Question 1: Visual Element - MCU Exemplar

Question 1: Visual Element – Medium Close Up

The medium close up of Evil Maria shows her from the chest up, and namely forces the viewer to focus on her face. Evil Maria is animated in her speech to the Workers of Metropolis, she talks rapidly and her eyes are intent, even crazed as she urges the Workers to revolt against Jon Fredersen’s machines. This animation, and her façade of the ‘Good Maria’ spurs the Workers on and they are drawn into her emotive comparisons (“Who feeds their flesh to the machines…”). This is the Workers perspective of Evil Maria and the viewer is drawn to the focal point of her eyes and mouth as their fixed stare and words make the Workers act – effectively the viewer is placed into the point of view of the Workers.
To the viewer she is completely different to that of Good Maria and she is excessive and exaggerated in her movements.
Within this shot she exposes her flesh on her chest and appears almost ‘wild’. This ironic display shows she is undeniably only surface and image. Here a dichotomy is shown between these two characters. Good Maria is saint like, whereas Evil Maria is the opposite. She is urging the Workers on to their harm and that of the city. This exposure of flesh shows her also as a femme fatale figure that draws in the men – but only to their doom. She is alluring, provocative and yet ultimately dangerous.
Here this creation of the cyborg Evil Maria shows that technology could become so large and advanced that it could go outside of the control of man and destroy humanity. Despite her or rather its human appearance they transcend the foibles of the human body and are immortal. She is in fact mechanical and soulless.
Evil Maria harkens also to the social context of the time and expresses a period of unrest, confusion and despair. Directly after the WW1, economic woes of an inflation-ridden country haunted Germany. The medium close up of Evil Maria is reminiscent of propaganda and the terror of the nation. The Workers are dehumanised and a great sense of ‘wrongness’ in imbued, whereon they are being directed to their potential demise by a cyborg. Evil Maria’s maniacal contorted gestures are inhuman and heighten the sense of woe that can befall man; due to technology.