I KOLLISION MED FRAMTIDEN : synen på modernisering och mans- och kvinnoroller i mellankrigstidens science fiction-film

The study centers on the work of various filmmakers that made science fiction films in the countries of the Soviet Union, the Weimar Germany and the United States of America during the interwar years. Among these are for example films like Aelita, Metropolis and Flash Gordon. Recurring themes in these movies are of such nature as space exploration and alien encounters as well as depiction of future human societies to only name a few. In the general method of analyzing these films these fantastic elements are seen as being many times of an allegorical nature expressing different political ideas and notions occurring in the societies and times of the films creation. In the analysis of these political notions the study aims to answer what attitudes these films expressed concerning the forth going modernization of societies and whether they expressed a positive or negative attitude towards changing roles of gender with the introduction of the New Woman. Also the study revolves around the central ideas of the utopian and dystopian societies and deals in all these aspects with the relation of classes as well as gender and also with the different expressions of orientalism that the filmmakers fashioned. The result is evident that the three societies had various views on the subjects. The Soviet Union was overtly positive towards modernization and the new Woman while the opinion changed over time in Germany and the USA. The latter two upheld a negative view mostly in times of economic turmoil which affected the attitude in promotion of traditional gender roles. In times of economic stability these attitudes was turned on its head in embrace of modernity and the New Woman. Orientalism filled different functions in each society being most common in the American films and rarest in the Soviet Union. Mostly it functioned as a symbol for the pre-modern or the traditional sometimes seen as positive in relation to a negative depiction of the modern woman. Other times it was used as a tool of enstrangement used to depict in allegorical sense the modern as being strange and negative