The Marxist social critique has spawned various mediums of popular culture, none more so than that of film. One of the examples I always think of is the darkly modern and realistic Metropolis; depicting a Marx-like class struggle. A city of duel classes; of the bourgeoisie capitalists who live in the sky and control the lives of the homogenized proletariat who exist underground. For the masses of workers the mode of production is their life; “the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it” (Marx The German Ideology). This film is not just about the commodification of man, but it shows the results of years of this type of commodification; that the human can never be efficient enough to satiate the hunger of capitalism, so there must be drastic measures to replace man with that which can meet the demands. The workers are therefore sacrificed to the machinery that replaces them, which takes the form of the M-Machine. Marx pointed out the realities of the capitalistic system in an attempt to educate and enlighten those inherently at odds with such a system—the proletariat.
A clip showing the strict deviation between the uninhibited and lavish life of bourgeoisie and the dark realities of the homogenized proletariat.
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