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I'm back!
Hello! Berlin was lovely - noticeably different from when I visited two years ago (Starbucks and McDonalds seem to have made inroads, yet at the same time Bio-Essen (organic food) seems to be making further strides, with Bionade way more expectable than some sort of equivalent over here), but also, to my tourist's eyes, familiarly different in the way's it's been to me since 2006.
I'd love to hear from the Germans on my flist about their thoughts on Ostalgie, because I was very much struck by my mother's and my souvenirs. I mean, Mum had never seen the Ampelmännchen before, so perhaps it was inevitable that we ended up in one of the shops that sells paraphernalia associated with them (though I'm not sure it could ever be inevitable that Mum would buy Ampelmännchen pastry cutters - why the random I am uncertain, since we rarely if ever make biscuits and usually only use cutters for scones or mince pies, neither of which would work very well - though I suppose it proves we're related one way or another). But then it wasn't till after I got myself a model Trabi (it's lime green; vroom!; the licence plate says DDR-1989) that I realised we'd collectively very much bought into the commercialisation of East Berlin/Germany's history, rather than going for something more comprehensively-Berlin-y (like the glass bear full of honey in the KaDeWe - yes, that this was called a Honey Bear amused me).
The thing is, I can't work out whether, from my position as a tourist, I'm doing a useful thing in supporting the preservation of East Germany's memory (no matter how frivolously), or whether I'm supporting the myth that it was all funny little men on traffic lights and whimsical sedan cars. Even thinking about this I feel I should be asking myself one of those 'who am I to say...?' questions, but I can't work out whether it should be 'who am I to say that it was all bad?' or 'who am I to say that it was in any way good?', if that makes sense. Obviously(?) it was a mix of the two - or is that just what Goodbye, Lenin wants me to think?
Maybe I should stop over-intellectualising souvenir-buying and be content that we helped some souvenir sellers make their targets. I kind of regret not going to the Stasi exhibition, though, if only for balance to my Trabi!vroom! (There was so little time! I think I spent 80% of the time either walking or sleeping...)
But if we're talking about over-intellectualising, I might as well mention the comics. Because I'm still annoyed about the sexualised marketing of Buffy; I'm annoyed that the big!climactic!drama is a sex scene instead of a boss fight (this can be done well, but I don't understand how sex instead of fighting has been built as a thematic point in the season; as it is it just feels like the female narrative ending in sex once again, especially since this is selling itself as a retconned climax to all the seasons - and, hey, apparently sex and power are bad for women too; two birds with one remarkably unsubversive stone, eh, Joss?); I'm annoyed that the TwilightZone is symbolically represented by people wearing sheets (because you know what, Joss, the Ancient World is not that different to this one; you aren't that safe); I'm annoyed the Slayer mythos has been divorced from all the human bullshit that made it so believable and relevant, to be replaced by some sort of bizarre sentient Naturegod; I'm annoyed by the solipsism that Earth is of central importance to the Universe, because what is solipsism if not the fount of faily privilege?
Though, thinking about it, I think I'm mostly annoyed that the annoyance I feel, no matter how extreme, cannot compare to how passionately I once enjoyed watching the show. :(
ALTHOUGH, making myself read - DID YOU SEE HOW SATSU PUT DAWN IN CHARGE? Feel the chemistry, my friends. :P There are some characters I still care about, OK?
I'd love to hear from the Germans on my flist about their thoughts on Ostalgie, because I was very much struck by my mother's and my souvenirs. I mean, Mum had never seen the Ampelmännchen before, so perhaps it was inevitable that we ended up in one of the shops that sells paraphernalia associated with them (though I'm not sure it could ever be inevitable that Mum would buy Ampelmännchen pastry cutters - why the random I am uncertain, since we rarely if ever make biscuits and usually only use cutters for scones or mince pies, neither of which would work very well - though I suppose it proves we're related one way or another). But then it wasn't till after I got myself a model Trabi (it's lime green; vroom!; the licence plate says DDR-1989) that I realised we'd collectively very much bought into the commercialisation of East Berlin/Germany's history, rather than going for something more comprehensively-Berlin-y (like the glass bear full of honey in the KaDeWe - yes, that this was called a Honey Bear amused me).
The thing is, I can't work out whether, from my position as a tourist, I'm doing a useful thing in supporting the preservation of East Germany's memory (no matter how frivolously), or whether I'm supporting the myth that it was all funny little men on traffic lights and whimsical sedan cars. Even thinking about this I feel I should be asking myself one of those 'who am I to say...?' questions, but I can't work out whether it should be 'who am I to say that it was all bad?' or 'who am I to say that it was in any way good?', if that makes sense. Obviously(?) it was a mix of the two - or is that just what Goodbye, Lenin wants me to think?
Maybe I should stop over-intellectualising souvenir-buying and be content that we helped some souvenir sellers make their targets. I kind of regret not going to the Stasi exhibition, though, if only for balance to my Trabi!vroom! (There was so little time! I think I spent 80% of the time either walking or sleeping...)
But if we're talking about over-intellectualising, I might as well mention the comics. Because I'm still annoyed about the sexualised marketing of Buffy; I'm annoyed that the big!climactic!drama is a sex scene instead of a boss fight (this can be done well, but I don't understand how sex instead of fighting has been built as a thematic point in the season; as it is it just feels like the female narrative ending in sex once again, especially since this is selling itself as a retconned climax to all the seasons - and, hey, apparently sex and power are bad for women too; two birds with one remarkably unsubversive stone, eh, Joss?); I'm annoyed that the TwilightZone is symbolically represented by people wearing sheets (because you know what, Joss, the Ancient World is not that different to this one; you aren't that safe); I'm annoyed the Slayer mythos has been divorced from all the human bullshit that made it so believable and relevant, to be replaced by some sort of bizarre sentient Nature
Though, thinking about it, I think I'm mostly annoyed that the annoyance I feel, no matter how extreme, cannot compare to how passionately I once enjoyed watching the show. :(
ALTHOUGH, making myself read - DID YOU SEE HOW SATSU PUT DAWN IN CHARGE? Feel the chemistry, my friends. :P There are some characters I still care about, OK?
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I usually come away from it all with a deep sense of satisfying superiority. I may have my moments of being a whack job, but no one's going to look at a show I produced or pick up a comic book I wrote half a century from now and say "Wow, she was in need of some serious therapy." Not that my feeling is justified, but it feels good anyway.
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