeg Image.


UUs. Directed by Jordan Peele, performances by  Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker, Universal Pictures, 2019

Metropolis. Directed by Fritz Lang, performances by Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Brigitte Helm, Parufamet, 1927


Snowpiercer, Directed by  Bong Joon-ho, performances by  Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Go Ah-sung, John Hurt, and Ed Harris, CJ Entertainment, 2013





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