Postmodernism & Deutschland 83: blog tasks
Media Magazine - A Postmodern Reimagining of the Past
Media Magazine 73 has a feature exploring Deutschland 83 as a postmodern media product. Read ‘Deutschland 83 - A Postmodern Reimagining of the Past’ in MM73 (p18). You'll find our Media Magazine archive here - remember you'll need your Greenford Google login to access. Answer the following questions:
1) What were the classic media representations of the Cold War?
Representations of Cold War-era Germany often fit a stereotypical binary ‘good vs evil’ The Cold War – the state of tension and hostility between the Soviet bloc countries and the West from 1945 to 1990 – has inspired a series of film and media texts within the spy genre. These texts often present the East and West as binary opposites through codes and conventions.
2) Why does Deutschland 83 provide a particularly good example for postmodern analysis?
Deutschland 83 however is not your typical Cold War text for a number of reasons but perhaps the most significant is that it has a young Stasi officer as its main protagonist. It is an example of a text that reimagines the past by blurring the established views of the Cold War through a postmodern treatment.
3) Pick out some of the aspects of the opening of episode 1 and explain why they are significant.
All postmodern texts create a relationship with the past and the first episode of Deutschland 83, ‘Quantum Jump’, does this with intertitles that frame its historical context. The location is the ‘East German Diplomatic mission’ situated in Bonn, West Germany in 1983. A woman is listening to US president Ronald Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ speech on a television set. This intertextual footage with its message to ‘pray’ for those who live in ‘totalitarian darkness’ creates ambiguity – Reagan talks of the ‘quiet men’ who conceive and order this ‘greatest evil’ in ‘carpeted well-lit offices.’
We cut to an interrogation sequence of two young actors in East Berlin who have bought some Shakespeare plays on the black market. This is conducted by our communist protagonist Martin Rauch and a colleague. The sequence in part parodies typical interrogation scenes from the spy genre – the crime is not serious and it ends with the release of the two men and a trading of the texts by Shakespeare with those by Marx. It finishes in a comedic fashion with both guards bursting into laughter as the actors leave (and we later see Martin give a Shakespeare book to his mother for her birthday).
This Todorovian equilibrium – of Martin carrying out his fairly humble work for the Stasi – is soon to be displaced as we return to a conversation between Lenora and another high-ranking Stasi official about sending Martin to West Germany to spy on General Edel, who is thought to be colluding with America. The decision is made in an office that recreates 1980s mise-en-scène alongside tense and reflective exchanges that perfectly imitate and pastiche the period.
In the scene that follows, Martin and his antagonists play a chess game (in itself a symbol of the Cold War) over uneasy dialogue and knowing glances, embracing spy genre conventions. However, the subsequent breaking of Martin’s finger to ensure he perfectly fits the profile of the West German piano-playing man (Moritz) who he is to impersonate is over-exaggerated. It is presented as an extended length of shot and extreme closeup and is an example of a self-reflexive postmodern treatment. It draws attention to itself as artificial. There is a piano strategically placed behind Martin drawing attention to its ironic mode of address.
4) How does the party scene at Martin's mum's house subvert stereotypes of East Germany in the Cold War?
One of the ways that the text challenges the conventions of Cold War dramas is through its representation of the East. The most revealing is the party scene at Martin’s house when he returns from leave in East Germany. Martin arrives and embraces family members in a bright, sunlit garden setting. In the living room, young people (including his girlfriend, Annett) are drinking beers and dancing and singing to the Cold War era protest song ‘99 Luftballoons’ that is later played in the West German barracks too. This scene reimagines the representation of the East beyond the operators of the restrictive state to the humanity, care and affection of everyday family and friends. The vibrant youth camaraderie, anthemic rock music and positivity are in contrast to Lenora who represents the callous manipulative officialdom that is more stereotypically present in representations of East Germany. She looks on with displeasure, repeatedly in profile, through an ominous, dark kitchen hatch.
5) What aspects of the episode set in West Germany offer postmodern elements?
Martin’s first taste of western consumerism, in the supermarket scene is playfully underscored by the Eurythmics 1980’s pop song ‘Sweet Dreams are Made of This’ as Martin wonders at the volume and choice of products available in the West.
In homage to the gadget-saturated spy genre (think of Q in the James Bond movies) there is a sequence where Martin’s mentor, Tobias Tischbier, trains him in espionage techniques. The surveillance equipment used in the scene encodes the spy genre. However, the montage editing, jump cuts, soundtrack and humorous insertion of pop culture references as Martin learns different pronunciations of German words blends different artistic styles into an effective pastiche.
6) Finally, how does the article apply postmodern theory to Deutschland 83 and link it to the potential target audience?
A key theorist at A level is Jean Baudrillard with his ideas of ‘Simulacra’ – representations that depict things that have no original. We cannot know for certain how Eastern and Western Europeans behaved during this time – what we are seeing is only a reimagining and one that is influenced by the present. According to postmodern theorist Baudrillard, Simulacra reveal that there is no fixed, absolute truth; and Deutschland 83 certainly challenges our preconceptions of this period of history.
Postmodernism Factsheet
Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet #54: Introduction to Postmodernism. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. If you need to access this from home you can find our factsheet archive here (you'll need to use your Greenford login).
1) Read the section on Strinati's five ways to define postmodernity. What examples are provided of the breakdown of the distinction between culture and society (media-isation)?
1) Read the section on Strinati's five ways to define postmodernity. What examples are provided of the breakdown of the distinction between culture and society (media-isation)?
1. The breakdown of the distinction between culture and society – (mediaization).
*Advertising can make or break a company irrespective of the quality of the product they are selling, a poor quality product can be commercially successful if it has great advertising whilst an excellent product can fail without it. Where once the reality of the product would create its success or failure (e.g. how well it worked), now the media reality of advertising determines the success of products.
* The characters Bruno and Borat have more ‘reality’ for film audiences than their creator Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen’s films rely on the fact that the characters he creates are seen as ‘real’ people and he is able to get away with saying and doing things that a ‘real’ person could not. Cohen is only ever interviewed ‘in character’ so his creations have a voice but he does not.
2. An emphasis on style at the expense of substance and content.
* People are strongly influenced by branding when buying products. The label sometimes becomes more important than the product itself and packaging is more important than the contents. People will pay high prices for products which bear the logo of a fashionable label regardless of the actual quality of the product.
• The modern rise of celebrities launched through reality television programmes such as Big Brother can be seen as the culture celebrating style over substance. Many celebrities are now famous for being famous rather than for an identifiable talent or ability.
3. The breakdown of the distinction between high culture (art) and popular culture.
• In postmodern culture Andy Warhol created multi-coloured prints of the Mona Lisa (high art) and Campbell’s soup cans (low art)
• Pop music (low art) often samples classical music (high art)
• Advertising (low art) often makes reference to visual art (high art) or uses classical music (high art) to help sell its products
4. Confusions over time and space.
In today’s society we have accelerated the speed information can travel over distances. Satellites beam down television links from other countries in seconds. The internet can send mail to someone on the other side of the world in hardly any time at all; where once it would take days to get to the nearest city we now have access to most of the world in just hours using modern travel networks or in seconds via electronic communication.
The mass media (television and the internet primarily) allows us access to the whole world from the comfort of our homes. Post modern society is a society built on the instantaneous; everything is ‘here and now’.
According to Jameson, is the idea of historical deafness. He argues that as mediaization increases so the culture finds itself losing a sense of historical context. History is now reduced to ‘talking heads’ documentaries and historical knowledge is often based on media representations.
This links to Deutschland 83 specifically as it is a drama based series of the past due to the cold war that was happening between East and West Germany and we follow this drama through Martin who is the main character in the drama. This links to history being reduced to 'talking heads' as Deutschland is based off from documents such as the nuclear documents that Martin had to get that was signed off by Ronald Regean who was the president of the USA at the time but since it was a recreation of the scene we as the audience have to imagine how it might have been taking away that real experience as this is an example of a media representation as Jameson describes.
* People are strongly influenced by branding when buying products. The label sometimes becomes more important than the product itself and packaging is more important than the contents. People will pay high prices for products which bear the logo of a fashionable label regardless of the actual quality of the product.
• The modern rise of celebrities launched through reality television programmes such as Big Brother can be seen as the culture celebrating style over substance. Many celebrities are now famous for being famous rather than for an identifiable talent or ability.
High art such as opera, ballet, theatre and the visual arts were only accessible to elite groups whilst low art such as pop music was intended for the masses. This links to Deutschland as the low art pop music 99 Red Balloons Go By is repeatedly played throughout the episode. Even though this is a form of low art music, the song hits both sides of culture for people that enjoy listening to high art music as this song was popular at the time and can be perceived to people as political song due to the cold war going on at the time.
Bricolage (meaning jumbled). Bricolage refers to the process of adapting and juxtaposing old and new texts, images, ideas or narratives to produce whole new meanings. This links to Deutschland 83 such as the revealing of the official documents that Ronald Reagan himself signed off back in the past but now coming into light into a 2015 drama.
Meta-narratives are the ideas and concepts that have been used to attempt to explain the way the world is and the way it should be. In postmodern society it is argued that people no longer believe there are absolute ways to explain reality. as most of our cultural understanding is based on the personal interpretations we make from the media representations that dominate our culture, therefore grand narratives are too simplistic and too narrow in their approach. Audiences still respond positively to classical structures and representations as they are more familiar and more reassuring. however, postmodern construction of texts and ideas began to become more prominent in mainstream media. people preferred the more comforting approach that conventional text construction provided. conventional ideas and structures are beginning to be more visible in mainstream media text production once more.
7) Now look at page 4 of the factsheet. How does Deutschland 83 demonstrate aspects of the postmodern in its construction and ideological positioning?
Deutschland 83 demonstrates aspects of postmodernism in its construction and ideological positioning as it is written from the perspective of a young Stasi officer in east Germany which is not what is usually seen with pieces of media from this time.
The scene that best provides an example of postmodernism in Deutschland 83 is the supermarket scene where he runs into the supermarket after fleeing from his aunt where he is then presented with a supermarket with filled shelves mirroring the work of Andy Worhol while a pop song "Sweet dreams are made of these" plays in the background with the lyrics "Some of them want to use you... Some of them want to abuse you" possibly showing how Martin feels internally at the time.
There is a lot of challenging work here - you will have plenty of time to complete it so take it slowly, read around the subject and re-watch the scenes from the first episode on All4 to help develop impressive academic answers to these questions.
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