Post WWII german culture
In this ambitious study, Uta G. Poiger attempts to trace the developments of Post-WWII popular culture in East and West Germany, paying close attention to reaction and politicization that framed each side's discussions. The picture that emerges seems to be extremely accurate, but it is at the same time, very confusing. Reactions of all sorts of sociologists, pundits and commentators leaves the reader with an obfuscated view of what life in both East and West Germany was like after WWII. Poiger's cultural scholarship focuses on interpretations of Hollywood movies, jazz, and rock 'n' roll, and the class, gender, and racial anxieties that American cultural imports evoked. Poiger shows that every time new American music and fashion were made available, they inevitably crashed up against a counter-wave of adult panic about their effects on the morality, sexuality, and national identity of Germans. Commentators feared that the blatant sensuality of American films and the openly erotic gyrations of jitterbug and other dances would corrupt innocent German girls. They also worried that Westerns, gangster movies, and films such as The Wild One undermined efforts to reconstruct masculinity as less aggressive, more self-controlled than und
West German reaction to Jazz, for example, ranges from ambivalence to apprehension to outrage to hatred to acceptance, depending on which magazine is cited and which year it is. Youth were no longer controlled by denying them their fashions, music, and alienated heroes but by ignoring the political meaning of their behavior and styles. The Cold War liberals co-opted the rebellious, gender-bending, antimilitarist young Germans for use as consumer weapons of the war. This is significant because Poiger is concerned with gender and racial construction, but she neglects to study how the younger generation defined and reacted to these social constructs. Nowhere in the book does a German who grew up in that period describe what the experience of being a German youth was like. This creates a divorced view of German youth culture as it relies on the stereotypes used to describe them based on the reactions and fears of the older generation. She labels the friendly interpreters of Americanization as "Cold War liberals" who, she maintains, were intent on establishing West Germany's place as an American ally and a military power within NATO. Despite their intense opposition to one another, Poiger asserts that Stalinist East Germans and conservative West Germans reacted similarly to American culture. This anxiety is not cut and dry, however, as Poiger's narrative often illustrates contradictions in the perception of youth culture. Poiger argues that elitist Germans relinquished the long struggle to save culture from the dangers of consumerism, and redefined West German culture as part of an international bourgeois way of life. Perhaps this politicized view of East and West Germany obscures the experience of German youth. In depoliticizing culture and consumption, Poiger asserts, they actually employed them for political purposes. The assumption by Poiger seems to be that the German youths were politically motivated, but aside from references to occasional opposition to military service, Poiger does not demonstrate that the kids who raced motorcycles, wore ducktails or tight sweaters, and rioted outside Bill Haley concerts saw themselves as rebels against the political system, gender norms, or reigning cultural hierarchies. Thus, they pointed to the lack of consumerism and cultural diversity in the East as evidence of the deficiency of Communism.
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Acceptance Essays
