Metropolis

The characters in the movie showed they were living in a time of poverty. Pete’s family

As said in the film Many has always been poor. It is heart wrenching to me to think that there are people our there skipping meals to feed their children. However, it is happening every day. In a way, society enables people to live in poverty. Mary states that if she gets a job she may loose her medical coverage.

Poverty has always been an issue throughout centuries. In most areas living conditions were horrible due to wars, and corruption within cities and states. Most families lost their male sons to the draft of the war at the ages of 6 years or older. Families struggled and did what they had to, to maintain a home as well as food for their families. Because of this Social Realism was successful. Social Realism was an international movement that many artists and composers where a part of. This movement highlights inequalities of capitalism, and gave the chance to these artists and composers to express everyday living conditions of the working class and the poor through their work. Diego Rivera is one of those artists that through his work showed the struggle of the poor, he was one of the most famous muralists in the Mexican Social Realism. The Harlem Renaissance was known as the “New Negro Movement” where African Americans where forced out of Southern states to the urban areas due to the Great Migration. Jacob Lawrence was one of those that expressed his thought on the Great Migration describing it as the push and pull factors.

Socialism along with many other ideologies has a vast number of different strands and with a couple of different roads to achieving what is fundamentally socialism. Socialism being the ideology that utilises collectivisation to bring people together and to unite people by their common humanity. The two most obvious roads of socialism would be that of revolutionary socialism and also that of evolutionary socialism. This are taken on by two different types of socialists, revisionist socialists and fundamentalist socialists. Revolutionary socialism is the belief that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolution against the current political system. To them

The city above was home to the rich and privileged. They were not concerned or aware of the needs of the workers that kept the city running below them. The ruler of the city was aware of their work conditions, but saw them as a tool or machine to accomplish the lifestyle above, not as individuals

As Marx’s states in his theory, when the working class becomes aware of their exploitation, this will result in a revolt lead by the proletariats. The major theories studied by Marx can be used to analyze the characters and situations presented in the film.

capitalist movement and how it negatively affects the working class through telling a story of the

It is considered to be the transitional phase between the capitalism and communism. Thus, you would find all communists advocating for socialism because it lays the foundations for communism. It advocates an egalitarian society where everyone shares equal wealth and power. There is a considerable disagreement over how the distribution should take place. Hence, socialism can be said to be between extreme capitalism and extreme communism with it being nearer to communism.

My example that I will be using is Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin. Modern times is a film developed after the industrial revolution. It serves the purpose of critiquing capitalism and the social world. Modern Times begin with a factory worker who starts developing anxiety through the lack of breaks and repetitive work. When the Worker is on break, his boss is always keeping an eye on him and demands him to go back to work due to the loss of production. Soon after, the factory worker goes on lunch break, but is again distracted by his boss due to the desire to try out a new lunch contraption. At first, the new technology seems to work since the factory Worker was being fed. But, after a few seconds the contraption goes haywire and starts hurting the worker. The factory Worker goes back to work, but suddenly starts to mess up. He goes around ruining all his co-workers’ work and even get himself in prison. However, he ends up saving all the cops from the inmates’ revolution and is released early from jail. He does not want to leave since he is treated properly in jail and will be homeless in the outside world. He tries to get himself in prison again, but meets a beautiful woman Gamin who is also homeless and workless. They run off together and commit burglaries to feed themselves, but is soon discovered by the police. They manage to escape and run off to live in a small house by themselves. The factory Worker and the Gamin decides to have lunch together, but finds out that a

In the film, workers in the bathhouse, the main setting of the film, are depicted to be money hungry, and greedy. Workers will even abandon their work stations,

Many movie companies and industries have made millions of dollars off of movies that portray poor people, because many individuals prefer to relive the times when they were either poor, or disliked by the society as a whole. There are many movies such as Pretty Woman which “is a perfect example of a film that made huge sums of money portraying the poor in this light” (Hooks, 486). Hooks perceives this as a very good way of making profit, but does mention that the poor should not be devalued by the society this way, and should be treated differently with respect. The way the companies portray the poor in the movies is the way the higher and middle class

In the film Modern times by Charlie Chaplin it was a film that showed the

A 1927 a German Film called Metropolis presents a utopia for the upper-class and a dystopia for the lower-class workers. It is a utopia for the upper class because it is cultured, beautiful, and has entertainment. While the dystopia is a dark, loud, steaming city, where all they do is work. This is the story where the head and hand both needed a heart to join the cities together in harmony, following love between two worlds.

Socialism is the underlying motivation behind communist movements in history. Socialists believe that it is unjust for a small amount of people to own the biggest portion of the wealth in society. This idea lead to the concept of a communist society, in which the existence of private property is eliminated in favor of government-owned property being shared among all it’s people. The government would provide jobs and care for all people equally. The idea was that through communism, there would be no social classes, thus eliminating alienation for any of the people in the society.

Marx predicted that the ruling class would be overthrown and predicted the working class would set up a society based on common ownership.      Socialism has never been very strong in the United States. Because of the opportunity for even the poor to become successful, socialism has never been able to grow. The strongest movement might have been during World War I. socialists tried to group, but because of problems at hand nothing was accomplished. After World War I a complete collapse of socialism occurred.