Metropolis / Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell

[erosoplier]

Metropolis / Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell

Couldn't decide which thread to post this on - too many options just at the moment. I decided to start a new thread because I wouldn't mind hearing some other opinions on the clip, especially what the quote at the end might mean in relation to the movie and/or the song. Because I don't have a clue myself. It doesn't seem to have a lot to do with the song.

From the guy who posted the clip:

Perhaps the most famous sequence from Fritz Lang's 1927 movie, Metropolis, is here set to music from The Flaming Lips.

It also serves as a surprising introduction to the Book of Revelation Chs. 17 & 18.

Maria, who represents the true 'prophetic church', is 'cloned' by Rotwang - the occultic alchemist, kabbalist(?) and prototypical 'mad scientist' (compare 'doc' from 'Back to the Future') - who uses her body to help vivify the technological Maria - her evil doppelganger. The robot Maria / Futura emerges as Ishtar (Astarte / Kali / Isis / Venus), the erotic and destructive 'queen of heaven' - goddess of sex and violence, and, like her ancient Assyrian counterpart, displaying as a symbol the 'witches pentacle'. The biblical and occult imagery in Fritz Lang's classic film (from Genesis to Revelation) is extensive and clearly deliberate.

Visual ideas from this scene can be seen recycled in many other films - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Fifth Element, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, every Frankenstein film ever made, and (no doubt) at least a couple of episodes of the Simpsons. It has also been suggested that the show title 'Futurama' is a reference to FuturaMa[ria].

I actually have this particular Flaming Lips album in my collection, but I haven't listened to it very much. This song was probably the reason I acquired it in the first place, but I'd forgotten about it until all this recent talk of "ego tripping" reminded me of it...

lyrics here

[Joe Hillshoist]

I haven't seen metropolis, or a whole lot of other movies (like being there), so I can't comment on the movie itself.

But I'll assume the point of it and the scene is to illustrate an apocalyptic scenario as it develops, and leads to the rise of babylon, and her whore riding the beast.

Obviously ego tripping is what the scientist is doing. I spose ego tripping is what caused the Fall too. And it leads to the gates of hell being opened.

Personally I like the idea that the song is a subtle dig at the idea of an apocalypse and all the rapture/year zero drivel that comes out of the Evangelion movement. I mean Evangelical movement.

Ego tripping is what the Evangelicals are doing on any number of levels, and the gates of hell might be opened, but its a hell of our own making not some supernatural battlefield. the apocalypse is always coming. It always has been and it always will be. (cept on a personal level, where its original meaning might be more appropriate.) "I was waiting on a moment, but the moment never came."

But thats probably not what the original idea was behind the clip and the movie itself. Tho I dunno, the text "Are you ready?" to the lyric "But the moment never came." Just got me wondering.

I noticed the way the electricity formed a sort of eye in the pyramid thing too.

Electricity, science crossing the boundaries of human to the area traditionally reserved for Gods and all that seems to be an apt description of where we are today. Especially as Catalyst (ABC science show) had a story on the cern ring tonight.

Genetically modifying stuff, nano tech, nuclear stuff, its all the point where humans go all promethean and tresspass into the territory of the gods to steal knowledge and power, and recreating the big bang, as they modestly claim to be attempting at cern seems like the actual ultimate attempt to cross into the territory of the gods.

Not just stealing fire, but the primal first fire that everything came out of.

I wouldn't be surprised if they opened something, a crack in reality and something really nasty came through. Forget Lam, and Parsons and Hubbard. If you want to really usher in the aeon, get thee to Switzerland and do some pretty funky rituals inside the cren ring when they finally fire it up.

[compared2what?]

I love that song. And it's been a long, long time since I've seen Metropolis, which is scary and confusing. But I am definitely not ready for that moment, if it ever comes. Check out this here clip to see where it leads.

It's urban, not montane, but it freaks me out how similar the imagery here is to Leni Riefenstahl's bergfilme work.

And even more how much it resembles the work of Nicholas Roerich, who is, for some reason, the extra-spooky theosophist that time forgot, and who, prior to wandering around the same territory as Mr. Seven-Years-in-Tibet, looking for whatever the hell it is frightening people in the Weimar-to-WWII period were looking for there, was busy -- among other things -- designing the set and costumes for the version of Le Sacre du Printemps that so shocked audiences in 1913 that they stormed from the theater.

I've never seen that in any production. But I wonder how similar the girl who dances to death in the version Roerich worked on is to Maria's performance linked above....

I'll go pull some comparison images, and post them in a follow-up, after which, discuss. Please. I find all this stuff very frightening.

[compared2what?]

The poster for the movie in which Leni R. made her debut as an actress:

[compared2what?]

And this is from her directorial debut:

[compared2what?]

One of about a million Roerich paintings along these lines:

[compared2what?]

Mother of the World, the first Roerich painting that the Flaming Lips clip put me in mind of:

[compared2what?]

Maitreya:



And there's oh-so-much-more. Roerich was a very odd figure. He was briefly guru to Henry Wallace, but iit was (I think) before he was Vice President. So I guess when he was still Secretary of Agriculture....

I wonder, wonder....What were they all really after in those or other mountains, Roerich and Blavatsky and Riefenstahl and the various other Nazis and/or mystics who were climbing every one of them and fording every stream during those several decades?

Roerich saw a UFO in, I think, now-Pakistan, in the '20s. But maybe it was in now-India, I'm not sure. If that's any help.

Were they really looking for Shambhala? Is that possible? And was Fritz Lang really making movies in which people live underground before the apocalypse, one of whom ends up waking the dead that use all the same imagery as they did?

The last one is rhetorical. I know he was. But it seems so unlikely.

[erosoplier]

I wonder, wonder....What were they all really after in those or other mountains

I guess they were just looking for an opportunity for their spirit to soar. Mountains are the place where the spirit can soar, dig? Neitzsche told them so.

And the Alps are just hills in the back yard compared to the Himalayas (especially the Australian Alps!).


That art is all very early for what it is.