Human Form and Power: Metropolis, Left Hand of Darkness, and "The Hood Maker" Leyla Meharg 12th Grade

In science fiction, composers challenge traditional perspectives on humanity in order to investigate the way in human form influences power dynamics within texts, which is conveyed through the use of a variety of forms and features in response to the authors’ contextual background. This is demonstrated in Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness (Darkness) which, informed by Le Guin’s feminist background, portrays a planet inhabited by ambisexual beings. Correspondingly, the expressionist film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, and Phillip K. Dick’s short story the Hood Maker both implicate creative perspectives on human form, responding to Lang’s German political situation of the early twentieth century, and Dick’s context increasing nuclear technology during a Cold War period. All texts investigate the effect of unconventional human forms on power distribution within a fictitious society.

Authors and directors create worlds in which alternative expressions of human forms are represented, in order to critique upon aspects of the respective author’s contexts. Such is evident in Darkness, wherein at the beginning of the novel, protagonist Ai illustrates his lack of understanding for the Gethenian social orientation, and...