In the second scene of the movie before Professor Rath enters the class the students are having fun talking with each other. When the professor is on his way all the students rush to their seats and as he walks in they stand up for him. This shows that they are afraid of the professor. I believe the professor is representing the government and the class is the public. The public is scared of the government because they punish people without knowing for sure if they are punishing the correct person. This is shown when the professor tells a student to clean his book cover for drawing on it even though he did not draw on it. He also punishes the whole class for one student not knowing how to pronounce a specific word. This is also to represent the government punishing a group of people as a whole rather than punishing a specific person. Professor Rath makes the students stand up and sit down for no apparent reason other than to flex his power. This is a symbol for the government always wanting the public to feel under its power. They use a fat professor to show that government is fat with power and always wants more. There are no women in the class which shows that women were not given the chance to be educated and they were looked down upon. When a student has a picture of Lola he is punished for this. It says that the culture at the time looked down at women in that type of professions. I feel the reason the director uses a classroom to show the picture is because some people at the time thought these types of women were bringing down the higher class and society.
Do you think that this scene shows the foolishness of the older generation, represented by the Professor, or the foolishness of the younger generation, so scared by him? Because personally, I could not tell. On the one hand, the professor is just so silly and petty; he is like a cartoon character of the older generation, so traditional and orderly. On the other hand, the younger generation is not much better, as they are living empty lives, playing pranks and holding cigarettes for cabaret singers. I couldn't tell what the message was - is the older generation right or the younger generation? Perhaps the message is more nihilistic: the entire society is rotten and should be started over.
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