Metropolis, the Cyborg and Contradictions in Psychoanalysis
Written by Gauntgirl, copyright 2001
The image of a female cyborg is defined by conflicting psychoanalytic readings. In his film Metropolis (1926), Fritz Lang sets the framework for future theories of hybridized identities, which aim to expose the limitations of psychoanalytic theory in constructing a gendered subject. The cyborg is an image used by feminists to rework the nature of the symbolic order. The cyborg is abject; it transgresses the boundaries between human and machine. The cyborg defies the pre-Oedipal story of identity’s origin. And, most importantly, the cyborg attempts to challenge the construction of woman as male other. I will be using the scene in which Fredersen (and the audience) are first introduced to the female robot to illustrate how these points are developed in Metropolis.
According to Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’ theory , the individual’s identity is found when, as a child, he first recognizes his own reflection in a mirror, thus beginning the process whereby he identifies with the father and rejects the mother (reducing her to the realm of ‘Other’). What is called the ‘pre-Oedipal’ is the stage before the subject’s separation from the mother, where the subject’s identity is inseparable from that of the mother, and the child stands in for the mother’s missing phallus. It is on this basis that many psychoanalytic film theories involving gender identity are based. Metropolis immediately rejects this process by demonstrating a technological reproduction that challenges the necessary existence of the mother.
When Rotwang engages in unnatural (motherless) reproduction to create a living worker, he does so at the expense of his ‘child’s’ identity. Denied access to the Oedipal process, the cyborg is denied subjectivity. At her 'birth', she is barely alive - her movements are slow and purposeless (seemingly prompted by Rotwang’s command), she is without voice, without identity. In this manner the cyborg is of little use. To make her a more effective tool, Rotwang and Fredersen (as substitute father) give her the identity that she is unable to find on her own – that of Maria. It is here that Lang’s use of a female cyborg gains greater significance. Within psychoanalysis, the female subject has been constructed with a similarly conflicted identity. She is expected to identify with the father (phallus envy, as per Freud) and reject the mother in order to be elevated into the symbolic order. This process (a function of phallologocentrism) echoes the means by which the Maria Cyborg is dependent on the ‘father’ for her identity. However, in acting out the required rejection of the mother, the Maria-borg also rebels against the father-image (Fredersen) for lack of a natural mother . When Rotwang says: “Now we have no further use for living workers,” he is really saying that there is no further use for natural woman. Indeed, woman’s ultimate function, that of reproduction, has been usurped by the masculine realm. Further, it is important to add that the very existence of a cyborg is defined by ‘otherness’ (a feminine trait). Whereas woman is defined as ‘male other’ due to the lack of a phallus, the cyborg is man’s other due to its unnatural/machine-like quality (the female cyborg incorporating a double ‘otherness’). Therefore, when Rotwang says: “I have created a machine in the image of man,” he is making a false statement, for his machine will always exist in the realm of the female (the realm of otherness) and, by definition, will never occupy the realm of the natural (that of the male).
For postmodern theorist, Donna Haraway, the dualistic nature of the cyborg offers a more optimistic reading. For Haraway, the Oedipal processes outlined by Freud and Lacan as constructing identity are at the root of theories that subjugate women and cultural ‘others’ under the guise of difference. Haraway’s cyborg acts as means for redefining difference. The cyborg (a product of replication rather than reproduction), defies the Oedipal process, and in so doing is also defying the manner in which gender and identity are constructed – thereby challenging ‘otherness’ . The cyborg is an ‘inappropriate other’ - a fractured, hyphenated identity. The cyborg is a site of numerous dualities and differences in fluidic transgression. In a world of cyborgs, it is difference that defines ‘sameness’. Haraway’s utopian theory, despite showing the possibilities that cyborgs possess in orchestrating positive social change, is ultimately denied in Metropolis. In creating the Maria-borg, Rotwang and Fredersen are not attempting to subvert dominant social constructions; they are attempting to pronounce them. The Maria-borg does not exist as an image of their own potential to defy the symbolic order; conversely, it solidifies the distinction between natural/human/man/surface world and unnatural/machine/woman/underworld. The Maria-borg exists to remind them that they are human and that the feminine (that which threatens to castrate by nature of its ‘lack’) is something over which they have control. The Maria-borg eventually proves to be a force that, indeed, they cannot control. In her subversion, the Maria-borg acts as a multi-faceted warning to the natural/masculine realm of the dangers involved in subverting natural processes and in creating ‘otherness’. Seen through Haraway’s theory, the cyborg is a site of dualistic discourse aimed at uncovering dominant social anxieties and hopes.
The idea of possessing the feminine is also important to the theories constructed in Laura Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In her essay Mulvey identifies the mechanisms by which the spectator participates in the filmic experience. She describes the male gaze as the spectator’s (and the male protagonist’s) attempt to possess the female and alleviate his castration anxiety. This is performed cinematically in the manner that women are often fragmented (symbolically castrated), fetishized, and constructed as highly sexualized, partial subjects. In Metropolis, there is a conflict of the gaze in the manner that the cyborg is represented cinematically. Once the cyborg is established with Maria’s hyper-sexualized identity, she is framed by the camera for the purpose to be looked upon (for example, the scene at Yoshiwaras). However, before her identity is established, the cyborg defies the gaze. Her body is never fractured into fetishized parts. In fact, in several shots she is framed whole whereas Rotwang and Fredersen are only shown from the knees or waist up. The cyborg is also granted the rare power of confronting the actual audience and transgressing the cinematic space. When it seems that Rotwang are Fredersen are directly addressing the audience, the camera, in fact, is actually taking the point of view of the other character. However, when the cyborg address the camera, the camera is not taking the place of either character’s point of view, it is merely reflecting the spectator’s gaze. Therefore, the cyborg’s unflinching gaze is directed back at the audience, creating a circular ‘4th look ’ – the audience looking at the subject on the screen looking back at the audience. The cyborg’s confrontation would seem, on one hand, to be of a lesser effect than if a clearly female character were to initiate the confronting gaze. However, as I’ve already demonstrated, the cyborg is a site of dual lack whose threat to the masculine is ultimately greater than that of a woman. The cyborg’s confrontation of the spectator acts to further its transgression from the normal symbolic order, and to re-inscribe it as unnatural.
In Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, the cyborg is characterized by its refusal to be properly categorized by the rules of psychoanalytic theory. Further, the cyborg acts to expose the inadequate processes by which female identity is constructed. The Maria-borg offers a reading that can both stand to challenge this construction of identity and reinforce it. In that, her existence echoes the uncertainties which abound in dominant social discourse.
BibliographyHaraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. ed. New York: Routledge, 1991: p. 149-181
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen, 16,3(1975): p. 6-18
Ruppert, Peter. Technology and the Construction of Gender in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. www.genders.org, 2000
Thornham, Sue. Passionate Detachments: An Introduction to Feminist Film Theory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997
