Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari


  A style of art developed in the 20th century, characterized chiefly by heavy, often black lines that define forms, sharply contrasting, often vivid colors, and subjective or symbolic treatment of thematic material. Traditional forms of culture like painting became obsolete by mass culture, and in second sense you can actually see the visual styles of expressionisman artistic and literary movement originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, which sought to express emotions rather than to represent external reality: characterized by the use of symbolism and of exaggeration and distortion integrated in the films, summed up by one of the film designers who declared that "films must be drawings brought to life." expressionism and Dadaism: A European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.
occured in the same period.

Words, images, pictures have power and influence our lifestyle and understanding of societies. in term of nihilism approach, an 11th century monk having power to take life of a peson obviously is fake to the society therefore nihilistic.Francis enlists the help of some of the staff who go through Caligari's papers. They find that he is obsessed with the fictional story of an 11th century monk who was able to wield hypnotic powers over a sleepwalker. When, a sleepwalker was delivered to this hospital he began his plan on using the sleepwalker as his hypnotized slave to carry out murders and gain power. obviously, it is an evil power that Dr. cailigary is obsessed, again nihilistic to the society.

                                         Marxism and frankfurt School.
The founders of Marxism, Marx and Engels, participated in the “International Workingmen's Association” from 1864 to 1872, where they found their first base of support and a connection with the workers' movement. Based in London, the International found supporteres across Europe and in the U.S.A.They tended to focus on a different dynamic, a different unity-of-opposites, the opposition between culture and society, or more specifically the utopian values contained in art and the dominant social norms.
Marx emphasized praxis at a time when almost every other intellectual favored detachment from reality. Even Hegel, Marx argued, did not see that it was really the interaction of opposing economic forces: the forces of production (technology, science, and culture) and the ownership of the means of production, that was the true driving force of change in history, and which takes the form of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in modern times. However, to bring things full circle the old theoretical foundation (based on the proletariat) on which praxis rested had now been broken. All of the economic conditions were present for revolutionary change in 1918, yet when faced with this pivotal moment, the supposedly revolutionary workers and their leadership became conservative. So how could this new generation born around the 1890s, who came of age during the war find a new way to revive praxis?
                                    
     Values change over time because of the critical role that art plays in society, producing new syntheses of values that are generated from the clash between culture and society. To understand better the motivations behind values or belief systems, they also incorporated Freudian psychoanalysis based on the idea of the unconscious, which Freud claimed he "discovered." Nietzsche's emphasis on cultural decline and nihilism was also added to the mix. (Nietzsche's concepts of the "Apollonian" (reason) and "Dionysian" (sensuality) as forces within art itself, also suggests this idea of unity-of-opposites and synthesis, as does his most famous saying: "whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger." The synthesis of injury and health produces a stronger body.
 

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