Sci-Fi and Religion Paper

May 2019

How do Metropolis and Blade Runner use religion to criticize capitalism’s creation of androids?

Introduction

Androids, the intersection of scientific exactitude and design, artificiality and humanity, are the sinful but sympathetic face of technology. Cinema as a representation of the human condition shows how “knowledge itself is re-embodied and audiovisualized” (McPheron), and this embodiment is also apparent in androids and the fear they elicit. Michael Szollosy uses the psychoanalytic notion of projection to show that the Frankenstein complex reflects human anxieties regarding the “dehumanising tendencies of science and reason”, and a “perceived transformation in human nature” over time (Szollosy). This transformation is essential to androids and is what grants them a part of humanity, but dehumanization is also a universal contention especially in critiques of capitalism, so addressing these double anxieties is a symbolic path to humanity’s future itself. Metropolis and Blade Runner are two futuristic science fiction films illustrating the harrowing consequences of capitalism’s life-creation. In Metropolis, the creation leads the underclass to a destructive revolt; in Blade Runner, the creation itself revolts as the underclass. Although the two high-budget films would not have materialized without advanced technology (Belton), it is interesting to question their criticism of technology, for both construct the religious power of capitalism via several symbols and subvert this power from within in order to critique capitalism’s hubris. They establish the religious undertone of capitalism’s creative power through the setup of heaven and hell, evil and sins, and then show capitalism’s downfall under the revolt of their own creations. The following is an examination combining formal analysis and religious text as well as different cinematic and economic theories.

Anticapitalist and religious background

Cinema’s commentary on capitalism’s life-creation takes root in its commonality with religion. Religion and cinema “share a capacity for world making, ritualizing, mythologizing, and creating sacred time and space” (Plate). This “sacred time and space” follows the viewer’s “initiation” into the narrative’s world, where the act of viewing is a cultural ritual that affirms or challenges social beliefs (Barsam). Early Western cinema is replete with Christian symbols, and filmmakers tapped into their religious consciousness as they witnessed technological advances that enabled filmmaking and presented moral dilemmas.

Cinema has explored this power indirectly through Science Fiction. Androids are the technical magnification of capitalism’s capabilities. By creating machines, “imparting a soul” in giving life (McCauley), capitalists are in a sense approaching divinity. David Noble states in “The Religion of Technology” that “mechanistic scientists” divorce God and creation, and imagine themselves as occupying a similar, God-like perspective, one that gazed from “outside of nature” (Nelson). The fear of the inability to control the creation has pervaded Western storytelling for hundreds of years, from the Golem to Frankenstein’s monster. In the 20th century, science fiction cinema joined the allegorical endeavor started by religious parables. The futuristic nature of the normal world creates an emotionally neutral context where the disturbing realities of modern life, such as war and technological change can be safely and sometimes enjoyably experienced (Brain). Cinema can also imagine how industrial flaws play out in the future on a more visible scale.

In 1926, a year before the release of Metropolis, George O’Brien asked, “by what steps did the medieval conception of a society dominated by religion give way to a modern society dominated by competition and greed?” (O’Brien, 3) To Lang, who based his film off mid-1920s New York life, the city of the future was synonymous with exploitation, corruption and greed -- “the crossroads of multiple and confused human forces, blinded and knocking into one another, in an irresistible desire for exploitation, and living in perpetual anxiety” (Singh). The high-rises helped him envision those inside becoming the brain of capitalism, whereas the proletariat workers labor underneath. This social anxiety is reflected in Metropolis as the technological capacity to oppress and kindle evil on the fertile ground of god-like capitalism.

Similarly, Blade Runner qualifies as a response to a new age of conservative capitalism. In 1967, economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in his book The New Industrial State that giant firms in the post-WWII era began taking over the market because “subordination to the market, and to the instruction that it conveys, has disappeared” (Galbraith). Later scholars tend to connect the existence of humanoid robots as an integral part of economic production with Marx’s assertion that “growing wants of the new market” introduces complications for humankind (Wang). This Marxist reading sometimes swings radical, for instance, Forysth claims that Blade Runner responds to the “neo-conservative devastation of the '80s”, with a 'New Bad Future' while savouring the collapse of the social order with cheerful and inventive hopelessness (Forysth). Indeed, director Ridley Scott sensed darkness in that world as he described drawing inspiration from two “dark places”, Hong Kong (“where the actual harbor was filled with junks”) and New York (“a city on overload”) (Greenwald). Whether it is artistic vision or social commentary, as a film that inspired a generation of dystopian science fiction films, Blade Runner’s world with a capitalistic temple, slavery by birth, and programmed death is fit for an analysis of the consequences of technological might. Thus both films’ motivation are their directors’ witness of capitalism, the greed of the market, and the hubris that promises progress.

Capitalism = Religion

The cinematic use of imagery and symbols in the films suggest that technological advances enable capitalism to become a complete religious analog with its heaven and creator, its hell, its sins and its redemption.

The Creator and His Edifice of Heaven

The setup of Metropolis shows class differences as distinctions between heaven and hell. Citymaster Joh Fredersen is a God figure for his imagery of omnipotence. In his ornate penthouse office, deep focus and highlights a geometric space, with the wide window overlooking a concrete forest (Appendix 1). The symmetrical framing evokes religious artwork centering the creator. Joh’s display of technology recurs throughout the film, such as when he surveilles his son Freder’s actions through a screen, a nonexistent technology in the 1920s. This suggests that Joh is a god that knows everything happening down below. But just as the darkness of the devices suggest, Joh is not a god of light or truth: it is capitalism and the exploitation of workers that gave him this encroaching power.

The edifice that Joh inhabits is the “New Tower of Babel”, a symbol of his aspiration to heaven. It metaphorically confounds the languages of resistance and prevents the people from uniting. The Tower of Babel was built so that its top “may reach unto heaven” (Genesis 11:1–9), and so is Joh’s ambition to build his facade of power tall enough to reach heaven. The film’s shows the gods’ ecstasy upon building the Tower: “Great is the world and its Creator! And great is Man!” But the Tower of Babel would eventually shatter, breaking this elusive hubris. Joh’s place, then, may also be a blissful, oblivious heaven. In the Eternal Garden where Joh’ son Freder plays, costumes are lavish and exotic, lush foliage fall from above, and Freder is dressed in all white like an angel (Appendix 1.5). But there is a price for this privileged enjoyment, as the introduction text suggests: “Fathers for whom every revolution of a machine wheel meant gold had created for their sons the miracle of the Eternal Gardens”. This comment reveals the calculating greed of the capitalist.

Rotwang is another creator god in Metropolis. An archetypal mad scientist, Rotwang inhabits a Gothic house (Appendix 2a), which is traditionally associated with churches’ vertical frames moving the viewer’s gaze up to heaven, but also shows his isolation and dark ambition. His laboratory features Tesla coils, towering switch panels, and baroque chemical equipment, which became a stock feature of many later films such as the “Frankenstein” series. Early cinema was obsessed with the Victorian scientist, explaining why Joh must consult him on technology --“the Victorian period is especially important for understanding how [science and popular visual culture] became intimately intertwined” (Lightman). This god of technology all too easily becomes the partner of the capitalist god, for the same reason that Noble delineated: scientists trumping nature and nurturing the machine. Together, they eavesdrop from above when the workers gather to hear Maria preach, as suggested in the high-angle shot following a quick parallel sequence featuring them and the workers descending in different directions (Appendix 2b), symbolizing their heavenly invisibility.

Blade Runner’s creator Tyrell combines of Rotwang’s mystique and Joh’s coolness. Ridley Scott’s capitalist-engineer heads a corporate headquarter with a design demanding worship. From the outside, his complex rises high above other structures, an impassive dark mass surrounded by flying crafts policing the world. The set design of the officer uses the basic structure of Joh’s window, but incorporates more elements such as two Mayan-style pyramids, each 700 storeys high (Sammon) (Appendix 3). The fallibility of Mayans mirrors the filmic world where Earth’s resources are depleted. But it is precisely this tragic setting that allowed Tyrell to prey on human suffering, monopolize android labor and establish an army of blade runners -- the system “machine of law-like materiality” (Mawby). The structure’s grandeur and symmetry evokes a temple, screaming Tyrell’s the aspiration to godhood; despite the darkness on the ground throughout the film, this place’s proximity to the glaring sun confirms its unearthliness. This adds to the traditional capitalism critique: in addition to making profit from suffering, it justifies its cruelty by making itself holy.

The Oppressed/Hell

In the workers’ city, Lang establishes a imagery of hell and cruelty. The crossing metal shafts and silhouettes of workers on platforms utilize the rule of thirds composition between men, machines, and space, a illustration of the power structure where men feed the machines (Appendix 4). The machines are always framed symmetrically because the Metropolis centers the machines as the moral compass of the city. In contrast, the operating worker is shot in high angle, and the slanted framing highlights his weakness. Western art had used chaotic imagery, little negative space, and scattered figures as its traditional interpretation of hell (Appendix 5a, Miller). The Hell in Metropolis, however, is a uniquely capitalistic hell: clean lines, geometrical rhythm, even the fall into the “Hellmouth” is done in mass organized grinds. Naked and bound workers ascend the steps in a rhythmic march and fall to their death into the “mouth” as hot steam erupt from the sides (Appendix 5b). The dehumanizing “mouth” is a biblical reference to Moloch, a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, where victims are thrown into the fire inside. This is the visualization of throwing away disposable bodies, the “human sacrifice” that capitalism performs to cleanse its guilty conscience (Partyka). Cinema’s power of ritualizing the worst dreams of religion and combining it with technology’s dark side is apparent.

Unlike Metropolis, Blade Runner’s entire degenerated normal world qualifies as hell. To show entropy, the film’s style is “is both present, future and past simultaneously” (Salem). The past is the historical allusions and chiaroscuro film noir from the mid-20th century (Appendix 6); the present lies in the references to real Los Angeles, and a familiar Hollywood camera language; the future lies in the crowded chaos of the architecture. The interplay of light and shade resemble Salvador Dali’s surrealist art, rendering the setting more psychological than religious, yet the feeling matches the description of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost: a “Region of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell” (Desser). The random bursts of searchlights are like hellfire sweeping over every covert action while everyone scrambles for their lives. The shimmering sound effect that creeps elusively with the light makes these familiar settings alien, as if humans have become strangers to their own planet.

Unlike Metropolis which equates hell with worker exploitation, oppression in the Blade Runner world derives from capitalism’s granting of incomplete humanity to the androids. As their leader, Roy could be interpreted as Lucifer because he prefers to "reign in hell" rather than "serve in heaven" (Gossman). He deliberately misquotes William Blake, "Fiery the angels fell..." rather than “rose”, inspiring a theory that replicants are fallen angels (Newland). This willingness to sacrifice their safety in the off-world comes from wishful thinking that they could coerce the humans into granting them longevity. In the scene where Pris declares “I think, therefore I am”, she and Roy’s positioning creates a composition where they share an understanding of their quagmire and are desperate to endear the human through physical proximity (Appendix 7). They fall victim to the classical human fantasy about androids: coveted for their strength but programmed to die for fear of their consciousness. Their act of defying Tyrell’s command “more human than human” and confronting their mortality draws audience sympathy and disgust for greed-driven slavery. “It's a shame that she won't live, but then again, who does?” Gaff questions. There is no discussion of life in the hell of exploitation.

Femininity/Sin

The representation of females in both films bridges the gap between the human and artificial while critiquing this transformation. Capitalism “commodifies and sells” the faces and bodies of females (Avery), so their bodies are naturally placed for manipulation by creator-engineers. Examining the female in relation to their traditional religious associations of purity and sin furthers their android selves’ impact on capitalism.

The robot Maria represents tainted purity, and Metropolis uses this to equate capitalist technology with temptation and destruction. The good Maria resembles Virgin Mary in that she helps Freder descend from the Eternal Gardens and help the workers (Wharton). Lang sets her up as a moderate rather than a revolutionary: she persuades the workers to reject violent insurgencies and cautions against the Tower of Babel where miscommunication destroys both the ruler and the revolution. When she says “the mediator between the head and hands must be the heart”, her centralized framing and gentle movements highlights her innocence. She beholds light from above with the posture and symmetry of a biblical drawing (Appendix 8a, 8b). Maria’s light is humanity, tolerance, and truth as opposed to capitalism’s dehumanization, exclusion, and manipulation.

After Rotwang transfers her consciousness into her android double, Maria becomes sinful. In the triangular composition (Appendix 9a), she sits impassively on top of the rapturous crowd, dressed as the Whore of Babylon (Appendix 9b), which Revelation 17:4–18 describes as “a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy”. Her costume design matches the alienness of her robotic form, and the fact that she is scantily clad suggests that she belongs to a long line of femme fatales. See sets free the Seven Deadly Sins, including pride and greed. Although objectifying, this virgin-femme fatale dichotomy shows warns the audience with the corruption of the pure and innocent, pointing to machines as the culprit.

The evil portrayal of the android accentuates evil in the creator, the scientist. The design of the robot itself shows early 20th-century preoccupation with controlled artificiality. Artificial beings with a malevolent nature were a popular theme at the time, as seen in films such as Der Golem or Marcel Lherbier's L'Inhumaine. The robot Maria was one of the first androids ever depicted in cinema, and according designer Walter Schulze-Mittendorff, “the description in the original film script makes an analogy to an Egyptian statue (Eisner)”. One can infer the imposing effect the filmmakers brought to the machine. The robot reflects another dimension to the creative drive of capitalists: male fantasy. Rotwang creates her out of a desire for Freder’s deceased mother, Hel. When Hel’s statue was revealed as a giant monument (Appendix 10), the two men gaze at her, raging about her absence. Thus Maria’s duality makes her "brandished like a trophy, a totem erected on the shoulders of all the sons, workers and bourgeois alike, joined together in communion" (Dadoun). The android does push the people into reconciliation, albeit a dark one with endless desire and greed.

Rachel’s humanization in Blade Runner parallels the process of purging one’s original sin. Unlike Maria, her beauty is not a flimsy image imposed upon an object; she is baptized from the moment Tyrell pours human memories into her like pouring holy water. But although she is convinced of her humanity, it is ultimately up to Tyrell to decide which replicants are worthy of the “memories”. The ones who are not chosen are forever stuck in a liminal state of humanity, and the film shows their suffering to criticize how capitalism decides who one loves or remembers.

The original sin, as programmed by capitalism, is imposed upon every android at birth. Rachel’s hair is in a mid-1940s updo, and only falls loose when she draws empathy from Deckard (Appendix 11), symbolizing the transition of androids from machines to fertile entities. The cinematography shows a ponderous figure divergent from the expected image of an android. The light overhead sets a mini-stage between her and the photographs of her memories (Appendix 12), representing her impending change of status. If the robot Maria is vilely seductive, Rachel marks the launch of the romantic robot, which appears films like Ex Machina and Her. Critic David Desser has observed an adaptation of a 'fundamental mythic structure' also found in Frankenstein: the struggle against human facsimiles. He speculates that Rachel is Eve, the fallen mother, born with the original sin of being a replicant; when she studies photographs of her “memories” and lets her hair down, she becomes a “true human” free of sin (Desser). She subconsciously saves herself from dehumanization by fantasizing about her humanity, much like the definition in the book Working-class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (1993), which argues that in the American society pretending to be classless -- “The American Dream” -- working class origin is “a state from which we are saved” by “working hard and being good” (Tokarczyk). This sin of being an android can be expanded to the workers’ sin of being born into an underclass, and their economic value and in extension humanity can only be given by the capitalist god conditionally.

Subversion and Forgiveness -- A Hopeful Lesson on Hubris

Both films show the self-defeating nature of capitalism’s religious construct. In almost all religious doctrines this aspiration leads to downfall. Walter Benjamin’s 1921 book Capitalism as Religion claims that “God finally becomes utterly guilty” when “capitalism is no longer the reform of being but its ruination” (Hamacher). What capitalism creates must fall, and this downfall is brought about by the Frankenstein Complex, coined by science fiction author Isaac Asimov to describe the creators’ inability to control their creations. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus implies that grave punishment is still awaiting for those breaching divine rules and bringing secrets to the world (McCauley). When capitalists breach this rule, devastating consequences ensue in both films, but they both end on a hopeful tone.

Revolt

The fall of science and capitalistic oppression in Metropolis is twofold: first the death of the scientist Rotwang, then the surrender of the capitalist Joh. Joh’s fall from grace in Metropolis is also two-fold: from the moment he meets the evil Maria and establishes a father-and-child relationship, Maria falls into the Frankenstein complex. Her subtle grin shows she is manipulated by the other God Rotwang and would lead to the destruction of both Gods (Appendix 13). J.P. Telotte writes of the “ghost of man that inhabits the machine” which is Maria, whose “image is a possibility for subversion, individuality, and self-realization”(Telotte). As she inflames the workers’ rage and leads the mass revolt, cinematography shows capitalism’s deceiving power: she stands in the light and keeps the workers in the dark (Appendix 14). This power also balances her out from the crowd compositionally, allowing her plenty of room to wield wild gestures as her weapon. The workers destroy the Heart Machine and set off a city-wide flood, which in the Biblical context is humanity’s violence and greed setting off a reversal of creation. This “reversal of creation” is key, as it implies that the robot is defying its own creation.

Blade Runner’s symbolic subversion of capitalism features creations making conscious decisions to kill the creator. Blade Runner shows some degree of free will within the androids, which distinguishes it from Maria’s simplicity in Metropolis. Neo-noir cinema uses chiaroscuro to paint character complexity. In the elevator, as Roy decides to kill Tyrell, his face lights up with a neon blue light, barely illuminating his features and highlighting his eyes (Appendix 15). The following exchange between Roy and Tyrell is an explicit confrontation against capitalism:

Roy: I've done questionable things.

Tyrell: Also extraordinary things. Revel in your time.

Roy: Nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for.

This links to the mechanization of creation. Although Tyrell sees Roy as the Prodigal son and forgives him for his wild actions, Roy has already been psychologically detached from the father/creator, and cannot embrace his return home. When Tyrell tries to tell him that he has “burned so very bright”, again evoking the biblical language of sacrifice of the son, Roy kills him instead, subverting the Prodigal son figure.

Forgiveness

Because both films are grounded in their times, they rejected a deterministic criticism of capitalism in favor of hope as a takeaway for the audience. Whether it involves an alliance between the capitalist and the workers or showing the spiritual transcendence of the android, the films show that even if capitalism is inevitable, there is still hope if people awaken to others’ suffering.

In Metropolis’s controversial ending, the workers make peace with the Joh. Freder fulfills the prophecy and united the head and the heart. This affected the film’s reception: the German Left labeled it fascistic and the Right called it Communist (Scott). This incomplete revolution possibly mirrors the shaky peace during the Weimar Republic, as Lang was one of Prime Minister Gustav Stresemann's supporters (Product). But the ending is a message of hope nonetheless, as evidenced by the sound design, a triumphant, symphonic march distinct from the winding minor-key irregularities throughout the film.

While in Metropolis the workers find redemption by burning the android at stake, Blade Runner gives the android a beautiful death. Even though he killed Tyrell, Roy saves Deckard and completes his life in a spiritual and hopeful way. Paris Mowby argues that the lack of a final solution gives the film a postmodern quality that connects to the Gnostic idea of “bondage and redemption” (Mawby), which again calls into question the “original sin” of being a replicant. Roy creates a stigmata by driving a nail into his hand, making him a Christ figure by sacrificing himself for Deckard. When he dies, the dove he was holding flies upwards, completing the transcendence of this individual. His speech before his death is touted as “perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history”, with rain pouring and minimal high-key lighting, the camera respectfully allows him to “find the path to spiritual and moral enlightenment” (Salem).

Conclusion

Metropolis and Blade Runner takes audiences on harrowing journeys of revolting androids that grew out of the capitalist oppression, but ascend to a spiritual level as the underclass finds redemption. Differences in cultural context distinguish their social implication, one emphasizing on the 1920s’ rise of corporatism and the other a change in the American market, as shown by different formal qualities such as the tone of the environment and the depth of the characters. But they both criticize capitalism by deconstructing creation into production, greed, and hubris, which they portray as dehumanizing, exploitative, and unsustainable. Religious and literary references connect the audience to these wrongdoings: the workers must suffer to atone for their original sin of the lowborn, the machine corrupts the virgin into a witch, and the creation kills the creator. Since the making of the films, the ethical debate around corporate ambition of creation continues. Yuval Noah Harari writes in his Homo Deus that “in pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.” Yet the filmic lessons of redemption remains, guiding innovators to carefully bestow humanity.

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