by Andrew Hultkrans
Page 2

Never far from the public imagination, the celluloid mirror of the cinema offered its own distorted visions of techno-utopia. Indeed, two of the earliest examples of the futuristic film–Metropolis (1926) and Things to Come (1936)–deal with themes of dehumanization in ostensibly utopian societies.Metropolis does so in a hamfisted and arguably false manner; inThings to Come, the techno-utopia of Everytown is supposed to seem glorious, despite a whiny, unsympathetic neo-Luddite insurrection; to contemporary audiences it is as creepy as The Stepford Wives.

With its brilliant expressionist credit sequence, employing diagonal split screens of ultra-Deco skyscrapers and close-ups of pumping pistons and grinding turbines, Metropolis presents a world completely penetrated by industrial technology. Even the masses of subterranean workers are coded as robotic–cogs in the machine–as they move stiffly in regimented blocks through underground tunnels. In marked contrast to the dreary habitrails and machine rooms of the underground, the skyline of Metropolis is as spectacular as anything conceived by Frank R. Paul or Hugh Ferriss.

Reportedly inspired by Lang's first visit to New York by airplane, the Metropolis cityscape resembles a pre-war Manhattan on steroids, densely overbuilt, connected by a web of elevated freeways and personal aircraft, those staples of 1920s futurist cities. The skyline sequences remain breathtaking, and along with the industrial nightmare of the machine rooms and Rotwang's now-iconic robot, account for the film's seminal reputation. Discounting Lang's stunning visuals, the film is naive, burdened by heavy, obvious symbolism, and disingenuous in its sham reconciliation between the workers ("the hand") and the boss ("the head") by way of the hero Freder ("the heart"). By establishing a false compromise between the workers and the hypercapitalist tyrant at the end of the film, Lang and Thea Von Harbou (his wife and screenwriter) pave the way for a new stage of domination and exploitation, an early evocation of "friendly fascism."

Another vision of the "friendly fascist" techno-utopia is offered by William Cameron Menzies' Things to Come, albeit unintentionally. An adaptation of an H.G. Wells story, the long, tendentious film traces the evolution of "Everytown" from a normal '30s city to a war-torn battlefield to a scavenger wasteland ruled by gangs (rehearsing the post-apocalyptic anarchy film later manifested in the Mad Max series) to a gleaming, white, Usonian city served, apparently, by machines of loving grace. William Gibson's description of Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax building ("designed for people who wore white togas and Lucite sandals") can be directly traced to the aesthetics of the techno-utopian Everytown, where, in fact, citizens do wear white togas and Lucite sandals.

The anachronistic use of classic Roman costume in a decidedly futuristic architectural setting raises the issue of pastiche, which Fredric Jameson argues (based initially on his analysis of LA's Bonaventure Hotel) is concrete evidence of the postmodern turn. Without directly challenging Jameson's exhaustively documented claims, it would be useful to note that techno-utopian films (from Things to Come onward) regularly engage in the sort of history-flattening pastiche Jameson sees as a relatively recent development. Indeed, the blending of ancient costumes (with minor "mod" alterations) and futuristic architecture (which often quotes ancient structures itself: Mayan step pyramids, Roman columns and pavilions, Egyptian iconography, Persian pleasure domes) is a typical design strategy in the creation of techno-utopian and -dystopian societies.

The bold design of Things to Come is the film's only redeeming feature. Created by the director and Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the futuristic Everytown evokes Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian period, all white and rounded, the endless stacked terraces of Le Corbusier, the elevated walkways of Hugh Ferriss, the Geodesic Dome concept of Buckminster Fuller (the city is underground, illuminated by round-the-clock artificial light) and the public pavilions, surrounded by wide steps, of ancient Rome. The production is also notable for its minor technological details: a TV-like screen which presents video footage of Everytown's pre-utopian history to a young girl (shades of Microsoft's "educational" spin of the Web), a broadcast medium (called "radio" in the film) which combines radio, cinema, and holography to deliver a giant 3-D image of whoever is broadcasting into public spaces, giant "flying wings" which were fixtures of the futuramas of the day, and a "space gun" rocket launcher intended to shoot a manned spaceship to the moon (true to its name, the space gun resembles a giant pistol barrel, complete with sight). Although the film's manifest destiny message of space travel and civilizing the universe is intended to be uplifting, the flattened affect of the city's ruler and most of its citizens inadvertently sabotages this optimism, making Everytown seem as appealing as a pleasure garden designed by Body Snatchers.