Manic Pixie Revolutionary Awakenings

Maria essentially makes Freder the chosen one—she inspires him to go underground and gives him his purpose when he awakens to the dystopian system in which he lives. Without her, the story does not proceed and the system continues unopposed.

This guest post by Julia Patt appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Contemporary audiences best know Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for its unlikely restoration after museum workers discovered several missing scenes from the film in Brazil in 2008, 80 years after the film’s 1927 release. An archetypal depiction of the class struggle, Metropolis continues to influence dystopian landscapes, from George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead to The Hunger Games.

In the opening scenes of the film, we learn that the Metropolis is in fact two cities: the wealthy city above and the workers’ city below. Our protagonist is Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), son of the Metropolis’ Master, Joh. Freder differs little from the other men of his class—indulging in meaningless contests in the city’s stadiums, enjoying the comfort of elaborately dressed and painted women in the Eternal Gardens, and completely oblivious to the trials of the working class. It’s only when Freder encounters Maria (Brigitte Helm) that he deviates from the course set for him.

In this first scene, Maria brings a large group of children up to the Eternal Gardens so that they may see the people who live there. “These are your brothers,” she says again and again, perhaps addressing both groups. While the other visitors seem alarmed by the newcomers and move away, Freder stands transfixed, watching Maria.

He then learns of the deplorable conditions in the city, but only because he follows Maria underground. There he sees terrible accidents, men lagging with fatigue at their posts—all the horrors of the industrial world with its vast inequalities. Afterward, he tries to explain the conditions to his father, who is unconcerned, so much so that he casually dismisses one of his own employees to go join the ranks at the machines.

Although he prevents the man’s suicide and saves another from exhaustion, Freder can find no overarching solution or purpose apart from pursuing Maria and at several moments bids these other characters to wait for him. He’ll find answers, he seems sure, when he finds the woman who has so shaken him. He’s not wrong, either. When he later finds Maria—more than 30 minutes after her first appearance—she is delivering a modified sermon about the Tower of Babel, ending with the maxim: the mediator between the head and the hands is the heart.

Joh, Freder’s father, immediately recognizes the danger she presents and turns to the inventor, Rotwang, to help him discredit her. They decide to give Rotwang’s greatest creation, the Machine-Man, Maria’s face. It’s worth noting, however, that the Machine-Man had a female form well before this plan—Rotwang created it to replace the woman he loved. Joh and Rotwang are naturally delighted with the Machine-Man version of Maria, calling it the most perfect and obedient tool. Each believes that the Machine answers only to him, although it is ultimately unclear whether the Machine has motivations of its own. (“Let’s watch the city go to the devil!” it exclaims toward the film’s conclusion with noticeable glee.)

It does, however, fulfill its joint purpose, which is to bring chaos to both the city above and the city below. In the Metropolis’ nightclubs, the Machine dances, driving the upper-class men to violence and delirium. Below, it incites the workers to revolution and encourages them to destroy the machines that keep both cities alive and functioning.

Thanks to the Machine’s efforts, the Metropolis comes close to complete destruction, with the workers’ children trapped in a flooding city below and the wealthy stalled by massive power outages above. Rioting breaks out as the two classes encounter each other on the surface. However, Maria saves the workers’ children—with Freder’s assistance—and later, the mob unwittingly destroys the Machine-Man. After seeing his son nearly die, Joh has a somewhat convenient change of heart and, with Freder’s help, joins hands with the worker’s foreman.

All this comes at the hands of one woman and her doppelganger—equal forces for peace and chaos. But Maria isn’t a character with much agency or screen time. Freder’s pursuit of her dominates our attention throughout the film. And ultimately she is not the mediator, rather only the inspiration for him, the original Trinity to Neo’s Chosen One in The Matrix.

Maria is an unusual character in other respects. It’s unclear what her position or profession is, although it seems likely she might be a teacher or a minder for the children, and she doesn’t quite seem to belong to the working class. Neither does she seem to spend time with other women. Only men come to the meetings she calls; in fact, we see no women workers at all until the film’s final act.

There seems to be a suggestion, then, that only men can overthrow the oppressive society—we see three men clasp hands at the end of the film to show that peace is possible. Aside from the women in the mob of workers, women in Metropolis remain isolated, surrounded by crowds of men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no moment of: “These are your sisters.” However, without Maria, revolution seems unlikely. She threatens the status quo by calling her meetings; she inspires Freder to leave the city above and witness the city below. Her image—properly manipulated—is enough to create division within both societies, but she also contributes to the unity.

The Machine-Man, of course, has even less control over its destiny. Its appearance is stolen, an appropriation of Maria’s body for the benefit of the patriarchal upper class. If it loves chaos and seems devious, we should remember that it was designed to behave as it does. It is an ideal tool because it appeals as women as meant to appeal without any desires or notions of its own. But it’s worth noting that the other women of the upper city are also tools of the patriarchy, used for a particular end other than their own determination, however willing their participation in the system might appear.

Ultimately, Metropolis gives us two images of how women function in repressive societies—as revolutionary visionaries and unholy temptresses. However, it falls short on both sides: they can neither overcome nor create the dystopian world as they choose.

We find a similar duality of character in François Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. The film deals similarly with a male hero of the dominant society awakening to the realities of the world around him: Guy Montag (Oscar Werner). Montag belongs to the enforcement class—he burn books—and lives a comfortable if unhappy life with his wife, Linda (Julie Christie).

Linda is the picture of complacence. She consumes the media her society dictates, wants what her culture tells her to want, and questions little.

We wouldn’t know anything of her unhappiness, save for the fact that in her second appearance in the film, she has apparently overdosed on pills. It’s never settled satisfactorily whether she did this intentionally or by accident. The emergency crew treats it as a routine occurrence, so it seems likely that Linda represents the typical woman of her station—lonely, uneducated, and lacking control over her life in any meaningful way.

Montag is visibly shaken by the episode, but only to a point—he is in the midst of a transformation inspired by Clarisse, a woman he meets on the train. In a deft move by Truffaut, Christie also plays Clarisse, distinguished from Linda only by her short hair.

Although he is not as immediately taken with her as Freder is with Maria in Metropolis, Montag clearly finds himself drawn to Clarisse. (She is often regarded as one of the original manic pixie dream girls.)

He seems happy to see her again and goes so far as to visit the school where she works with her after she’s fired. He particularly seems moved by her emotional response when the children don’t remember her—she cries the tears Linda can’t.

But most importantly, Clarisse puts Montag on the path to his awakening by asking him, “do you ever read any of the books before you burn them?”

Don’t mind me…just here to inspire you to a revolution.

Clarisse, like Maria, is an active participant in a movement to change the way her society works. She warns a man at the beginning of the film that the firefighters are on the way to his house. She doesn’t teach the way she is directed to and she challenges all of Montag’s preconceptions about the world in which he lives. However, as with Metropolis and Maria, Fahrenheit 451 is not Clarisse’s story. And strikingly, the dual casting of her and Linda suggests that the two play complementary roles in Montag’s life. One represents the inadequate if safe life he’s lead and the other the intellectual freedom and curiosity he learns to want. But under slightly different circumstances, Clarisse might have been Linda or vice versa. Their individual desires, while relevant, do not drive the narrative the way Guy’s do. Rather, like Maria and the Machine-Man, they represent the two possibilities in particular dystopian systems—their roles largely determined by the needs of men in those societies, be they revolutionary or otherwise.

Ultimately, what are we to make of these manic pixie dream girls with their unusual ideas? Is there a moment when they might do more than inspire others and take real revolutionary action on their own? And is it possible to tell the story of a woman coming to the same realizations that Freder and Guy do?

Or, does it all come back to the creation of the Machine-Man—the ultimate symbol of society’s desires with no identity of its own?

Recommended Reading: “Reproducing the Class and Gender Divide: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis”

Julia Patt is a writer from Maryland. She also edits 7×20, a journal of twitter literature, and is a regular contributor to VProud.tv and tatestreet.org. Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/chidorme

‘Concerning Violence,’ Concerning Ferguson

Chinua Achebe said, “There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
Reading Fanon, listening to Malcolm X, watching ‘Concerning Violence’–these are just a few ways to hear the lions. When the hunter listens, though, he sees a lion roaring, jaws open wide to bite and kill. The fear sets in. Oppressive control digs its heels back in.

“We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.” – Frantz Fanon

Written by Leigh Kolb.

I saw Concerning Violence six months before Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown. It was six months before white people started wringing their hands to a chorus of “The answer to violence isn’t more violence!” “Look at them destroying property and looting!” “What would Martin Luther King, Jr. say?”

Nine months before the announcement that Darren Wilson was not indicted, white audience members–in Missouri–squirmed in their seat after screening Concerning Violence: “But violence should never be the answer.”

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/ohoiW9HrXkc”]

Concerning Violence is a remarkable documentary. Directed by Göran Hugo Olsson (The Black Power Mixtape 1967 – 1975), it weaves together archival footage of African colonization and anti-colonial liberation revolts from the 1960s – 1980s with the words of Frantz Fanon‘s The Wretched of the Earth (1961). The text–read by Lauryn Hill–often appears on screen as she narrates. Technically, the documentary is brilliant. It’s almost as if we cannot feel the director’s presence, because the power of the archival footage and Fanon’s language is woven together so powerfully and without any added commentary (nor does there need to be). Instead, we are assaulted with a perspective we never feel: that of the colonized-as-heroes, by any means necessary.

The stunning, disturbing footage is presented in such a way that we must realize how pertinent it is to America in 2014. The film opens with images of armed men in helicopters shooting and killing a field full of cattle. As Keith Uhlich describes at A.V. Club:

“One animal takes a particularly long time to die, and, with each bullet that doesn’t kill it, convulses in what can only be described, anthropomorphically, as pure fear. The more horrifying implication is that there’s no true word for what the beast is going through, and it’s impossible, by the end of the scene, to not imagine a human being in the same terrible situation.”

From far away, a literal and figurative position hundreds of feet higher than those on the ground, these powerful colonizing forces shoot with savage impunity. The privilege and power are palpable, and this sets the stage for the rest of the film (or, more accurately, for our history). Colonize, control, instill fear, kill, in perpetuity.

Missionaries in Tanzania, watching Tanzanians dig a site to build a church. They say that maybe after the church, they’ll build schools and hospitals.

I can’t stress this enough: watch this film, and research the various “anti-imperialistic self-defense” histories that you likely never learned about in school.

What is overwhelming to me is the complete cognitive dissonance in white Americans decrying violent revolution. The same utterance of “violence is never the answer!” about protests contrasts with celebrating American history. This isn’t a new dichotomy, of course. In “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X said,

“When this country here was first being founded, there were thirteen colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, ‘Liberty or death!’ I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan. The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot, and George Washington – wasn’t nothing non-violent about ol’ Pat, or George Washington. ‘Liberty or death’ is was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English.”

The word “or” is important here. Just as the American Revolution we celebrate with fireworks (even though there was plenty of looting and a high death toll) was built upon this notion of “liberty or death,” so also are calls to anti-colonial violence in self-defense.

“If you do not liberate us, we must liberate ourselves.” How is this not logical? And if the historical precedence of “liberation” is through violent means, how can we, with a straight face, say that the answer to violence is not more violence? It’s always been white America’s answer.

In the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), founded in 1962, men and women fight as equals.

When we learn about Nat Turner and Malcolm X in school (if we do), it’s in hushed tones. That‘s not the way to get freedom (if you are African American, at least). We know that we receive our history, literature, and film primary from one voice: the white male. Chinua Achebe said, “There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

Reading Fanon, listening to Malcolm X, watching Concerning Violence–these are just a few ways to hear the lions. When the hunter listens, though, he sees a lion roaring, jaws open wide to bite and kill. The fear sets in. Oppressive control digs its heels back in.

One of the aspects of Concerning Violence‘s archival footage that makes it powerful is that so much of it is in color. We tend to think that the fiercest acts of colonialism and imperialism happened long ago and far away. It’s so important to see a world that looks like our world now, with the weapons and machinery of modernity that colonize now, not 100 years ago. Concerning Violence is historical, but it’s not history. It forces us to be uncomfortable with the world we’re living in, which is the first step to changing it.

Violence is presented as the or. Instead of desiring or justifying violence from the oppressor or the oppressed, we need to consider changing the structure. If people riot and respond to oppression with violence, how can we think that’s unheard of, uncalled for, or without historical precedent? If we do react that way, then we need to drastically change how we teach and understand our own history. If violent revolution is abhorrent, make that clear–even when white men do it.

From the Al Jazeera review of Concerning Violence:

“In her spoken preface to Concerning Violence, renowned Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak explains that in ‘reading between the lines’ of The Wretched of the Earth, one sees that Fanon does not in fact endorse violence but rather ‘insists that the tragedy is that the very poor is reduced to violence, because there is no other response possible to an absolute absence of response and an absolute exercise of legitimised violence from the colonisers’. Spivak goes on to make a telling comparison regarding the earth’s ‘wretched’: ‘Their lives count as nothing against the death of the colonisers: unacknowledged Hiroshimas against sentimentalised 9/11s.'”

Violence is the or. If the oppressed, the colonized, are not treated as human beings, and are subjected to institutional racism and injustice, thinkers such as Fanon and Malcolm X see the or as revolutionary self-defense. This kind of violence is part of a long history of the oppressed overcoming oppression. That’s why it’s so terrifying to colonial powers and their rhetoric is censored, shut down, and shrouded in fear.

Perhaps that is what is most frightening to those who focus on how abhorrent rioting in the face of injustice and brutality is: they know, deep down, that rioting makes sense. White Americans know–consciously or subconsciously–that Black Americans have reason to respond to violence from the “colonizers.” And that is a terrifying reality.

In Ferguson and the protests that have swept the nation, small pockets of violent and destructive reactions have occurred–almost never by the organized protesters themselves. Even so, one image on the news media of a burned business or vehicle makes many white Americans shut down and refuse to see any legitimacy in wider protests.

White Americans, at the very least, can strive to understand why–in a world bought and won by violence–an oppressed group might see violence as self-defense and justifiable. This is not to encourage violence, to desire violence, or to act violently. This is to pause, take a step back, and just for a moment, listen to the lions. Listen to them roar.

Two of the most prominent messages during the protests against police brutality and inequality in Ferguson and elsewhere have been “Black Lives Matter” and “I/We Can’t Breathe” (after Eric Garner’s final words). These sentiments, and the response from both the judicial system and many white Americans, bear a chilling resemblance to the words Fanon wrote about colonialism.

See also:

“Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting,” by Darlena Cunha at TIME; “If Assata is a terrorist, then Timothy Loehman, Daniel Pantaleo, & Sean Williams are terrorists,” by Shaun King at Daily Kos; “When Are Violent Protests Justified?” by Taylor Adams at The New York Times

Review: ‘Concerning Violence’ Visualizes Frantz Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth’, by Zeba Blay at Shadow and Act; ‘Concerning Violence’: Fanon lives on, by Belen Fernandez at Al Jazeera; “Film of the week: Concerning Violence,” by Ashley Clark at BFI; “Living at the Movies: Concerning Violence,” by Jeremy Martin at Good; What’s Happening Now in Ferguson and ‘The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,’ by Ren Jender at Bitch Flicks

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.