Total Mobilization as a Social Condition in the Modern Metropolis and its Representation in Fear and Hope (1960)

Sayyad, Alireza

doi:10.22034/jaco.2022.357368.1261

Total Mobilization as a Social Condition in the Modern Metropolis and its Representation in Fear and Hope (1960)

https://doi.org/10.22034/jaco.2022.357368.1261

Volume 10, Issue 37
Autumn 2022

Pages 19-30

Journal of Art and Civilization of the Orient

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Alireza Sayyad

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Ernst Jünger, a distinguished German author, and theorist is known as one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. Along with individuals like Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, he was among those right-wing thinkers whose ideas and theories had a great impact on raising the Nazi party. Jünger’s argument regarding total mobilization uses war and struggle as a model for the formation of a social condition in which the social order is reconfigured according to the concepts related to war. In such a condition, militarization and mobilization of wartime are injected into the social structure. Based on a descriptive-analytic method and by using library references, the present research aims at analyzing Fear and Hope (1960) film directed by George Ovadiah and studying how the condition of total mobilization and social control is represented in this film. Fear and Hope is the life story of a young married man named Mr. Karimi who due to the economic and financial crisis of the 1950s has just been dismissed from his job and as a result, cannot afford the expenses of the New Year ceremony. Regarding the impaired social condition, economic crisis, and the spread of demonstrations and strikes against the government in the late 1950s, the present study tries to unfold some socio-political implications of the film. In this regard, the film acts as a propagandistic work that introduces a fanciful image of a coherent empathetic society in which the government and citizens are mobilized to confront the danger that is threatening one of the citizen’s life (a metaphor of threatening the social order). The social-familial peace and stability pictured at the end of the film can be linked to the Pahlavi regime’s tendency to establish stability and order in the heart of demonstrations and strikes.

Keywords

Total Mobilization

Social Surveillance

Ernst Jünger

Walter Benjamin

Fear and Hope (1960)

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