Quote, Double Quote : Aesthetics Between High and Popular Culture [1 ed.] 9789401210447, 9789042037960

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Quote, Double Quote

171

Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft

Begründet von Alberto Martino und in Verbindung mit Francis Claudon (Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne) – Rüdiger Görner (Queen Mary, University of London) – Achim Hölter (Universität Wien) – Klaus Ley (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) – John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt University) – Alfred Noe (Universität Wien) – Manfred Pfister (Freie Universität Berlin) – Sven H. Rossel (Universität Wien)

herausgegeben von

Norbert Bachleitner (Universität Wien)

Redaktion: Paul Ferstl und Rudolf Pölzer Anschrift der Redaktion: Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Sensengasse 3A , A-1090 Wien

Quote, Double Quote Aesthetics between High and Popular Culture

Edited by Paul Ferstl and Keyvan Sarkhosh

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014

Cover images: www.dreamstime.com Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de “ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents Prescriptions pour la permanence”. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. Die Reihe “Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft” wird ab dem Jahr 2005 gemeinsam von Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York und dem Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin herausgegeben. Die Veröffentlichungen in deutscher Sprache erscheinen im Weidler Buchverlag, alle anderen bei Editions Rodopi. From 2005 onward, the series “Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft” will appear as a joint publication by Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York and Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin. The German editions will be published by Weidler Buchverlag, all other publications by Editions Rodopi. ISBN: 978-90-420-3796-0 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1044-7 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl Introduction: Popular Culture in the Field of ‘Undercomplexity’ and ‘Imbalanced Coding’

7

Moritz Baßler “New Standards of Beauty and Style and Taste”. Expanding the Concept of Camp

23

Achim Hölter Doppelte Optik and lange Ohren – Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise

43

Marion Wittfeld “Wartime Entertainment”: Press Instructions of the NS Propaganda Ministry on Literary Texts in Magazines

65

Norbert Bachleitner Literary Field or “Digital Soup”? Literature in the Internet

87

Keyvan Sarkhosh »Sick, sick, sick«? Pornography, Disgust, and the Limit Values of Aesthetics

99

Daniel Syrovy Sharks, Spiders, Locusts, Bats, and Rats: Thoughts Toward the Morphology of Creature Features

121

Sabine Schönfellner Appropriating the Undead: Zombies Outside the Horror Genre

135

Stefan Tetzlaff Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series, or: Why Family Guy Does not Copy The Simpsons

151

Paul Ferstl Wrestling with Narratives: Reflections on the Montréal Screwjob

167

6 Esteban Sanchino Martinez The Logic of Metallica out of the Spirit of the Drastic: Reflections on Serious Writing in Popular Culture

179

Ulrich Meurer Becoming Line: On Some Features of Philosophy in Salut, Deleuze!

197

Monika Schmitz-Emans Alphabetical Writing between Information, Entertainment, and Experiment. Playful Variations of Lexicography in High and Popular Culture

221

Notes on Contributors

245



Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl Introduction: Popular Culture in the Field of ‘Undercomplexity’ and ‘Imbalanced Coding’1 Nowadays it hardly needs any justification for a literary or cultural scholar why he or she deals with popular culture. And if anyone should demand for it, one can in good conscience refer to such prominent pioneers as Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco and many others who have paved the way for a critically founded examination and discussion of phenomena of popular culture.2 However, the question of the ‘popular’ in culture and its relationship to so-called ‘high culture’ remain an unsettled issue. This is even truer as two current developments may catch one’s eye on closer inspection of the popular cultural discourse: First, one can observe that on the one hand popular culture is becoming more and more avant-gardist, leading to a new mode which could be referred to as ‘elitist pop’.3 Here, the films of Quentin Tarantino, TV series such as The Sopranos and The Simpsons or even the Simon Brenner crime novels by Austrian writer Wolf Haas might come to one’s mind. On the other hand, the alleged ‘high culture’ increasingly seems to absorb elements from popular culture. This may indeed lead to a “dissatisfaction with the distinction between high culture and popular culture”, as Sabine Coelsch-Foisner has pointed out in her preface to another recent volume focusing on the relationship between high and popular culture.4 As a consequence, we can either challenge the general distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ or, if we leave it untouched in essence, we may be inclined to ask how the reciprocal exchange processes between the two poles precisely

 1 2

3

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The authors would like to sincerely thank Daniel Syrovy for his insights in the discussions of this introduction. Without question, a milestone in the serious treatment of popular culture from the perspective of literary scholars is issue number eight (1966) of the famous French literary journal Communications. Not only does this issue contain papers of Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Gérard Genette, Tzvetan Todorov, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Claude Bremond, and Christian Metz which are seminal for a structuralist narratology. It also ‘exhibits’ the dignity of popular culture for a serious approach as Barthes (‘Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits’, in Communications, 8 [1966], 1-27) and Eco (‘James Bond: Une combinatoire narrative’, in Communications, 8 [1966], 77-93) develop their arguments on the basis of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Cf. Joe Grixti, ‘Blockbuster Art and Elitist Pulp: Textual Discrimination in the Age of Commercial Media’, in High Culture and/versus Popular Culture, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Dorothea Flothow (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009), pp. 31-44 (p. 32). Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, ‘Preface: High Culture and/versus Popular Culture’, in High Culture and/versus Popular Culture, ed. by Coelsch-Foisner and Flothow (Heidelberg: Winter 2009), pp. vii-xi (p. vii).

8

Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl

function. However, in both cases a clear notion of interrelation and/or delimitation between high and popular culture is imperative. This brings us to the second aspect: Despite the growing, yet still manageable number of publications and conferences in the field of popular culture, a large number of the current discussions either lack a clear theoretical approach or they focus merely on phenomena of a single cultural and language area.5 However, our object of investigation – i.e. popular culture and its relationship to high culture – not only requires a broad perspective crossing linguistic, cultural, temporal, and media borders and, therefore, is a pertinent object of Comparative Literature. It also demands a theoretically informed approach leading to the delineation, even uncovering of discernible patterns and recurring forms. In other words: priority is given to the analysis of inherent structures, techniques, and contexts. Our investigation will lead us to the question of changing social and cultural conditions, recontextualisations, and new modes of reception. How is it possible that something which was once regarded as ‘trash’ – as the leftover of the cultural industry and/or as deliberate low art – becomes quotable, and by being quoted, by being re-contextualised and (re-)integrated in a piece of ‘art’ or any other cultural product, is provided with a supposedly additional sense it formerly did not possess? Accordingly, the following considerations will focus on the underlying conditions and inherent structures of the current new reception of popular culture which allows for, as Susan Sontag has put it, a “new sensibility” (even though for us the question of whether the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture becomes more and more obsolete is still pending).6 Hasn’t this ‘new sensibility’ taken the place of the judgment of taste? Within the realm of the popular, historical and even social distance leads to a feeling of nostalgia combined with pleasure – not even on the side of the individual recipient, but even in an all-encompassing cultural sense. These considerations call for a set of tools which enables a precise description of the inherent structures of the diverse phenomena of popular culture as well as of the 5

6

The aforementioned volume High Culture and/versus Popular Culture, for instance, comprises the papers presented at the 18thBritish Cultural Studies Conference in Salzburg in 2007 and is therefore obviously anchored in the field of English Studies. Other conferences such as ‘Low’ ganz ‘high’? Zur Hybridisierung von Populär und Hochkultur in der Gegenwartsliteratur, held in July 2010 at the Literaturhaus Berlin on behalf of the Sonderforschungsbereich 626 of the Freie Universität Berlin, merely concentrate on contemporary literature. – Cf. also the subsequent conference proceedings: Thomas Wegmann and Norbert Christian Wolf, “High” und “Low”. Zur Interferenz von Hoch- und Populärkultur in der Gegenwartsliteratur (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2012). Susan Sontag, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 293-304 (p. 302).

Introduction

9

cultural conditions laying the path to possible transpositions between ‘high’ and ‘low’. This again must go hand in hand with the attempt to obliterate any terminological fuzziness. Terms like ‘mass culture’ and ‘popular culture’ on the one hand, ‘trash’, ‘camp’, and ‘kitsch’ on the other are often used synonymously. Consequently, it is our intention to counter this inaccuracy with a precise differentiation and nomothetic definition of the respective notions. The problem can be addressed from several sides. As a first approach we might follow Simon Frith who stresses “that to understand popular values we need to look at the social contexts in which value judgements are deployed, to look at the social reasons why some aspects of a sound or spectacle are valued over others.”7 From the perspective of sociology and, especially, critical theory, the differentiation between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is closely connected with a critique of mass culture. As Susan Sontag has put it: “The distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ (or ‘mass’ or ‘popular’) culture is based partly on an evaluation of the difference between unique and massproduced objects.”8 Sontag’s explanation (which, by the way, can be taken as a proof for the aforementioned undifferentiated equitation of different notions) refers to the production-related aspect of mass culture and its consumption. In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno have described the effects of mass production of popular culture in detail, stressing that mass produced cultural artefacts lack any originality: For the consumer there is nothing left to classify, since the classification has already been preempted by the schematism of production. This dreamless art for the people fulfills the dreamy idealism which went too far for idealism in its critical form. Everything comes from consciousness – from that of God for Malebranche and Berkeley, and from earthly production management for mass art. Not only do hit songs, stars, and soap operas conform to types recurring cyclically as rigid invariants, but the specific content of productions, the seemingly variable element, is itself derived from those types. The details become interchangeable.”9

7

8 9

Simon Frith, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Defending Popular Culture from the Populists, in A Cultural Studies Reader. History, Theory, Practice, ed. by. Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan (London and New York: Longman, 1995), pp. 356-366 (p. 356). Sontag, One Culture, p. 297. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, in: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments, ed. by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) pp. 94-136 (p. 98).

10 Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl In this sense, the objects of popular culture are mere commodities, meant for consumption and thus short-lived.10 As mass-produced objects they lack uniqueness. As Umberto Eco has already pointed out, above all the products of mass media such as pop songs, TV series, comic strips, or detective novels are often regarded as lacking originality and instead “seen as more or less successful tokens of a given model or type”; in short, they are “serial products” and as such considered as contrary to art.11 But who is it who feels attracted to such goods of supposedly low cultural esteem? In other words: Who has got a taste for mass culture? According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu it is possible to discern “three zones of taste which roughly correspond to educational levels and social classes: (1) Legitimate taste, i.e., the taste for legitimate works […].” For Bourdieu, these ‘legitimate works’ are represented amongst others by Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier but to a certain degree also by cinema and even jazz music, in short by works generally regarded as artistically valuable. And he argues that the ‘legitimate taste’ “increases with educational level and is highest in those fractions of the dominant class that are richest in educational capital.” He then distinguishes “(2) ‘Middle-brow’ taste, which brings together the minor works of the major arts” which he thinks to be “more common in the middle classes (classes moyennes) than in the working classes (classes populaires) or in the ‘intellectual’ fractions of the dominant class. (3) Finally, ‘popular’ taste’ which is either represented by works labelled as ‘light’ and “devaluated by popularization” or by works “totally devoid of artistic ambition or pretension”.12 No doubt, Bourdieu’s diction is revelatory: the differentiation of different “zones of taste” serves as a means to create and sustain social discrepancies and hierarchies. However, it seems doubtful whether such a clear distinction still works (if it ever did). The affinity of many academics and scholars – who, by definition, should be members of the (at least intellectual) ‘upper class’ and thereby representatives of the ‘legitimate taste’ – towards pop cultural phenomena is a fact that can scarcely be denied and which even had its impact on university curricular. Hardly anyone will be surprised to find professors teaching on comic strips or TV series alongside courses on, say, Dante, Shakespeare, and James Joyce. In an academic and intellectual cli10 11

12

Cf. Umberto Eco, ‘Prefazione’, in Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 2008), pp. 3-25 (p. 8). Umberto Eco, ‘Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics’, in Reading Eco: An Anthology, ed. by Rocco Capozzi (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997) pp.14-33 (p. 15). Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 16.

Introduction 11

mate that has passed through and has been deeply influenced by postmodernism, the irreconcilable opposition of ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture seems obsolete.13 Moreover, phenomena which are part of one’s private life are revaluated, for example, when a literary scholar addresses the TV series of his childhood henceforth from a theoretically infused position while still bearing nostalgic feelings for it. As Leslie A. Fiedler has argued in his famous paper Cross the Border, Close the Gap (1969), this attitude can be equated with postmodernism: Postmodernism implies the closing of the gap between critic and audience, also if by critic one understands leader of taste and by audience, follower. But most importantly, it implies the closing of the gap between artist and audience or, at any rate, between professional and amateur in the realm of art.14

This stands in stark contrast to Bourdieu’s hypothesis that “nothing more rigorously distinguishes the different classes than the disposition objectively demanded by the legitimate consumption of legitimate works, the aptitude for taking a specifically aesthetic point of view on objects already constituted aesthetically […].”15 Hence “the clear-cut separation of ordinary dispositions from the specifically aesthetic disposition” is blurred and substituted by “the affirmation of continuity between art and life”; and it is the latter which according to Bourdieu defines the popular ‘aesthetic’.16 Rather, the aesthetic judgment of taste seems to be superseded by a new attitude towards life, art, and culture, a new way of living, in short, a new sensation and a ‘new sensibility’. Following Lawrence Grossberg, ‘sensibility’ can be understood as a “dominant organization of effectivity”.17 Hence, it is impossible to be indifferent to popular culture. Rather it affects us. In many cases, the impact of popular culture on the recipients is quite concrete, as Grossberg correctly points out: “Popular culture often inscribes its effects directly upon the body; tears, laughter, hair-tingling, screams, spine-chilling, eye-closing, erections, etc.”18 To sum it up: “Popular culture seems to work at the intersec 13

14 15 16 17

18

Cf. Laura Kipnis, ‘“Refunctioning” Reconsidered.Towards a Left Popular Culture’, in High Theory/Low Culture. Analysing Popular Television and Film, ed. by Colin MacCabe (New York: St. Martins’s Press, 1986), pp. 11-36 (p. 20). Leslie A. Fiedler, ‘Cross the Border, Close the Gap’, in Playboy, 16.12 (1969), 151, 230, 252-258 (p. 256). Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 40. Ibid., p. 32. Lawrence Grossberg, ‘Mapping Popular Culture’, in We Gotta Get Out of this Place. Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 69-87 (p. 72). Ibid., p. 79.

12 Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl tion of the body and emotions.”19 Certainly, the predominant emotion arisen by popular culture is pleasure. However, pleasure is not entirely a corporal reaction. It is in fact “a complex phenomenon” which encompasses a large variety of reasons and reactions such as the satisfaction of doing what others would have to do; the enjoyment of doing what you want; the fun of breaking the rules; the fulfillment – however temporary and artificial – of desires […]; the relief of catharsis; the comfort of escaping from negative situations; the reinforcement of identifying with a character; the thrill of sharing another’s emotional life; the stature of expertise and collecting; the euphoria of ‘vegging out’; the compulsion of overconsumption.20

It can hardly be denied that there is also an intellectual side to pleasure. If we bear in mind that nowadays almost all recipients have been socialised by postmodernism (at least unconsciously), then the correlation of popular culture and pleasure becomes once again obvious. It is the result of a mode of reception that takes delight not so much in novelty (of a story, e.g.), but rather in recurrent patterns and repetition.21 For these, Umberto Eco has coined the term “seriality”, which he regards as a predominant feature of post-modern aesthetics.22 – Repetitio delectat. As Eco has already lengthily explained, using the example of Raiders of the Lost Arc and other films,23 we rejoice in recognising familiar patterns: We are pleased when expectations are met and confirmed, but sometimes the opposite is true as well and we take delight in the ironic variation of a familiar pattern, the non-compliance of expectations. – Variatio delectat. It is no accident that Eco draws his examples mainly from films of a certain genre, e.g., adventure or science fiction. It seems to us that the question of pleasure in the reception of popular culture is closely connected to the aspect of genre. As a feature bundle of codes and conventions,24 every genre bears the potential of indulging in self-irony, finding its expression in parody, travesty, and pastiche. And it is the knowledge of this potential of selfirony which renders a genre suitable for the masses – a phenomenon that surely does not originate in our time, but whose proliferation has accelerated since the early 20th century. Moreover, a growing cultural familiarity of a genre’s conventions on the side of the recipient leads to its increasing poten 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 74. 21 Eco, Innovation and Repetition, p. 20. 22 Ibid., p. 18. 23 Ibid., p. 22-23. 24

On the importance of conventions for the concept of genre from the perspective of cinema studies cf. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art. An Introduction, 8th ed. (Boston et al.: McGraw-Hill, 2008), p. 320.

Introduction 13

tial of indulgence in self-irony in the course of time. This process may be conceived as a helix: the increase in genre-parody and self-irony goes hand in hand with the acceleration in the flow of information (at least since the 1950s and the rise of television), leading to a more and more flat cultural hierarchy as well as to the abolition of cultural authorities and social taboos. At the same time, it is possible to discern a kind of ‘double helix’ causing a counter movement: the familiarity with a genre’s codes and conventions accounts for the resistance of the sociocultural alien towards parody. The potential of irony decreases with a growing sociocultural distance, similar to the renunciation of western religions that many experience as being relative and ironic, and the completely unironic orientation towards, for example, eastern religions and belief systems or esotericism. However, as soon as the latter ones become familiar, too, and are incorporated into the, say, westernpostmodern sociocultural context, they in turn become likewise potential targets for parody and self-irony. Turning back to the question of genre, this means that a tendency towards (self-)irony and parody increases with the recipient’s growing familiarisation with a genre’s content. But when this potential of irony reaches a certain degree of ‘saturation’, the view on a genre’s proper content and convention gets obstruct. This is the moment, where a genre’s revival can begin. Take for example the current wave of ‘re-boots’ in cinema, where prominent representatives of certain genres such as the James Bond and Star Trek series, Japanese samurai films, or Scandinavian crime novels with a clear tendency toward ‘hard boiled’ fiction have been revisited. Of course, these ‘re-boots’ are not a mere return to the origins. Rather they revive the original conventions of genres while at the same time incorporating new developments – however in an entirely unironic manner. Consequently, as soon as a certain mode of reception has been established, cultural artefacts are produced in this vein. Due to its clear-cut genre conventions that allow for a facile control of sub-texts, and their greater material and human resources, mass culture can more easily adapt to such changing modes of reception than ‘high’ culture. This last aspect brings us to the question of the modes of production and the inherent structures of the products of mass or popular culture. Focusing on a precise definition of ‘trash’ as an aesthetic category of post-modernism, Sarkhosh has developed a taxonomy that is indebted to structuralism,25 and which, with some slight modification, can also be applied to mass or ‘low’ culture in general. This taxonomy can be summed up in the formula Unter25

Cf. Keyvan Sarkhosh, ‘“Trash” als ästhetische Kategorie der Postmoderne’, in Comparative Arts. Universelle Ästhetik im Fokus der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Achim Hölter (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2011), pp. 367-377 (pp. 372-373).

14 Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl komplexität bei gleichzeitiger Übercodierung. However, ‘Übercodierung’, ‘overcoding’ is not to be understood as mode of ‘extra-coding’ in the interpretive process as coined by Umberto Eco, assigning additional meaning to an expression.26 Instead we are reverting to the differentiation of the five different codes responsible for the creation of ‘meaning’ in a text, which Roland Barthes has described in his essay S/Z – i.e., the hermeneutic code, the semic code, the symbolic code, the proairetic code, and the referential or cultural code.27 As used in the aforementioned formula, ‘Übercodierung’ designates an ‘imbalanced coding’ among those five codes: an overemphasis of one code at the expanse of one or several others. Take for example the tendency of popular culture towards explicitness, perhaps most prominently on display in those works labelled as ‘trash’: the explicit description or portrayal of sexual or violent actions can be understood as an over-emphasis of the semic code to the disadvantage of the hermeneutic and/or proairetic code and as serving as a means to create a strong stimulus on the side of the reader or spectator. Besides, the tendency towards explicitness implicates a reference to the cultural code which is consciously or unconsciously violated. However, this does not necessarily mean that the referential code is downgraded. On the contrary, due to this violation the cultural code may come to the fore. This ‘imbalanced coding’ which characterises ‘low’ culture goes hand in hand with a tendency towards a reduction of complexity. This ‘undercomplexity’ can become evident on a material level, for example, when products such as the so-called ‘B and C movies’ or dime novels are of low-grade quality: be that either amateurish skills (of a writer or director), wooden actors, or simply poor material (cheap paper or celluloid full of scratches). Often enough (but not necessarily) suffering from insufficient financial resources, many products of mass culture are literally ‘trash’ – meant for quick consumption and without lasting value. The ‘undercomplexity’ can also come to the fore in form and content, for example when sensual effects count more than, say, an artistically elaborated network of intertwining story lines. In other word, what we tend to designate as ‘low’ or ‘middle-brow’ art is often much more engaged in straining after effects than in the consistent psychological motivation of characters. Not least, this reduction of complexity is facilitated by a strong inclination to the conventions of a certain genre. The previous explanations can be integrated into a general definition: all forms and phenomena of ‘low’ culture are characterised by a concurrence of (structural) undercomplexity and imbalanced coding. The diverse sub26 27

Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington, London: Indiana University Press 1976), p. 134. Cf. Roland Barthes, S/Z, transl. by Richard Miller, with a preface by Richard Howard (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 18-21.

Introduction 15

categories of ‘low’ culture result from the gradually different occurrences of undercomplexity and imbalanced coding, their frame of reference as well as their relative success and acceptance on the side of the recipients. This definition encompasses all cultural artefacts such as literature, music, visual arts, cinema, fashion, etc., but also spheres of action like politics and, last but not least, notions of personal style. Conversely, ‘high’ culture can be conceived as being complex and presenting a state of ‘balanced coding’ (maßcodiert). This moderate coding implies a fair balance between all applied codes. And finally, artefacts which are characterised by ‘imbalanced coding’ while at the same time being complex in form and/or content can be considered as pretentious. For the still unsettled issue of the diverse sub-categories of ‘low’ culture, we recommend the following differentiation: Speaking with Horkheimer and Adorno, mass culture indiscriminately comprises everything produced by culture industry. Mass culture describes an undifferentiated and unspecific area of cultural production and consumption; its products aim at “a radically heterogeneous, anonymous public, therefore it is a culture of the smallest common denominator” (“ein radikal heterogenes, anonymes Publikum, also eine Kultur des kleinsten gemeinsamen Nenners.”).28 This common denominator is industrial production and consumption; culture (art) is thus reduced to a mere commodity.29 In contrast, popular culture designates those products of culture industry which due to specific modes of reception and a high acceptance (vulgo popularity) are assigned with a kind of ‘charge’, i.e., an additional value or a specific form of ‘social energy’ in the light of certain cultural or historic circumstances. In this respect ‘social energy’ is – as Stephen Greenblatt has put it – “manifested in the capacity of certain verbal, aural, and visual traces to produce, shape, and organize collective physical and mental experiences. Hence it is associated with repeatable forms of pleasure and interest, with the capacity to arouse disquiet, pain, fear, the beating of the heart, pity, laughter, tension, relief, wonder.”30 Therefore, the pop music of the 1960s and 70s which developed in the context of the Vietnam War and as an answer to an intergenerational conflict represents a prominent example for popular culture. Accordingly, for Leslie A. Fiedler “pop art is, whatever its overt politics, subversive – a threat to all hierarchies  28 29

30

Barbara Kuon, ‘Massenkultur’, in Gegenwartskultur. 130 Stichwörter, ed. by Ralf Schnell (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2006), pp. 128-130 (p. 128). Cf. Horkeimer and Adorno, p. 107: “The culture industry can boast of having energetically accomplished and elevated to a principle the often inept transposition of art to the consumption sphere, of having stripped amusement of its obtrusive naiveties and improved the quality of its commodities.” Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations. The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 6.

16 Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl insofar as it is hostile to order.”31 And as John Caughie has put it: popular culture “is one of the sites where forms of consciousness and identity are constituted.”32 Whereas popular culture has an affinity toward conflict, kitsch are those products of culture industries that have a strong emphasis on harmony, happiness, and sentimentality. In a certain way, they can be grasped as the ‘female principle’ in cultural production.33 This can be illustrated by an example taken from Heinrich Mann’s novel Im Schlaraffenland (1900). Near the end of the novel, the main character Andreas Zumsee gets annoyed when his mistress Adelheid gives him the same two lamps as present that her husband Türkheimer had given to his love-affair, the little Matzke. Zumsee despises these lamps as “süßen Kitsch, unkünstlerisch und unanständig lüstern” (“sweet kitsch, inartistic, and indelicately lascivious”), something that could only please a woman – or a man with the “Geschmack einer Kokotte” (“taste of a cocotte”).34 Furthermore, camp can be conceived as an offspring of kitsch which is characterised by a high potential toward irony caused by an extremely imbalanced coding. This results in a mode of reception that regards everything as artificial, improper, and two-sided. “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman’.”35 And ultimately, trash are those products made according to the techniques of culture industry without benefiting from its financial and/or human resources. The general definition of ‘low’ culture as a concurrence of undercomplexity and imbalanced coding makes obvious that its relationship towards ‘high’ culture is a relational one. The boundary between high culture and low culture is neither hermetic nor stable. But although both partially share common features, they differ in their respective inherent structural dispositions. By now, the wide-spread mechanism of a reception that has been strongly influenced by structuralism and post-modernism has led to an amplification and acceleration of cultural production between these two movements. In the process, one can either revert to forms and contents which are suitable for the masses or extremely popular, or, in somewhat  31 Fiedler, p. 256. 32 33 34 35

John Caughie, ‘Popular Culture. Notes and Revisions’, in High Theory/Low Culture, pp. 156-171 (p. 162). Cf. Ute Dettmar and Thomas Küpper, ‘Einleitung’, in Kitsch. Texte und Theorien, ed. by Dettmar and Küpper (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007), pp. 9-16 (p. 11). Heinrich Mann, Im Schlaraffenland. Ein Roman unter feinen Leuten, 6th ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2006), p. 344. Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on “Camp”’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 275-292 (p. 280).

Introduction 17

elitist or avant-gardist approach, rather draw on more or less unfamiliar works of mass culture, which thereby are popularised. Thirdly, in the process of mass cultural production, genres which have become unpopular, which have been neglected or relinquished to irony, can be revived. This process is not only sustained by a selection of quotations, but also by the act of combinations which assigns additional values to the products and thus creates new contexts. The interactive production of cultural artefacts which obliterates the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ is characterised by three features: 1. Increasingly structuralistic and postmodern mechanisms and modes of reception lead to more and more structuralistic and postmodern forms and modes of productions in popular culture that are generally accepted. 2. The classical forms of artistic creation (adaptation through selection and combination) are principally the same. However, the extremely increasing number of producers and consumers (recipients) of cultural commodities (works) amplifies the potential frame of reference of ‘high’ culture. 3. Due to its superiority in material and human resources as well as its relative freedom within the boundaries of genre conventions, mass culture can particularly profit from and adapt to the new postmodern modes of reception and production and, should the situation arise, create avant-gardist works which not only display a relatively high degree of complexity, but also a light potential of success, thus rendering the boundaries between ‘high’ culture and ‘low’ culture permeable. The relationship between ‘high’ culture and ‘low’ culture and, moreover, the different reflections and perspectives on this relationship are object of the following articles, either from a more theoretical/methodological point of view or referring to exemplary case studies. The volume opens with Moritz Baßler’s contribution. He argues that the status of aesthetics in the age of mass culture needs to be thoroughly reevaluated. The concept of camp might serve as an adequate starting point for this re-evaluation. Rather than being confined to some kind of gay aesthetics, the basic features of this concept, as brought forth by Susan Sontag in 1964, could be expanded to define the radically new qualities of Pop culture as well as ‘the serious’ in its wake. Achim Hölter evaluates the impact of the triangle Wagner – Nietzsche – Thomas Mann that is, even on the internet, famous for the usage of a metaphor which, despite some variations or misquotations, is nowadays known as “doppelte”, “wechselnde”, or “zweifache Optik” (dual, changing, or double optics), denominating the compromise between artistic ambition for an élite and concessions to the general public – in the same piece of art. A metaphorological analysis follows the traces to Mozart’s analogous acoustic imagery and shows that the basic contradiction is founded in Nietzsche’s

18 Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl ambiguity on the topic, who simultaneously favoured and rejected “dual optics” in the arts. Marion Wittfeld outlines the aesthetics that constituted desirable literary entertainment under National Socialist rule, focusing on serialised novels, novellas, and short stories published in magazines between 1939 and 1945. Two sorts of documents serve as primary sources: the written press instructions of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP) for magazine editors and the Journal of the Reich Association of German Magazine Publishers (Reichsverband Deutscher Zeitschriften-Verleger, RDZV). Focusing on digital literature, Norbert Bachleitner explores mechanisms and criteria of distinction and canonization that are used to implement a “Literary Field” rather than a literary “Digital Soup” – as done by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). The digital hypertext connection of texts and the growing obsoleteness of the hierarchy between author and reader, text and commentary contribute to the levelling of high-brow and low-brow literature on the internet, and thus to attempts of canonization. Keyvan Sarkhosh shows that notions of ‘sickness’ and ‘disgust’ often serve as qualifiers for works whose art status seems to be doubtful as they bluntly defy and even transgress the borders of a culturally and aesthetically established ‘taste’ – most obviously in the genres of pornography and horror. However, by means of narrativization, depictions of extreme violence and graphically explicit, unsimulated sex have found their way into arthouse and mainstream films. This may give rise to the assumption that the borders of ‘aesthetic’ disgust have been shifted, leading to the conclusion that these borders cannot be violated or transgressed, but only approximated in terms of aesthetic ‘limit values’. From a structuralist perspective, Daniel Syrovy raises the question whether films known as Creature Features form a genre of its own; and if yes, which criteria – apart from featuring creatures – define a film of that genre. Sabine Schönfellner analyses cultural products of the recent “zombie wave”: In all of these, zombies have been transferred into new contexts outside the horror genre – into a highly intertextual novel (Die Kinder der Toten), into a literary classic (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), into a comedy (Shaun of the Dead), and into satires (Homecoming, Das dritte Lager). The central questions are whether these novels and films adapt features of the classical “zombie narrative” and how their presentation of zombies deviates from “classical” zombies. While superficially seen The Simpsons and Family Guy share a vast amount of themes, situations, and characteristics, a closer look reveals pivotal differences in respect to plot structures and narrative devices. Stefan Tetzlaff ap-

Introduction 19

plies Teun van Dijks approach to text grammar as well as Roland Barthes’ model of kernels and catalysts and shows that the frequent reproach of plagiarism does not hold as the two series prove to differ fundamentally regarding their structural handling of the grotesque. The Montréal Screwjob (November 9, 1997) is attributed with an unparalleled effect on the development of professional wrestling. Paul Ferstl describes and analyses the process in the context of structuralist narratology, interpreting the Screwjob as a metalepsis in order to explain its impact on the subsequent construction and reception of wrestling events. Esteban Sanchino Martinez argues that these days the distinction between high and popular must be regarded as a distinction which is not readily justified from a perspective of cultural poetics – using the music and lyrics of the most successful heavy metal band in the world, Metallica, as his point of reference. This kind of popular music expresses the aesthetics of the drastic, which is not only contradictory to modern aesthetic formalism, but also appears as a counter-concept to the pop cultural category of camp. For the development of post-modern pop culture this notion of aesthetics is of enormous importance because it also appears to be a mainstay and an immanent critique of pop culture. According to Ulrich Meurer, doxa opposes the conceptual ‘heights’ of philosophical writing to the ‘low’ realms of popular imagery. While a philosophical comic book thus appears as impossible hybrid, the nonconceptual or affective components of thinking and the possibility of ‘mental images’ or ‘noosigns’ both challenge the division between intellectual speculation and graphic depiction. In this context, Martin tom Dieck’s and Jens Balzer’s comic book Salut, Deleuze! may at times be shrugged off as mere illustration and reductionist popularization of thought. Meanwhile, the comic book seems to attempt the transformation of pictorial likeness into a decidedly Deleuzian, non-individual and machine-like principle of ‘faciality’. From there, it heads for a deterritorialization of face and landscape and leaves classical concepts of codification or individuality behind. In so doing, Salut, Deleuze! adumbrates a graphic ‘line of flight’ and hints at philosophy’s vital connection to non-philosophy. Finally, Monika Schmitz-Emans observes that recently, both writers and readers of literary fiction have developed an increased interest in alphabetically structured texts and books, especially in forms of lexicographic writing as a model that can be used in order to create or describe intradiegetic worlds. There is a broad range of different examples based on formats that are conventionally used in order to obtain factual information – such as encyclopaedias, conversation lexica, and dictionaries. The examples presented refer to different traditions: not only to the history of alphabetical lexicogra-

20 Keyvan Sarkhosh and Paul Ferstl phy, but also to the format of the list and to the genre of spelling books. – Among the alphabetical lexicographical books different groups and genres can be distinguished. They represent critical philosophical reflection about concepts and discourses as well as texts based on autobiographical experience and personal ideas. And there are quite different kinds of contributions to entertainment literature as, for instance, to literary Fantasy, but also to entertaining and obviously ‘useless’ representations of anachronistic, oldfashioned or otherwise ‘outlandish’ subjects of knowledge and imagination. The majority of these articles was presented at a conference (“From Arthouse to Grindhouse – and back? Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Hochund Populärkultur”) held in Vienna, Austria, 5-7 May 2011.

Bibliography Barthes, Roland, ‘Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits’, in Communications, 8 (1966), 1-27. Barthes, Roland, S/Z, transl. by Richard Miller, with a preface by Richard Howard (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson, Film Art. An Introduction, 8th ed. (Boston et al.: McGraw-Hill, 2008). Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). Caughie, John, ‘Popular Culture. Notes and Revisions’, in High Theory/Low Culture, pp. 156-171. Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine, ‘Preface: High Culture and/versus Popular Culture’, in High Culture and/versus Popular Culture, ed. by Coelsch-Foisner and Flothow (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009), pp. vii-xi. Dettmar, Ute and Thomas Küpper, ‘Einleitung’, in Kitsch. Texte und Theorien, ed. by Dettmar and Küpper (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007), pp. 9-16. Eco, Umberto, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington, London: Indiana University Press 1976). Eco, Umberto, ‘Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and PostModern Aesthetics’, in Reading Eco: An Anthology, ed. by Rocco Capozzi (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997) pp.14-33. Eco, Umberto, ‘James Bond: Une combinatoire narrative’, in Communications, 8 (1966), 77-93. Eco, Umberto, ‘Prefazione’, in Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 2008), pp. 3-25. Fiedler, Leslie A., ‘Cross the Border, Close the Gap’, in Playboy, 16.12 (1969), 151, 230, 252-258.

Introduction 21

Frith, Simon, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Defending Popular Culture from the Populists, in A Cultural Studies Reader. History, Theory, Practice, ed. by. Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan (London and New York: Longman, 1995), pp. 356-366. Greenblatt, Stephen, Shakespearean Negotiations. The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). Grixti, Joe, ‘Blockbuster Art and Elitist Pulp: Textual Discrimination in the Age of Commercial Media’, in High Culture and/versus Popular Culture, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Dorothea Flothow (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009), pp. 31-44. Grossberg, Lawrence, ‘Mapping Popular Culture’, in We Gotta Get Out of this Place. Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 69-87. Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, in: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments, ed. by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) pp. 94-136. Kipnis, Laura, ‘“Refunctioning” Reconsidered. Towards a Left Popular Culture’, in High Theory/Low Culture. Analysing Popular Television and Film, ed. by Colin MacCabe (New York: St. Martins’s Press, 1986), pp. 11-36. Kuon, Barbara, ‘Massenkultur’, in Gegenwartskultur. 130 Stichwörter, ed. by Ralf Schnell (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2006), pp. 128-130. Mann, Heinrich, Im Schlaraffenland. Ein Roman unter feinen Leuten, 6th ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2006). Sarkhosh, Keyvan, ‘“Trash” als ästhetische Kategorie der Postmoderne’, in Comparative Arts. Universelle Ästhetik im Fokus der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Achim Hölter (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2011), pp. 367-377. Sontag, Susan, ‘Notes on “Camp”’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 275-292. Sontag, Susan, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 293-304. Wegmann, Thomas and Norbert Christian Wolf, “High” und “Low”. Zur Interferenz von Hoch- und Populärkultur in der Gegenwartsliteratur (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2012).

Moritz Baßler “New Standards of Beauty and Style and Taste”. Expanding the Concept of Camp The status of aesthetics in the age of mass culture needs to be thoroughly re-evaluated. It is argued that the concept of Camp might serve as an adequate starting point for this reevaluation. Rather than being confined to some kind of gay aesthetics, the basic features of this concept, as brought forth by Susan Sontag in 1964, could be expanded to define the radically new qualities of Pop culture as well as “the serious” in its wake.

In the mid-sixties, Susan Sontag explained to the readers of glossy Mademoiselle magazine that, with her intellectual and artist friends, a new song by the Supremes would get the same kind of appreciation as a new Robert Rauschenberg painting. The fact that many of the most serious American painters, for example, are also fans of ‘the new sound’ in popular music is not the result of the search for mere diversion or relaxation; it is not, say, like Schoenberg also playing tennis. It reflects a new, more open way of looking at the world and at things in the world, our world. It does not mean the renunciation of all standards: there is plenty of stupid popular music, as well as inferior and pretentious ‘avant-garde’ paintings, films and music. The point is that there are new standards, new standards of beauty and style and taste.1

By doubling the phrase “new standards”, followed by the polysyndetic construction in the quote’s last sentence, Sontag conveys an emphasis I want to build on in this essay. Is it possible that half a century later, half a century which has seen the rise and development of media, market, and pop culture into the dominant culture of our age on a global scale, we, as literary critics, have still not lived up to these new standards? Doing academic research on Trash and Camp, for example – doesn’t it still have the aura of something that may be necessary but cannot be taken fully seriously like a children’s menu? In this essay, therefore, I will go back to some of the essentials of the aesthetics of Camp and Trash and argue that they should be generalized as aesthetic principles not just of pop culture, but of our culture full stop.

1

Susan Sontag, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility [1965], in Against Interpretation (London: Vintage 2001), pp. 293-304 (p. 303f.).

24 Moritz Baßler

I When Susan Sontag talks about Camp, or Pop, she does not regard it as some kind of trivia to be mentioned in addition to the real stuff, “like Schoenberg also playing tennis”. Rather, “this is about aesthetics, therefore it is about everything”, as Willi Winkler stated in his 1999 review of Tristesse Royale,2 the minutes of a panel discussion featuring five ‘pop authors’ in the Berlin Hotel Adlon3 – words, spoken in the spirit of Friedrich Schiller. For it was Schiller who held that only an aesthetic concept could “give mankind its full expression” (“der Menschheit ihren möglichst vollständigen Ausdruck […] geben”).4 “For, to speak out loud for once, man only plays, where he is man in the word’s full meaning, and only in playing he is fully man.”5 Therefore the German classic author is looking for a type of man who is active without working and can idealize without romanticizing, who grasps the reality of life without being limited by it, sailing the stream of events without being carried away by its torrents. Only men like this could be the keepers of the beautiful whole of human nature […] and, in all human affairs, give common judgement its law by their sensibilities.6

As we know, Schiller found this type of man in the poet. In particular, though, his description seems fitting for the young man in the course of his pop cultural socialization, the maker of lists, the mixtape bricoleur, the expert within a culture of subtle distinctions, the “dandy in the age of mass cul2 3

4

5

6

“Es geht um Ästhetik, also um alles.” Willi Winkler, ‘Männer ohne Frauen’, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.11.1999.All translations from German sources by the author. Tristesse Royale. Das popkulturelle Quintett mit Joachim Bessing, Christian Kracht, Eckhart Nickel, Alexander v. Schönburg und Benjamin v. Stuckrad-Barre (Berlin: Ullstein, 1999). Friedrich Schiller, ‘Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung’, in Werke in drei Bänden, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert, Vol. 2 (München: Hanser, 1966), pp. 540-606 (p. 557). “Denn, um es endlich auf einmal herauszusagen, der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt.” Friedrich Schiller, ‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen‘,inWerke in drei Bänden, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert, Vol. 2 (München: Hanser, 1966), pp. 445-520 (p. 481). “So müssen wir uns […] nach einer Klasse von Menschen umsehen, welche, ohne zu arbeiten, tätig ist und idealisieren kann, ohne zu schwärmen; welche alle Realitäten des Lebens mit den wenigstmöglichen Schranken desselben in sich vereiniget und vom Strome der Begebenheiten getragen wird, ohne der Raub desselben zu werden. Nur eine solche Klasse kann das schöne Ganze menschlicher Natur […] aufbewahren und in allem, was rein menschlich ist, durch ihre Gefühle dem allgemeinen Urteil Gesetze geben.” Schiller: Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, p. 596f.

Expanding the Concept of Camp 25

ture”,7 the intellectual fan that has been the hero of pop literature for a couple of years now. Five of these advanced bachelors staged themselves as the aforementioned pop cultural quintet in the Adlon, to discuss at some length the difficult aesthetics of contemporary Pop. Quite explicitly, they were willing to give common judgement its law by the means of their own aesthetic sensibility, a mode of taste they sought to express in their own complex but apodictic manner. Which, then, sounded something like this: “BENJAMIN V. STUCKRAD-BARRE: Pop is based simultaneously on the principle of exclusion and on consensus. […] As a hippy, it would be quite natural to say: How wonderful that the great band Kruder & Dorfmeister is successful at last. But as soon as the Golf driver starts listening to the same music as I do, one might get the idea that we might have other things in common, too, and therefore, then, I turn away from this music. Because with the music, I don’t want to go for the lifestyle of the Golf driver, for things like Kenwood stickers and mobile phones on the belt. This we reject. Categorically. Difficult.”8

Evidently, the aesthetics of Pop that is displayed here is an aesthetics of mixed feelings, or mixed emotions, as it was called in the 18th century. “Pop is based simultaneously on the principle of exclusion and on consensus”, it requires distance and, at the same time, identification. How so? One reason can be seen in the fact that the universe of pop culture consists of things that are always already industrial products and therefore made for mass consumption, even where they stand for elitist values. Prada or bell bottoms, Zegna shirt or Barbour jacket, Marusha or soft rock, Massive Attack or German Camp punk Die Goldenen Zitronen, Oasis or Dieter Bohlen, Sushi or Crunchips – the individual position within this culture can only be defined by selection and differentiation. Therefore, there is nothing within the cosmos of pop culture that is not, at the same time, a sign of demarcation against something else, establishing its meaning via difference. “BENJAMIN V. STUCKRAD-BARRE: Liking certain movies, for example. How strenuous is the discussion about ‘Pulp Fiction’ by Quentin Tarantino. For nowadays you simply don’t know what to deal with any more, coming up 7 8

Susan Sontag. ‘Notes on “Camp”’ [1964], in Against Interpretation (London: Vintage, 2001), pp.275-292 (p. 288). “Pop basiert gleichzeitig auf dem Prinzip des Ausschließens und des Konsenses. […] Als Hippie würde man naturgemäß sagen: Wie schön, daß die ausgezeichnete Band Kruder & Dorfmeister jetzt endlich einmal Erfolg hat. Aber wenn der Golffahrer schon damit anfängt, die gleiche Musik wie ich zu hören, wäre es ja nicht abwegig, daß wir auch ansonsten einiges gemeinsam haben, und deshalb wende ich mich dann von dieser Musik ab. Denn für den Lebensstil des Golffahrers möchte ich mich mit der Musik nicht entscheiden müssen, also für Kenwood-Aufkleber und Mobiltelefone am Gürtel. Das lehnt man ja ab. Kategorisch. Schwierig.” Tristesse Royale, p. 27.

26 Moritz Baßler with an opinion about the movie or coming up with an opinion about other people’s opinions. CHRISTIAN KRACHT: Thus, it is no longer possible to have an opinion.”9

It would be a mistake to take statements like these not seriously, just because they are put forth partly in the form of non-serious routines. Of course, pop authors can and must have opinions and take a stand, after all, they are quite notorious for their “terrorism of taste” (Der Spiegel),10 their aesthetic verdicts. But mostly, these verdicts are not based upon the thing itself, e.g. on some intrinsic quality of Kruder & Dorfmeister or Pulp Fiction, but upon the position the thing occupies within the differential system of pop culture. As it was stated by de Saussure and has become common knowledge within post-structuralism, the meaning of a sign is not defined by its reference to something else, but by its difference and equivalence to other signs of a given system. Within postmodern culture, as Dirk Baecker, a disciple of Niklas Luhmann, states in his book Wozu Kultur?, everything appears twice: first as what it is, and then as what it means within the frame of a comparison. And of course, the conjunctures of meaning feed back on what something “is”. Finally, there is nothing that “is” anything anymore if it does not, at the same time, “mean” something.11

The protagonists of Tristesse Royale take up on this semiotic common knowledge, transferring it into the sphere of aesthetics or, rather, of aesthetically dominated rules of conduct. This, then, leads us back to Schiller, whose aesthetics aimed for ethical dimensions as well. Some of us might remember the Frankfurt School-type criticism of the 1970s and early 80s accusing Schiller’s aesthetic education of repressing the political. The sometimes scathing criticism of Tristesse Royale in German feuilletons refers mainly to this kind of provocatively staged re-aesthetification, for example, when the

 9

10 11

“Zum Beispiel beim Gutfinden bestimmter Filme. Wie anstrengend ist doch die Diskussion über ‘Pulp Fiction’ von Quentin Tarantino. Heutzutage weiß man doch gar nicht mehr, womit man sich beschäftigen soll: mit der Meinungsbildung zu diesem Film oder mit der Meinungsbildung über die Meinung der anderen. CHRISTIAN KRACHT Es ist eben nicht mehr möglich, eine Meinung zu haben.” Ibid., p. 26f. Cf. ‘Amoklauf eines Geschmacksterroristen’, in: Der Spiegel, 7.9.1998, 209. “Alles erscheint doppelt, nämlich einmal als das, was es ist, und einmal als das, was es im Rahmen eines Vergleiches bedeutet. Und natürlich schlagen die Konjunkturen der Bedeutung zurück auf das, was etwas ‚ist’. Schließlich ‚ist’ nichts mehr etwas, wenn es nicht zugleich auch etwas ‚bedeutet’.” Dirk Baecker, Wozu Kultur? 3rd ed. (Berlin: Kadmos, 2003), p. 67.

Expanding the Concept of Camp 27

five authors take a break to visit a political rally at the Brandenburg Gate only to judge about the Donna Karan tops of the female protesters afterwards. Or, to give another example, Florian Illies writing about the liberating effects of Kracht’s 1995 novel Faserland: Finally, I can say that I am not the only one to find it harder to decide between the green and the blue Barbour jacket than between CDU and SPD. To finally be allowed to call the whole arsenal of values and slogans of the generation of 68, things you always found daft, daft in public simply felt liberating.12

To scent neo-conservatism here, as many critics did, still means to judge from a political point of view, thus missing the point that the political has lost its primacy here to the aesthetic. “This is about aesthetics, therefore it is about everything.” Or rather: it is about the possibility of aesthetic self-fashioning within Pop and therefore within the brand, media, and mass culture that horrified Adorno under the label of ‘culture industry’. Susan Sontag posed her famous question “how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture” as early as 1964. In striking distance to Adorno, one might say, and just like Schiller, she starts off from the authority of her own aesthetic sensibility which might aptly be characterized as a mixed emotion: “I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it.”13 Under the label of Camp, she outlines an attitude of good taste within the bad, which at first is given as a factual sensibility. Thus it is only at second sight that she can manage to figure out the laws of this strange taste, to put its new “logic of taste” into terms. Sontag is speaking from the perspective of the New York of Andy Warhol, Roy Liechtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. The finding-campy of Tiffany lamps, King Kong, Jane Russell or Swan Lake, of Flash Gordon comics, feather boas and bad stag films, but also already of pop music (“post rock’n’-roll, what the French call yé yé”14) – all of this comes as a strategy of gay aesthetics at first, serving to break away from the existentialist highbrow culture of their contemporaries. Today, the more interesting aspect of Camp might be its inclination towards a genuinely aesthetic possibility of transcending the disgust for the technically reproduced work of art. This is

 12

13 14

“Nicht nur ich, so durfte man endlich sagen, finde die Entscheidung zwischen einer grünen und einer blauen Barbour-Jacke schwieriger als die zwischen CDU und SPD. Es wirkte befreiend, daß man endlich den gesamten Bestand an Werten und Worten der 68er-Generation, den man immer als albern empfand, auch öffentlich albern nennen konnte.” Florian Illies, Generation Golf. Eine Inspektion (Berlin: Argon, 2000), p. 154f. Sontag: Notes on “Camp”, p. 276. Ibid., p. 278.

28 Moritz Baßler closely connected to a subliminal scepticism against all quasi-religious attitudes towards high art, an art that believes to stand apart, or rather: high above the age of mechanical reproduction, occupying some kind of authentic space outside the discourses of our media-dominated present. “Many examples of Camp are things which, from a ‘serious’ point of view, are either bad art or kitsch”, as Sontag remarks.15 In revaluing things like these, though, Camp also implies “a new, more complex relationship to the ‘serious’”, which Sontag therefore puts in quotation marks. “One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that ‘sincerity’ is not enough.”16 Almost en passant, Sontag is mapping out some aspects here that some years later have become notorious under the label of post-modernity and are still characteristic of our pop authors in the Adlon hotel. Camp has always already taken things not as they are an sich, by itself, but as what they mean. The quotation marks of Camp, then, do not only relativize the alleged serious, they relativize everything at all: Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman’. To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.17

And this is exactly why the mixed emotions of Camp are so well suited for aesthetic orientation within the complex culture of media, commodities and surfaces they originate from. We must not forget that in 1964, when Susan Sontag came up with Camp’s “logic of taste”, this whole culture stood only at the beginning of its exponential growth and differentiation into the global pop cultural universe we are facing today. Maybe Camp proper is only known to specialists nowadays,18 but in our way of dealing with pop music, movies, TV shows, advertising, and brand products we are familiar with a whole range of closely related aesthetic sensibilities of the mixed kind. Historically manifest facets of this spectrum are known by the names of Cult, Trash, Punk, Glamour, or Pulp Fiction – if yet named at all. The vast majority of these mixed emotions, so it seems, are still waiting for their Susan Sontag. Events like the cultural ennoblement of Tarantino, or even the German pop literature boom of the mid-nineties and the lively debates it triggered in feuilletons and university classes, can be seen as symptoms of a beginning aptness-for-discourse of a mass culture we all have grown up in  15 Ibid., p. 278. 16 Ibid., p. 288. 17 Ibid., p. 280. 18

In recent discourse on pop music the concept is generally limited to its associations of “irony and mere trendiness”. Cf. Simon Reynolds, Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (London: Faber and Faber 2011), p. xxxii).

Expanding the Concept of Camp 29

and have been moulded by. This socialisation has taken place in the shadow of and sometimes decidedly against a canonical Western high culture that was the dominant culture conveyed to us by educated parents, schools, music schools, feuilletons, quality TV, and universities.

II Take Trash, for example. When Sontag wrote her article on the New York intellectual fad called Camp, California-based act The Trashmen had their biggest hit with Surfin’ Bird. The general repertoire of The Trashmen closely resembles that of, say, the Beach Boys, but Surfin’ Bird is an exception. There’s this one song in the rep that just drives the kids nuts. It starts as a cover of The Rivingtons’ 1962 hit, ‘Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow’. The wilder, louder and faster The Trashmen play it, the nutzier the crowds become. The Rivingtons’ follow-up, ‘The Bird’s the Word’, is absorbed into the mayhem, and the medley takes on a life of its own. Local dj/emcee Bill Diehl christens the resulting insanity ‘Surfin’ Bird’.19

As we learn here, there is no original song material whatsoever in Surfin’ Bird, still the “medley”, that is, the collage of two older songs “takes on a life of its own”, is eventually recorded and becomes not only a hit, but a classic that until this day is much better known than the originals by The Rivingtons.20 Thus, it is simply not true, that “[m]usicians glutted with influences and inputs almost inevitably make clotted music: rich and potent on some levels, but ultimately fatiguing”, as Simon Reynolds complains.21 One could well make the opposite point: good pop was never based on originality, and it has always been a product of the media-culture industry-complex. In the case of the Trashmen, DJ Diehl eventually manages to interest local producer George Garrett, who sells to major Midwestern producer Amos Heilecher of SOMA records and so on, a process far from the creative core no pop song could exist without. In addition to this story, Quaglieri’s liner notes convey to us the reaction of guitarist Larry LaPole after hearing Surfin’ Bird for the first time: “After a moment of stunned silence, Larry says, ‘Jesus, that’s the worst thing I ever heard in my whole life”22 – only to get 19 20 21 22

Al Quaglieri, ‘[Liner Notes]’, in, The Trashmen: Tube City! The Best of The Trashmen (Coxsackie, NY: Sundazed, 1992). Younger generations know it via Family Guy. By the way, before recording Surfin’ Bird, The Trashmen had not been a recording band at all. Reynolds: Retromania, p. 75. Quaglieri: Liner Notes, l.c.

30 Moritz Baßler down and write the follow-up piece King of the Surf. After all, it is Trash, or, as Sontag has it: “It’s good because it’s awful.”23 For our aesthetic reasoning, it is especially telling that in 1970, Richard Meltzer opened his book The Aesthetics of Rock by printing the three pages of this song’s lyrics without any comment.24 They consist of nothing but obstinate repetitions of the lines (or rather: fragments of the lines) “Everybody’s heard about the bird”, “Everbody knows that the bird is the word” and “Papa-oom-mow-ma-mow”, the deeper meaning of which must have escaped even the contemporary surfer. The Trash aspect is enforced by the fact that in the middle of the song, the moment the first Rivingtons’ tune melts into the second, its title phrase (“Surfer birrrrrd”) is pronounced in a way that Meltzer transcribes as “prolonged sound of vomiting”. The statement in printing this nonsense, obviously, is that in dealing with the special qualities of rock we need to abandon some of our traditional categories. In the musical phenomenology of the whole thing, here’s the way rock can represent it: a song with a tune at first seemingly not strong enough to back up and validate any set of words, with words not really discernible at first and not reinforcing of the strengths of the music anyway once you know ‘em […], the whole thing being reinforced by in the word-learning and tune-remembering process […].25

Music that can’t stand for itself and ditto lyrics, both already quotes of former pop material, melt into something new, a song-hit of high quality and high potential also in terms of economics and media. Interestingly enough, the trashy status is part of the “whole thing” from the very beginning. The sleeve notes of the Tube City collection of Trashmen-hits feature a chart that lists well-known pop songs against characteristics like “analyzed by English teachers”, “technically perfect”, “takes itself too seriously”, and “could be sung by Neil Diamond” on the one hand and “stupid”, “shallow”, “fun”, “meaningless”, “enjoyed by people of all I.Q.s”, and “understood in any language” (let alone “triggers dangerous teen hormones”) on the other, only to proudly present Surfin’ Bird at the rear end of the spectrum (with The Beatles’ A Day in the Life residing at the top). From its very beginning, Pop itself proves to be very conscious of the difference between what it “is” and what it “means”.

23 24 25

Sontag: Notes on “Camp”, p. 292. Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock [1970] (New York: Da Capo, 1987), pp. 1-3. Ibid., p. 142.

Expanding the Concept of Camp 31

III Summing up our observations on Camp and Trash, the main aspect seems to be that both of them, as mixed emotions, are in no way naïve. This goes for the intellectual New York-style “it’s good because it’s awful” as well as for the allegedly somewhat simpler “I know it’s only Rock-’n’-Roll but I like it”. In both cases, identification or immersion requires something like a Kierkegaardesque leap, overbearing the awareness of aesthetic inferiority and ending up in high esteem. In both cases, therefore, the relativity and artifice of these aesthetics is well reflected upon. Thus, Camp and Trash, in spite of their ostensible naiveté and spontaneity, still prove to be aesthetics of distance, not of immersion. In Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (“On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”, 1795/96), Schiller had given the theory of mixed emotions a historical index. In the artificial, reflexive modern age, naïve poets are “not really in their right place any more” (“nicht so recht mehr an ihrer Stelle”),26 poets whose “signs disappear completely in the signified” (“wo das Zeichen ganz in dem Bezeichneten verschwindet”) and whose language “as if by inner necessity springs from the thought”. There might be a latent nostalgic longing for this primordial state of authentic speech and primal words, but in the enlightened present, “sign and signified stay forever heterogeneous and estranged”.27 Thus, modern man is condemned to reflexive distance: The mind may suffer no impression without immediately witnessing itself at play and placing whatever happens inside of it on the outside and apart from itself. This way, we will never retrieve the object itself but only what the poet’s reflecting reason has made of the object, […] what it has thought about it as its own spectator.28

Therefore, even for Schiller sentiments appropriate to the culture of the present have to be mixed ones, because they simultaneously include sensual impressions and reflection, empirical and ideal concepts, emotions and their relativity. Where the ancient peoples “felt in a natural way”, we “feel the natural”, Schiller says (“Sie empfanden natürlich; wir empfinden das Natür 26 Schiller: Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, p. 556. 27

28

“Wenn dort das Zeichen dem Bezeichneten ewig heterogen und fremd bleibt, so springt hier wie durch innere Notwendigkeit die Sprache aus dem Gedanken hervor”. Ibid., p. 549. “Das Gemüt kann keinen Eindruck erleiden, ohne sogleich seinem eigenen Spiel zuzusehen und, was es in sich hat, durch Reflexion sich gegenüber und aus sich herauszustellen. Wir erhalten auf diese Art nie den Gegenstand, nur was der reflektierende Verstand des Dichters aus dem Gegenstand machte, […] was er als Zuschauer seiner selbst darüber gedacht hat.” Ibid., p. 569.

32 Moritz Baßler liche.”).29 Not nature, as Susan Sontag would put it, but “nature”. Modern history, up to our contemporary Western mass culture, has only deepened this reflexive distance, strengthened this imperative of semiotic quotation marks. We never get hold of the thing itself, Schiller says, just of what our reflecting reason makes of it, and Baecker adds: “Finally, there is nothing that ‘is’ anything anymore if it does not, at the same time, ‘mean’ something.” As we have seen, this is true even for the happy Surfer Pop of the sixties. Just like Schiller’s sentimental sensibility, the hybrid aesthetic sentimentality within pop culture can be directed towards products that are genuinely naïve as well as towards those that come with this hybridity already inscribed. The aesthetics of Trash can either appreciate the Die Hard movies starring Bruce Willis or the disco world of John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever directly or mediated, e.g. as parts of a movie like Pulp Fiction, which quotes both aspects already marked as Trash. Pulp Fiction is not so much starring Bruce Willis as “Bruce Willis”, not John Travolta, but “John Travolta” – if the difference is not wiped out for good, that is. From Grindhouse to Arthouse. “And of the quotes of these quotes”, moans Tristesse Royale’s Joachim Bessing, “culture around us is being made” (“Und aus den Zitaten dieser Zitate entsteht die Kultur um uns herum”).30 Already Susan Sontag drew a distinction between naïve and voluntary Camp: Busby Berkeley with his sumptuous musical revues of the thirties “does not mean to be funny”,31 in Fellini’s Dolce Vita, though, Anita Ekberg is staged without her knowing as a campy quote by her director. As far as the object is concerned, Camp can be “either completely naïve or else wholly conscious”;32 on the receptive side, though, it is always conscious. An aesthetics of Pop, therefore, is not likely to result in any kind of aesthetic arbitrariness, but on the contrary will lead to rather decisive verdicts of taste. The principle of exclusion-plus-consensus remains in place, but is set to work only in full consciousness of its own relativity. As early as 1909, German expressionist Carl Einstein put the paradox of snobbism into the formula: “We need to construct a visible law that can separate us and give us faith even though it is our own construction.”33 Under the conditions of our own present we might rephrase: We need to construct a visible law that can 29 30 31 32 33

Ibid., p. 553. Tristesse Royale, p. 31. Sontag: Notes on “Camp”, p. 282. Ibid., p. 283. “Ein Gesetz, ein sichtbares, ist zu konstruieren, das uns trennt, das uns Glaube gibt, trotzdem es unsere Konstruktion ist.” Carl Einstein, ‘Der Snobb’, in Werke Band 1: 1908-1918, ed. by Rolf-Peter Baacke (Berlin: Medusa, 1980), pp. 23-27 (p. 23). 

Expanding the Concept of Camp 33

separate us and grant us identification, even though, just like everything else, it is an effect of our own consumer and media culture. Or, for that matter: How to be a dandy in the age of mass culture? Tristesse Royale and the better part of recent pop literature develop their strategies in full awareness of this paradox, which, more often than not, makes them look somewhat more intelligent than their critics. “Irony is over. Bye, bye” is the motto of Mesopotamia (1999), an anthology of pop prose edited by Christian Kracht,34 quoting the lyrics of a Pulp song with the quite ironic title The Day After the Revolution. When taking part in a Christoph-Schlingensief performance, Stuckrad-Barre appeared with the crossed out word irony written across his forehead (IRONIE) – a well calculated mixture of labelling the body and embodying the label. In ways like these, pop literature has adapted or re-invented Derrida’s technique of sous rature, keeping the die-hard grand ideas of occidental metaphysics still readable under their cancellation. It’s not meaning, but “meaning” we are talking about here, and this, indeed, is about everything.

IV “The farther west we drove, the more Pop everything looked on the highways”, recalls Andy Warhol about a journey he took in the early sixties. Suddenly we all felt like insiders because even though Pop was everywhere – that was the thing about it, most people still took it for granted, whereas we were dazzled by it – to us, it was the new Art. Once you ‘got’ Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again. The moment you label something, you take a step – I mean, you can never go back again to seeing it unlabeled. We were seeing the future and we knew it for sure. […] The mystery was gone, but the amazement was just starting.35

“Once you ‘got’ Pop” – Warhol is talking about a new mode of aesthetic reception here, a mode that not only focuses on certain objects in a new way but changes aesthetic perception in general: “you could never see a sign the same way again.” Sontag’s “more complex relation to the ‘serious’” is pointing in the same direction, putting “the serious” into quotation marks, but 34 35

Mesopotamia. Ernste Geschichten am Ende des Jahrtausends, ed. by Christian Kracht (Stuttgart: DVA 1999), quote on back cover. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism. The Warhol ‘60s (New York: Harper & Row 1980), p. 39f.

34 Moritz Baßler not the ‘more complex’. If we are to take this seriously, with or without quotation marks, our task would be not to also talk about Camp, Trash, and Pop, but to fundamentally redefine the status of art and literature in the age of market and media culture, including Camp, Trash, and Pop, and also ‘serious’ art. Sontag’s “new standards of beauty and style and taste”, then, would mark a historical break, an epochè, whereafter a novel or a painting would not any longer belong to the same species as, say, a novel by Thomas Mann or a painting by Picasso. Once you ‘got’ Camp, you could never see a work of art the same way again. Seriously? To be honest – in today’s academia I don’t see a lot of backup for a basic re-orientation of aesthetics as implied here. If you do a bibliographical research on Camp, for example, you will come up with hundreds of publications dealing with certain segments and varieties of gay aesthetics. Well, yes, art can also be gay, like Schönberg playing tennis, but the idea that Sontag had a point here that might challenge the whole system of our aesthetic perception and production of meaning comes nowhere into sight. Even Adorno was closer to the point when he warned in his Résumé über Kulturindustrie (“Summary on Culture Industry”, 1967): “Intellectual entities produced by the culture industry no longer are also commodities, but are commodities through and through.” (“Geistige Gebilde kulturindustriellen Stils sind nicht länger auch Waren, sondern sind es durch und durch.”)36 Still, his kulturkritik perspective on the culture industry definitively belongs to the old paradigm of avant-garde aesthetics. The Frankfurt School critics had no self-doubt about being able to get an unmitigated insight into the capitalist contexts of delusion granting their objective analysis. As we all know, products of the culture industry, like the western or jazz, are notoriously losing out here – but they are being taken very seriously all the same. When Adorno talks about jazz, he is far from using any quotation marks: Triumphant trivialities, the bias of superficiality as doubtless certainty, glorify the recreant blocking of all self-reflection. All these well known modes of reaction have recently lost their innocence, they presume to be philosophies, which makes them pure evil.37

 36 37

Theodor W. Adorno,: ‘Résumé über Kulturindustrie’ [1963], in Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 337-345 (p. 338). “Auftrumpfende Trivialität, das Befangensein in der Oberfläche als zweifelsfreie Gewißheit, verklärt die feige Abwehr jeglicher Selbstbesinnung. All diese altgewohnten Reaktionsformen haben neuerdings ihre Unschuld verloren, werfen sich als Philosophie auf und werden damit erst ganz böse.” Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Zeitlose Mode. Zum Jazz’ [1953], in Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 123-137 (p. 131).

Expanding the Concept of Camp 35

Hermann Broch had already described Kitsch as “the evil in the system of art values” (“Der Kitsch ist das Böse im Wertsystem der Kunst.”).38 As phenomena of anti-enlightenment governed by capitalism in the mask of harmless entertainment, the new products of the culture industry subvert the old standards of an avant-garde aesthetics and its programme of radical destruction of any petrified, wrong way of life. One could read the Frankfurt School rants against pop culture as phrasing the back- and outside of what Sontag and Warhol ‘get’. Broch, Adorno, and Horkheimer note from the outside the same transvaluation of all signs and values the young New Yorkers describe from the inside. Or, in the words of German pop theorist Diedrich Diederichsen: At one point, the format of pop music had superseded the classic formulas of the old avant-garde for art with immediate effects on the reality outside. This day had come when the commodity began to promise more than the revolution.39

In a different context Diederichsen asks “whether there can still exist a homogeneous theory of the musical field”, which, then, would have to include Mozart and the compositions of Adorno’s teacher Webern as well as The Beatles and Lady Gaga, or “whether pop music belongs to a totally different cultural order” than traditional music.40 As I suggested above, this question should be posed for other arts, too, e.g. for the contemporary fine arts, changing constantly between pathos and what Jörg Heiser of Frieze magazine calls their constitutive slapstick factor.41 Unlike theoreticians of the sixties like Umberto Eco who were the first to deal analytically with the new phenomena of pop culture, we must not necessarily understand this “different cultural order” as the sphere of the trivial in opposition to high culture. Rather, it seems to have developed into the cultural order of our Western democratic affluent societies. In other words: What still looks like Kitsch, trivial, middle or low-brow art, or even

 38

39

40 41

Hermann Broch, ‘Einige Bemerkungen zum Problem des Kitsches’ [1950], in Kommentierte Werkausgabe, ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler, Vol. 9/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975); pp. 158-173 (p. 170). “Das Format der Pop-Musik hatte die klassischen Formeln der alten Avantgarde für eine auf die Realität außerhalb der Kunst direkt wirksame Kunst eines Tages abgelöst. Dieser Tag war gekommen, als die Ware mehr zu versprechen begann als die Revolution.” Diedrich Diederichsen, Musikzimmer. Avantgarde und Alltag (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2005), p. 18. “[…] ob es eine einheitliche Feldtheorie der Musik überhaupt noch geben kann und soll, oder ob Pop-Musik in eine ganz andere kulturelle Ordnung gehört.” Ibid., p. 25. Jörg Heiser, Plötzlich diese Übersicht. Was gute zeitgenössische Kunst ausmacht, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Claassen, 2007); p. 15-117.

36 Moritz Baßler like pure evil from the point of view of an older episteme, has been setting new aesthetical “standards of beauty and style and taste” long ago. And these standards of a global bourgeois culture – our culture, that is, the one that governs the circulation of aesthetic goods via media attention, supply and demand –, these standards require a different type of product, too. Its effect is no longer required to gradually unfold in time, by the epidemiological process of slow geographical and cultural dissemination, instead it should be globally present more or less in the very moment of its first appearance. As Joshua Clover stated, this kind of ‘abundant’, synchronic, mass distributed work of art has to meet essentially different formal and aesthetic requirements from a traditional, ‘scarce’, diachronic work of art: “the idea that one would use congruent aesthetic criteria for scarce and abundant, or diachronic and synchronic, art forms is absurd.“42 Ever since Wassily Kandinsky’s manifestos on abstract art, avant-garde models have been based on some kind of trickle-down system, working down from the revolutionary artists on top of the spiritual pyramid into broader circles of society, requiring a difficult and complex artwork, the meaning of which will only reveal itself in a long tradition of readings and interpretations – “the pill that dissolves over centuries”.43 Avant-gardists like Carl Einstein used to discuss the formal aspects of their artworks under the label of totality: “Entities only exist when they are clear, gain form; it is only their totality, their closure that qualifies them as objects of cognition and makes their realization possible.”44 This realization as an assertion of the artwork’s intrinsic order, though, happens in time, and this, according to Clover, has “many aesthetic implications, which can be filed under the rubric of durability.”45 In Einstein’s avant-garde opinion, the total closure of the work of art is but the other side of its radical difference from the order that governs the rest of the world; an order that it is, eventually, bound to erode. The synchronic work of art of the global media age, on the other hand, has to open up and prove accessible to as many recipients at the same time as possible. Therefore, no radical difference is required here but quite the 42

43 44

45

Joshua Clover, ‘Good Pop, Bad Pop. Massiveness, Materiality, and the Top 40’, in This Is Pop. In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project, ed. by Eric Weisbard (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 245-256 (p. 250). Ibid., p. 250. “Gebilde sind erst, wenn sie deutlich sind, Form gewinnen; nur die Totalität, ihre Geschlossenheit macht sie zum Gegenstand von Erkenntnis und ermöglicht, daß sie realisiert werden können.” Carl Einstein, ‘Totalität’, in Werke Band 1: 1908-1918, ed. By Rolf-Peter Baacke (Berlin: Medusa, 1980), pp. 223-229 (p. 226). Clover: Good Pop, Bad Pop, p. 250.

Expanding the Concept of Camp 37

contrary: sameness, accompanied by minimal differences to grant instant recognisability. “The modality of the song-hit is not invention but intensity”, or, as T.J. Clark has it, not “the World Turned Upside Down”, but “an imagining of the world as it would be if it were more fully itself – with its basic structures unaltered.”46 Maybe this opposition between the scarce and the abundant work of art could be a starting point to theorize the new standards of beauty and style and taste.

V Among the few scholars tracing these basic changes in the semiotics of culture is Siegen media critic and phenomenologist Jochen Venus. At a lecture he gave in Halle he presented three pictures: a realist, an abstract, and a comic book one, representing the “three prominent picture types of recent cultural history” (“drei prominente Bildtypen der neueren Kulturgeschichte”).47 He chose Norman Rockwell’s Freedom from Want48 for the realistic, referential type, a Mondrian for the abstract, non-referential type, and a drawing of Donald Duck in his 313 car for a new third type specific of popular culture, characterised by “spectacular self-reference”49 [fig. 1]. While the Donald Duck picture, he argues, is referential in so far as we read it as the picture of something (a duck in a sailor suit driving a car), it is also at the same time “radically de-realised”50 – ducks don’t wear sailor suits let alone drive cars or even have hands to hold on to the wheel, the red of the car is too red (without shades), isolated parts of the car like fenders or tires can not be recognized, the car’s speed is marked by lines that are easy to decipher for the comic book reader but have no correspondence in reality etc. In short: The whole picture of the car is ‘gestural’ – we would never recognize a running car in real life if we only knew it from this kind of picture, while we would easily recognize a roast turkey from the Rockwell.

 Clover: Good Pop, Bad Pop, S. 254. Interestingly enough‚ ‘intensity’ is also the expression Carl Einstein uses to back up his concept of totality (see Einstein: Totalität, p. 226). 47 Jochen Venus, ‘Die Erfahrung des Populären.Perspektiven einer kritischen Phänomenologie’, in: Performativität und Medialität populärer Kulturen. Theorien, Ästhetiken, Praktiken, ed. by Marcus S. Kleiner and Thomas Wilke (Springer VS: Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 49-73, here p. 62. 48 See http://www.artchive.com/artchive/R/rockwell/rockwell_want.jpg.html 49 Venus, Die Erfahrung des Populären, p. 65. 50 Venus, Die Erfahrung des Populären, p. 66. 46

38 Moritz Baßler

Fig. 1 © Disney As Venus notices, in pictures of this third type reference and techniques of representation are “strangely inverted”: The referential view takes the place originally reserved for the means of representation: it becomes a means to an end. The representational means, on the other hand, are exposed in the mode of a self-reliant spectacular artistry […].51

While referential art tries to correspond iconically with its objects, the techniques of spectacular art are arbitrary. Since the patterns it comes up with are the results of free choices of style, they can easily be dismissed in case of failure but might nonetheless prove extremely stable in case of success. The reference, then, is not so much a duck in a car but being part of “the object class of all possible (and factual) Donald pictures” (“die Objektklasse aller möglichen (und wirklichen) Donaldbilder”52), the Disney universe. According to its aesthetic principles, the self-reference of popular cultures constitutes (and stimulates!) a self-similar repertoire of forms. Whenever popular cultures are successful in gaining the attention of an audience, a complex of similar products will crystallize around this success. Anything fascinating will

 “Die referenzielle Ansicht rückt an die Stelle, die eigentlich die darstellerischen Mittel besetzen sollen: Sie wird Mittel zum Zweck. Die darstellerischen Mittel werden dagegen im Duktus einer selbstgenügsamen spektakulären Artistik ausgestellt […]”. Venus, Die Erfahrung des Populären, p. 65. ͷʹ Venus, Die Erfahrung des Populären, p. 67. 51

Expanding the Concept of Camp 39 immediately go serial, send out rays, grow metastases and include more and more recipients into its specific form of spectacular self-reference. Thus, style communities of normalised spectacle emerge.53

 It might prove worthwhile to translate Venus’s phenomenology of spectacular self-reference into semiotic terms to open up further perspectives for the adequate description and interpretation of artworks in the age of mass and pop culture, a project which at this point we cannot further pursue. But, since there is always a lot to learn from examples, let us take a final look at his example of good old referential art. While I basically agree with Venus’s threefold pictorial typology, I do have some doubts concerning the status of the Rockwell. This, after all, is realism after the avant-gardes, which means it is no longer part of an unfettered post-medieval tradition of realist painting like, say, Dutch still lives from the 17th century or the art of Corot and Courbet. This kind of painting believing to achieve the object itself, one might argue, ended for good with the likes of Mondrian, Malevich, and Kandinsky and, in the age of Rockwell (Freedom from Want was painted in 1937), would have been considered a naïve pursuit. Thus, in the allegorical title of Rockwell’s famous painting we might recognize the promise of American or Western capitalism itself (freedom from want), and does not his style resemble early advertising and commercial art? In Rockwell’s artworks, one might well find exactly the dose of ‘too much’ that Sontag found characteristic of Camp. Look at the man in the lower right corner – I mean, how seriously are we supposed to take this American idyll? A campy reading of Freedom from Want – not a turkey, but a “turkey”, not a happy family, but a “happy family” – seems not such a far-off option here. This would mean, though, that even Rockwell in his ‘realism’ tends towards Venus’s third type of painting, the spectacular. In its mode of reference, it might actually prove closer to the Donald Duck than to a 19thcentury Courbet. The campy parentheses around “the serious” indicate this transition into a new aesthetic order of significance. As we argued above, this new order calls for a re-evaluation of the status of ‘traditional’ realistic art (like Rockwell’s) and of ‘the authentic’ in art in general. In other words, even Donaueschingen, Herta Müller, or Neo Rauch will nolens volens have to be  53

“Die Selbstreferenz populärer Kulturen konstituiert (und stimuliert!) – und zwar gemäß ihres ästhetischen Prinzips – ein selbstähnliches Formenrepertoire. Wann immer populäre Kulturen einen Aufmerksamkeitserfolg erzielen, kristallisiert an diesem Erfolg sofort ein Konvolut ähnlicher Produkte. Jedes Faszinosum geht unmittelbar in Serie, strahlt aus, metastasiert und bezieht immer mehr Rezipienten in die spezifische Form spektakulärer Selbstreferenz ein. Auf diese Weise emergieren Stilgemeinschaften normalisierten Spektakels.” Venus, Die Erfahrung des Populären, p. 67.

40 Moritz Baßler analyzed within this new order with its mixed sentiments. On the other hand, we are to deal with the self-referentiality of spectacular popular art forms. Not only do Donald Duck, Madonna, Kraftclub, Tarantino, Tatort, or The Simpsons grant us the satisfaction of elementary proto-aesthetic needs of entertainment, they might well be part of a new aesthetics, to quote Jörg Heiser: […] bringing forth a fundamental displacement in modern art: the principle of industrial and technical fabrication and copying has made art as a medium of realistic representation a nostalgic matter. “Salvation”, though, will not come from an evocation of the artist’s privileged access to visuality, vitality, beauty, and taste, but rather from taking up the challenge and appropriating forms of industrial culture, adopting them against the grim logic of utilization. Best slapstick in comic books and film could be the role model.54

And we might add: best Pop and best Trash as well. In other words: pop culture has always been engaged in sailing the stream of the culture industry “without being carried away by its torrents”, and quite successful in giving common judgement its laws – “new standards of beauty and style and taste” – by means of our aesthetic sensibility. “Suddenly we all felt like insiders.” The history of this appropriation still needs to be written; systematically it is to be construed as evolution and differentiation of Sontag’s concept of Camp.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W.,: ‘Résumé über Kulturindustrie’ [1963], in Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 337-345. Adorno, Theodor W., ‘Zeitlose Mode. Zum Jazz’ [1953], in Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 123-137. ‘Amoklauf eines Geschmacksterroristen’, in: Der Spiegel, 7.9.1998, 209. Baecker, Dirk, Wozu Kultur? 3rd ed. (Berlin: Kadmos, 2003).

54

“[…] was eine grundsätzliche Verlagerung in der Kunst der Moderne so richtig zum Vorschein bringt: Das Prinzip der industriell-technischen Herstellung und Vervielfältigung hat Kunst als realistisches Darstellungsmedium nostalgisch gemacht. Die ‚Rettung’ besteht nun nicht im Beschwören eines privilegierten Zugangs des Künstlers zu Visualität, Vitalität, Geschmack und Schönheit, sondern darin, die Herausforderung anzunehmen und sich die Formen der industriellen Kultur selbst anzueignen und sie gegen ihre unerbittliche Logik der Verwertung einzusetzen. Bester Slapstick in Comic oder Film machte es vor.” Heiser: Plötzlich diese Übersicht, p. 36.

Expanding the Concept of Camp 41

Broch, Hermann, ‘Einige Bemerkungen zum Problem des Kitsches’ [1950], in Kommentierte Werkausgabe, ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler, Vol. 9/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975); pp. 158-173. Clover, Joshua, ‘Good Pop, Bad Pop. Massiveness, Materiality, and the Top 40’, in This Is Pop. In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project, ed. by Eric Weisbard (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 245-256. Diederichsen, Diedrich, Musikzimmer. Avantgarde und Alltag (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2005). Einstein, Carl, ‘Der Snobb’, in Werke Band 1: 1908-1918, ed. by Rolf-Peter Baacke (Berlin: Medusa, 1980), pp. 23-27. Einstein, Carl, ‘Totalität’, in Werke Band 1: 1908-1918, ed. By Rolf-Peter Baacke (Berlin: Medusa, 1980), pp. 223-229. Heiser, Jörg, Plötzlich diese Übersicht. Was gute zeitgenössische Kunst ausmacht, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Claassen, 2007). Illies, Florian, Generation Golf. Eine Inspektion (Berlin: Argon, 2000). Meltzer, Richard, The Aesthetics of Rock [1970] (New York: Da Capo, 1987). Mesopotamia. Ernste Geschichten am Ende des Jahrtausends, ed. by Christian Kracht (Stuttgart: DVA 1999). Quaglieri, Al, ‘[Liner Notes]’, in, The Trashmen: Tube City! The Best of The Trashmen (Coxsackie, NY: Sundazed, 1992). Reynolds, Simon, Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (London: Faber and Faber 2011). Schiller, Friedrich, ‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen‘, in Werke in drei Bänden, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert, Vol. 2 (München: Hanser, 1966), pp. 445-520. Schiller, Friedrich, ‘Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung’, in Werke in drei Bänden, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert, Vol. 2 (München: Hanser, 1966), pp. 540-606. Sontag, Susan. ‘Notes on “Camp”’ [1964], in Against Interpretation (London: Vintage, 2001), pp.275-292. Sontag, Susan, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility [1965], in Against Interpretation (London: Vintage 2001), pp. 293-304. Tristesse Royale. Das popkulturelle Quintett mit Joachim Bessing, Christian Kracht, Eckhart Nickel, Alexander v. Schönburg und Benjamin v. Stuckrad-Barre (Berlin: Ullstein, 1999). Jochen Venus, ‘Die Erfahrung des Populären.Perspektiven einer kritischen Phänomenologie’, in: Performativität und Medialität populärer Kulturen. Theorien, Ästhetiken, Praktiken, ed. by Marcus S. Kleiner and Thomas Wilke (Springer VS: Wiesbaden, 2013), pp. 49-73

42 Moritz Baßler Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett, POPism. The Warhol ‘60s (New York: Harper & Row 1980). Winkler, Willi, ‘Männer ohne Frauen’, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.11.1999.



Achim Hölter Doppelte Optik and lange Ohren – Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise The triangle Wagner – Nietzsche – Thomas Mann is, even on the internet, famous for their usage of a metaphor which, despite some variations or misquotations, is nowadays known as “doppelte”, “wechselnde”, or “zweifache Optik” (double, changing, or dual optics), denominating the compromise between artistic ambition for an élite and concessions to the general public in the same piece of art. A metaphorological analysis follows the traces to Mozart’s analogous acoustic imagery and shows that the basic contradiction is founded in Nietzsche’s ambiguity on the topic, who simultaneously favoured and rejected “dual optics” in the arts.

On 19th of June, 2008 the following communication was documented in an internet forum. A user asks: “ich stolper grad über ‘doppelte optik’ in bezug auf nietzsche und thomas mann. scheint so ein schlagwort zu sein, mit dem ich aber nix anfangen kann… weiß da jemand mehr?”1 (“I just happened to stumble over the term ‘doppelte optik’ [‘double optics’] in relation to nietzsche and thomas mann. seems to be a buzzword, but I’m not familiar with it ... does anyone have an idea?”) Four minutes and 22 seconds later, another user offers – instead of a detailed response – a link to a relevant article; naturally, one might say, to an article specifically written for the net. The question in itself is quite something, and to ask it in public was in this case – for once – probably wise. It contains five components, each of which is individually relevant. 1.) “Doppelte Optik” (“double optics”) is supposed to be a buzzword. Maybe it would be better to speak of a “topos”; in any case, the questioner is right that the text he refers to (but fails to specify) was not the first to use this term. 2.) The term is supposed to be connected with Thomas Mann, and this generally infers that for Mann the term is bound to have a specific, even complex background. 3.) It seems that “doppelte Optik” is also important in reference to Nietzsche, again with quite a distinct function. 4.) It appears that the two authors, as so often, are thereby linked intertextually. Essentially, the assumption is that in respect of the term “doppelte Optik” Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Mann have something in common, or rather that the younger Thomas Mann quoted Nietzsche or alluded to him.

 1

“Erklärbär”, 19.06.2008, 12:10:20 – response at 12:14:42, http//forum.mods.de/bb/ thread.php?TID=185523&page=1

44 Achim Hölter 5.) It is hardly the term itself that matters, but the underlying semantics that constitute a “buzzword”. From a philological point of view the situation is rather difficult to assess. But in a metaphorical vein, the formation of a blurred formulation of thought is what matters here, and its convergence with today’s usual Netzmündlichkeit (“net-orality”).2 There are always witnesses to be found for the ‘elitist’ and ‘popular’ double coding of texts, sometimes indirectly as, for example, even St. Augustine admits in his Confessions (3:5): I resolved then to bend my mind to the holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. […] For not as I now speak, did I feel when I turned to those Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of Tully [i.e., Cicero]: for my swelling pride shrunk from their lowliness, nor could my sharp wit pierce the interior thereof.3

The crucial point of this text is that Augustine was hindered by exaggerated requirements of art and style to engage with the Bible, because he had not yet understood that – though in its complex totality, it encompassed a whole theology – it stylistically spoke to the “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). Modern examples of multiple coding include, at least in public opinion, Harry Potter, whose recipe for success is to attract children, teenagers, and adults alike, or the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) by Peter Jackson, which was also critically successful. In reference to Jackson’s remake of the classic King Kong (2005), the Berliner Zeitung wrote: “selbst die Denkologen unter den Zuschauern gehen hier nicht leer aus” (“even the eggheads in the audience get their fill”), namely because of its subtle echoes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.4 I would also like to refer to Johann Sebastian Bach’s at times not audible but only readable composition tricks, to the hidden mathematical structures in novels of the Oulipists which a reader does not necessarily need to notice, and to Heimito von Doderer, who somewhat smugly apostrophised himself as an “einigermaßen gerissenen Verfasser besserer Romane”5 (“reasonably cunning author of better

 2 3 4

5

Achim Hölter, ‘Volltextsuche’, in Komparatistik (2004/2005), 131-137. The Confessions of S. Augustine. rev. from a former translation by the Rev. E.B. Pusey, D.D. (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1838), p. 33. Anke Westphal, ‘Affenliebe, wissendes Herz.Peter Jackson wäscht King Kong das schwere Blut und schafft einen atemberaubenden Film’, in Berliner Zeitung, 13.12.2005, p. 23. Heimito von Doderer, Die Wasserfälle von Slunj, 5th ed. (München: dtv, 1984), p. 312.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 45

novels”), meaning texts with such a refined structure that most readers would only diffusely guess its presence. The aforementioned link on the “Erklärbär”-website leads to an article from the page Wikibooks which provides a collectively created introduction to Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice. The wiki form has still its limits, at least for the time being, to supply (in regard to its contents) balanced and qualified literature studies. The title of the article alone immediately leads the reader astray – but in a way, it does not. It reads: “Zweideutigkeit als System – Thomas Manns Forderung an die Kunst” (“Ambiguity as a system - Thomas Mann’s call for the arts”). It is particularly surprising that this postulate is cited as typical for Der Tod in Venedig (“Death in Venice”), as the formulation is better known as Adrian Leverkühn’s term not for art in general, but for music, namely in Doktor Faustus. On the other hand, however, Mann used music time and again as a semi-metaphorical, semi-serious model for his literary ideal (as music offers the paradigm of ambivalence especially in harmony: in enharmonic relation, F-sharp major is to be read simultaneously as G-flat major). But what the author (or the authors) of this article mean(s) is something different: the ambivalent attitude towards the demands of the audience. As they point out, the writer Gustav von Aschenbach wanted (it is not quite correctly quoted) “to gain the faith of the general public and the admiring, demanding participation of the selective as well” (“den Glauben des breiten Publikums und die bewundernde, fordernde Teilnahme der Wählerischen zugleich gewinnen”6), and the article immediately claims that this wish had also been Thomas Mann’s (“auch Thomas Manns Bestreben”). Mann himself chose the formula mentioned above. Wikibooks describes the relationship this way: “Eine Formulierung Nietzsches aufgreifend, mit der dieser Wagner verunglimpfen wollte” (“Picking up a phrase by Nietzsche who wished to denigrate Wagner”). Specifically in the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (“Reflections of an Unpolitical Man”, 1918), in the chapter “Bürgerlichkeit”, Thomas Mann talks about “Bürgerliches Künstlertum” (“bourgeois artistry”) as a “verwirklichtes Paradoxon” (“an implemented paradoxon”), and it is here that he concedes that “Wagners Einfluß zu einer Art von Verderb werden kann und vielleicht in meinem Falle dazu geworden ist” (“Wagner’s influence may turn into a kind of spoilage, and perhaps in my case it has become one”), and he offers the following explanation:

6

Thomas Mann, ‘Der Tod in Venedig’, in Frühe Erzählungen 1893-1912, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe [GKFA] vol. 2/1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2004), pp. 501-592 (p. 509).

46 Achim Hölter Ich meine das, was Nietzsche die “doppelte Optik” nennt, die artistische und die bürgerliche nebeneinander und auf einmal, den Instinkt – denn es ist natürlich ein Instinkt, keine Berechnung; etwas durchaus Objektives, nichts Subjektives – raffinierte und gutmütigere Bedürfnisse zugleich zu befriedigen, die Wenigen zu gewinnen, und die Vielen obendrein […]7 (I mean what Nietzsche calls “double optics”, the artistic and the bourgeois side by side and at one time, the instinct – because it is naturally an instinct, not calculation, something quite objective, not subjective – to meet refined and more good-natured needs at the same time, to win the few, and the many on top of that [...])

In truth, however, Nietzsche had not used this term. Mann goes back to a posthumous aphorism, connected with what Nietzsche called “moderne […] Falschmünzerei in den Künsten”8 (“modern [...] forgery in the arts”). It was later published in the compilation Der Wille zur Macht 9 (Thomas Mann read this text for the first time in 1904). The text in the Kritische Studienausgabe reads as follows: NB. Die Scheidung in “Publikum” und “Coenakel”:10 im ersten muß man heute Charlatan sein, im zweiten will man Virtuose sein und nichts weiter! Übergreifend über diese Scheidung unsere spezifischen “Genies” des Jahrhunderts, groß für Beides; große Charlatanerie Victor Hugo’s und R. Wagners, aber gepaart mit so viel ächtem Virtuosenthum, daß sie auch den Raffinirtesten im Sinne der Kunst selbst genug thäten Daher der Mangel an Größe 1) sie haben eine wechselnde Optik, bald in Hinsicht auf die gröbsten Bedürfnisse, bald in Hinsicht auf die raffinirtesten11 (NB. The division into “audience” and “cenacle”: for the first one, today one has to be a charlatan, for the second one wants to be a virtuoso, and nothing more! Overlapping, there are our special “genius” of the century, great for both, the large charlatanism of Victor Hugo and R. Wagner, but coupled with so much genuine virtuosity that even the most refined sense of art in itself would be satisfied. Therefore, the lack of greatness 1) they have changing optics, sometimes in regard to the crudest of needs, sometimes in regard to the most refined.)

Hermann Kurzke has explored Thomas Mann’s Betrachtungen in his article “Semiotik des Zitierens” (“Semiotics of quotation”)12. Here, the optical 7 8

9 10 11

Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, GKFA, vol. 13/1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer 2009), p. 119f. Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15 vols. (München, Berlin, New York: dtv/de Gruyter, 1988), vol. 12, p. 435. No. 825 in the edition’s count: Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte, 13th rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1996). Ironic contrast: the close-knit circle of disciples, the apostles at the Last Supper. Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 12, p. 436.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 47

metaphor is classified as “Altzitat”13 (“old quotation”) and it is referenced that Thomas Mann used this formula in 1910 in a letter to Hermann Hesse to justify popular concessions he made in his second novel Königliche Hoheit.14 It states: Nietzsche spricht einmal von Wagners “wechselnder Optik”: bald in Hinsicht auf die gröbsten Bedürfnisse, bald in Hinsicht auf die raffiniertesten. Dies ist der Einfluß, den ich meine, und ich weiß nicht, ob ich je den Willen finden werde, mich seiner völlig zu entschlagen. Die Künstler, denen es nur um eine Coenakel-Wirkung zu thun ist, war ich stets geneigt, gering zu schätzen. Eine solche Wirkung würde mich nicht befriedigen. Mich verlangt auch nach den Dummen.15 (Nietzsche once spoke of Wagner’s “changing optics”: sometimes in reference to the crudest of needs, sometimes in reference to the most refined. This is the influence I mean, and I do not know if I shall ever find the will to divest myself entirely of this. I was always inclined to undervalue the artist who only strives after a Cenacle-effect. Such an effect alone would not satisfy me. I long even for the stupid.)

The implication in terms of a critique génétique is “daß er in den Betrachtungen aus dem Gedächtnis zitiert, während er im Hesse-Brief noch den genauen Wortlaut parat hatte.”16 (“that he quoted from memory in the Betrachtungen, while in the letter to Hesse he had the precise wording ready.”) Maybe this is true, but in the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen Mann uses the term in a third version as “zweifache Optik”17 (“twofold optics”). It rather seems that in this lengthy diatribe he followed the principle of variatio delectat and used the quote ‘wrongly’, or rather, analogously, then modified, then re-applied in the first analogous meaning. With this triad, however, he creates – on purpose? – in a clever way the tradition of a reformulation. This is a totally different field, but no less interesting: How does one accomplish – within one text – a plausible renaming? How does the German department store Kaufhof become Galeria without losing customers, or to remain within the realm of literature, how does Goethe rename his “Jarno” from the Lehrjahre  12

13 14 15

16 17

Hermann Kurzke, ‘Nietzsche in den “Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen”’, in Wagner – Nietzsche – Thomas Mann. Festschrift für Eckhard Heftrich, ed. by Heinz Gockel, Michael Neumann and Ruprecht Wimmer (Frankfurt a.M., 1993), pp. 184-202, here p. 184. Ibid., p. 193 and footnote 24. Cf. the commentary of the Betrachtungen (GKFA) 13/2, and Hermann Kurzke, Thomas Mann. Epoche – Werk – Wirkung (München: Beck, 1985), p. 237-238. Thomas Mann to Hermann Hesse, München, 1.4.1910, in Thomas Mann: 1848-1955 und Nachlese, ed. by Erika Mann (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1979), p. 457. – Cf. Hans Wysling, ‘Geist und Kunst. Thomas Manns Notizen zu einem “Literatur-Essay”’, in Thomas Mann-Studien 1 (Bern, München: Francke, 1967), pp. 123-233 (p. 133). Kurzke, Thomas Mann, p. 193, footnote 24. GKFA 13/1, p. 120.

48 Achim Hölter (“Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”) to “Montan” in the Wanderjahre (“Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years”)? The answer: he does it gradually, using the old name every now and then. Thomas Mann’s reflections, however, which are included in the Betrachtungen, form, as Kurzke has shown,18 part of the preparations for a major essay called “Geist und Kunst” which Mann did not finish and later broke up into various contexts. The notes for this essay have been meticulously edited by Hans Wysling.19 In the text of the Betrachtungen the case has certainly become complex, and in the course of his reflection Thomas Mann literally plays with the term, because after he has connected this twopronged strategy with Richard Wagner’s wish to be loved, he sums up: Man wird mich nicht hindern, in Wagners Begierde, seiner Welt-Erotik den Grund und Ursprung dessen zu finden, was Nietzsche seine zweifache Optik genannt hat, eines aus Bedürfnis entsprungenen Vermögens, nicht nur die Feinsten – das ist selbstverständlich – zu fesseln, sondern auch die breite Masse der Schlichten; ich sage: aus Bedürfnis entsprungen, weil ich überzeugt bin, daß jeder Künstler ohne Ausnahme genau das macht, was er ist, was seinem eigenen ästhetischen Urteil und Bedürfnis entspricht.20 (No one will prevent me to find in Wagner’s desire, in his world-eroticism the cause and origin of what Nietzsche called his twofold optics, an ability sprung from necessity not only to captivate the best – for that is self-evident - but also the broad mass of the simple; I say, sprung from necessity, because I am convinced that, without exception, every artist does exactly what he is, which corresponds to his own aesthetic judgments and needs.)

Here Mann quoted – without quotation marks – Nietzsche in reference to “twofold optics”. Later in this extended passage he refers back to his own, so to speak, spurious formulation “double optics”, when he self-diagnoses a risky ambivalence. “Was ich aber ferner weiß”, he says, “ist, daß der ‘Erfolg’ als Folge jener doppelten Optik, die man schlimmer und sündiger Weise von Wagner lernt, eine prekäre und nicht geheuere Behausung ist”.21 (“But what I also know is that the ‘success’ as a consequence of this double optics – adopted in a bad and sinful manner from Wagner – is a precarious and uncertain shelter.”)

18 19

20 21

Kurzke, Thomas Mann, esp. p. 86-88. Wysling, Geist und Kunst, p. 133-134. – On p. 196 we find some notes, in which Thomas Mann comments on the true political character of what he calls “Wagners […] Meistersinger-Demagogie” (“Wagner’s mastersingers-demagogy”) and currently wants to find “überall, auch in der Politik” (“everywhere, even in politics”), i.e., the “Ap[p]ell an die Ahnungslosen” (“appeal to the naïve”). GFKA 13/1, p. 120. GFKA 13/1, p. 121.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 49

The gradual renaming is indeed engineered by the triad of “doppelte” – “zweifache” (Nietzsche called it a “wechselnde”, i.e., “changing”) – “doppelte” optics. But in between, Thomas Mann added two argumentative devices: the notorious social artist-bourgeois antithesis which he mentions even twice, and then the criterion, or rather: the actual core concept, of “success”. He literally says, always in reference to Wagner: Die Folge jener aristokratisch-demokratischen, artistisch-bürgerlichen Optik ist der Erfolg, als welcher eben immer ein doppelter Erfolg ist: bei den Artisten und bei den Bürgern, denn weder der reine Bohème-und Cönakel-, noch der reine Publikumserfolg trägt mit Recht seinen Namen.22 (The consequence of these aristocratic-democratic, artistic-bourgeois optics is success, which precisely appears always as a double success: with the artists and the bourgeois public, since neither the pure bohemian and cenacle success, nor the mere popular success is worthy of this label.)

This semantic chain, which also presents a logical conclusion, has to be expanded. In the paragraph in question Thomas Mann offers the following terms: 1.) “doppelte Optik” (“double optics”); 2.) “zweifache Optik” (“twofold optics”) – a variant, only ostensibly closer to Nietzsche; 3.) “Aristocratic-democratic [...], artistic-bourgeois […] optics” – here, “optics” remain; 4.) “double success” – here, “double” remains; 5.) “doppelte Optik” (“double optics”). This is Thomas Mann’s art, for here, starting from the given “wechselnde Optik” (“changing optics”), optics and the double remain by permutative distribution of the isotopicvocabulary as a sort of common denominator of the various applications. And this is primarily a rhetorical performance which always meets its mnemonic challenge in today’s network culture, and its factual challenge in popular culture. This trick covers a complicated justification strategy, and its goal is the legitimization of popular success by declaring true success as double – by definition. Only those who have success with the masses or the bourgeoisie deserve success as artists; it seems that Thomas Mann’s elitist ideals of art must have been severely slighted by the sales of his novel Buddenbrooks and the echo of his novellas. So it is acceptable for him to project his own desire to be ‘everybody’s darling’ on his brother: Der Drang nach Popularität, nationaler – nicht nur conventikelmäßiger, rein literarischer – Wirkung: bei den Besten, ehrgeizigsten, bei einem Schriftsteller von so stark aesthetischen Tendenzen wie Heinrich, der einerseits in den InselVerlag gehört, andererseits in hundert Auflagen auf das Volk wirken möchte.23

 22 23

GFKA 13/1, p. 121. Wysling, Geist und Kunst, p. 173.

50 Achim Hölter (The desire for popularity, for national – not only conventicle-like, purely literary – effect: in the best and most ambitious, in a writer with pronounced aesthetic tendencies as Heinrich, who on the one hand belongs in the Insel-Verlag but on the other hand wants to influence the people in a hundred print runs.)

Incidentally, the aforementioned dilemma is very typical of this period. We may choose as a parallel the numerous ingenious but unsuccessful authors in the novels by Henry James (e.g., Ralph Limbert in The Next Time from 1895) who never succeed beyond the literary supplements of the newspapers nor ever succeed in making money like the simple minds at the desk who write simple novels for the simple minds at the tea-table. In reference to the above-mentioned quotation about Aschenbach’s double talent, the commentary of the Frankfurt Thomas Mann-edition states: Thomas Mann konnte seine Karriere ruhig auf einem Sowohl-als-Auch aufbauen: Als Hermann Hesse 1903 in einer Besprechung des Tristan-Bandes schrieb, es sei “ein Buch ausschließlich für literarische Leser, für Kenner” […], bahnte sich der enorme Erfolg der Buddenbrooks bereits entschieden an, der tatsächlich in erster Linie vom Publikum getragen wurde.24 (Thomas Mann could build his career without concern and sure of both critical and popular success: When Hermann Hesse wrote in 1903 in a review of the Tristan-volume that it was “a book exclusively for literary readers, for connoisseurs” [...] the enormous success of the Buddenbrooks was already imminent, primarily sustained by a broad audience.)

But to talk about a “trick” is not entirely fair. Thomas Mann did not falsify an argument; he only prepared it in such a – of course, self-referential – way that it offered exactly what he described. One may conceive the idea when reading the chapter from the Betrachtungen as a discourse, one may recognize and enjoy it as an artificial cabinet piece, perhaps without consent; but in any case the text fulfills its obligations. A year later, in 1919, Thomas Mann prepared an old essay Der alte Fontane for reprint in a Fontane-book (to be compiled by Ernst Heilborn). The revision – some shortening is due – is an opportunity to employ the newly invented “doppelte Optik”. And in Lotte in Weimar (1939), Thomas Mann lets the awakening Goethe reflect: “Tiefsinn soll lächeln… Er soll überhaupt nur mit unterlaufen, sich für den Eingeweihten heiter ergeben, – so wills die Esoterik der Kunst. Bunte Bilder dem Volk, dahinter für die Wissenden das Geheimnis.”25 (“Profundity must smile, glide gently in, and smiling yield 24 25

GKFA 2/2, p. 407. Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar, GKFA vol. 9/1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2003), pp. 307-308. The commentary (GKFA Bd. 9/2), p. 560f., tends to venture in other directions.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 51

itself to the initiate alone – that is the esoteric of our art. For the people gay pictures; for the cognoscenti the mystery behind.”26) Here, Mann’s selfreflection in Goethe is easily visible, but even a kind of private interpretation of the Klassik and the classical. In the great essay Versuch über Schiller, published in the year of his own death in 1955, he still refers to the matter, and it stands to reason why. To speak and write extensively about Schiller means to speak also about the review in which young Schiller relentlessly criticised the popular aspects in Gottfried August Bürger’s poetry. But where the “Problem von Kunst und Popularität”27 (“problem of art and popularity”) is addressed, “doppelte Optik” is nearby. Appropriately, in a commemorative speech to Schiller’s 150th day of death, Mann speaks declamatorily rather than ironically. Schiller’s “Schweizer Stück” (“Swiss play”), the Wilhelm Tell, is “ein herrliches Werk […], mit welchem in der Tat das ‘Allerschwerste’ vollbracht ist: die Aufhebung der Kulturunterschiede durch die Kunst”28 (“a wonderful work [...] that in fact has accomplished the ‘most difficult’: The abolition of cultural differences through the arts”). This formula is expressed again in other words: “Sein ist die Liebe der Einfachen und die Bewunderung der Kenner, vollendete Popularität.”29 (“He receives the love of the simple and the admiration of connoisseurs, complete popularity.”) But what follows then is a differentiation, itself capable of slowing down simplifying articles from the web. Perhaps it was the desire of old Thomas Mann to pay undisguised tribute to Schiller, or he probably was already far too much in tune with the zeitgeist of the 1950s. Anyway, his apotheosis of Schiller continues: Diese Popularität hat nichts von der “doppelten Optik”, die Nietzsche als eine Art von Schläue an Wagners Kunst degoutierte. Die Romantik hatte es immer auf die Vereinigung des Volkstümlichen mit dem Hochkünstlerischen abgesehen, aber ihr Mittel dazu war von kluger Unreinheit: eine Mischung des Raffinierten mit dem Kindlichen, die aller romantischen Volkstümlichkeit etwas Verderbtes gibt.30 (This popularity has nothing of the “double optics” which Nietzsche despised as a kind of shrewdness in Wagner’s art. Romanticism had always aimed at a merging of the folklike with the highly artificial, but its means had been of wise impurity: a mixture of the sophisticated and the childlike which adds something depraved to all romantic folklore.)

 26 27 28 29 30

Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weinmar, transl. by H. T. Lowe-Porter, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 229. Thomas Mann, Reden und Aufsätze 3,Gesammelte Werke vol. 9, 2nd, rev. ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1974), p. 918. Ibid., p. 919. Ibid. Ibid.

52 Achim Hölter We hear correctly: “Unreinheit” (“impurity”), “etwas Verderbtes” (“something depraved”), and we have to bear in mind that with ‘romanticism’ Thomas Mann did not so much refer to Tieck and Wackenroder, at best to Novalis, but – above all and by leap of time – to Wagner. This is the reason why he closes this rhetorically effective, but in terms of “doppelte Optik” highly problematic conclusion which borrows from the 19th century the more than precarious, irrational concept of character as follows: Es bestimmt den ganzen Charakter-Unterschied zwischen Schiller und Wagner, zwischen dem Edlen und dem ehrgeizig Klugen, daß bei jenem von Ausgepichtheit nicht eine Spur zu finden ist. Was ihm im “Tell” gelang, ist klassische Popularität.31 (It determines the whole difference in character between Schiller and Wagner, between the noble and the ambitiously clever that there is no trace of that crafty cunning in the first one. What he achieved in the “Tell” is classical popularity.)

This far, “doppelte Optik” has appeared as something positive, the compromise of the elitist with the popular as highest art in the second degree, in a manner of speaking. Now one gains the impression that every trope which is somehow becoming popular meets the same fate as the collective symbols in terms of Jürgen Link32, and is becoming radically ambivalent. But perhaps all this is not mere coincidence, as not only were the 1950s simply a period during which the protagonists of modern intellectualism between fin de siècle and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) grew old, but also the time in which, for instance, Hanns Eisler, who had been Mann’s comrade-in-exile in Hollywood when he was writing his Doctor Faustus, was exercising a new popularity in the newly founded German Democratic Republic. Following melancholic high-brow art with experiments in twelve-tone music, Eisler met the demands of the party and composed folk songs. In 1950 he explains: Will der Komponist ein Genre treffen, so muß er sich dazu bekennen, ohne nach einem anderen zu schielen. Wenn ich mir also zum Beispiel die Aufgabe stelle, zu den so schönen Gedichten von Becher eine volkstümliche Melodie zu finden, so darf ich nicht nach Konzertwirkungen schielen, die ja andere Hörvoraussetzungen haben.33 (If the composer wants to be faithful to a genre, then he has to admit himself to it without leering at some other. If, for example, I assign myself the task to 31 32

33

GW IX, p. 919f., italics in the original. Cf. recently Link(s). Eine Bibliographie zu den Konzepten “Interdiskurs”, “Kollektivsymbolik” und “Normalismus” sowie einigen weiteren Fluchtlinien, ed. by Rolf Parr and Matthias Thiele, 2nd, exp. and rev. ed. (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2010). Hanns Eisler, ‘Das neue Volkslied’, in Hanns Eisler. Materialien zu einer Dialektik der Musik, ed. by. Manfred Grabs, 2nd ed.(Leipzig: Reclam, 1976), pp. 190f. (p. 191).

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 53 find a popular tune for Becher’s poems which are so beautiful, then I may not leer to concert effects which indeed have different prerequisites of listening.)

It is the same Eisler, who in 1958 shall entitle a talk as “Über die Dummheit in der Musik” (“On stupidity in music”), in which he assumes an overall typically dialectical position. There he expresses his opinion that, for instance, dodecaphony “ermöglicht jeder mittleren Intelligenz, sich rasch in einen Dummkopf zu verwandeln, und kleinen primitiven Begabungen, sich mit Gelehrsamkeit zu drapieren”34 (“allows every mediocre intelligence to quickly transform into an idiot, and small primitive talents to drape with eruditeness”). Perhaps it is not out of place to forcefully bend something back: what else does it mean but dialectics when one speaks of changing or double optics, and ever different “Hörvoraussetzungen” (“prerequisites of listening”) are respectively taken into consideration?35 So much for “double optics” which in fact are none after all. Yet it is a catchy notion, and therefore able to effectively express a pre-conceived idea which apparently had been lacking a right clearness for a long time. And now for the “long ears”. Quite often, Mozart’s contemporaries complained that his texture was too complicated and cluttered, incidentally even with reference to works which – objectively and on the basis of later hearing – are rather easy. As a proof we might once again refer to an article in the Berliner Zeitung in which Wolfgang Fuhrmann quotes, for instance, Adolph Freiherr Knigge on Die Entführung aus dem Serail (“The Abduction from the Seraglio”) with the words: “Der Kenner fühlt den Wert dieser Stellen; aber für den populairen Vortrag taugt das nicht” (“The connoisseur senses the values of these parts, but it’s not much good for a popular performance.”)36 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had himself a different ideal. In December 1780

 34

35

36

Hanns Eisler, ‘Über die Dummheit in der Musik, in Hanns Eisler. Materialien zu einer Dialektik der Musik, ed. by. Manfred Grabs, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Reclam, 1976), pp. 251264 (p. 258). By the way, Brecht took the easy way out when he stated in 1935/39: “Das Volk versteht kühne Ausdrucksweise, billigt neue Standpunkte, überwindet formale Schwierigkeiten, wenn seine Interessen sprechen.“ (“The people understands a bold diction, approves of new points of view, overcome formal difficulties, when its interests are speaking.”) – Bertolt Brecht, ‘Volkstümliche Literatur’, in Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, and Klaus-Detlef Müller, vol. 22/1 (Berlin, Weimar, Frankfurt a.M.: Aufbau/Suhrkamp, 1993), p. 415f. (p. 415). – Cf. Die Expressionismusdebatte. Materialien zu einer marxistischen Realismuskonzeption, ed. by Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973), pp. 329-336. Wolfgang Fuhrmann, ‘Sozusagen die Musik selbst’, in Berliner Zeitung, 27.1.2006, p. 25.

54 Achim Hölter his father Leopold sent him a well-meant, paternal letter in which he recommended: Ich empfehle dir Bey deiner Arbeit nicht einzig und allein für das musikalische, sondern auch für das ohnmusikalische Publikum zu denken, – du weist es sind 100 ohnwissende gegen 10 wahre Kenner, – vergiß also das so genannte populare nicht, das auch die langen Ohren Kitzelt […].37 For your work, I suggest you should not solely keep in mind the musically talented but also the unmusical audience – you know, 100 ignorants stand against 10 true connoisseurs – so don’t forget the so-called popular which also tickles the long ears […].

Mozart replied to his father in his usual defiant obedience which has almost become a myth: on the 16th of December 1780 he wrote: “In my opera” – Idomeneo, that is, on which Mozart was working at that time – “there is music for all kinds of people – except those with long ears.” (“in meiner Oper ist Musick für aller Gattung leute – ausgenommen für lange ohren nicht.”)38 With “long ears” (“lange Ohren”) Mozart was clearly referring to those unwilling to listen but who rather wanted to be entertained, and which he confronted as an unrelenting artist. For the rest, this notion is rather idiosyncratic; the Grimmsches Wörterbuch does indeed keep record of innumerable idioms with “Ohren” (“ears”) plus adjective,39 but only the Röhrich translates – without giving a source – “Lange Ohren machen” (“to make long ears”) with “schnell davonlaufen, wie ein Angsthase, aber auch: etw. erlauschen wollen.” (“running away quickly, like a Angsthase [coward, literally: fearful bunny], but also: eager to listen to something”).40 Definitely, this has nothing to do with Mozart’s concept of art. But those familiar with Mozart’s straightforwardness will certainly not so much think of a well-established idiom – the more so as in such a case listeners with long ears would have to be those who are very attentive towards art – but rather of donkeys. Thus, when giving concerts, Leopold Mozart recognized underneath the wigs ten per cent accustomed pairs of ears and 90 per cent jackasses that also had to be satisfied. In the paragraph quoted from his letter, Mozart junior appears to be an artist without any concession, appealing to a predominantly aristocratic au-

 37

38 39 40

Salzburg, December 11th 1780. Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Gesamtausgabe, Vol. III (Kassel, München: Bärenreiter, dtv, 2005), p. 53. For further context cf. commentary ibid., Vol. VI, p. 35. Ibid., p. 60. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 7. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1889), columns 1233-1237. Lutz Röhrich, Das große Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten, vol. 2 (Freiburg, Basel, and Wien: Herder, 1992), p. 1114.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 55

dience and the way they treat their supposedly artistic lackeys (not by accident, it is his more conformist father with whom Mozart is discussing such questions of status). However, the main message of the sentence is quite the opposite, because if one takes the “long ears” as the extreme end of philistinism then Mozart prides himself of a quality which consists in composing music “for all kinds of people”. Therefore, the question of detail (it cannot be answered here) which leads to the heart of the aesthetics of opera rather goes like this: Does Mozart juxtapose different music for different addressees in the diverse numbers of the score or does he claim to serve different “genres” and maybe even different levels of listeners (which is not the same) within one and the same piece of music? A letter, once again addressed to his father and written two years later, on the 28th of December 1782 presents an answer. In this letter, Mozart not only talks about the opera, but about his piano concerts which is important, as instrumental music a priori offers fewer fallback positions for musical ignorants as there are neither text nor action, neither costumes nor stage design, neither pretty voices nor beautiful singers which could serve as a distraction. Mozart, however, characterizes his classical to date piano concertos in such a way that his selfevaluation is often cited in order to unravel the mystery of their success. die Concerten sind eben das Mittelding zwischen zu schwer, und zu leicht – sind sehr Brillant – angenehm in die ohren – Natürlich, ohne in das leere zu fallen – hie und da – können auch kenner allein satisfaction erhalten – doch so – daß die nichtkenner damit zufrieden seyn müssen, ohne zu wissen warum.41 The concerts are exactly the medium between too difficult and too easy – they are brilliant – pleasing to the ear – of course, without grasping at nothing – now and then – solely connoisseurs can find satisfaction – but in such a way – that the ignorant will be pleased with it without knowing why.)

“angenehm in die Ohren” (“pleasing to the ear”) – that is the leitmotif. What is “optics” with Nietzsche and Mann, is the acoustic organ with both Mozarts. And the ignorants are “pleased with it without knowing why”. Doesn’t this well-nigh resonate a Leverkühnian arrogance? Let us return to Thomas Mann or rather to how “doppelte Optik” is treated in the relevant philology. Already back in 1970, Eberhard Lämmert entitled his contribution on the “Erzählkunst des frühen Thomas Mann” (“The prose of the early Thomas Mann”) as Doppelte Optik (“double optics”)42 in which, on the one hand, he explained the Nietzschean concept 41 42

Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, Vol. III, p. 245f. Eberhard Lämmert, ‘Doppelte Optik. Über die Erzählkunst des frühen Thomas Mann’, in Literatur, Sprache, Gesellschaft, ed. by Karl Rüdinger (München: Bayrischer Schulbuch-Verlag, 1970), pp. 50-72.

56 Achim Hölter and, on the other hand, identified the very early story Das Wunderkind (1903) as a model. Of course, one can argue about the adequacy of that topos for the writing objectives of young Thomas Mann, but the operation of superimposing theory and practice is obvious. In a somewhat forced interpretation, Erkme Joseph reads a paragraph in the Zauberberg (“The Magic Mountain”) on which a tenor sings a melodic line in such a way that “it tugged at the audience’s heartstrings in an unexpected way” (“dem Zuhörer auf ungeahnte Weise ans Herz griff”) in the context of “double optics”.43 Another example for the universal applicability of the topos is of all things the Buddenbrookhaus in Lübeck which describes itself in the light of “double optics”, based on the argument that it has developed a “Literaturausstellung neuen Typs” (“new kind of literary exhibition”) “die das Spektakuläre mit dem Wissenschaftlichen verbindet” (“which combines the spectacular with the scientific”).44 This refers to the exhibition of more or less authentic documents including their aura, and the possibility to deepen one’s knowledge on location with the help of headphones and reading desks. It is doubtful whether this has seriously anything to do with the art of Richard Wagner which Nietzsche mistrusted. Finally, in an online review on Jochen Strobel’s standard reference on the topic of Germany in the works of Thomas Mann – namely Doktor Faustus – Franka Marquardt has particularly highlighted this most successful notion amongst others. As Strobel lays bare “die vielen Risse und Brüche, Widersprüche und Gegensätze” (“the many fissures and breaches, contradictions and antagonisms”) or, more conciliatory, the “Vielschichtig- und Mehrstimmigkeit” (“complexity and polyphony”) in Mann’s image of Germany, the “double optics” come into play, as the reviewer argues: Die doppelte Optik […], die Thomas Mann wohl von Nietzsche lernte, spiegelt sich nun auch als Analyseperspektive in Strobels Studie wider: Genau wie Thomas Mann sucht auch Strobel das “Rollenbild des Autors […] nach außen hin wenigstens performativ […] zu wahren”, indem er sich ausgerechnet dieses Lebenswerk zur Untersuchung “der Repräsentation Deutschlands” vornimmt.45 The double optics which Thomas Mann has presumably learned from Nietzsche are now also reflected as a perspective of analysis in Strobel’s study: Just like Thomas Mann, so does Strobel seek “to externally preserve the author’s role model at least performatively” by dealing of all things with his work of a lifetime for a survey of “the representation of Germany”. 43 44 45

Erkme Joseph, Nietzsche im “Zauberberg” (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1996), p. 280. Die “Buddenbrooks” – ein Jahrhundertroman, http://buddenbrookhaus.de/de/ 46/ asid:9/ausstellung.html. Franka Marquardt, ‘Doppelte Optik auf Deutschland. Thomas Mann über seine Nation’, in IASLonline (http://www.iaslonline.lmu.de/index.php?vorgang_id=2259).

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 57

What Marquardt ties here to Nietzsche under the label of “doppelte Optik” – thus making it easily compatible with Thomas Mann – rather seems to imply a performative contradiction which is eventually accepted. Can this also imply that the very same books appeal to dummies and to masterminds? But which dummy will read 400 pages of scholarly literary criticism? The conclusion is obvious: as the keyword is out in the world, it is gladly invoked – particularly in the context of Thomas Mann; however, its satisfactory potential lies exactly in the fact that it simultaneously promises to do what it speaks about. The connoisseur knows it, and he will immerse into the knowing glance of the one who is quoting. But for the most part, this has not much in common with Nietzsche. Finally, let us dare to think outside of the Thomas Mann box: It is once again on a collective-interactive website, on Wikiversity, where we can find an ambitious and personalized article under the headline “Annäherung an eine Kunstdefinition” (“Approximations to a definition of art”). In this article, we can find an ascending chain of essential features of a work of art, starting with the fact that art is formed nature, and culminating in the ambiguity of great (modern) art. Just as once again the catchphrase “Zweideutigkeit als System” (“ambiguousness as a system”) is exerted, so the following is decreed under the aspect of “Breitenwirkung” (“broad impact”): Große Kunst befriedigt gleichermaßen schlichte Erwartungen wie hohe Ansprüche. Eine Kunst, die nur von Eingeweihten als solche erkannt wird, wird dem Wesen der Kunst nicht gerecht. Nietzsche und mit ihm Thomas Mann nannten diese Sicht des Künstlers auf sein Publikum “doppelte Optik”.46 (Great art equally satisfies simple expectations and the demand for high standards. Any art which can only be recognised as such by the adept, does not do justice to the essence of art. Nietzsche, and along with him Thomas Mann, called such a view of the artist on his audience “double optics”.)

Leaving all philological question marks aside, the following remains as essence: 1.) in 2011 such a philosophy of art qualifies for comunis opinio; 2.) simply speaking, “double optics” is identified with the “view of the artist on his audience”. However, as much as it might match a certain personal arrogance, semantically this cannot be maintained regarding Mann and for all I care Nietzsche behind him. Who sees double after all? Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner whom Nietzsche blamed for having “eine wechselnde Optik, bald in Hinsicht auf die gröbsten Bedürfnisse, bald in Hinsicht auf die raffinirtesten” (“changing optics, sometimes in regard to the crudest of

 46

Hans Peter Haack, ‘Annäherung an eine Kunstdefinition’, in Wikiversity (http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Annäherung_an_eine_Kunstdefinition).

58 Achim Hölter needs, sometimes in regard to the most refined”).47 That means, they do indeed look alternately, and not double, on their audience, because otherwise they would only see the proper refined person and the idiot in one and the same addressee. It is rather the view of the artist on his own artistic ideal which can be “double”, bifocal, or the view from two changing positions, i.e., once the expectation of the sophisticated, once the look-out of the frugal. It is exactly this, what is meant, and what in fact becomes even more obvious in Nietzsche’s phrase. However, Nietzsche has also coined the notion in a different way. In Der Fall Wagner (“The Case of Wagner”) he speaks of Wagner’s art and “die Unruhe ihrer Optik, die dazu nöthigt, in jedem Augenblick die Stellung vor ihr zu wechseln”48 (“the restlessness of its optics, which necessitates continual changing of posture before it”49). And then there is a passage in Nietzsche contra Wagner where he once again reproaches Wagner’s music with being ambiguous, this time by expanding the antithesis of totality and detail. In a critical voice it says here that Wagner, the “Meister des ganz Kleinen” (“master of minutiæ”) and of the “Mikroskopische[n] der Seele” (“microscopic matters of the soul”), tends to “Wandmalerei” (“wall-painting”), although his spirit has an “entgegengesetzte Optik” (“antithetical optics”).50 Of course, Nietzsche’s obsession to talk about the “optics” of music over and over again is already becoming obvious here. On the one hand, this is almost enforced due to metaphorical parallels: genres of painting, psychomicroscopy. On the other hand, although referring to the negative attribute “Unruhe” (“restlessness”), Nietzsche – standing at the beginning of this chain of metaphors – emphasizes the audience when characterising Wagner’s works: vis-à-vis them one is forced to continually choose another position. What is it, then, that Nietzsche talks about? Is it, maliciously spoken, in fact the confession of what has become known as polyvalency in contemporary art theory and which is generally accounted for the credit side of a work of art? Regarding Thomas Mann, the widely known key concept is irony (although he partly does not expose it in such passages). Not only the reflected and secured inability to make decisions, appearing in a Socratic guise, could be subsumed under the notion of irony, but also the non-commitment to a certain aspiration level. Is it – expressed in form of an enallage, i.e, in47 48

49 50

Cf. footnote 12. Nietzsche, KSA, vol. 6, p. 27. – Cf. Thomas Klugkist, Sehnsuchtskosmogonie. Thomas Manns “Doktor Faustus” im Umkreis seiner Schopenhauer-, Nietzsche- und Wagner-Rezeption (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), p. 439. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner. Nietzsche contra Wagner. The Twilight of the Idols. The Antichrist (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1988), p. 24. Nietzsche, KSA, vol. 6, p. 418 and Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner. Nietzsche contra Wagner, p. 66. – Cf. Klugkist, Sehnsuchtskosmogonie, p. 440.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 59

terchanging the actually meant instances – a critique of Wagner’s inability to make decisions (then, of all things, we would find Wagner’s forerunnership to Thomas Mann’s irony being founded in Nietzsche)? Or is it some sort of surrender of connoisseurship? We should remember that in the 18th century connoisseur literature comprised recommendations on the ideal position (or positions) one should assume when looking at paintings in a picture gallery.51 Basically, Nietzsche’s imagery speaks in favour of and against changing optics, takes sides for the sphere of production and the sphere of reception; no wonder, as the underlying affect which determines everything – Nietzsche’s love-hate relationship with Wagner – remains unsolved as a contradictio in adiecto. As it is not possible to solve the paradox, we have to accept the juxtaposed semantics as a sum. We should also bear in mind that “doppelte Optik” (“double optics”) is often used colloquially to describe a kind of double moral standards, applying two sets of scales; in short, it is a form of usage for injustice. This is quite important if, in the broadest sense, one takes into consideration that aesthetics often draw their terminology from the limited field of rhetoric: Rhetoric takes an inappropriate and inadequate form of artistry as an aesthetic analogue to moral or legal injustice. But does the metaphor “double optics” not always evoke the seemingly trivial image of glasses? And do we not have to recall here that, for instance, in 17th century Spain and in the literature of the moralists “anteojos de mejor vista” are the instrument of knowledge of the desengaño par excellence?52 Today, perhaps, one would rather speak of binocular, stereoscopic 3D optics. Be that as it may – figures of thought are often ambivalent, and in aesthetics rather obscure than they explain. The reason is quite simple: normally, they polarise and simplify binarily instead of assuming also complex scalings. Last but not least, Edo Reents mentions that already Schopenhauer referred to the “Unterschied zwischen esoterischer und exoterischer Wahrheit” (“difference between esoteric and exoteric truth”); in an emphatic sense, he had the true artist in mind when he declared: Der Dichter bringt Bilder des Lebens, menschliche Charaktere und Situationen vor die Phantasie, setzt das Alles in Bewegung, und überläßt nun Jedem, bei diesen Bildern so weit zu denken, wie seine Geisteskraft reicht. Dieserhalb

51 52

Cf., for example, Johann Dominik Fiorillo, Beschreibung der Gemählde-Sammlung der Universität zu Göttingen (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1805), p. VII. Cf. Rodrigo Fernández de Ribera, Los anteojos de mejor vista, ed. by Victor Infantes de Miguel (Madrid: Legasa, 1979).

60 Achim Hölter kann er Menschen von den verschiedensten Fähigkeiten, ja, Thoren und Weisen zugleich genügen.53 (The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage people of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together.)

Yet, looking at the written statements of Nietzsche and Mann as well as of Mozart or Schopenhauer, it is eye-catching how often these authors have worked with italics and underlines. The reason is always the same: to highlight an “and at the same time” or to emphasise something which is apparently self-evident. On purpose, I have referred to the notion of the “aesthetic compromise” (“ästhetischer Kompromiss”) as this version should be more plausible for what is often advocated as an “ideal”. It is exactly the great effort, the underlines and letter-spacing, which reveal a rather busy compromise in producing for connoisseurs and laymen, masterminds and dummies, standing room enthusiasts and state box sponsors. As is generally known, the widespread implementation of “double optics” is a result of postmodernism. According to Gottfried Willms, it is a characteristic trait of, e.g., Patrick Süskind’s novel Das Parfum (“Perfume”) that the author has succeeded in meeting the requirement “die Kluft zwischen esoterischer Kunstliteratur und exoterischer Unterhaltungsliteratur zu überbrücken” (“to close the gap between esoteric art literature and exoteric light fiction”).54 The figure of thought for this kind of multiple coding has by then itself infiltrated the, let us say, discourse of popular aesthetics. Consequently, it has at the same time become trivial, diffuse, unclear, fertile, dynamic, in short: popular. By now, it seems to fit the crime novel as a popular genre which can be well-written (“literary”, as the word is), to fit poetae docti like Wolf Haas, who partially hide, partially exhibit their literary scholarship behind a new “popular style”. Finally, let us keep in mind the practical aesthetics of the circus, the music hall, of every virtuosity, i.e., to make the difficult look simple. For a long time, jazz has occupied this posi53

54

Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Parerga und Paralipomena’ in Zürcher Ausgabe. Werke in zehn Bänden, Vol. IX. (Zürich: Diogenes, 1977), p. 11 (in the original italics are set in letterspacing) Gottfried Willems, ‘Die postmoderne Rekonstruktion des Erzählens und der Kriminalroman. Über den Darstellungsstil von Patrick Süskinds “Das Parfum”’, in Experimente mit dem Kriminalroman. Ein Erzählmodell in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Wolfgang Düsing (Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 223244 (p. 223). Also cf. Judith Ryan, ‘Pastiche und Postmoderne. Patrick Süskinds Roman “Das Parfum”’, in Spätmoderne und Postmoderne. Beiträge zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur, ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1991), pp. 91-104.

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 61

tion in the popular music of the 20th century, jazz having the advantage that its different styles and players made the notion fuzzy, but also that one could ascribe any intellectualism and emotionality to the jazz-players. When pop-music shrank to 3-minute-tracks in the 1970s, it was – at least for a while – Symphonic rock à la Yes and Genesis which appeased several variants of aesthetic conscience. The counter-strategy beginning at that time continues down to the present day: to locate the “well-written”, the hard work in the simple. Since then, we can find the topos of the well-made pop-music with its sophisticated sub-structures in the literary and arts sections of the newspapers. No longer anyone talks about the length of ears, but hypertrophic headphones earmark them again. Just as well, someone wearing extreme sunglasses highlights the discourse of vision in cultural studies, but at the same time hides his real direction of sight. It is well possible that “double optics” is mainly a strabismus.

Bibliography Brecht, Bertolt, ‘Volkstümliche Literatur’, in Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. by Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, and Klaus-Detlef Müller, , vol. 22/1 (Berlin, Weimar, Frankfurt a.M.: Aufbau/Suhrkamp, 1993), p. 415f. Die Expressionismusdebatte. Materialien zu einer marxistischen Realismuskonzeption, ed. by Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973). Doderer, Heimito von, Die Wasserfälle von Slunj, 5th ed. (München: dtv, 1984). Eisler, Hanns, ‘Das neue Volkslied’, in Hanns Eisler. Materialien zu einer Dialektik der Musik, ed. by. Manfred Grabs, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Reclam, 1976), pp. 190f. Eisler, Hanns, ‘Über die Dummheit in der Musik, in Hanns Eisler. Materialien zu einer Dialektik der Musik, ed. by. Manfred Grabs, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Reclam, 1976), pp. 251-264. Fernández de Ribera, Rodrigo, Los anteojos de mejor vista, ed. by Victor Infantes de Miguel (Madrid: Legasa, 1979). Fiorillo, Johann Dominik, Beschreibung der Gemählde-Sammlung der Universität zu Göttingen (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1805). Fuhrmann, Wolfgang, ‘Sozusagen die Musik selbst’, in Berliner Zeitung, 27.1.2006, p. 25. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 7. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1889). Haack, Hans Peter, ‘Annäherung an eine Kunstdefinition’, in Wikiversity (http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Annäherung_an_eine_Kunstdefinition).

62 Achim Hölter Hölter, Achim, ‘Volltextsuche’, in Komparatistik (2004/2005), 131-137. Klugkist, Thomas, Sehnsuchtskosmogonie. Thomas Manns “Doktor Faustus” im Umkreis seiner Schopenhauer-, Nietzsche- und Wagner-Rezeption (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000). Kurzke, Hermann, ‘Nietzsche in den “Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen”’, in Wagner – Nietzsche – Thomas Mann. Festschrift für Eckhard Heftrich, ed. by Heinz Gockel, Michael Neumann and Ruprecht Wimmer (Frankfurt a.M., 1993), pp. 184-202. Kurzke, Hermann, Thomas Mann. Epoche – Werk – Wirkung (München: Beck, 1985). Joseph, Erkme, Nietzsche im “Zauberberg” (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1996). Lämmert, Eberhard, ‘Doppelte Optik.Über die Erzählkunst des frühen Thomas Mann’, in Literatur, Sprache, Gesellschaft, ed. by Karl Rüdinger (München: Bayrischer Schulbuch-Verlag, 1970), pp. 50-72. Link(s). Eine Bibliographie zu den Konzepten “Interdiskurs”, “Kollektivsymbolik” und “Normalismus” sowie einigen weiteren Fluchtlinien, ed. by Rolf Parr and Matthias Thiele, 2nd, exp. and rev. ed. (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2010). Mann, Thomas, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 13/1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer 2009). Mann, Thomas, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. Kommentar von Hermann Kurzke, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 13/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer 2009). Mann, Thomas, ‘Der Tod in Venedig’, in Frühe Erzählungen 1893-1912, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 2/1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2004), pp. 501-592. Mann, Thomas, Frühe Erzählungen 1893-1912. Kommentar von Terence J. Reed u. Mitarb. v. Malte Herwig, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 2/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2004). Mann, Thomas, Lotte in Weimar, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 9/1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2003). Mann, Thomas, Lotte in Weimar. Kommentar v. Werner Frizen, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe vol. 9/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2003). Mann, Thomas, Lotte in Weinmar, transl. by H. T. Lowe-Porter, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976). Mann, Thomas, Reden und Aufsätze 3, Gesammelte Werke vol. 9, 2nd, rev. ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1974). Marquardt, Franka, ‘Doppelte Optik auf Deutschland. Thomas Mann über seine Nation’, in IASLonline (http://www.iaslonline.lmu.de/index.php?vorgang_id=2259).

Notes on the Aesthetic Compromise 63

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Gesamtausgabe, Vol. III (Kassel, München: Bärenreiter, dtv, 2005). Nietzsche, Friedrich, Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte, 13th rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1996). Nietzsche, Friedrich, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15 vols. (München, Berlin, New York: dtv/de Gruyter, 1988). Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Case of Wagner. Nietzsche contra Wagner. The Twilight of the Idols. The Antichrist (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1988). Röhrich, Lutz, Das große Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten, vol. 2 (Freiburg, Basel, and Wien: Herder, 1992). Ryan, Judith, ‘Pastiche und Postmoderne.Patrick Süskinds Roman “Das Parfum”’, in Spätmoderne und Postmoderne. Beiträge zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur, ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1991), pp. 91-104. Schopenhauer, Arthur, ‘Parerga und Paralipomena’ in Zürcher Ausgabe. Werke in zehn Bänden, Vol. IX. (Zürich: Diogenes, 1977). The Confessions of S. Augustine.rev. from a former translation by the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1838). Thomas Mann: 1848-1955 und Nachlese, ed. by Erika Mann (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1979). Westphal, Anke, ‘Affenliebe, wissendes Herz.Peter Jackson wäscht King Kong das schwere Blut und schafft einen atemberaubenden Film’, in Berliner Zeitung, 13.12.2005, p. 23. Willems, Gottfried, ‘Die postmoderne Rekonstruktion des Erzählens und der Kriminalroman. Über den Darstellungsstil von Patrick Süskinds “Das Parfum”’, in Experimente mit dem Kriminalroman. Ein Erzählmodell in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Wolfgang Düsing (Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 223-244. Wysling, Hans, ‘Geist und Kunst.Thomas Manns Notizen zu einem “Literatur-Essay”’, in Thomas Mann-Studien 1 (Bern, München: Francke, 1967), pp. 123-233.

Marion Wittfeld “Wartime Entertainment”: Press Instructions of the NS Propaganda Ministry on Literary Texts in Magazines1 The paper outlines the aesthetics that constituted desirable literary entertainment under National Socialist rule, focusing on serialised novels, novellas and short stories published in magazines between 1939 and 1945. Two sorts of documents serve as primary sources: the written press instructions of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP) for magazine editors and the Journal of the Reich Association of German Magazine Publishers (Reichsverband Deutscher Zeitschriften-Verleger, RDZV).

The National Socialists did not deny entertaining literature the right to exist. Though at first no effort was made to prohibit light reading,2 a change of paradigm was desired after 1933. The discussion focused in particular on texts labelled as “kitsch”, seen as an indicator of a disintegrating culture (“Gradmesser einer sich zersetzenden Kultur”3). Supposedly good entertainment and popular literature had their place within the Volksliteratur, but supposedly “bad” or subversive literature should be removed and destroyed. Thus, the Reichsschrifttumskammer created numerous observational and advisory services between 1934 and 1937 to further self-censorship among publishers. Direct measures of censorship were (according to Carsten Würmann) implemented in the late ‘30s – with special regard to pulp fiction, especially in the form of crime, adventure, and Wild West stories.4 Despite these and similar measures, the demand for popular fiction remained constant.5 The distribution of entertainment and popular literature in accordance with National Socialist ideology seemed therefore necessary. The new National Socialist Volksliteratur should both distract from the problems of everyday life and introduce non-intellectuals to reading. The reading Translation from German by Paul Ferstl.

1 2

3

4

5

In this regard, opinions differed among National Socialists, for example between Joseph Goebels and Alfred Rosenberg. Cf. Christian Adam, Lesen unter Hitler. Autoren, Bestseller, Leser im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Galiani, 2010), and Jan-Pieter Barbian, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat. Von der “Gleichschaltung” bis zum Ruin (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer 2010). Cf. Carsten Würmann, ‘Entspannung für die Massen. Die Unterhaltungsliteratur im Dritten Reich’, in Zwischen den Zeiten. Junge Literatur in Deutschland von 1933 bis 1945, ed. Uta Beiküfner and Hania Siebenpfeiffer (Berlin: Lotos 2000), pp. 9-36 (p. 22). Cf. Carsten Würmann and Ansgar Warner, Im Pausenraum des “Dritten Reiches”. Zur Populärkultur im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Publikationen zur Zeitschrift für Germanistik, Bd. 17 (Bern: Lang 2008), p. 14. According to Reinhard Wittmann, 60 million dime novels were sold in Germany between 1933 and 1939. Cf. Reinhard Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im Überblick (München: Beck 1999), p. 378.

66 Marion Wittfeld of popular literature should ease the access to literature of higher quality. Especially during the war, the promotion of literature was emphasised,6 but (according to Jan-Pieter Barbian) without much success. The intended change of reading habits was hampered by a lack of qualified National Socialist authors and a reading public clinging to traditional forms of popular literature.7 These few sentences only serve as a short introduction. A mere outline of the trends in the “Third Reich”regarding popular literature omits many central aspects.8 In this paper, popular fiction itself or its development during National Socialism is not the main concern. It rather addresses the following question: what – at least in theory – constituted desirable literary entertainment under National Socialist rule? For this I concentrate on serialised novels, novellas and short stories published in magazines between 1939 and 1945. To avoid the chaos typical of many areas of National Socialism – due to overlapping responsibilities in administration, and resulting in different (or sometimes even conflicting) statements by governmental agencies, or those affiliated with the NS party – two sorts of documents will serve as primary sources: the written press instructions of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP) addressed to magazine editors and the Journal of the Reich Association of German Magazine Publishers (Reichsverband Deutscher Zeitschriften-Verleger, RDZV). The instructions of the RMVP will illustrate the official governmental positions and show how literature was used for propaganda in magazines. The excerpts from the RDZV journal will on the one hand highlight the discussion of such popular literature as was to be published in journals – for even before 1933, various institutions had tried to abolish the so-called literary “kitsch”. On the other hand, the RDZV itself followed the press instructions as a magazine. 6

7 8

Cf. Ine van Linthout, ‘“Dichter, schreibt Unterhaltungsromane!” Der Stellenwert der Unterhaltungsliteratur im Dritten Reich’, in Im Pausenraum des “Dritten Reiches”. Zur Populärkultur im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, ed. by Carsten Würmann and Ansgar Warner (Bern: Lang 2008), p. 111-124. Cf. Jan-Pieter Barbian, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat, p. 352. For further information on the overall status or specific developments of popular literature between 1933 and 1945, see e.g. Carsten Würmann and Ansgar Warner, Im Pausenraum des “Dritten Reiches”. Also cf. Heinz J. Galle, Volksbücher und Heftromane, Bd. 2, Vom Kaiserreich zum “Dritten Reich” – 40 Jahre populäre Lesestoffe (Lüneburg: von Reeken 2006); Carsten Würmann, Entspannung für die Massen; Helga Geyer-Ryan, ‘Wunschkontrolle – Kontrollwünsche. Die Gleichschaltung der Populärliteratur im Dritten Reich’, in Leid der Worte. Panorama des literarischen Nationalsozialismus, ed. Jörg Thunecke (Bonn: Bouvier 1987), pp. 177- 206.

Wartime Entertainment 67

The analysis period (from 1939 to 1945) was chosen deliberately, as the written instructions of the Ministry for magazines, the ZD and the VI, were started in 1939. Before that, instructions were (apart from a few exceptions) issued for both newspapers and magazines at the same time.

I. The Implementation of Political Influence in Magazines (19331945) – General Measures Apart from the daily “press conference” held by the Ministry of Propaganda since 1933, starting from July 1937 the “Kulturpolitische Pressekonferenz”9 and from October 1937 the “Reichszeitschriftenkonferenz”10 were held specifically for magazine editors. In addition, written instructions were sent out by the Propaganda Ministry at different intervals, starting in 1939. The notes of the Zeitschriften-Dienst (ZD) (“journal service”) were published once a week from May 9, 1939 to April 14, 1945. On November 7th, 1941 the Deutscher Wochendienst (DW) was added to complement the instructions or to offer more detail. Their reception was mandatory – and was subject to strict confidentiality. Only the Hauptschriftleiter (“chief editor”) and his holiday replacement were officially allowed to know of its existence. The loss, temporary loss or unauthorized disclosure of the ZD was considered a betrayal of state secrets.11 Its “sachgemäße Behandlung und Aufbewahrung”12 (“proper handling and storage”) could be inspected at any time. Especially, the instructions were not to fall into enemy hands: Die Propagandamethode, die wir mit dem „Zeitschriften-Dienst“ und „Deutschen Wochendienst“ verfolgen, ist völlig neu und wird in keinem anderen Lande angewandt. Sie hat sich aber als so zweckmäßig erwiesen, daß wir unseren Gegnern durch die Kenntnis dieses Propagandaweges nicht auf die Sprünge helfen dürfen. Sollte durch irgendwelche Unachtsamkeit der „DW“ ins Ausland gelangen, so würde dies für den Schuldigen daher schwerste Folgen nach sich ziehen.13 (The propaganda method we employ using the ZD and the DW is en-

 9 10

11 12 13

Cf. Elke Fröhlich, ‘Die Kulturpolitische Pressekonferenz des Reichspropagandaministeriums’, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 22.4 (1974), pp. 347-381. Cf. ‘Bericht über die 1. Reichszeitschriftenkonferenz am 25.10.37 in Berlin’, in Walter Löhde, Am heiligen Quell deutscher Kraft. Zeitschrift in Ludendorffs-VolkswarteVerlag.Reichspressekonferenzen, Korrespondenz zur Pressepolitik, Presselenkung und Zensur, 1936-1939. Originale. 1. Band Blatt 77 ED 731/1. Cf. 1138 ‘Behandlung des Zeitschriften-Dienstes’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 27.1110-1152 (3.11.1939), p. 19. Ibid. Wilfried Bade, ‘An die Bezieher des „ZD“ und „DW“’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 220./89.9117-9145 (23.6.1943), p. 1.

68 Marion Wittfeld tirely new and not used in any other country. It has proven to be so useful that we must not let our opponents know about it. If by any negligence the DW should fall into foreign hands, the culprit would face severe consequences.)

The ZD had an average length of 20 pages until November 7th 1941, when the Deutsche Wochendienst itself averaging 20 pages began to appear – afterwards, the ZD consisted of only four pages, as the rest of the information was moved to the DW. The structure of each issue remained roughly the same. The main categories were self-explanatory and featured titles such as “Die Parole der Woche” (“Slogan of the week”), “Zur Lage” (“State of affairs”), “Hauptthema” (“main topic”), “Themen der Zeit” (“issues of our time”), “Aussprache unter uns” (“discussion among us”), “Bitte nicht so” (“Not that way, please”), and “Was uns gefiel” (“What we liked”). The editors were not compelled to use all the content of the ZD in their magazines, except for doubly framed topics that were absolutely obligatory. A leaflet that was featured in the first issue of the ZD explained its expected handling: “Vielmehr bieten wir eine solche Fülle von Material und Gedanken, um jedem Schriftleiter die Möglichkeit zu geben, die für sein Blatt, seinen Leserkreis geeigneten Themen auszuwählen.”14 (“Rather, we offer such a wealth of material and ideas to give each editor the opportunity to select topics suitable for his paper and his readers.”) The material should be used in regard to the magazine’s target audience.15 The ministry placed utmost importance on the wish that impressions of uniformity (in form of clumsy propaganda) should be avoided. This „neuartige[n] eigenschöpferische[n] Zeitschrifteneinsatz“ (“novel, creative use of journals”) aimed at “die gezielte Beeinflussung des Einzelmenschen und seine Hinführung zum großen politischen Geschehen, zum Gemeinschaftsdenken und Gemeinschafs-handeln”16 (“the systematic manipulation of the individual and his introduction to major political events, to a community mind-set and to community action”). In addition to the ZD, the Propaganda Ministry started to forward the Vertrauliche Informationen (VI) (“Confidential Information”) in 1939, distributed by regional propaganda offices to the journal editors. Current information from the press conferences was combined with regionally relevant material supplied by the different Gau-Propagandaämter,17 independent of the 14 15 16 17

‘Anschreiben an den “Berufskamerad!”’, leaflet in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 1.1-32 (9.5.1939), pp. 1-2 (p.1). Cf. ibid.  1214 ‘Geistige Kriegsführung durch die Zeitschrift’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 30.12021272 (24.11.1939), p. 12. Cf. Doris Kohlmann-Viand, NS-Pressepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Die ‘Vertraulichen’ Informationen als Mittel der Presselenkung (München [u.a.]: Saur 1991), p. 92.

Wartime Entertainment 69

weekly rhythm of the ZD. VI were issued in varying intervals: on some days, three directives were sent; sometimes several days passed without any news.

II. The Directives of ZD and VI Relating to Literature In the ZD and in the VI, numerous instructions were published in reference to serialised novels, short stories and novellas for magazines. Besides mostly brief notes – banning an author or a particular story without any reasons given – the directives were directed particularly against the so-called literary “kitsch” and promoted the politicization of literature. The National Socialist propaganda should be conveyed by literary texts, as an unobtrusive but effective means of influencing the reader. On October 28, 1939, the ZD featured the headline „Und der Roman?“ (“And the novel?”). In the article it is noted that the novel published in magazines – in contrast to the other content of the magazines – had “naturgemäß” (“naturally”) not yet adapted to the war situation.18 The authorities wished to change this situation, but they faced a problem: on the one hand, literary texts should fortify the National Socialist regime, support the war effort, and advocate “goodtaste”; on the other hand, clumsy propaganda would have a deterrent effect. Additionally, readers of popular literature were thought to be looking for entertainment and relaxation, rather than political education. A year later, almost nothing had changed. In the edition of August 8, 1940, the lack of “literarische, politische und volkserzieherische Wert”19 (“literary, political, and national educational value”) of serialised novels is criticised: far too many women’s, love, marriage, crime, and adventure novels had been published, novels too similar to those that had been banned. Even various forbidden books had been published in magazines and newspapers, disguised under a new title.20 But according to the ZD, literary texts had to be adjusted to the war situation. It would be “ziemlich nutzlos, im Leitaufsatz oder in Bildreportagen vom Feind England zu sprechen, in schönen Aufsätzen z.B. die Verordnungen zum Schutze der Jugendlichen zu begrüßen, wenn man im Fortsetzungsroman die Möglichkeit gibt, solche Beiträge zu sabotieren”21

 18 19 20 21

1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 26.1033-1109 (28.10.1939), pp. 25-26 (p. 25).  2981 ‘Der Roman in Zeitschriften’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 68.2945-2998 (8.8.1940), pp. 18-19 (p. 18). Cf. ibid. Ibid. 

70 Marion Wittfeld (“rather useless to speak of the enemy, England, in the leading article or other coverage, or to welcome the regulations for the protection of teenagers in beautiful essays, if the serialised novel is given the opportunity to sabotage such contributions”). In September 1940, this concern is reinforced again. The Ministry lists the reasons why so-called “old” literature has lost its raison d’être. Three arguments stand out: the “kitsch novel” cultivates unrealistic aspirations and leads to social discontent among the people. The greater part of these novels does not refer to political facts, and treats racial matters in an indifferent and uncomprehending way.22 Youths in particular would be threatened by such texts, as their content stood in stark contrast to the values advocated by the Hitlerjugend (“Hitler Youth”) and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (“League of German Girls”): “Auch hier das Ergebnis: Verwirrung des Denkens, Fühlens und Handelns. Das Liebeserlebnis wurde verkitscht, auf Bahnen gedrängt, die zu Irrschlüssen führen mussten, es wurde in seiner Darstellung verfälscht, dadurch schädlich und gefährlich [...].”23 (“Again, the result is confusion of thought, feeling, and acting. The notion of love was turned into kitsch, set upon tracks that necessarily led to fallacies; it was distorted in its presentation, thereby damaging and dangerous [...].”) As in many cases, National Socialist propaganda tried to evoke a present that was, in contrast to the past, new and cleansed; however, even after this press statement, numerous “shortcomings” of the literary texts in the magazines led to complaints. Therefore, the supposedly “dated”, troubling spectre of “kitsch” was once again described in detail: [...] das Fremde – im Kriminalroman das Englische und Amerikanische – war ihm [dem Unterhaltungsroman] Vorbild, es war allein erstrebenswert und besser als alles Deutsche. Auf bestehende politische Tatsachen nahm man keine Rücksicht [...]. Ein anderer Roman wählt sich als “Haupthelden” einen unsympathischen üblen Verbrecher, einen – Italiener!24 (The foreign – in the case of the detective novel, English and American texts – served as an ideal example, it alone was desirable and better than anything German. There was no consideration for political actuality [...]. Another novel featured as “main hero” a disagreeable evil criminal, an - Italian!)

The genre of the detective novel was a controversial subject in National Socialism and mentioned explicitly. The ZD stated:

22 23 24

3146 ‘Fortsetzungsromane so oder so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 72. 3123-3159 (6.9.1940), pp. 18-19 (p. 18). Ibid. Ibid.

Wartime Entertainment 71 Die Gruppe der Kriminalromane behinderte in ihrer Wirkung auf den Leser die vorbeugende, erzieherische und aufklärende Arbeit der Polizeiorgane. Spionage gehörte zu häufig verwandten Stoffen, genaue Beschreibung und Schilderung von Mordvorgängen waren an der Tagesordnung, Fingerabdruckverfahren, Spurenverschleierung den Lesern kein Geheimnis. Manche dieser Erzeugnisse erwiesen sich für haltlose Menschen als richtiggehende Verbrecherschulen.25 (The effects of detective novels on the reader obstructed the preventive, educational, and enlightening work of the police organs. Espionage was frequently treated, accurate descriptions and depictions of murder were commonplace events, fingerprinting or the covering of tracks no secret to readers. For unstable minds, some of these products proved to be full-fledged schools for criminals.)

However, the authorities did not want to suppress these forms of entertainment completely: Daß wir z.B. keine Kriminalromane wollten, ist ein Gerede. Kriminalromane ja, aber gute, die sich mit der Arbeit der Polizei vereinbaren lassen und sie nicht stören, Verbrecherbekämpfung nicht hindern [...], auch Abenteuerromane, Spannungsromane mit wahrem Hintergrund ohne die ewig Colt ziehenden Schützen, ohne widerliche Entführungsszenen, Vergewaltigungen, ohne Unwahrhaftigkeiten.26 (It is mere gossip that we do not want any detective novels. Detective novels, yes, but of good quality, novels that respect the work of the police and do not disturb crime-fighting [...], and adventure novels as well, suspense novels with a true background, without gunslingers, sickening abduction scenes, rapes, without falsities.)

Texts by English and French authors were not welcome, as were narratives that took place in these countries or that featured persons from enemy nations as heroes.27 Literary depictions of war were of course treated with caution. Novels dealing with the First World War were generally regarded as useful, “aber man wird klugerweise besonders ausführliche und schreckliche Kampfdarstellungen vermeiden, um die Stimmung der Leser nicht zu belasten”28 (“but it would be wise to avoid most detailed and horrific battle depictions in order not to burden the mood of the reader”). Also, any “Geschichtsklit-

 25 26 27 28

3146 ‘Fortsetzungsromane so oder so’, p. 18. Ibid. 1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 25; cf. also 2770 ‘Zeitschriften-Romane einsenden!’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 63.2736-2777 (5.6.1940), p. 19. 1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 25.

72 Marion Wittfeld terung” (“historical distortion”) and all “Hurrapatriotismus”29 (“jingoism”) were to be omitted. The style of the texts is hardly mentioned; content mattered. If anything occasional remarks called for “good” style and optimistic “frische Darstellungsart”30 (“fresh manner of representation”). In the edition of December 13, 1940, for example, a short story from a Viennese illustrated magazine was criticised: The topic (the encounter between the bride and them other of a soldier killed in Poland) was reasonable, the style inadequate. The verdict: “Leider hat sie zum zeitgemäßen Thema nicht den zeitgemäßen Stil finden können und ergeht sich nun viele Absätze lang in Redewendungen, die einer Courths-Mahler Achtung abgewonnen hätten.”31 (“Unfortunately the author has not been able to find a modern, suitable style fora modern, contemporary topic, and now indulges in a lot of paragraphs with phrases worthy of a Courts-Mahler.”) Maybe because it was less obvious than in novels, short stories were considered especially suitable for propaganda. In September 1940 it was stated that in political matters, no aesthetic but only a politically expedient perspective mattered. The meaning of “political expediency” was clarified in reference to the short story “Rotbraune Flecken” (“Red-brown stains”) from the September 1940 issue of the “Wiener Magazin”: Eingeborene Arbeiter kommen durch die Geldgier und Gefühlslosigkeit ihrer englischen Zwingherren bei der Ausübung ihrer Arbeit durch Unfälle ums Lebens, ohne daß sich jemand sonderlich darum bemüht, den Uebelständen, die dazu führen, abzuhelfen.32 (Through the greed and insensibility of their English oppressors, indigenous workers die in work-related accidents, without anyone trying particularly to remedy the bad state of affairs that caused the accidents.)

About a month later, magazines were requested to publish short stories suitable “zur Durchführung unserer publizistischen Arbeitsziele”33 (“for the implementation of our journalistic goals”). From mid-1941 to the end of the year, the VI asked again to review short stories with regard to their “kulturpolitische und weltanschauliche Stichhaltigkeit” (“cultural-political and ideological soundness”).34 29 30 31 32 33 34

1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 25. Ibid. 3715 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 86.3684-3726 (13.12.1940), p. 18. 3253 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 75.3235-3266 (27.9.1940), p. 17. 3452 ‘Anregungen aus Zeitschriften – für Zeitschriften’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 80.3430-3479 (1.11.1940), p. 15. Cf. ‘Kurzgeschichten’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (3.6.1941), p. 2; and ‘Kurzgeschichten’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (8.12.1941), p. 2 

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Generally speaking, content that might arouse the reader’s desire for peace was excluded.35 The cultural-political and entertaining part of any magazine – even the smallest publications – had to support the efforts of total war.36 The representation of a “eingeschränkten Friedenszustand” (“limited state of peace”) and a “Friedensmentalität”37 (“peace mentality”) had to be avoided – otherwise, a reduction of the German will to win and of the resilience of the population was imminent.38 The following subject matters were (apart from car driving and the purchase of goods no longer available)39 described as “abseits vom totalen Krieg” (“aloof from total war”): Dagegen ist es abwegig, beispielsweise in Romanen prächtige Friedensreisen zu beschreiben, Luxushotelszenen darzustellen oder mit aller Eindringlichkeit zu schildern, wie schwer, ja lebensgefährlich für die Mutter die Geburt eines Kindes sei. [...] Abwegig sind sentimentale Schilderungen und Naturschwärmereien über Reisen in fremden Ländern oder Erzählungen von Abenteuern, die von Männern bestanden werden, aus deren Namen deutlich hervorgeht, daß sie Angehörige fremder, uns feindlicher Nationen sind.“40 (In novels, it is misguided to describe, for example, magnificent journeys of peace, scenes in luxury hotels, or to portray with great intensity how hard, even how dangerous the birth of a child is for the mother. [...] It is misguided to publish sentimental portrayals of nature and fantasies about travels in foreign countries, or tales of adventures that feature men whose names clearly indicate that they are citizens of foreign, enemy nations.)

Barely a month later, this was combined with the request to fundamentally review the current approach to entertainment.The reader should indeed find entertainment, but it should always inspire him to fulfil the tasks of war.41 Especially in the cultural sector, the National Socialists knew how to maintain the idea of their supposedly new culture through the objection and eradication of supposedly negative opposing positions. But how did the press statements define desired content? In July 1940, it was stated:  35 Cf. 2270 ‘Zeitschriften-Romane einsenden!’, p. 19.  36

37 38

39 40 41

Cf. 8209 ‘Grundsätzliches zur Kulturpolitik’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 193./62.8187-8225 (15.1.1943), pp. 2-3; and ‘Kulturelle Ereignisse – totaler Kriegseinsatz’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (14.8.1944), p. 1. 8209 ‘Grundsätzliches zur Kulturpolitik’, p. 2. Cf. ibid., p. 3 and the identical instruction ‘Kulturberichterstattung und Unterhaltungsteil’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (9.1.1943), p. 12. Cf. ‘Kurzgeschichte und Novellen’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (10.1.1942), p. 1. 8209 ‘Grundsätzliches zur Kulturpolitik’, p. 3. Cf. 8363 ‘Aussprache unter uns’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 197./66.8352-8388 (12.2.1943), pp. 2-3.

74 Marion Wittfeld Positiv kann der Roman dadurch wirken, daß er, ohne das ganze Thema äußerlich darauf auszurichten, die Gebiete der Volksgemeinschaft, Wehrerstarkung, Bevölkerungspolitik, Umschulung, der Arbeitsdisziplin, der Betriebsgemeinschaft in seinen Handlungskreis mit einbezieht.“42 (The novel has a positive effect if it incorporates the ideas of national community, martial strengthening, population policy, re-education, discipline at work, the working community – without making the theme too obvious.)

In October 1939 and September 1940 the instructions increased in detail. Potential subjects – for example, a novel on the history of Upper Silesia, the history of Danzig or the East in general – were proposed.43 Even everyday life, professional life, a settlers’ community, or the workload of a mother were presented as suitable topics.44 But by and large, such propositions form an exception. Other statements relate more to the fundamental National Socialist doctrine in general: “Als Norm für den Roman kann man Stoffe aus unserer Zeit in unserer weltanschaulichen Linie und mit einer lebensnahen Haltung, mit geraden Charakteren und mit Problemen, die kämpferischen oder opferbereiten Einsatz verlangen, ansehen.”45 (“Material from our time serves as a standard for the novel, material in our ideological line and with a realistic attitude, with straightforward characters and problems that require a combative or sacrificial mind-set.”) The following sentence from the above-mentioned press statement clarifies the demands further: Die Menschen des Romans sollen Ideale haben, die unseren Auffassungen entsprechen. Die offene oder versteckte Uebernahme bzw. Vorstellung liberalen Gedankengutes, wie es unsere Feinde vertreten, muß endgültig ersetzt werden durch die Auffassungen des Nationalsozialismus in politischer, sozialer und rassischer Hinsicht.46 (The characters of the novel should have ideals that correspond to our conceptions. The open or covert notion and acceptance of liberal thought, as represented by our enemies, must be permanently replaced by the views of National Socialism in political, social, and racial terms.)

Even the choice of genre was regulated: humorous texts only in moderation, love stories only in “emergencies”, and at best political novels.47

 42 43 44 45 46 47

2770 ‘Zeitschriften-Romane einsenden!’, p. 19. Cf. 1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 25. Cf. 3146 ‘Fortsetzungsromane so oder so’, p. 18. 1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 25. 1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 25-26. Cf. ibid., p. 25.

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But on the other hand, novels of political content should not be overtly predominant. The line between entertainment and propaganda was to be blurred but otherwise respected. Editors were warned against “allzu harmlose Stoffe krampfhaft mit einem k r i e g e r i s c h e n A n s t r i c h zu versehen”48 (“forcefully decorating all too innocent topics with a martial coat of paint”). It was argued that the reader would take notice, resulting in alienation: Eine KdF-Fahrt als billige Rahmenhandlung für kitschige Liebeserlebnisse in geschmackloser und verstaubter Umgebung ist eine Unmöglichkeit, die Arbeit einer Betriebsfürsorgerin zu wichtig, um sie zum Anlaß eines rührseligen Frauenromans zu nehmen, Liebesschilderungen der oben gezeichneten Art in der Umgebung eines Lazaretts zwischen Aerzten und Pflegerinnen sind fast schon ein Verbrechen.49 (A KDF-trip that serves as a cheap frame story for kitschy love adventures inbad taste and dusty environment is an impossibility, the work of a Betriebsfürsorgerin too important to use it as basis for a sentimental women’s romance; love narratives of this kind in the environment of a hospital between doctors and nurses almost constitute a crime.)

National Socialist propaganda should be virtually undetectable and thus omit any obvious “markers”, making it theoretically possible to use any type of text for political purposes. In July 1943 the VI ordered the editorial offices to examine novels scheduled for publication once more, especially if these novels had been chosen some time ago – for only a while ago a novel had been published that dealt with a Wehrmacht officer entangled in a criminal case. The officer had been shown in an uncertain light.50 In order to avoid further such incidents, in October 1943 a special newsletter announced the creation of an examination unit for novel submissions by the press department of the Reich government. In doubtful cases, editorial offices and publishers could send manuscripts to the unit for examination.51

 48 49 50 51

4623 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 108.4594-4637 (23.5.1941), p. 19. ‘Fortsetzungsromane so oder so’, p. 18. Cf. ‘Veröffentlichung von Romanen’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (21.7.1943), p. 1. Cf. ‘Zeitungs- und Zeitschriften-Romane’, in Sonderinformation an die Schriftleitungen, Presseabteilung Reichspropagandaamt München-Oberbayern (30.10.1943). Zeitschriften-Information [Reichspropagandamt München-Oberbayern], Signatur 11/Da 070.004 Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München.

76 Marion Wittfeld

III. Was uns gefiel – Population Policy, Volksgemeinschaft, Enemy Propaganda, and Racial Policies Apart from a fundamental discourse on literature, commentaries on certain topics appear repeatedly in the press instructions: population policy, Volksgemeinschaft (ethnic community), enemy propaganda, and racial policies. In National Socialism, the “erbgesunde deutsche Familie” (“genetically healthy German family”) had ideological and political functions as the “Keimzelle des Staates” (“nucleus of the state”), and marriages were supported by various government measures such as Ehestandsdarlehen (“marriage loans”). These ideas were implemented on legal, political and social levels. In literature, marriage should be presented as a rewarding goal. Critical comments, however, should be omitted, as illustrated by a statement from July 1939: Eine große süddeutsche illustrierte Zeitschrift veröffentlicht [...] gleich zwei Kurzgeschichten, in denen die Ehe als wahre Tyrannei hingestellt wird. Solche Darstellungen der Ehe, witz- und geistlos, zersetzend und abgeklappert, wirken besonders schlimm bei einer illustrierten Wochenzeitschrift, die den Anspruch erhebt, mehr als andere Illustrierte volkserzieherisch zu wirken.52 (A large southern German illustrated magazine published [...] two short stories presenting marriage as outright tyranny. Such representations of marriage, humour- and mindless, destructive and outworn, seem especially bad in an illustrated weekly which claims to educate the people more than other illustrated magazines.)

In November 1939, a novel was praised that seemed to support the population policies of National Socialism: Wir freuen uns besonders darüber, wenn wir auch in solchen R o m a n e n, deren Gattung sich früher durch besonders negative oder oberflächliche Einstellung zu Ehe, Familie, Kinderreichtum auszeichnete, jetzt Ansätze zu einer positiven Behandlung dieser Themen finden. Je weniger aufdringlich eine solche Beeinflussung erfolgt, um so besser. Einen noch nicht völlig befriedigenden, aber anerkennenswerten Versuch finden wir in der Zeitschrift Jede Woche ein Roman, Nr. 349: “Hannelore sucht ihren Weg” von Mia MunierWroblewska. E r b p f l e g e r i s c h e G e d a n k e n g ä n g e sind in die Handlung eingearbeitet. 53 (We are especially pleased when we find novels that positively approach topics such as marriage, family, children, especially in genres that used to show a particularly negative or superficial attitude towards these issues. The less intrusive such an influence is, the better. We see a not entirely satisfactory but laudable attempt in the magazine A novel every week, No. 349: “Hannelore finds her way” 52 53

409 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 10.383-416 (8.6.1939), p. 20. 1234 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 30.1202-1272 (24.11.1939), p. 20.

Wartime Entertainment 77 by Mia Munier-Wroblewska. Considerations of genetically sound procreation are incorporated into the plot.”)

A month later however, the press statements complain about a lack of support for the official population policy and its objective, an abundance of children. Even family magazines were said to prefer “empty” crime and social novels to stories about family life. In the same statement, a positive example is singled out – the story “Mother of five children” by Fritz Immenhauser, published in the family magazine Hausschatz: Manche bittere kleine und große Wahrheit wird darin gesagt, und jede kinderreiche Mutter wird bei der Lektüre vergnügt schmunzeln und sagen: “So ist es!” Und letzten Endes kommt es doch darauf hinaus, daß die positiven Seiten bedeutend überwiegen, und das ist es ja, was wir wollen: Keine Schönfärberei, nicht so tun, als seien Kinder lediglich Unterhaltungsangelegenheit für verspielte Mütter, sondern die Pflichten und Büren der Mutter ruhig nennen, aber die alles überwiegenden positiven klar dagegen stellen.54 (Bitter small and great truths are described, and every mother with many children will smile and say: “That’s the way it is!” And in the end it still amounts to saying that the positives outweigh significantly, and that is what we want: no whitewash, no pretensions that children are merely an entertainment for playful mothers – but to quietly show the duties and burdens of a mother, and the far greater compensations in a positive way.)

The concept of Volksgemeinschaft (“ethnic community”) was meant to be represented in literature as well. In January 1941, a story in a Berlin fashion magazine was criticised: “Es liegt uns, die wir lebensbejahend und tatenfroh unsere Pflicht in dem Freiheitskampf unseres Volkes erfüllen, wenig daran, Geschichten oder Erzählungen von Menschen zu lesen, die abseits der Gemeinschaft stehen und sich bewußt vor ihr verschließen.”55 (“Life-affirming and active people like us, dutifully engaged in the struggle of our people for freedom, have little interest to read stories about people dwelling on the outside of the community, who consciously stay away from it.”) The instructions frequently dealt with issues that seem rather mundane. But those responsible were convinced that even one sentence could have a major impact. In July 1939, for example, an allegedly “derailed” short story (published in a judicial newspaper) was cause for concern. In the story, a motorist runs over a dachshund about to be shot: Dieser Autofahrer ist ein junger Lebemann, hatte die Fahrprüfung bestanden und war sehr stolz darauf, obwohl er wusste, daß die Prüfungskommission ein Auge dabei zugedrückt, daß sie, mit anderen Worten, einmal fünf hatte gerade

 54 55

1299 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 31.1273-1299 (1.12.1939), p. 16. 3835 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 89.3813-3845 (10.1.1941), p. 17.

78 Marion Wittfeld sein lassen. Aha, denkt der Leser, unter solchen Umständen braucht man sich über die vielen Verkehrsunfälle nicht zu wundern.56 (This driver is a young bon vivant. He had passed the driving test and was very proud of it, although he knew that the examiners had turned a blind eye in his case. Aha, the reader says, under such circumstances the many traffic accidents do not come as a surprise.)

A year later, the propaganda effect of small details was once again illustrated by a model example. In the novel “Morgen müssen Sie mich heiraten” (“Tomorrow you have to marry me”) by Roland Marwitz, published by the Münchener Illustrierte Presse, a man is surprised when a Swedish doctor speaks German, and she replies: “Ich würde wohl eine schlechte Ärztin sein (...) wenn ich kein deutsches medizinisches Werk lesen könnte.”57 (“I would be a bad doctor if I could not read a German medical book.”) The ZD’s verdict: “Auf diese Weise wird ganz unauffällig, aber äußerst wirkungsvoll auf das deutsche Fachschrifttum als Bahnbrecher der deutschen Sprache und damit der deutschen Kultur hingewiesen.”58 (“In this manner, German scientific literature is highlighted effectfully but inconspicuously as a mediator of the German language and therefore German culture.”) The propaganda was supposed to work in favour of National Socialism, but of course against its opponents as well. The ZD only issued instructions directed against England, however. Thus, in March 1940 Was uns gefiel presented a particularly successful text: Wie man das wahre Gesicht des Engländers, des skrupellosen Plutokraten und aller Gefühle baren Unmenschen, in unterhaltenden Kurzgeschichten zeigen kann, beweist die Deutsche Romanzeitung in ihren Nummern 17 und 19 mit zwei Beiträgen von Heinrich Tiaden: “Das Lächeln des Major Brown” und “Der Tiger von Pandjapuur”. Stark und eindrucksvoll ist die Wirkung, die diese für kurzweilige Unterhaltung geschriebenen, gern gelesenen Kurzgeschichten hinterlassen.59 (The Deutsche Romanzeitung shows how to present the true face of the Englishman, the unscrupulous plutocrat, a monster bare of all feelings, in entertaining short stories. Numbers 17 and 19 feature two contributions by Heinrich Tiaden: “The Smile of Major Brown” and “The Tiger of Pandjapuur”. These exciting short stories, written to entertain and pleasant to read, leave a strong and impressive mark.)

56 57 58 59

509 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 13.484-514 (29.7.1939), p. 19. 2880 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 66.2860-2896 (26.7.1940), p. 17. Ibid. 2010 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 47.1975-2028 (15.3.1940), p. 18.

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Surprisingly, the aspect of “racial policies” seemed to be irrelevant in the evaluation of literature. Only one press statement in January 1941 deals specifically with this issue: Kurzgeschichten, die im Dienste einer noch größeren deutsch-italienischen Verständigung geschrieben werden, sind sehr zu begrüßen. Es ist besonders gut, wenn auch in diesen Veröffentlichungen die Zusammenarbeit und Kampfgemeinschaft der Nationen unterstrichen wird. Wenn die Handlung aber mit einer Heirat zwischen einem Deutschen und einer Italienerin endet, dann werden andere Gesichtspunkte, die noch viel wichtiger sind (vgl. 3703), dadurch verletzt.60 (Short stories that serve to even further improve the German-Italian relationship are very welcome. It is particularly good if these publications emphasise the cooperation and fighting community of the nations. But a plot that ends with a marriage between a German and an Italian violates other principles which are much more important (see 3703).)

The directive 3703 referenced at the end, also from the ZD, states that “positive Darstellungen über italienisch-deutsche Mischehen unerwünscht sind. Von deutscher sowie von italienischer Seite werden diese Mischehen grundsätzlich abgelehnt”61 (“positive depictions of Italian-German mixed marriages are undesirable. German and Italian politics alike reject these mixed marriages”). Mixed marriages were forbidden by law in Italy in 1941, Germany was preparing a law against them.

IV. The Journal of the RDZV The journal of the RDZV illustrates the discourse-theoretical background of the NS attempts at political interference with magazines and their content, in this instance with regard topopular literature. At the same time it serves as an example for the implementation of the press instructions, for the RDZV itself was a magazine as well. The title of the journal changed several times during the National Socialist regime: from April 1930 to December 1933 it was titled Die Zeitschrift für alle Zweige des Zeitschriftenwesens (“The magazine for all branches of magazine publishing”), from January 1934 to December 1942 it was called Der Zeitschriften-Verleger (“The magazine publisher”), and from January 1943 to March 1943 (combined with Der Vertrieb. Amtliches Organ der Hauptfachgruppe Vertrieb in der Reichspressekammer (“Distribution. Official organ of the main section ‘Distribution’ in the Reich Press Chamber”)

 60 61

3953 ‘Kurzgeschichten’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 92.3925-3958 (31.1.1941), p. 20. 3703 ‘Völkische Mischehen’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 86.3684-3726 (13.12.1940), p. 15.

80 Marion Wittfeld it was published under the title Der Zeitungs- und Zeitschriften-Verlag (“Newspaper and magazine publishing”). In 1937, two years before the war, the scholar Dr. Gerhard Eckert62 published an article on the role of the novel in magazines in Der ZeitschriftenVerleger. According to Eckert, a novel published in a magazine especially excels in terms of range: “[…] er wandert durch die Lesezirkel und erscheint schließlich häufiger als der Zeitungsroman noch in Buchform oder als Film.”63 (“It wanders through the reading circles and finally appears – even more frequently than a novel serialised in a newspaper – in book form or as a movie.”). Due to its potentially high impact on the general education, a novel has to meet certain criteria. A novel does not necessarily have to be a “dichterisches Kunstwerk” (“poetic art“), but it should always “sauber und lebensecht sein, soll den Leser nicht nur fesseln und zerstreuen, sondern ihm auch etwas mitgeben, das tiefer geht.”64 (“be clean and true to life, but also offer attraction and distraction to the reader, along with something meaningful.”) Eckert does not supply any examples. However, the article shows that a discourse-theoretical debate on popular literature in magazines took place in the journal of the RDZV even before the war, and it makes the accompanying increase in propaganda obvious. The question is whether the stereotyped attributes “clean” and “lifelike” were expanded or even replaced once the war had begun – and if so, how. The next article dealing with the effect and function of literature in journals was published in 1939, under the title “Die Sorge um den Roman” (“The concern for the novel”). The title represents the tenor of the text. But why is the anonymous author concerned? He is particularly anxious about the economic restrictions with regard to paper, which limited not just the quantity of published texts but also their quality. But at least he or she is aware of the role of the novel: “Der Roman soll entspannen – das ist seine allgemeine Aufgabe –, er soll aber noch mehr: den Leser innerlich sammeln, ihm unbewusst Kräfte zuführen, die ihn festigen, ihn stärken” (“The novel should help relax – that is its general task – but it should do even more: it should help the reader concentrate and subconsciously bestow strength on him, empowering him”).65 This article is certainly influenced by the ZD 62

63 64 65

Regarding Eckert’s biography, see Frank Biermann/ Dietmar Reuß, ‘Gerhard Eckert (geb. 1912)’, in Zeitungswissenschaftler im Dritten Reich. Sieben biographische Studien, ed. by Arnulf Kutsch (Köln: Studienverlag Hayit), p. 245-280. Gerhard Eckert, ‘Der Roman in der Zeitschrift’, in Der Zeitschriften=Verleger. Zeitschrift des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Zeitschriften-Verleger, 39.14. (1937), pp. 153-154 (p. 153). Ibid., p. 154. ‘Die Sorge um den Roman’, in Der Zeitschriften=Verleger. Zeitschrift des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Zeitschriften-Verleger, 47.41 (1939), pp. 466-467 (p. 467).

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press instruction published one month earlier (“Und der Roman?”, see above). For example, similar wording is used, and the ZD states that the novel is able to entertain, “convince and move its readers. Here, the reader is familiarised in an inconspicuous and unbiased way with subjects that influence his attitude positively and decisively.” (“überzeugen und innerlich bewegen kann, und daß hier unaufdringlich und tendenzlos Dinge dem Leser nahegebracht werden können, die seine Haltung entscheidend positiv beeinflussen!”66) The article also states that the attitude of the author is crucial for the effectiveness of a text. However, only a few authors are in tune with the ongoing “Zeit mit ihren Forderungen”67 (“demands of today”). As a result, publishers and editors have to reject many of the texts offered to them.68 In 1941, Eckert published an article on “Der Zeitschriftenroman im Kriege” (“The magazine-novel in the war”). Again, he calls the novel one of the pillars of entertainment, especially in illustrated magazines such as women’s and family magazines, or professionally oriented publications such as sports magazines. In contrast to 1937, Eckert now deems the novel a possible means of propaganda: “Es lassen sich also auch politisch durch den Roman Erfolge erzielen, die von anderen Ausdrucksformen nicht erreicht werden.”69 (“The novel makes political success possible where other forms of expression fail.”) During wartime, journals should compose their entire content “führungsgemäß” (“according to guidance”). Eckert presents data from a study to prove that this policy had been implemented insufficiently so far: He analysed about 60 novels, published in eight magazines from November 1939 until the summer of 1941, with the following result: more than 50 novels had to be declared “timeless” and therefore could have appeared before the war.70 Eckert’s demands for the stipulated “new magazine novel” are very interesting: currency is of the utmost importance, plots should take place in the present or at least in recent history. This criterion, however, is met by only four of the novels analysed by Eckert. The final article on the topic appeared in early 1943. The author (identified only by the code “Wis.”) generally argues against the so-called literary

 66 67 68 69

70

1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, p. 26. ‘Die Sorge um den Roman’, p. 467. Cf. ibid. Gerhard Eckert, ‘Der Zeitschriftenroman im Kriege’, in Der Zeitschriften=Verleger. Zeitschrift des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Zeitschriften-Verleger, 43.33 (1941), pp. 255-256 (p. 255). Cf. ibid., p.256.

82 Marion Wittfeld “kitsch” in entertainment, calling it a “Zerrbild der guten Unterhaltung”71 (“travesty of good entertainment”): Es wird dem Leser ein Leben vorgegaukelt, das es nicht gibt, das es nach den Gesetzen der Welt und nach der Natur des Menschen nicht geben kann. Bei diesen Machwerken flüchtet der Leser aus der Wirklichkeit, weil er ihr nicht gewachsen ist.72 (The reader is fooled by a depiction of a life that does not exist, that – taking into consideration the laws of the world and the nature of man – cannot possibly exist. With the help of these concoctions, the reader escapes from reality, because he is not able to cope with it.)

Especially in times of war, this is – at least according to the author – irresponsible. The reader is weakened instead of strengthened. Wartime paper shortage serves once again as an additional argument, a shortage that leaves no place for supposedly worthless entertainment. Examples of short stories in newspapers show what constitutes valuable entertainment for the author: Stories that relate to everyday life, presented in a simple and easily understandable manner. The decisive factor is the personality of the author, because his life experience, his character, and attitude subtly influence and educate the reader.73 Summarising, we can say that for the RDZV, literary texts should offer a simple and understandable presentation of current events. Reading should have a positive effect on the attitude and the fighting spirit of the people. Overall, literary entertainment did not receive a lot of attention in the journal of the RDZV. But the combination with the instructions from the ZD made sure that magazine editors were told at least twice how to use literature in their magazines.

VI. Conclusions The political appropriation of popular literature was systematised under National Socialist rule. Both ideologically loyal magazine publishers and the state authorities tried to exploit the serialised novels, short stories and novellas, and to promote their “good taste” of choice.

71

72 73

Wis., ‘Wesen und Aufgabe guter Unterhaltung. Grundsätzliche Überlegungen und praktische Hinweise’, in Der Zeitungs- und Zeitschriften-Verlag. Vereinigt mit “Der Vertrieb”, amtliches Organ der Hauptfachgruppe Vertrieb in der Reichspressekammer, 44/45.1 (1943), pp. 3-5 (p. 4). Ibid. Ibid., p.5.

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At the beginning of the war, the assertion was both internally and externally maintained as long as possible that the population in the German Reich was doing well. Towards the end of the war it was tried to mobilise the last reserves of the population – by all available means, entertainment in magazines included. The main aspects of National Socialist propaganda are reflected in the press statements in reference to literary texts – the concepts of national community, the National Socialist population policy or, in the course of the war, increasing propaganda against the enemy England. It is striking that racial policy, in particular anti-Semitism, is left out. Many general instructions of the ZD were directed against Jews, but there are none to be found that deal with anything of literary relevance. It is very interesting to note that in many cases, National Socialist rule tried to create effects similar to those they criticised in “kitsch” (for example as mentioned in press statement 3146): they tried to cultivate unrealisable aspirations and to create a simple world that in fact did never exist.74 Appearances were created and kept for those the regime did not persecute – an effort impeded by the war and finally bound to fail. On the other hand, “realistic” propaganda literature concentrating on the war efforts was hard to sell to wartime readers: literature was a welcome means of escape from reality, as reports from the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (SD) show: “Große Teile der Bevölkerung, darunter auch viele Soldaten suchten im Buch einen inneren Ausgleich zum aufwühlenden Geschehen und zur seelischen Beanspruchung des Krieges. Dies sei vor allem auch bei den Frauen festzustellen.”75 (“Major parts of the population, among them many soldiers, try to find relief from the troubling events and the stress of war in books, a phenomenon particulary frequent in women.”) Another press statement refers to a woman using literature “um nicht nachts mit Sorge auf die Flieger zu warten und nachher stumpfsinnig im Keller hocken zu müssen”76 (“to avoid waiting anxiously for the planes at night, only to dully sit in the cellar afterwards.”). And the journal of the RDZV thought the possible loss of entertainment in times of war a psychological mistake. „Die Führung des deutschen Volkes weiß, daß ein Mensch, der hart arbeitet und entschlossen  74 Cf. ‘Fortsetzungsromane so oder so’, pp. 18-19. 75

76

‘Zur Lage im Schrifttum’, in Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS; Vollständige Texte aus dem Bestand des Bundesarchivs Koblenz. 10: Meldungen aus dem Reich, Nr 272 vom 30. März 1942-Nr 301 vom 20. Juli 1942, ed. by Heinz Boberach (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984), p. 3970. ‘Zur Lage im Schrifttum’, Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS; Vollständige Texte aus dem Bestand des Bundesarchivs Koblenz. 5: Meldungen aus dem Reich, Nr 102 vom 4. Juli 1940-Nr 141 vom 14. November 1940, ed. by Heinz Boberach (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984), p. 1576.

84 Marion Wittfeld kämpft, auch Erholung und Unterhaltung braucht.“77 (“The leadership of the German people knows that a person working hard and fighting determinedly needs recreation and entertainment.”) It is very important to distinguish between NS propaganda, the instructions issued by various governmental agencies, and their actual implementation in the magazines. This paper mainly dealt with the political intentions, what was theoretically intended. The actual extent of influence the instructions exerted on literature in the press is difficult to assess today. Though various instructions purported the notion that successful NS propaganda was possible in popular literature, the lack of authors (suitable for, and capable of corroborating that theory) was constantly lamented. The negative examples from the magazines highlighted in the category “Bitte nicht so” show that things did not work out as smoothly as the leadership wished. A detailed content analysis of serialised novels, novellas and short stories will lead to further insights. Definite acts of censorship might be difficult to trace and prove, but at least the general state of popular literature in the National Socialist magazine landscape could be outlined.

Bibliography Primary Literature Anonymous, ‘Die Sorge um den Roman’, in Der Zeitschriften=Verleger. Zeitschrift des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Zeitschriften-Verleger, 41.47 (1939), 466-467. Eckert, Gerhard, ‘Der Roman in der Zeitschrift’, in Der Zeitschriften=Verleger. Zeitschrift des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Zeitschriften-Verleger, 39.14 (1937), 153-154. Eckert, Gerhard, ‘Der Zeitschriftenroman im Kriege‘, in DerZeitschriften=Verleger. Zeitschrift des Reichsverbandes der deutschen ZeitschriftenVerleger, 43.33 (1941), 255-256. Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS; Vollständige Texte aus dem Bestand des Bundesarchivs Koblenz. 5: Meldungen aus dem Reich, Nr 102 vom 4. Juli 1940-Nr 141 vom 14.November 1940, ed. by Heinz Boberach (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984). Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS; Vollständige Texte aus dem Bestand des Bundesarchivs Koblenz. 10: Meldungen aus dem Reich, Nr 272 vom 30. März 1942-Nr 301 vom 20.Juli 1942, ed. by Heinz Boberach (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984).  77

Wis., ‘Wesen und Aufgabe guter Unterhaltung. Grundsätzliche Überlegungen und praktische Hinweise’, p. 5.

Wartime Entertainment 85

‘Zeitungs- und Zeitschriften-Romane’, in Sonderinformation an die Schriftleitungen, Presseabteilung Reichspropagandaamt München-Oberbayern (30.10.1943). In: Zeitschriften-Information [Reichspropagandamt München-Oberbayern], Signatur 11/Da 070.004 Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München. Vertrauliche Informationen (Dresden: Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen, 2.1.193924.1.1945): ‘Kurzgeschichten’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (3.6.1941), p. 2. ‘Kurzgeschichten’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (8.12.1941), p. 2. ‘Kurzgeschichte und Novellen’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (10.1.1942), p. 1. ‘Kulturberichterstattung und Unterhaltungsteil’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (9.1.1943), p. 1-2. ‘Veröffentlichung von Romanen’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (21.7.1943), p. 1. ‘Kulturelle Ereignisse – totaler Kriegseinsatz’, in Vertrauliche Informationen, Reichspropagandaamt Sachsen (14.8.1944), p. 1. Wis., ‘Wesen und Aufgabe guter Unterhaltung.Grundsätzliche Überlegungen und praktische Hinweise‘, in Der Zeitungs- und Zeitschriften-Verlag. Vereinigt mit “Der Vertrieb”, amtliches Organ der Hauptfachgruppe Vertrieb in der Reichspressekammer, 44/45.1 (1943), 3-5. Zeitschriften-Dienst. Deutscher Wochendienst (Berlin: Verlag Pressebericht, 9.5.1939-14.4.1945): ‘Anschreiben an den “Berufskamerad!”’, leaflet in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 1.1-32 (9.5.1939). 409 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 10.383-416 (8.6.1939), p. 20. 509 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 13.484-514 (29.7.1939), p. 19. 1083 ‘Und der Roman?’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 26.1033-1109 (28.10.1939), pp. 25-26 (p. 25). 1138 ‘Behandlung des Zeitschriften-Dienstes’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 27.11101152 (3.11.1939), p. 19. 1214 ‘Geistige Kriegsführung durch die Zeitschrift’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 30.1202-1272 (24.11.1939), p. 12. 1234 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 30.1202-1272 (24.11.1939), p. 20. 1299 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 31.1273-1299 (1.12.1939), p. 16. 2010 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 47.1975-2028 (15.3.1940), p. 18. 2770 ‘Zeitschriften-Romane einsenden!’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 63.2736-2777 (5.6.1940), p. 19. 2880 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 66.2860-2896 (26.7.1940), p. 17.

86 Marion Wittfeld 2981 ‘Der Roman in Zeitschriften’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 68.2945-2998 (8.8.1940), pp. 18-19 (p. 18). 3146 ‘Fortsetzungsromane so oder so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 72. 3123-3159 (6.9.1940), pp. 18-19 (p. 18). 3253 ‘Was uns gefiel’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 75.3235-3266 (27.9.1940), p. 17. 3452 ‘Anregungen aus Zeitschriften – für Zeitschriften’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 80.3430-3479 (1.11.1940), p. 15. 3703 ‘Völkische Mischehen’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 86.3684-3726 (13.12.1940), p. 15. 3715 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 86.3684-3726 (13.12.1940), p. 18. 3835 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 89.3813-3845 (10.1.1941), p. 17. 3953 ‘Kurzgeschichten’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 92.3925-3958 (31.1.1941), p. 20. 4623 ‘Bitte nicht so’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 108.4594-4637 (23.5.1941), p. 19. 8209 ‘Grundsätzliches zur Kulturpolitik’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 193./62.81878225 (15.1.1943), pp. 2-3. 8363 ‘Aussprache unter uns’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 197./66.8352-8388 (12.2.1943), pp. 2-3. Wilfried Bade, ‘An die Bezieher des „ZD“ und „DW“’, in Zeitschriften-Dienst, 220./89.9117-9145 (23.6.1943), p. 1. Secondary Literature Barbian, Jan-Pieter, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat. Von der “Gleichschaltung” bis zum Ruin (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2010). Kohlmann-Viand, Doris: NS-Pressepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Die ‘Vertraulichen’ Informationen als Mittel der Presselenkung (München et al.: Saur 1991). Linthout, Ine van, ‘„Dichter, schreibt Unterhaltungsromane!“ Der Stellenwert der Unterhaltungsliteratur im Dritten Reich’, in Im Pausenraum des “Dritten Reiches”. Zur Populärkultur im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, ed. by Carsten Würmann and Ansgar Warner (Bern: Lang 2008), 111-124. Wittmann, Reinhard, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im Überblick (München: Beck 1999). Würmann, Carsten and Ansgar Warner, Im Pausenraum des “Dritten Reiches”. Zur Populärkultur im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Publikationen zur Zeitschrift für Germanistik, Bd. 17 (Bern: Lang 2008). Würmann, Carsten, ‘Entspannung für die Massen. Die Unterhaltungsliteratur im Dritten Reich’, in Zwischen den Zeiten. Junge Literatur in Deutschland von 1933 bis 1945, ed. by Uta Beiküfner and Hania Siebenpfeiffer (Berlin: Ed. Lotos 2000), 9-36.

Norbert Bachleitner Literary Field or “Digital Soup”? Literature in the Internet The hyper-linking of texts and text fragments and the dissolution of the hierarchy between author and reader, between text and commentary in the Internet contribute to the levelling of high-brow and low-brow literature. The digital format and the mass media act as great levellers; the Internet is a place where the law of value entropy is reigning. This paper evaluates the mechanisms and criteria of distinction and canonization institutions such as the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) try to implement in order to establish a “Literary Field” rather than a literary “Digital Soup”.

Nicolas Negroponte, a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, drew attention to the convergence of different media in the digitized world, to the ongoing fusion of formerly differentiated sectors of information distribution, and coined the term “digital soup” in order to describe the end-product of this process. The following diagram, known as ‘2000 slide’ among media researchers,1 shows the increasing overlapping of film, print and computer industry. Negroponte predicted that media such as e-mail, ejournal and e-book would soon melt into one another and become one single e-media.

Ten years later this rather modest prophecy has already come true in the form of smart phones and tablet computers which additionally include audio and video players. This process of convergence is due to the common mode of programming and storing data: all sorts of signs, audio, pictorial or linguistic, may easily be coded in the same digital format and combined. The same is true for works belonging to the same media, for instance literature. 1

See http://world.std.com/~mehopper/Media/Media.htm. (23.07.2012)

88 Norbert Bachleitner In contrast to printed books and periodicals it is very difficult if not altogether impossible to distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art in the internet. Publishing houses have the power to convey distinction to their products by careful layout, paper, typography, cover design and other characteristics that distinguish books from one another. On the other hand, e-books look all the same on the screen, no matter if the text is a canonized novel, a recent best-seller or the text of an anonymous author uploaded on his personal internet site, in a blog or social network page. A small print-run or a high price may indicate restricted distribution and exclusivity. The machines counting internet site visits have no power of distinction, texts appearing on computer screens are all the same in this respect too. The process of convergence described by Negroponte applies to literature deemed to be of different value and bestowed with different grades of legitimacy as well. Theoreticians of writing in the new media have maintained that it would encourage democracy in the domain of literature. To give an example, George P. Landow has underlined the fact that the lexias in a hypertext and texts or sites in the internet can no longer be separated from one another because of the links connecting even texts far ‘apart’ from each other. Furthermore, the hierarchy between author and reader, between text and commentary is becoming obsolete.2 Both developments contribute to the levelling of high-brow and low-brow literature. Of course, post-modern literary theory and philosophy have already paved the way for the acceptance of such a statement. Thus, Fredric Jameson has maintained that literature in the era of late capitalism is characterized by the effacement of the older distinction between high and mass culture.3 Still another theory of culture in the age of mass media high-lighting the levelling of ‘high’ and ‘low’ may be mentioned. Georg Franck has recently argued that attracting the attention of the media, being ‘in the news’, no matter if on TV, in the newspapers or in the internet, has replaced traditional critical evaluation. Artistic reputation, being rich in symbolic capital, does not count anymore, being present in the media is much more important nowadays.4 It goes without saying that from this point of view the concepts high-brow and low-

2 3 4

Cf. George P. Landow, Hypertext 2.0 (Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 25, 90-114. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 63. Franck, Georg, ‘Autonomie, Markt und Aufmerksamkeit.Zu den aktuellen Medialisierungsstrategien im Literatur- und Kulturbetrieb’, in Mediale Erregungen? Autonomie und Aufmerksamkeit im Literatur- und Kulturbetrieb der Gegenwart, ed. by Markus Joch, York-Gothart Mix and Norbert Christian Wolf (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2009), p. 1121.

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brow are obsolete as well. The digital format and the mass media are great levellers, the internet is a place where the law of value entropy is reigning. Above we have employed the terms legitimacy, distinction and symbolic capital. They refer to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field, the dominant theory of literature structured according to a traditional literary value system. It may serve as a counter-theory to the idea of a general levelling of standards and the dissolution of distinct art forms in the ‘digital-soup’. In Bourdieu’s field there is still room for ‘high’ and ‘low’ and even for positions to the right and to the left. The field abounds in different styles, modes of writing and artistic habitus corresponding with different grades of reputation and chances of income, respectively. The diagram below shows the field of French literature in the second half of the 19th century.5

The two poles on the left and on the right hand correspond to the duality of autonomous and heteronomous literature – that is of ‘art for art’s sake’, and an art subject to external (political, religious, and others) standards or the taste of a wider public. Literature at the autonomous pole is rich in symbolic capital and more or less equivalent to ‘high’ literature. Consecration and  5

Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Field of Cultural Production’, in The Book History Reader, edited by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (London, New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 77-99 (p. 82).

90 Norbert Bachleitner legitimation is bestowed by the small ‘intellectual’ audience or institutions such as academies, salons, juries granting prizes, leading critics and publishing houses. On the left side of the field we find the avant-garde, in the lower quarters on the right side we find literature for the mass audience in accord with popular taste that normally guarantees high print runs and income. What about traditional differentiation of literature and art in the digital media? Does it really disappear, absorbed by general entropy and levelling inherent in the new writing environment? Or will there emerge new institutions, mechanisms, and criteria of distinction and canonization? Will there be ‘soup’ or rather ‘field’ in the end? In the following we will take a look at one institution that tries hard to define the elite of digital authors and works. Except for commercial e-books digital literature is distributed free of charge in the internet. The rationale behind this mode of distribution seems to be the same as in traditional literary fields: economic profit is not the first goal of artistic production; it may eventually be achieved by a later exchange of the symbolic capital acquired with innovative and ground-breaking works. This idea is compatible with Franck’s theory of attention being the only ‘currency’ valid in the new media system. Joseph Tabbi, a member of the board of directors of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), underlines the importance of the number of hyperlinks leading to one’s literary works in the internet for the creation of web-specific “literary value”. It is above all important to become included in renowned electronic data-bases, webliographies and anthologies: Further, since nobody to my knowledge has ever paid to read an archived work of e-lit, we must be careful to specify that the “exchange value” of the works we present is given in the activity of sharing data across the networked community as a whole. The directory is not a “store” where people shop or browse, but rather a fully developed marketplace where literary value is created, in communication with similar values, and often similar vocabularies under development in affiliated disciplines.6

The directory mentioned in the above citation is the list of works recommended by the ELO, founded in 1999 and now hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The ELO is the prominent centre for digital literature in the English-speaking world.7 The ELO’s board of directors and literary ad-

 6 7

Joseph Tabbi, Towards a Semantic Literary Net. Setting a Direction for the Electronic Literature Organization’s Directory (http://eliterature.org/pad/slw.html). (23.07.2012) See the ELO web site http://www.eliterature.org. Other centres for digital literature and web art are the Electronic Poetry Center, hosted by the University at Buffalo (http://epc.buffalo.edu), the nt2 (Nouvelles technologies nouvelles textualités. Le laboratoire de recherches sur les arts et littératures hypermédiatiques), maintained by the Université de

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visory board consist mainly of academics, journalists and authors, most of the persons involved are active in two or all three of these areas. ELO president is Nick Montfort who writes “computational and constrained poetry, develops computer games, and is a critic, theorist, and scholar of computational art and media. He is associate professor of digital media in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Vice-president is Dene Grigar, “an Associate Professor and Director of the Digital Technology and Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver who works in the area of electronic literature, emergent technology and cognition, and ephemera.”8 The organisation edits the Electronic Literature Collection, an anthology of digital literature. So far two volumes have appeared. The collections are meant to inform the public about the state of the art and are recommended as reading lists and course programs for academic seminars on digital literature. Being included in the collections seems to be the ultimate act of consecration to be bestowed by ELO. A lower grade of acceptance but still an act of canonization is the admission to the Electronic Literature Directory. At the moment (October 2011) the Directory contains 253 items; this list is the result of a severe selection, its predecessor, the “Directory 1.0”, comprised more than 2500 works. The “Directory 2.0” is peer-reviewed and tags works according to the techniques used and many more categories. This is the list of 55 keywords for the description of works established by Joseph Tabbi: *3D, *Ambient Poetry, *Animation/Kinetic, *Appropriated Text, *Audio, Authors from Outside North America, Blog or other Network Forms (Homepage, FAQ list, Commercial website, News, Reader email), Cave, Chatterbot/Conversational Character, Children’s Literature, *Codework, *Collaboration,*Combinatorial, Conceptual, *Constraint-Based/Procedural, Critical/Political/Philosophical, Database, Documentary, Essay/Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Flash (development system), *Games, *Generative, Hacktivist, HTML/DHTML (development system), *Hypertext, INFORM (development system), Installation, *Interactive Fiction, Java (development system), JavaScript (development system), Locative fiction, Memoir, Multilingual or Non-English, Musical, Non-Interactive, Parody/Satire, Performative, Poetry, Place, Processing (development system), QuickTime (development system), Shockwave (development system), Squeak (development system), Stretchtext, TADS (development system), Textual Instrument, Text Movie, Translation, *Time-Based, *Viral, *Visual Poetry or Narrative,

 Québec à Montréal (http://nt2.uqam.ca), and Johannes Auer’s Netzliteratur (http://auer.netzliteratur.net). (23.07.2012) ͺ See http://www.eliterature.org (23.07.2012)

92 Norbert Bachleitner VRML (development system), Women Authors, Wordtoy.9 Except for the software used, an indication that may be interesting for other authors, only the terms marked with an asterisk are specific for the new digital literary forms. If we try to find out the kind of works selected for inclusion in the Directory by the ELO peers it turns out that the tags ‘hypertext’ and ‘hypertext fiction’ appear most frequently (72 times). Since the submitters of works are free to add other keywords than the ones mentioned above, we also learn that 18 of the selected texts have been published by Eastgate, the first and only commercial publisher of hypertext fiction on floppy discs and CDROMs respectively. Among the Eastgate publications there are ‘classics’ like afternoon by Michael Joyce, Victory Garden by Stuart Moulthrop, and Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson. On the other hand, genres and tags such as Animation/Kinetic (25 times), Audio (25), E-Poetry (24) or Visual poetry (12) are comparatively rare in the list, techniques typical for avant-garde literature such as Algorithm (4), Constraint-Based/Procedural (5), Generative (7), Text-based game (2) and Codework (2) are hardly present at all. It is striking that the canon established by the ELO mirrors the preference for narrative (hypertext) fiction and the marginalisation of poetry and avant-garde techniques that is the rule on the market-place of printed literature. The problems of canonization are amply discussed by Joseph Tabbi in his article “Towards a Semantic Literary Net”. He defines the Directory as a site where “readers and (necessarily) authors are given the ability to identify, name, tag, describe, and legitimate works of literature written and circulating within electronic media”.10 Whereas this goal corresponds with the task traditionally ascribed to literary critics, the idea of the author as an individual genius working in isolation is abandoned. According to Tabbi, to distinguish oneself in the web it is necessary “to enter a network actively, from the moment of a work’s conception through the acts of composition, circulation, and site maintenance, or authorship as such, in this environment, will be denied.”11 Only networking in the form of being linked with as many other sites as possible guarantees the attention of the online public. It is this kind of attention and appreciation that has earned some authors (M. Joyce, St. Moulthrop, Sh. Jackson) the status of classics. Not only this statement but also the recommended cultivation of the works of the digital classics are ideas imported from the print tradition: The Michael Joyce “papers” have been acquired by a library and a scholarly edition of Afternoon might be expected eventually, with obsolescent works “re-

 9 10 11

Tabbi, Towards a Semantic Literary Net. Ibid. Ibid.

Literature in the Internet 93 scored,” if deemed worthy of being read on current platforms. The numerous obsolescent hard- and softwares that “our” Joyce must have worked with are not less available, surely, than James Joyce’s working notes for Exiles.12

The ELO peers, “trusted and informed agents”, are qualified by the following criteria: We give credence to specialists largely on the basis of three assumptions: that they are trained by creditable institutions, and they are reasonably disinterested, and they are sufficiently dispersed geographically and culturally so as to represent a reasonable diversity of literary activity.13

One must admit that the peer-review process is a mixture of bottom-up and top-down procedures and that Tabbi claims that selection criteria should also be public and debatable. Like in other wikis, every reader can submit a proposal and his description of a digital work but finally the ELO board will decide upon its inclusion in the Directory. We will not discuss the qualification of individual members of the ELO boards, we only draw attention to the fact that the outcome of the peer-review consists almost exclusively of works in English. The second ELO Collection comprises 53 works in English and only 9 works in other languages (Spanish and Catalan 4, Portuguese 3, French 1, and German 1). We will now take a closer look at two works from the ELO Directory. Both are by authors who have already created themselves a name in the field of digital literature, namely hypernovel pioneer Shelley Jackson and Jim Andrews, a specialist of Visual Poetry. Both authors produce works that are accepted as legitimate by the digital community, so we will try to define their place on the traditional scale of ‘high’ and ‘low’. This should help to find out if these categories are still adequate for the description and classification of digital works of art – as the ELO’s urge to canonize the more valuable part of artistic production distributed via the internet suggests – or if in the digital medium by way of hybridization of high-class and popular cultural elements and by the irony involved in most of the digital works high-brow and low-brow are levelled. The first example is Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, a hypernovel blending elements and motifs taken from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Frank L. Baum’s The Patchwork Girl of Oz with post-structuralist theory. The most important theorists cited in the text are Lyotard, Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Deleuze and Guattari, the creators of the hypertext software Storyspace Michael Joyce, J. D. Bolter und Mark Bernstein, Donna J. Haraway (Cyborg 12 13

Ibid. Ibid.

94 Norbert Bachleitner Theory), Barbara Maria Stafford (Body Criticism) and Klaus Theweleit (Male Fantasies). Being composed of patches, the main character has a hybrid body and identity. Similarly, the text is a patchwork of motifs, citations, and allusions, therefore authorship is hybrid as well. In particular, patchwork is a metaphor for hypertext as becomes clear in the lexias ‘written’ and ‘sewn’: written: I had made her, writing deep into the night by candlelight, until the tiny black letters blurred into stitches and I began to feel that I was sewing a great quilt […]. sewn: I had sewn her, stitching deep into the night by candlelight, until the tiny black stitches wavered into script and I began to feel that I was writing, that this creature I was assembling was a brash attempt to achieve by artificial means the unity of a life-form […].14

The patches represent the ‘sources’ of the monster and the text. In her commentaries Shelley Jackson indicates that she takes the metaphor of the patchwork seriously and even literally and refers to contemporary biology. In a lecture entitled “Stitch Bitch” she explains that the belief that the body is homogeneous is actually an illusion. The body is a patchwork, though the stitches might not show. It’s run by committee, a loose aggregate of entities we can’t really call human, but which have what look like lives of a sort; though they lack the brains to nominate themselves part of the animal kingdom, yet they are certainly not what we think of as objects, nor are they simple appendages, directly responsible to the conscious brain. […] Call them yours if you want, but puff and blow all you like, you cannot make them stop their work one second to salute you. The original body is dissociated, porous and unbiased, a generous catch-all. The mind, on the other hand, or rather discursive thought, what zen calls monkey-mind and Bataille calls project, has an almost catatonic obsession with stasis, centrality, and unity. Project would like the body to be its commemorative statue or its golem, sober testament to the minds’ values and an uncomplaining servant.15

14 15

Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl; or, a Modern Monster. By Mary Shelley and Herself (Cambridge, MA.: Eastgate Systems, 1995).  See http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html. (23.07.2012)

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Reproduction courtesy by Eastgate Systems Inc. The first page shows the monster with ispatches that correspond with the lexias, the scars represent the links that connect the parts of the body and the text respectively. From the title page you can choose the path to the ‘graveyard’, from there you find paths to the creatures of which the monster has been assembled – mainly women, but among them also a man and a cow. All these creatures are portrayed or featured in micro-stories, each of them has a style and a voice of his or her own in the sense of Bakhtin. The reader must put the parts together, search for a synthesis, he or she thus adopts the perspective of Dr Frankenstein who wanted to create life from lifeless materials. In the section ‘a story’, the main plot is told. In Shelley’s novel Dr Frankenstein decides to destroy the female monster, her parts lie around all over the place. In Jackson’s text the female monster maintains to have asked the author to erase her from the text because she hated the idea of living with her designated partner. Patchwork Girl embarks a ship and travels to the New World. Among many other activities she participates in spiritualistic séances in order to encounter the souls of the former owners of her body parts. She loses one of her legs in an accident, is robbed by a passer-by, chases him and takes his leg to have her revenge. At the end Patchwork Girl lives in a motor-home and becomes an author. She uses a laptop and writes hypertexts – influenced by Shelley Jackson she is adverse to linear writing and living. The second example comes from Canadian visual poet Jim Andrews. His text-based game is called arteroids 3.11 and sub-titled “A literary shoot-em-up

96 Norbert Bachleitner computer game – the battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness”. arteroids is an adaptation of the classic video game Asteroids that dates back to 1979.16 In arteroids the mission is not to destroy asteroids but instead words invading the screen and threatening the word ‘desire’. In case of a contact with an invading word, ‘desire’ will explode – game over. ‘Desire’ may be steered to evade the bad words but it can also be used as a gun and shoot the invaders which will explode in their turn and leave a spray of letters scattered on the screen. If you choose “play mode” the game runs much slower than in “game mode”, reading and contemplation will replace competition. In order to stress the literary character of the game Andrews provides the possibility of saving the shot words in a program called “Word for Weirdos”.

Reproduction courtesy by Jim Andrews According to Jim Andrews this game is “a kind of an ‘end of language’ piece”.17 The invaders are words like ‘death’, ‘fear’, ‘insecurity’, ‘nothing’, and ‘poetry’. The user’s attention is divided between reading and shooting. Too much reading can endanger your life. The trivial ego-shooter turns into a philosophical riddle, you can meditate upon the question what distinguishes reading from playing, you may ask yourself if reading is not after all only a different sort of adventure, and so on. The game wants to encourage reflections about language in the tradition of modernism. Two citations 16 17

Jim Andrews, arteroids 3.11 (http://vispo.com/arteroids/indexenglish.htm). (23.07.2012) Jim Andrews, The Battle of Poetry Against Itself and the Forces of Dullness (http://www.vispo.com/arteroids/onarteroids.htm). (23.07.2012)

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must suffice: “Arteroids is about cracking language open. William S. Burroughs said about audio tape that when you cut it, the future spills out.” – “Every sound in Arteroids is my voice and nothing but – with a little help from Sound Forge. The sounds range from cartoonish to adult, sound poetry to computer game, Kurt Schwitters to Mel Blanc and Gregory Whitehead in their associations.” It is striking that the assortment of Schwitters and Whitehead, an audio and radio play artist, with Blanc, a synchronizer famous for having lent his voice to Bugs Bunny, signals a bridge between ‘high’ and low’. In spite of the philosophical reading suggested by the author, users seem to tend to interpret the work as humoristic. In the video of a presentation of the game by Andrews the audience is laughing most of the time. This mode of reception is supported by the funny shrieks of the ‘dying’ words and by Andrews’ tongue-in-cheek-presentation.18 Instead of a conclusion we will sum up our observations on the two examined examples. The first readers of Shelley’s Frankenstein were educated visitors of the art house. Only in the course of the 19th century did popular literature become an independent cultural sector with some patterns to be perpetually reproduced. This happened in the “grind house”. In her adaptation Shelley Jackson connects the motifs of the Gothic imagination with contemporary scientific discussions of the body, biogenetics and cloning,19 and uses the story of a monster as a metaphor of the philosophical problem of identity. She makes both modes of reading possible and neutralizes the opposition of ‘high’ and low’. Jim Andrews uses the shooter-game as a literary text generator. You may aim at a high-score or at a random-generated text. Similar to Patchwork Girl the action-game is connected with literary and linguistic reflections. Since asteroids, space-ships and guns are replaced by words the question of the durability or fragility of words and meanings arises. Another philosophical question concerns the relationship between art (reading), entertainment (playing) and life (playing in order to save your life). Again, two more or less incompatible modes of reading – ‘high’ and ‘low’ – are possible. According to Pierre Bourdieu, the taste for legitimate art is disinterested in bodily stimuli and primary feelings such as laughter, anxiety, passion or compassion produced by the immersion in a fictitious world and especially by the reader’s identification with characters and their fate. The consumption of legitimate art is a purely intellectual operation, concentrating on the

 18 19

http://vispo.com/arteroids/arteroidsvideo.htm. (23.07.2012) Cf. Der Frankenstein-Komplex. Kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte des Traums vom künstlichen Menschen, ed. by Rudolf Drux (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), especially p. 26-47: Rudolf Drux, “Frankenstein oder der Mythos vom künstlichen Menschen und seinem Schöpfer”.

98 Norbert Bachleitner pleasures emanating from the encounter with beautiful objects. The two examples discussed above raise the trivial elements to a higher level, they provide primary sensations and intellectual adventures at the same time, they are canonized, yet trivial. This double bind of entertainment and concessions to high-brow taste makes the classification according to traditional aesthetic standards difficult if not impossible. These standards are dissolved in the ‘digital soup’. It is not surprising that ‘peers’ and their institutions try to cut the literary wild oats in the internet, but we may doubt if such attempts will be successful in the long run since they are inadequate in the new media environment. At best the canonized works will end as all institutionally consecrated art, namely in (digital) museums and literary history books.

Bibliography Andrews, Jim, arteroids 3.11 (http://vispo.com/arteroids/indexenglish.htm). Andrews, Jim, The Battle of Poetry Against Itself and the Forces of Dullness (http://www.vispo.com/arteroids/onarteroids.htm). Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘The Field of Cultural Production’, in The Book History Reader, edited by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (London, New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 77-99. Der Frankenstein-Komplex. Kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte des Traums vom künstlichen Menschen, ed. by Rudolf Drux (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1999). Franck, Georg, ‘Autonomie, Markt und Aufmerksamkeit.Zu den aktuellen Medialisierungsstrategien im Literatur- und Kulturbetrieb’, in Mediale Erregungen? Autonomie und Aufmerksamkeit im Literatur- und Kulturbetrieb der Gegenwart, ed. by Markus Joch, York-Gothart Mix and Norbert Christian Wolf (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2009), p. 11-21. Jackson, Shelley, Patchwork Girl; or, a Modern Monster. By Mary Shelley and Herself (Cambridge, MA: Eastgate Systems, 1995). Jameson, Fredric: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991). Landow, George P., Hypertext 2.0 (Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Tabbi, Joseph, Towards a Semantic Literary Net. Setting a Direction for the Electronic Literature Organization’s Directory (http://eliterature.org/pad/slw.html).

Keyvan Sarkhosh »Sick, sick, sick«? Pornography, Disgust, and the Limit Values of Aesthetics The notions of ‘sickness’ and ‘disgust’ often serve as qualifiers for works whose art status seems to be doubtful as they bluntly defy and even transgress the borders of a culturally and aesthetically established ‘taste’ – most obviously in the genres of pornography and horror. However, by means of narrativization, depictions of extreme violence and graphically explicit, unsimulated sex have found their way into arthouse and mainstream films. This may give rise to the assumption that the borders of ‘aesthetic’ disgust have been shifted, leading to the conclusion that these borders cannot be violated or transgressed, but only approximated in terms of aesthetic ‘limit values’

1.

In the penultimate episode of season four of Showtime’s series Californication the main characters – that is Hank Moody, his long-term on-again, off-again partner Karen, their daughter Becca as well as Hank’s friend and agent Charlie Runkle and his ex-wife Marcy – are having dinner together. A conversation arises, focusing on not only, but especially Charlie’s escapades and autoerotic mishaps. The atmosphere is cheerful, even hilarious, yet the others judge Charlie and his behaviour in clear words: what he has done is “embarrassing”, even “gross”, they look at him as a “disgusting perv”, and Becca comments the adults’ talk with the words “I’m throwing up in my mouth right now”. Finally, Charlie exculpates himself by telling Becca that he was “no grosser than your mother and father”. And they all agree on that. Obviously, all those attributes and judgements serve as a means to characterise Charlie’s behaviour as ‘abnormal’ in the sense that it deviates from an assumed moral or social norm. And strikingly, all the quoted phrases derive from a common semantic field: as a colloquial expression, ‘gross’ denominates something that is “repulsive in quality”1, even more something nauseous, emetic, and disgusting; in short, something that makes one sick. Becca’s commentary that she has to vomit fits here quite as well in the context of Charlie’s (dis-)qualification as a ‘disgusting pervert’. If we approach the subject from a medical perspective, vomiting is generally preceded by a feeling of discomfort known as nausea. Nausea is a sensation of unease, and such a sensation is generally called ‘illness’. The term ‘illness’, however, can hardly be distinguished from the term ‘sickness’ as a

1

Cf. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prep. by John A. Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), online version, September 2011 [accessed 14 September 2001].

100 Keyvan Sarkhosh glance into the Oxford English Dictionary will prove.2 ‘Illness’ and ‘sickness’ circumscribe the realm of the pathological and abnormal, even more of disease which in the medical sense can be defined as firstly a “dysfunction of the vital activities in the organs or in the entire organism” (“Störung der Lebensvorgänge in den Organen od. im gesamten Organismus”) and secondly as the “abnormal body or mental state” (“regelwidriger Körper od. Geisteszustand“).3 These determinations of dysfunction and anomaly enable us to understand disease, and therefore also sickness, in a non-medical sense. Thus the adjective ‘sick’ can be used to describe an aberration or irregularity, a violation of norms, even a defiance of the taboo. To give an example: Nicolas Roeg’s film Bad Timing (1980) is the portrait of an amour fou based on a (graphically quite explicit) sexual obsession which led its producer, the Rank Organisation company to distancing itself from the final film, condemning it as “a sick film made by sick people for sick people”.4 On the one hand, this statement implies a moral judgement which relates to the director, the script writer, and all the others involved in the film’s production, but also to the audience that appreciates Roeg’s drama. On the other, the statement implies an aesthetic judgement, too, relating to the ‘product’ or ‘work of art’, i.e., the film itself. Obviously, ‘sickness’ serves as an aesthetic valuation here. Although sickness and disease cannot be equated one-to-one, they all refer to or designate what Winfried Menninghaus calls a “state of alarm or emergency, an urgent crisis in the claim of meaning, a spasm and a struggle, literally fighting over existence or inexistence” (“Alarm- und Ausnahmezustand, eine akute Krise der Sinnbehauptung, ein Krampf und ein Kampf,

 2

3 4

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘illness’ designates “[t]he quality and condition of being ill”, namely in a physiological and in a moral sense (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prep. by John A. Simpson [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], online version, September 2011 [accessed 14 September 2011]). On the other hand, ‘sickness’, which may serve as a synonym for ‘illness’, is defined as “[t]he state of being sick or ill; the condition of suffering from some malady.” Moreover, ‘sickness’ can be regarded as a “disturbance of the stomach manifesting itself in retching and vomiting” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prep. by John A. Simpson [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], online version, September 2011 [accessed 14 September 2011]). ‘Krankheit’, in Pschyrembel. Klinisches Wörterbuch, 260., neu bearb. Aufl. (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2004), p. 983. Cf. Nick Hasted, ‘Sick, sick, sick, said Rank’, in The Guardian, 15 August 2000 [accessed 29 April 2011].

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in dem es buchstäblich um Sein oder Nicht-Sein geht”).5 Disgust, as well as disease, is experienced as life-threatening. They are the result of a deviation from the norm, of a rule violation, or of a border violation (transgression). In the following I intend to demonstrate what the nature of such rule violations and transgressions is when one does not use the notion of sickness – and even more the notion of disgust – in the context of medicine, physiology, and clinical psychology but rather considers them as aesthetic attributes. In my examples I shall concentrate on films, especially those that have been labelled as ‘pornographic’. As I intent to argue, these film show a strong affinity to disgust – or rather the disgusting (das Ekelhafte) – as an ‘aesthetic limit value’ (as I would like to call it, picking up Robert Stockhammer’s notion).6 Besides, these films are a fitting example to demonstrate processes of exclusion and reincorporation between ‘art house’, ‘mainstream’, and ‘grindhouse’ – i.e., between supposed ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture’.

2.

In a recent paper I have taken a stab at developing a list of criteria for films and other media or works of art that are commonly labelled as ‘trash’, allowing to conceive ‘trash’ as a distinct and clearly describable aesthetic category of postmodernism.7 In this context, the “enjoyment of that which is aesthetically dubious and of deliberate low taste” (“Lust am ästhetisch dubiosen und bewusst Geschmacksarmen”)8 can be regarded as a fundamental criterion of ‘trash’: ‘trash’ serves the bad taste, even more, it evokes disgust. The etymology of ‘disgust’ (or the French dégout) reveals that first of all the notion designates a gustatory or olfactory defence action.9 As Mennighaus explicates:

5

6 7

8

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Winfried Menninghaus, ‘“Wir lernen den Ekel um.” (Nietzsche). Grundlinien einer historischen Philosophie modernen Ekels’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. by ZDF-nachtsudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 247-264 (p. 247). Cf. Robert Stockhammer, ‘Einleitung’, in: Grenzwerte des Ästhetischen, ed. by Robert Stockhammer (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2002), pp. 7-22. Keyvan Sarkhosh, ‘“Trash” als ästhetische Kategorie der Postmoderne’, in Comparative Arts. Universelle Ästhetik im Fokus der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft.Beiträge zur XIV. Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Münster, 25.-28.November 2008., ed. by Achim Hölter (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2011), p. 367-377. Rainer Moritz, ‘Bücher, denen Sie vertrauen können. Das Ranking der aktuellen Schundbücher, Möchtegern-Schundbücher und Bücher, die wider Willen zu Schund wurden’, in Literaturen, 10 (2002), 28-35 (p. 30). Cf. Aurel Kolnai, ‘Der Ekel’, in: Ekel – Hochmut – Haß. Zur Phänomenologie feindlicher Gefühle. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2007), pp. 7-65 (p. 8).

102 Keyvan Sarkhosh The elementary pattern of disgust is the experience of a proximity which is not wanted. An obtruding presence, a smelling or tasting consumption is spontaneously rated as contamination and forcefully pushed away. (Das elementare Muster des Ekels ist die Erfahrung einer Nähe, die nicht gewollt wird. Eine sich aufdrängende Präsenz, eine riechende oder schmeckende Konsumtion wird spontan als Kontamination bewertet und mit Gewalt distanziert.)10

Nausea is the reaction to the possibility that the cause of disgust might enter one’s mouth or even stomach.11However, the spectrum of disgust is much broader. Apart from animal or human waste products (above all excrement) it comprises “sex, gore, poor hygiene, and death” as well as “violations of the body border”12 and, we might add, sociomoral violations.13 Disgust is always a means and, at the same time, a symptom of a delimitation and of an exclusion. “It is the affective operator of elementary taboos of civilisation and of social differences between the familiar and the alien […].” (“Er ist der affektive Operator elementarer zivilisatorischer Tabus und sozialer Fremd-eigen-Differenzen […].”)14 But just as well disgust is the reaction to a violation of or threat to this discrimination or border. This already becomes obvious when taking a closer look on gustatory disgust, as Slavoj Žižek has done, indicating that “while we swallow our own salvia without hesitations, every knows that we find it disgusting to swallow the salvia we have spitted before” (“auch wenn wir ohne Schwierigkeiten unseren eigenen Speichel schlucken, weiß doch jeder, wie abstoßend wir es finden, wenn wir Speichel schlucken, den wir zuvor ausgespieen haben.”).15 Not only does Žižek with his statement imply that body fluids are a primary source of disgust (apart from, salvia these include nasal mucus, pus,16 gore as well as menstrual fluid and semen which due to cultural or religious beliefs are often regarded as impure17 –, he also explicitly points out that a

 10 11 12

13 14

15

16 17

Menninghaus, Wir lernen den Ekel um, p. 247. Kolnai, p. 19. Cf. Paul Rozin, Laura Lowery and Rhonda Ebert, ‘Varieties of Disgust Faces and the Structures of Disgust’, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66.5 (1994), 840-881 (p. 870). Cf. Kolnai, p. 56. Winfried Menninghaus, ‘Ekel. Vom negativen Definitionsmodell des Ästhetischen zum “Ding an sich”’, in Grenzwerte des Ästhetischen, ed. by Robert Stockhammer (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002), pp. 44-57 (p. 44). Slavoj Žižek, ‘Von Lust zu Ekel … und zurück’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. byZDF-nachtstudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 265-279 (p. 278). Cf. Menninghaus; Wir lernen den Ekel um, p. 250. Cf. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis and Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 3.

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“border between inside and outside is violated” (“Grenze von Innen und Außen verletzt wird”).18 In the same manner Claudia Benthien argues that the mouth cavity and the tongue – i.e., that part of the body where salvia is produced – mark a “fragile border between lust and disgust, between the desire for union and defence” (“fragile Grenze zwischen Lust und Ekel, zwischen Verschmelzungswunsch und Abwehr”).19 Surely, the exchange of spittle or a French kiss involving the partner’s tongue entering one’s mouth cause sexual arousal. But at the same time, objects someone we do not feel intimate with has taken into his or her mouth represent an abject, as Benthien stresses referring to Julia Kristeva.20 However, for Kristeva, who takes the alimentary disgust (dégoût alimentaire) as the most fundamental and most archaic form of abjection,21 the abject is not characterised by a lack of purity or health, but rather by its quality to disturb an identity, a system, or an order as it respects neither borders nor rules.22 The abject is that which is disgusting and thus excluded. Hence it represents a threat to the symbolic order. Insofar as we understand ‘trash’ as an artefact that is essentially characterised by the property of disgust, it represents a threat to the aesthetic order. “What is disgust in its elementary sense?” (“Was ist Ekel im elementaren Sinne?”), we might ask with Žižek who also offers a straightforward answer: “Shit” (“Scheiße”).23 Disgust represents excrement; it is that which has been excluded from the symbolic order that is our reality and hence, like being flushed the toilet, migrates into an alternative dimension which is not part of our daily life.24 ‘Trash’ is precisely this ‘alternative reality’; it picks up that which has been marginalised from the established aesthetic order, that – speaking with Bourdieu25 – which has been excluded from the zone of the legitimate taste, in short: the supposed aesthetic waste. However, this process is by no means unidirectional. To cling to Žižek’s vividness:26 like an overflowing toilet the discarded may return into the le 18 Žižek, Von Lust zu Ekel, p. 278. 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Claudia Benthien, ‘Zwiespältige Zungen. Der Kampf um Lust und Macht im oralen Raum’, in Körperteile. Eine kulturelle Anatomie, ed. by Claudia Benthien and Christoph Wulf (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2001), pp. 104-132 (p. 119). Cf. ibid, p. 120. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection, transl. by Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 2. Ibid, p. 4. Žižek, Von Lust zu Ekel, p. 272. Ibid., p. 279. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 16. Žižek explains this process with the help of a scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Conversation (1974), in which the detective (Gene Hackmann) flushes the toi-

104 Keyvan Sarkhosh gitimate symbolic or aesthetic order. This border violation evokes horror, sickness, or nausea; it leads to a “visceral”27 antipathy, in short: it provokes disgust. But at the same time it is a source of pleasure. Žižek is convinced that “the disgusting objects that return from this dimension are the supreme source of pleasure” (“die ekelhaften Objekte, die aus dieser Dimension zurückkehren, sind der höchste Grund unserer Lust”).28 What is more, there are good reasons to consider the border violation itself as a source of pleasure. Just as the liminal character of the tongue and the mouth can provoke disgust,29 so can the tongue-entwining, unifying French kiss which crosses the boundary of inside and outside arouse highest pleasure, even lust.30 This refers to the intrinsic correlation of pleasure and disgust. According to Kristeva, the abject is essentially linked to pleasure, the latter actually constituting the first: “[…] jouissance alone causes the abject to exist as such. One does not know it, one does not desire it, one joys in it [on en jouit].”31 Correspondingly, for Bourdieu the aesthetic disgust is a highly ambivalent phenomenon, it “is the paradoxical experience of enjoyment extorted by violence, an enjoyment which arouses horror.”32 Menninghaus even recognizes this union as the place of art, arguing that art is “the abject as ‘absolute’ pleasure, the disgust as a form of excremental-destructive and at the same time innocent enjoyment, the disgusting the intermitting existence of the ‘true’” (“das Abjekte als ‘absolute’ Lust, der Ekel als Form exkrementelldestruktiven und zugleich unschuldigen Genießens, das Ekelhafte als intermittierendes Sein des ‘Wahren’”).33 Therefore, pleasure essentially stems from a transgression, from a border violation and is hence in opposition to

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

let in the hotel’s bathroom whereupon the toilet flows over and several blooddrained towels appear in the bowl: “This scene, a kind of Psycho reread through Marnie (with its red stain blurring the screen) contains the main elements of the Hitchcockian universe: it has the Hitchcockian object which materializes some unspecified threat, functioning as the hole into another abyssal dimension (is flushing the toilet in this scene not like pushing the wrong button that dissolves the entire universe in the science-fiction novels?); this object which simultaneously attracts and repels the subject can be said to be the point from which the inspected setting returns the gaze (is it not that the hero is somehow regarded by the toilet sink?); and, finally, Coppola realizes the alternative scenario of the toilet itself as the ultimate locus of mystery.” (Slavoj Žižek, ‘Is There a Proper Way to Remake a Hitchcock Film?’ in Lacan dot com [accessed 29 April 2011].) Bourdieu, p. 486. Žižek, Von Lust zu Ekel, p. 279. Cf. Benthien, p. 104. Cf. ibid., p. 119. Kristeva, p. 9. Bourdieu, p. 488. Menninghaus, Ekel. Vom negativen Definitionsmodell, p. 56.

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any temperance. Following Žižek, it is pleasure’s nature to exceed certain borders; pleasure is the “sexual passion which completely captivates me, insatiability, the destructive passion that does not even stop at murder…” (“sexuelle Leidenschaft, die mich vollständig besetzt, Unersättlichkeit, die destruktive Leidenschaft, die selbst vor einem Mord nicht mehr Halt macht…”).34 To make a long story short: basically, the excess is the highest source of pleasure.35

3.

In perhaps no other genre excess, pleasure, and disgust are so tight-knit than in pornography. This seems primarily due to the fact that every form of pornography represents a crossing of a border par excellence: “Pornography describes a violation of social or sexual norms.” (“Pornographie beschreibt eine Verletzung von sozialen oder sexuellen Normen”)36 And it exposes itself to the suspicion of being “notoriously tasteless, if not even dangerous” (“notorisch geschmacklos, wenn nicht gar gefährlich”).37 In this context, the sexuality that is explicitly exhibited in pornography serves as a primary source of disgust, which according to Aurel Kolnai arises whenever the “possibility of a general sexual abandon, boundlessness, and amorphousness” (“Möglichkeit einer allgemeinen sexuellen Hemmungs-, Schrankenund Formlosigkeit”) forces its course.38 Pornography is an excess, and basically a corporal one. Accordingly, Linda Williams ranks pornography – along with horror films and melodramas – among the “sensational ‘body’ genres” which display a body spectacle: “The body spectacle is featured most sensationally in pornography’s portrayal of orgasm, in horror’s portrayal of violence and terror, and in melodrama’s portrayal of weeping.”39 For Williams, pornography and horror are related genres because they stir us somatically.40

 34 35 36 37 38 39

40

Žižek, Von Lust zu Ekel , p. 266-7. Cf. ibid., p. 266. Rüdiger Lautmann and Michael Schetsche, Das pornographierte Begehren (Frankfurt a.M., New York: Campus, 1990), p. 88. Ibid., p. 7. Kolnai, p. 37. Linda Williams, ‘Film Bodies. Gender, Genre, and Excess’, in Film Quarterly, 44.4 (1991), 2-13 (p. 4). – Williams also suggests that one has to give consideration to the possibility that excess can be organised as a system, and concludes: “Pornography and horror are two such systems of excess. Pornography is the lowest in cultural esteem, gross-out horror is next to lowest.” (p. 3) When we understand horror as the genre of fear, we might state in the words of Hartmut Böhme that the “primary condition of fear is not its symbolic character which we would have to interpret hermeneutically, but rather its somatically perceptible, and instantaneous presence.” (“Die primäre Gegebenheitsweise von Angst ist nicht ihr Zeichenhaftes, das wir hermeneutisch zu entschlüsseln hätten, sondern ihre

106 Keyvan Sarkhosh She argues that pornography is “one of the few places where sexual representation functions for purposes of arousal”.41 According to Williams, such films which stir us somatically are colloquially designated as ‘gross’.42 This brings us back to the sequence from Californication which has been quoted at the beginning of this paper where the adjective ‘gross’ repeatedly serves to (dis-)qualify Charlie Runkle’s sexual behaviour which obviously violates the rules of good taste. In the context of the body spectacles ‘gross’ can be understood as synonymous with ‘ugly’, ‘sick’, and ‘disgusting’.43 And so Williams points out: “There is no accounting for taste, especially in the realm of the ‘gross’. As a culture we most often invoke the term to designate excess we wish to exclude […].”44 However, not only does pornography arouse us somatically. Pornography also represents a ‘body spectacle’ because it excessively exhibits the body. “Pornographic trash” aims “for the depiction of the non-presentable, for the display of that which is normally not displayed” (“um die Darstellung des Nichtdarstellbarem, um das Zeigen dessen, was sonst nicht gezeigt wird”).45 And this is a sort of corporeality contrary to the ideal of beauty. Menninghaus suggests that the “foundation of modern aesthetics around the middle of the 18th century” (“Grundlegung der modernen Ästhetik um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts”) basically consisted in a “prohibition of the disgusting” (“Verbot des Ekelhaften”):46 With Winkelmann, Lessing, and Herder, the ideal of beauty, the classical sculptural body and the human body in general, is subject to a topo- and choreography of ‘disgust’. Wrinkles, puckers, warts, ‘excessive softness’, visible or too large body orifices, the leakage of body fluids (nasal mucus, pus, gore) are aesthetically banned as ‘disgusting’.

41

42 43

44 45 46

leiblich spürbare, unmittelbare Präsenz.”) (Hartmut Böhme, ‘Leibliche und kulturelle Codierungen von Angst’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. by ZDF-nachtsudio [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000], pp. 214-239 [p. 220].) Linda Williams, ‘Sex and Sensation’, in The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 490-496 (p. 495) Cf. Williams, Film Bodies, p. 2. In the German version of Linda William’s paper Andrea B. Braidt translates the term ‘gross’ with “krass” which is much closer to the colloquial expression ‘wicked’. Besides, the German colloquial term ‘krass’ does not have as strong connotations of sickness and disgust as the English ‘gross’. Cf. Linda Williams, ‘Filmkörper.Gender, Genre und Exzess’, transl. by. Andrea B. Braidt, in montage/AV, 18.2 (2009), 9-30 (p. 9). Williams, Film Bodies, p. 2. Christian Banse, ‘Der Trash-Körper.Eine Bemerkung über eine Form der Pornographie’, in Ästhetik & Kommunikation, 38.138 (2007), 57-59 (p. 58). Menninghaus, Wir lernen den Ekel um, p. 248.

Sick, sick, sick 107 (Das Ideal des Schönen, der klassische Statuenkörper und der menschliche Körper überhaupt, unterliegt bei Winkelmann, Lessing und Herder von Kopf bis zu den Füßen einer Topo- und einer Choreographie des ‘Ekels’. […] Falten, Runzeln, Warzen, ‘allzu große Weichheit’, sichtbare oder zu große Körperöffnungen, austretende Körperflüssigkeiten (Nasenschleim, Eiter, Blut) und Alter werden als ‘ekelhaft’ auf den ästhetischen Index gesetzt.47)

In contrast, pornography and the pornographic body are subject to an – speaking with Karl Rosenkranz48 – ‘aesthetic of ugliness’, as Werner Faulstich stresses: “The actors and speakers or the characters of novels, comics, and other sorts or representation often are of repellent ugliness, the bodies are banally trivial and anonymous.” (“Die Schauspieler und die Sprecher bzw. die Roman-, die Comic-, die Darstellungsfiguren sind oft von abstoßender Häßlichkeit, die Körper alltäglich-trivial oder anonym.”)49 Hence, the corporeality of pornography does not comply with the ideal of Hollywood mainstream. The pornographic body is the result of a forceful wearing and wasting. In pornography, just as in ‘trash’, the body degenerates into a meaningless object which can be used, consumed, and finally dumped. In this context, the pornographic body serves as a primary source of disgust because, as Kolnai has put it, “‘the body’ as such, without ‘human’ role and authentication, comes forward and becomes intrusive; far too strongly, it is ‘felt’ as body.” (“‘der Leib’ gerade als solcher, also ohne ‘menschliche’ Rolle und Beglaubigung, hervortritt und aufdringlich wird, sich allzustark als Leib ‘spüren’ läßt)50 Accordingly, Faulstich explains: “Pornography exhibits a dramaturgy of crude corporeality, a dramaturgy of sexual instruments.” (“Pornografie hat eine Dramaturgie kruder Körperlichkeit, eine Dramaturgie der Sexualwerkzeuge.”)51 Only the naked body, serving as the ‘leading actor’, is in the spotlight,52 and the “lack of convincing characters” (“Mangel glaubhafter Personen”) is the “aesthetic necessity of a staging which aims at effect” (“ästhetische Notwendigkeit einer auf Wirkung bedachten Inszenierung”).53 The ‘figures’ of pornography – one can hardly speak of characters – miss character drawing; they are emotionally flat, and they are neither psychologically motivated nor do they evolve. All this is the conse-

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Ibid. Karl Rosenkranz, Aestehtik des Häßlichen (Königsberg: Bornträger, 1853). Werner Faulstich, Die Kultur der Pornographie. Kleine Einführung in Geschichte, Medien, Ästhetik, Markt und Bedeutung (Berdowick: Wissenschaftler-Verl., 1994), p. 208. Kolnai, p. 37. Faulstich, p. 207. Cf. Sarkhosh, p. 372. Faulstich, p. 144.

108 Keyvan Sarkhosh quence54 of pornography’s concreteness which finds its expression in the ‘explicitly detailed’ and ‘fictionally real’ depiction of sexual activities.55 In this context, Susan Sontag argues that the lack of emotion and the ‘characters’ triviality is a condition for pornography becoming a screen for the viewer’s fantasy: “The emotional flatness of pornography is thus neither a failure of artistry nor an index of principled inhumanity. The arousal of a sexual response in the reader requires it. Only in the absence of directly stated emotions can the reader of pornography find room for his own responses.”56 All this makes clear that pornography has to be distinguished from sexuality. Pornography is a practice of representation (Darstellungspraktik),57 a fantasy, and no real experience as Sontag emphasises: “Experiences aren’t pornographic; only images and representations – structures of the imagination – are.”58 Apart from being ‘explicitly detailed’ and ‘fictionally real’ pornography must offer a third feature which enables the recipient (viewer, reader, etc.) to immerse into it: pornography is ‘scenically narrative’.59 Albeit the rudimentary plot mainly serves as a vehicle for sensory stimuli,60 it is indispensable in order to mediate arousal. According to Andrea Braidt, a mere “display as descriptive model” is insufficient.61 And, “after examining many hard-core movies” – as he himself stresses – Umberto Eco has come to the conclusion: A pornographic film is designed to satisfy the audience’s desire for sexuality and explicit scenes, but it can’t show an hour and a half of uninterrupted sexual acts because that would be tiring for the actors – and ultimately tedious for the

54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Cf. ibid., p. 206: “Pornography comes to business straightaway. There is no elaborate prelude, no long-term development of suspense. The characters are anonymous and exchangeable, have no personal, individualising features, no psychology, but are reduced to their mere sexuality.” (“Pornografie kommt direkt zur Sache. Es gibt kein elaboriertes Vorspiel, keine langen Spannungsentwicklungen. Die Figuren sind anonym und austauschbar, haben keine persönlichen, individualisierenden Merkmale, keine Psychologie, sondern sind reduziert auf ihre bloße Geschlechtlichkeit.”) Cf. ibid., p. 20. Susan Sontag, ‘The Pornographic Imagination’, in Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), p. 35-7 (p. 54). Cf. Faulstich, p. 7 with reference to Susanne Kappeler, Pornographie. Die Macht der Darstellung (München: Frauenoffensive, 1988), p. 8. Sontag, The Pornographic Imagination, p. 49. Faulstich, p. 20. Cf. Sarkhosh, p. 372. Andrea B. Braidt, ‘Erregung erzählen.Narratologische Anmerkungen zum Porno’, in montage/AV, 18.2 (2009), 31-53 (p. 31).

Sick, sick, sick 109 audience as well. The sexual acts therefore have to be dispersed throughout the story.62

As minimal as it might be, a narrative frame is necessary to keep the viewer’s appetite on a constant high level. Even in anthology films or in gonzo-style porn videos which can be found on the internet in great numbers one can find a rudimentary narrative structure. The typical plot usually starts with an exposition which explains the encounter and the sexual activities of the involved ‘characters’ more or less plausibly: be it that the neighbour or the plumber drop in, whereupon they are seduced by a lascivious girl; be it the naughty student trying to get better marks by offering sexual favours to her teacher; or simply be it that a more or less dressed girl which accidently passes by is addressed and complimented for her female attributes. Finally, the depicted sexual acts are subject to a narrative sequence which runs over the following steps: foreplay, fellatio, vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, and the concluding ejaculation of the male’s part – all this insinuating an “increase in intensity” (“Steigerung der Intensität”).63 Virtually, these steps constitute the narrative “standard repertoire”64 which not least lays open the uniformity of pornography: analogous to the rhythm of body movements 62

63

64

Umberto Eco: Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 2nd print. (Cambridge/MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 61. – However, this story turns out trivial and rudimentary because “no one has the least intention of spending time and money thinking up a worthwhile story, and the spectators aren’t interested in the story either, because all they’re doing is waiting for the sexy bits. The story is thereby reduced to a series of insignificant everyday actions […].” (Ibid.) Cf. Braidt, p. 48. – Also cf. Lautmann and Schetsche, p. 70-1: “Practically always the stories can be divided into four parts which build a sort of dramaturgy […]. These four parts are: 1. Introduction: initial situation and prior history; 2.getting naked: undressing, presentation of the bodies, and first physical contacts; 3. Coitus: diverse penetrations (oral, vaginal, and anal); 4. Climax; extracorporeal ejaculation of the men onto the women’s bodies. Generally, the third part is the longest. It is usually structured into individual subsections according to the kind of penetration of the participating woman/women by one or several participating men: oral, vaginal, and anal penetrations. Anal intercourse, which is not found in all stories, generally concludes the penetration section.” (“Die Geschichten lassen sich fast immer in vier Abschnitte unterteilen, die eine Art Spannungsbogen bilden […]. Diese vier Abschnitte sind: 1. Einstieg: Ausgangssituation und Vorgeschichte; 2. Nacktwerden: Ablegen der Bekleidung, Vorzeigen der Körper und erste körperliche Berührungen; 3. Koitus: diverse Penetrationen (oral, vaginal und anal); 4. Höhepunkt: extrakorporale Ejakulation der Männer auf die Körper der Frauen. Der dritte Abschnitt ist dabei i.d.R. der längste. Er ist meist nach der Art der Penetration der beteiligten Frau(en) durch den oder die beteiligten Männer in einzelne Unterabschnitte gegliedert: orale, vaginale und anale Penetrationen. Der Analverkehr, der nicht in allen Geschichten vorkommt, stellt meist den Abschluß der Penetrationsphase dar.”) Braidt, p. 50.

110 Keyvan Sarkhosh during coitus, pornography proves itself as being the genre of seriality65 par excellence.

4.

Their narrative quality allows the integration of pornographic representations into the fictional film. Not only in genuinely pornographic films, but also in a number of feature films one can find ‘explicitly detailed’, ‘fictionally real’, and ‘scenically narrative’ depictions of sexual activities – even though they usually represent only a small proportion compared to nonpornographic actions. As a matter of fact, films like La Vie de Jésus (Bruno Dumont, 1997), Pola X (Leos Carax, 1999), and prominently Lars von Trier’s Idioterne (1998) and Catherine Breillat’s Romance (1999) have kicked off a series of feature films at the beginning of the 21st century which include graphically explicit sex scenes:66Baise-moi (Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, 2000), Intimacy (Patrice Chéreau, 2001), Lucía y el sexo (Julio Medem, 2001), À ma sœur! (Catherine Breillat, 2001) Ken Park (Larry Clark and Edward Lachman, 2002), The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003), 9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom, 2004), Anatomie de l’enfer (Catherine Breillat, 2004), Batalla en el cielo (Carlos Reygadas, 2005), Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006), and – to end this surely most incomplete list – Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009). However, the integration of graphically explicit sex scenes or detailed close-ups of the primary genitalia into the non-pornographic film is by no means a novelty. What characterises the aforementioned films form the last decade is rather the fact that the public uproar, the scandal created by those films, kept within – more or less – reasonable limits. Or, as Stefan Volk has put it: “In the 2000s, explicit depictions and even real sex in front of the camera were not really much good for causing a major scandal.” (“Explizite Bilder und selbst realer Sex vor laufenden Kameras genügten in den 2000er Jahren kaum noch, um einen handfesten Skandal zu verursachen”)67 As the basic prerequisite for a scandal one might consider a border violation, a deviation from the norm, an “offence against a social consensus” (“Verstoß gegen einen gesellschaftlichen Konsens”).68 When that which has been excluded from the universe of legitimate art, the disgusting, the abject, 65

66 67 68

On ‘seriality’ cf. Umberto Eco, ‘Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics’, in Reading Eco: An Anthology, ed. by Rocco Capozzi (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997) pp.14-33 (p. 19). Vgl. Stefan Volk, Skandalfilme. Cineastische Aufreger gestern und heute, in collaboration with Barbara Scherschlicht (Marburg: Schüren, 2011), p. 237. Ibid., p. 268. Ibid., p. 10.

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forces its way back into it, the result is not only a scandal but rather a defence reaction. We could not have a clearer proof of this as in the critical and legal debates around Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975) and Nagisa Ôshima’s Ai no korîda (In the Realm of the Senses, 1976) in West Germany at the time. In both cases the question was: Legitimate art or illegitimate, condemnable pornography which should be rejected even banned? Speaking with Volk, Ôshima’s film showed what normally remains hidden in (conventional) cinema: “genitals in close-ups, fellatio, and real sex in front of the camera” (“Genitalien in Großaufnahme, Fellatio und echten Sex vor der Kamera.”).69 That is the reason why the film was confiscated when it was screened at the Berlinale in 1976. However, a year later the film was approved in an uncut version and it was re-released to cinemas nationwide in West Germany in 1978. What distinguishes Ôshima’s film from ordinary pornography and raises it to the level of art is the fact that it turns the logic of pornography upside-don, as Volk argues, because Ai no korîda does not suggest “the ubiquitous and exchangeable availability of lust and satisfaction” (“die allgegenwärtige und austauschbare Verfügbarkeit von Lust und Befriedigung”).70 Instead it demonstrates the destructive and fatal consequences of sexual obsession. Likewise, the German courts were concerned with Salò, the last film Pasolini made before he was brutally murdered in 1975, because it rose “the old question of the limits between art and pornography, and the new question of how dangerous such art may be” (“die alte Frage nach den Grenzen zwischen Kunst und Pornographie und die neue Frage, wie gefährlich solche Kunst sein darf”).71 It equally concerned many (conservative) critics who were of the opinion that with his last film Pasolini had clearly crossed the line.72 In the weekly newspaper Die Zeit Rudolf Walter Leonhardt stated his opinion under the headline “The limits of bad taste” (“Die Grenzen des schlechten Geschmacks”). He argues that Pasolini’s film which shows the intimate correlation between fascism, cruelty, and sexuality is no longer a borderline case but rather an extreme, displaying sadism and coprophagia, thus breaching “the limits of bad taste be-

 69 70 71 72

Ibid., p. 199. Ibid., p. 200. Rudolf Gerhardt, ‘Ein Film als Fall. “Salo” von Pasolini und das Rüstzeug der Juristen’, in Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung, 14 February 1976, p. 21. Although earlier films like Il Decameron (1971) or Il fiore delle mille e una notte (1974) were quite explicit in matters of sex, with his last film Pasolini broke new ground in the depiction of “obscenity and uncompromising cruelty” – a fact he was very well aware of (cf. Stephen Barber, ‘The Last Film, the Last Book. Pasolini and Sade’, in From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse. Highbrow and Lowbrow Transgressions in Cinema’s First Century, ed. by John Cline and Robert G. Weiner [Lanham et al.: The Scarecrow Press, 2010], pp. 95-106 [p 99]).

112 Keyvan Sarkhosh yond which the disintegration of civilisation begins” (“die Grenzen des schlechten Geschmacks, jenseits derer die Auflösung von Zivilisation anfängt”).73 Similarly, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Karl Korn admonished in his review with the title “The limits of the representable” (“Die Grenzen des schlechten Geschmacks”) “that Pasolini has repeatedly exceeded the limits of what is reasonable to society” (“daß Pasolini das Maß dessen, was gesellschaftlich zumutbar ist, vielfach überschritten hat”).74 He mentions the “scene, in which a young girl has to crawl on her knees to the excrement of one of the men in order to eat it with a spoon” (“Szene, in der ein Mädchen an die Exkremente eines der Herren herankriechen muß, um sie mit einem Löffel zu verzehren”) – a scene which should cause disgust in any normal viewer.75 By bringing the disgusting, the abject, to the screen, Pasolini’s film itself had become an abject which was confronted with a defence reaction – precisely because with Pasolini’s film that which had been excluded from the realm of legitimate (film) art, the aesthetically excremental, was ‘returning home’. Neither Pasolini’s Salò nor Ôshima’s In the Realm of the Senseswere meant to be shown covertly in low-budget film theatres. However, in the wake of the liberalisations of the late 1960s and the 70s, such low budget film theatres like adult cinemas or the so-called American ‘grindhouses’ were exactly the place where films were shown which obviously offended the rules of the ‘legitimate good taste’ without anyone really bothering. Stefan Volk accordingly attests: “Films on the verge of public perception only have a small potential for creating a scandal. This applies for avant-garde or underground films just as much as for pornographic films.” (“Filme, die sich am Rande der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung bewegen, verfügen entsprechend über ein geringes Skandalpotenzial. Das gilt für Avantgarde- oder Undergroundfilme ebenso wie für Pornos.”)76 This is the reason why we can indeed find many films with explicit depictions of sexuality within the genre of exploitation films. Take for example the Swedish ‘rape and revenge’ film Thriller – en grym film (Bo Arne Vibenius, 1974) which has gained a certain cult status as a source of inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films (2003, 2004) lately: when Frigga (Christina Lindberg) who got addicted to heroin and has been forced to prostitution by Tony (Heinz Hopf), has to serve her customers we explicitly get to see how she is being penetrated vaginally or anally. 73 74 75 76

Rudolf Walter Leonhardt, ‘Die Grenzen des schlechten Geschmacks’, in: Die Zeit, 13. Feburary 1976, p. 36. Karl Korn, ‘Die Grenzen des Darstellbaren. Zu Pasolinis letztem Film “Salo oder Die 120 Tage von Sodom”’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08 June 1976, p. 21. Ibid. Volk, p. 10.

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Surely, this is a lurid effect, serving the curiosity and voyeurism of the supposedly predominantly male audience. On the other hand, the explicit depictions alternate with shots of Frigga’s face contorted with pain; and to these shots distorted sounds are added. Consequently, one may consider this as the (whether clumsy or not remains to be seen) attempt to make the young woman’s pain and suffering physically palpable for the audience – quite in accordance to Linda Williams’s definition of pornography as a ‘body spectacle’.77 In the same sense, the attempt of physical palpability which puts the audience into the emotional situation of the fictional characters can be understood as the motivation of those recent art house and mainstream films which contain graphically explicit sex scenes – especially when these scenes go hand in hand with depictions of physical violence. Possibly, such palpability is the intention behind films like Baise-moi which Volks wants to be considered as “anti-porn” (“Antiporno”), arguing that the film “has nothing in common […] with ordinary pornography” (“mit herkömmlicher Pornographie […] nichts gemein”).78 However, other critics have described Baise-moi as lurid and voyeuristic.79 Perhaps Volk’s diagnosis fits better for Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible. Although not graphically explicit, yet in a scene of – at least for some viewers – unbearable length the film shows how a woman (played by Monica Bellucci) is brutally raped in a subway. And the aspect of physical palpability surely applies to Lars von Trier’s Antichrist when we have to witness in close-ups how the woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) cuts her clitoris with a pair of scissors, when she wounds her husband (William Dafoe) “with a plank in such a way that he does not ejaculate semen but blood during masturbation” (“mit einem Brett so verletzt, dass

 77 78

79

Cf. Williams, Film Bodies, p. 4. Volk, p. 276-7. – To justify his statement Volk explains: “Neither does the camera revel in the genitals nor does the [sexual] act follow the voyeuristic rituals of the pornographic myths of masculinity and femininity; in its violence, the female body remains autonomous and eludes the male grasp.” (“Weder weidet sich die Kamera an Geschlechtsteilen noch folgt der Akt selbst den voyeuristischsten Ritualen pornografischer Männlich- und Weiblichkeitsmythen, der in seiner Gewalt autonome weibliche Körper entzieht sich dem männlichen Zugriff.”) Cf. John Lichfield, ‘Art-house porn movie shocks even the French”. inThe Independet, 14 June 2009 [accessed 29 April 2011]: “Most French film critics have panned the movie; for exploiting rather than exploring these issues, and for selling itself simultaneously as hard porn and an art-house film or film d’auteur.”

114 Keyvan Sarkhosh beim Masturbieren nicht Sperma, sondern Blut spritz”).80 On the premiere in Cannes, Lars von Trier’s film got booed.81 Probably this was less due to the film’s graphically explicit sex scenes but rather to their combination with explicit violence (and a maybe somewhat misogynistic tendency). Obviously, today explicit sex is only good for a scandal when it comes in combination with violence – though violence, too, is more and more free from taboos as proven by certain recent films like Hostel (Eli Roth, 2004) and the Saw series (2004 onwards). These films have brought a new form of “drasticality and explicitness” (“Drastik und Deutlichkeit”)82to the screen which has earned the sub-genre the name ‘torture porn’.83 In those cases, however, where we can find pornographic depictions in mainstream and art house films without them being in connection with violence, they can best be understood as an effort for realism84 – if they not simply serve the audience’s voyeurism, that is. Confronted with the question whether his film 9 Songs which contains numerous graphically explicit and authentic sex scenes is a pornographic film, director Michael Winterbottom replied that it was his intention to tell a “love story” (“Liebesgeschichte”), and such a love story necessarily comprises “sex and physical intimacy” (“Sex und körperliche Intimität”).85 (For the rest, his film differs from an ordinary pornographic film insofar as no viewer would expect it to be shown in an adult cinema, says Winterbottom.86) To this effect pornographic depictions can be understood as effort of an accurate representation of reality, as a form of extreme, almost documentary naturalism. Such a representation reflects the attempt of a codeless immediacy, which however is always doomed to failure as lust and disgust which become manifest in the pornographic abject are at least physically coded. The codeless immediacy contradicts the principle of pornography as a fantasy, as an imagination in terms of Susan Sontag.87 “In pornography the depiction is by no means in80

81 82 83

84 85

86 87

Peter Körte, ‘Nackt und tot.Lars von Triers Film “Antichrist” zeigt viel Blut, Horror und ein bisschen Porno’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 6 September 2009, p. 24. Cf. ibid. Cf. the title of Dietmar Dath, Die salzweißen Augen. Vierzehn Briefe über Drastik und Deutlichkeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2005). Cf. David Edelstein, ‘Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn. Why has America gone nuts for blood, guts, and sadism?’, in New York Magazine, 28 January 2006 [accessed 13 October 2011]. Cf. Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, p. 60. ‘“Liebe ist nun mal körperlich”. Der britische Regisseur Michael Winterbottom, 43, Über seinen Sex- und Rock’n’Roll-Film “9 Songs”’, interview with Thomas Hüetlin, in Der Spiegel, 4 (2005), p. 176. Cf. ibid. Cf. Sontag, The Pornographic Imagination, p 49.

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tended as a representation of reality. Basically, pornography is the staging of subjective wishes in the shape of objective reality, it is pseudo-authenticity.” (“Bei Pornografie soll das Abgebildete keineswegs die Wirklichkeit repräsentieren. Pornografie ist im Kern die Inszenierung von subjektiven Wünschen als objektiver Wirklichkeit, ist Pseudo-Authentizität”)88However, being the sum of lust and disgust, pornography is physically and culturally coded, and this code can be expended, it can wear off. Contrary to Hannelore Schlaffer’s assertion that the feeling of disgust “as a biological warning system“ is a provocation one cannot accustom to,89 disgust can wear off and even change into pleasure and lust. And both, lust and disgust can fade. Maybe this is the reason why pornography loses its attraction so quickly, why the consumer of pornography is in constant demand of ‘fresh supplies’.90 Most notably this fading of the disgust code is the reason why pornography as something which is supposedly excluded from the realm of legitimate art may return to it. But the attraction, the pleasure which derives from this reintegration fades quite as quickly, indeed (the more so as in today’s age of the internet pornography is only a mouse click away). This coincides with Stefan Volk’s diagnosis that despite the massive increase in pornographic representations in mainstream and art house cinema during the last decade, “the audience did not beat its path to the doors of those cinemas showing these risqué films” (“rannten die Zuschauer den Filmtheatern, die diese gewagten Streifen vorführten, nicht die Tore ein”).91 5. Umberto Eco has suggested that the products of mass culture” (“prodotti della cultura di massa”) – which are meant for consumption – have “the first characteristic” (“la prima caratteristica”) of “being short-lived” (“l’esser effimeri”).92 Insofar as pornography represents a phenomenon which is – in terms of Bourdieu – excluded from the universe of legitimate art, i.e. from the dimension of codified good taste, in short: from high culture, and which is liable to a process of wear, it appears as the extreme hallmark of mass culture which from the perspective of high culture calls for a defensive stance leading to a reaction of disgust. “Pornography is the lowest in cultural esteem, gross-out horror is next to lowest“, says Linda Williams. But as Eco 88 89

90 91 92

Faulstich, p. 207. Hannelore Schlaffer, ‘Ekel-Kunst.Ein neuer Stil jenseits der schönen Künste’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. by ZDF-nachtsudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 280-297 (p. 281). Cf. Lautmann and Schetsche 1990, p. 24. Volk, p. 267. Umberto Eco, ‘Prefazione’, in Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 2008), pp. 3-25 (p. 8).

116 Keyvan Sarkhosh has rightly pointed out, “the sequence of mediations and borrowings” (“la sequenza delle mediazioni e dei prestiti”) is by no means unidirectional.93 Using the example of pornography it has become apparent that not only is this process one of exclusion but also of reintegration. The border between the legitimate and the abject, between beauty and disgust, between high culture and low culture, i.e., between art and ‘trash’ is at least semi-permeable in both directions. While Susan Sontag – in terms of the New Sensibility she has proclaimed – questions such a border in principle,94 Karl-Heinz Bohrer, for example, seeks to defend the limits of the aesthetic “vis-à-vis hedonism, design of everyday life, and surface without depth” (“gegenüber Hedonismus, Alltagsdesign, Oberfläche ohne Hintergrund”).95 He even advocates for a strict demarcation “because otherwise the […] banalising misconceptions of the aesthetic appear in the shape of the hedonistic, the humane, or the social” (“weil sonst die […] banalisierenden Mißverständnisse des Ästhetischen als das Hedonistische oder das Humane oder das Soziale auftreten”).96 In contrast, in my view it seems advisable to question a hermetic discrimination between the realms of the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic. Accordingly, Sontag argues that the capacity to comprise extremes is in the nature of art: To put it very generally: art (and art-making) is a form of consciousness; the materials of art are the variety forms of consciousness. By no aesthetic principle can this notion of the materials of art be construed as excluding even the extreme forms of consciousness that transcend social personality or psychological individuality.97

Beauty and disgust, aesthetics and sexuality, art and pornography are by no means mutually exclusive. For such a fusion Peter Gorsen has coined the term “sexual aesthetics” (“Sexualästhetik”) whose “domain” (“Domäne”) is the “aesthetic border crossing” (“ästhetische Grenzüberschreitung”).98 This definition is imprecise insofar as a crossing describes a movement or a process but not a ‘domain’. Instead of speaking of aesthetic borders and hence of crossings or transgressions, I would like to argue for Robert Stockhammer’s  93 94 95 96 97 98

Umberto Eco, ‘La struttura del cattivo gusto’, in Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 2008), pp. 65-129 (p. 128). Susan Sontag, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 293-304 (p. 297 and p. 302). Karl Heinz Bohrer, Die Grenzen des Ästhetischen (München, Wien: Hanser, 1998), p. 7. Ibid, p. 188. Sontag, The Pornographic Imagination, p. 44. Peter Gorsen, ‘Sexualästhetik.Zur Hermeneutik von Obszönität und Pornographie’ in Sexualästhetik.Grenzformen der Sinnlichkeit im 20.Jahrhundert (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1987), p. 11-114 (p. 13 and. p. 20).

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suggestion not to speak of the limits of the aesthetic but rather of ‘limit values’ (“Grenzwerte”) in terms of mathematics.99 By definition, a mathematical limit value cannot be transgressed, “because due to the progression of the function it cannot be even reached at all” (“gemäß des Funktionsverlaufs gar nicht erst erreicht werden kann”).100 However, with its growing index a sequence can approximate such a limit value. Figuratively, this means: Depending on the cultural variables we enter into the index we gradually approximate a certain aesthetic limit value. And depending on the cultural function we deploy the limit value will be different. According to index and function we achieve different values – aesthetic, socio-cultural, and moral values, that is. Such a limit value cannot be exceeded or transgressed; but as cultural variables are (historically and aesthetically) contingent, such limit values are subject to change. That the disgusting, the sexually excessive, and the pornographic may have been mass-cultural aesthetic values once does on no account imply that they still are.

Bibliography Banse, Christian, ‘Der Trash-Körper.Eine Bemerkung über eine Form der Pornographie’, in Ästhetik & Kommunikation, 38.138 (2007), 57-59. Barber, Stephen, ‘The Last Film, the Last Book.Pasolini and Sade’, in From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse. Highbrow and Lowbrow Transgressions in Cinema’s First Century, ed. by John Cline and Robert G. Weiner (Lanham et al.: The Scarecrow Press, 2010), pp. 95-106. Benthien, Claudia, ‘Zwiespältige Zungen. Der Kampf um Lust und Macht im oralen Raum’, in Körperteile. Eine kulturelle Anatomie, ed. by Claudia Benthien and Christoph Wulf (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2001). Böhme, Hartmut, ‘Leibliche und kulturelle Codierungen von Angst’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. by ZDF-nachtsudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 214-239. Bohrer, Karl Heinz, Die Grenzen des Ästhetischen (München, Wien: Hanser, 1998). Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). Braidt, Andrea B., ‘Erregung erzählen.Narratologische Anmerkungen zum Porno’, in montage/AV, 18.2 (2009), 31-53. Dath, Dietmar, Die salzweißen Augen. Vierzehn Briefe über Drastik und Deutlichkeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2005). 99

Stockhammer, Einleitung, pp. 8-9. Ibid., p. 8.

100

118 Keyvan Sarkhosh Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger. An Analysis and Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2003). Eco, Umberto, ‘Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and PostModern Aesthetics’, in Reading Eco: An Anthology, ed. by Rocco Capozzi (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997) pp.14-33. Eco, Umberto, ‘La struttura del cattivo gusto’, in Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 2008), pp. 65-129. Eco, Umberto, ‘Prefazione’, in Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 2008), pp. 3-25. Eco, Umberto: Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 2nd print. (Cambridge/MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994). Edelstein, David, ‘Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn. Why has America gone nuts for blood, guts, and sadism?’, in New York Magazine, 28 January 2006 [accessed 13 October 2011]. Faulstich, Werner, Die Kultur der Pornographie. Kleine Einführung in Geschichte, Medien, Ästhetik, Markt und Bedeutung (Berdowick: Wissenschaftler-Verl., 1994). Gerhardt, Rudolf, ‘Ein Film als Fall. “Salo” von Pasolini und das Rüstzeug der Juristen’, in Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung, 14 February 1976, p. 21. Hasted, Nick, ‘Sick, sick, sick, said Rank’, in The Guardian, 15 August 2000 [accessed 29 April 2011]. Gorsen, Peter, ‘Sexualästhetik.Zur Hermeneutik von Obszönität und Pornographie’ in Sexualästhetik.Grenzformen der Sinnlichkeit im 20.Jahrhundert (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1987), p. 11-114. ‘gross’, in Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prep. by John A. Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), online version, September 2011 [accessed 14 September 2001]. ‘illness’, in Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prep. by John A. Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), online version, September 2011 [accessed 14 September 2011]. Kappeler, Susanne, Pornographie. Die Macht der Darstellung (München: Frauenoffensive, 1988). Kolnai, Aurel, ‘Der Ekel’, in: Ekel – Hochmut – Haß. Zur Phänomenologie feindlicher Gefühle. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2007), pp. 7-65.

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Korn, Karl, ‘Die Grenzen des Darstellbaren. Zu Pasolinis letztem Film “Salo oder Die 120 Tage von Sodom”’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08 June 1976, p. 21. Körte, Peter, ‘Nackt und tot.Lars von Triers Film “Antichrist” zeigt viel Blut, Horror und ein bisschen Porno’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 6 September 2009, p. 24. ‘Krankheit’, in Pschyrembel. Klinisches Wörterbuch, 260., neu bearb. Aufl. (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2004), p. 983. Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection, transl. by Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Lautmann, Rüdiger and Michael Schetsche, Das pornographierte Begehren (Frankfurt a.M., New York: Campus, 1990). Leonhardt, Rudolf Walter, ‘Die Grenzen des schlechten Geschmacks’, in: Die Zeit, 13. Feburary1976, p. 36. Lichfield, John, ‘Art-house porn movie shocks even the French”. inThe Independet, 14 June 2009 [accessed 29 April 2011]. ‘“Liebe ist nun mal körperlich”. Der britische Regisseur Michael Winterbottom, 43, Über seinen Sex- und Rock’n’Roll-Film “9 Songs”’, interview with Thomas Hüetlin, in Der Spiegel, 4 (2005), p. 176. Menninghaus, Winfried, ‘Ekel. Vom negativen Definitionsmodell des Ästhetischen zum “Ding an sich”’, in Grenzwerte des Ästhetischen, ed. by Robert Stockhammer (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002), pp. 44-57 Menninghaus, Winfried, ‘“Wir lernen den Ekel um.” (Nietzsche). Grundlinien einer historischen Philosophie modernen Ekels’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. by ZDF-nachtsudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 247-264. Moritz, Rainer, ‘Bücher, denen Sie vertrauen können. Das Ranking der aktuellen Schundbücher, Möchtegern-Schundbücher und Bücher, die wider Willen zu Schund wurden’, in Literaturen, 10 (2002), 28-35. Rosenkranz, Karl, Aestehtik des Häßlichen (Königsberg: Bornträger, 1853). Rozin, Paul, Laura Lowery and Rhonda Ebert, ‘Varieties of Disgust Faces and the Structures of Disgust’, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66.5 (1994), 840-881. Sarkhosh, Keyvan, ‘“Trash” als ästhetische Kategorie der Postmoderne’, in Comparative Arts. Universelle Ästhetik im Fokus der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft.Beiträge zur XIV. Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Münster, 25.-28.November 2008., ed. by Achim Hölter (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2011), p. 367-377.

120 Keyvan Sarkhosh Schlaffer, Hannelore, ‘Ekel-Kunst.Ein neuer Stil jenseits der schönen Künste’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. by ZDFnachtsudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 280-297. ‘sickness’, in Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prep. by John A. Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), online version, September 2011 [accessed 14 September 2011]. Sontag, Susan, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 293-304. Sontag, Susan, ‘The Pornographic Imagination’, in Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), p. 35-7. Stockhammer, Robert, ‘Einleitung’, in: Grenzwerte des Ästhetischen, ed. by Robert Stockhammer (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2002), pp. 7-22. Volk, Stefan, Skandalfilme. Cineastische Aufreger gestern und heute, in collaboration with Barbara Scherschlicht (Marburg: Schüren, 2011). Williams, Linda, ‘Film Bodies.Gender, Genre, and Excess’, in Film Quarterly, 44.4 (1991), 2-13. Williams, Linda, ‘Filmkörper.Gender, Genre und Exzess’, transl. by. Andrea B. Braidt, in montage/AV, 18.2 (2009), 9-30. Williams, Linda, ‘Sex and Sensation’, in The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 490-496. Žižek, Slavoj, ‘Is There a Proper Way to Remake a Hitchcock Film?’ in Lacan dot com [accessed 29 April 2011]. Žižek, Slavoj, ‘Von Lust zu Ekel … und zurück’, in Große Gefühle. Bausteine menschlichen Verhaltens, ed. By ZDF-nachtstudio (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2000), pp. 265-279.

Daniel Syrovy Sharks, Spiders, Locusts, Bats, and Rats: Thoughts Toward the Morphology of Creature Features Although we may intuitively know a creature feature when we see one, this paper addresses the question whether there is something that defines a film of that genre, apart from its subject matter, using a structuralist approach.

Sharks, spiders, locusts: in this vein, the list could be extended indefinitely. Not only bats and rats, but anacondas, scorpions, bees, piranhas, ants. One may encounter nondescript bugs, futuristic or alien species, giant octopodes, or fire-starting cockroaches (as in Bug, 1975). All of them attack in swarms, packs, hordes, or as solitary predators; they are all part of various creature features. The intriguing question is whether there is something that defines a film of that genre – if it is a genre – apart from featuring, in fact, creatures? After all, we do readily recognize a creature feature when we see one. It is of no great help that pop culture proposes a wealth of subgenres: if a film featuring Godzilla is categorized as a Godzilla film nobody will be any the wiser for it. Tautology is no way toward understanding genre. Another, much broader definition says a genre comprises “films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations.”1 As the subtitle of this essay indicates, the following argument is made mainly from a structuralist perspective, so this definition suits the present purpose well. It is true that in the popular sense an alien attack for instance will by default belong to the science-fiction ‘genre’. Yet, it might well be a creature feature, if we tentatively define creature features as movies where humans (either as individuals or as a species) are threatened and/or attacked by other species. There is little purpose to scouring thousands of pages of internet forums and fan sites to determine the popular use of the term creature feature, which may or may not be homogenous and may or may not include films our definition applies to – such as, indeed, Alien (1979). At the same time, even the casual perusal of several online sources suggests a more or less equivocal use of the term with natural horror, animal horror, monster movies, etc. Moreover, it has been argued that “the Creature cycle tends […] to be disowned by both horror and SF purists”, while at the same time “it is obvious that there are elements of both genres in it.”2 I intend no malice by calling atten1 2

Barry Keith Grant, ‘Introduction’, in Film Genre Reader III, ed. by B. K. Grant (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2003), pp. xv-xx (p. xv). Vivian Carol Sobchack, Screening Space. The American Science Fiction Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Ungar, 1987), p. 49.

122 Daniel Syrovy tion to the confusion of what ‘genre’ means, it just happened to be a muchused and rarely defined term. If our notion of ‘genre’ in the movie-sense corresponds to Grant’s above-quoted rather schematic principle (we might also call it a ‘mode’ to avoid some of the confusion), then the scale of this definition is significantly smaller – and arguably more useful – than what is implied by “horror” or “SF”. To qualify as a creature feature, a movie will have to observe certain conventions of storytelling. To qualify as “SF”, on the other hand, it might suffice to show aliens, spaceships, and future technologies.3 For a serious study of creature features, the crucial point is to determine certain commonalities among a number of films. Of course, even a corpus of several dozen movies (and ours is considerably smaller) may just be scratching the surface of all the eligible material produced during a good century of moviemaking. Fortunately, speaking with Vladimir Propp, “what matters is not the amount of material, but the methods of investigation.”4 While the study of structural principles is a worthy goal in itself, its ultimate use is to provide clues or even answers to the seemingly counterintuitive issue of why we do not mind schematic storytelling so much as long as it is done reasonably well. Generally, there are no ‘rules’ that demand overall realism, scientific or biological plausibility, seriousness, or social commentary in creature features; just as no ‘rules’ exist that ask for elements of camp, self-irony or parody. The fact that all too often trashy production values are characteristic of creature features does not necessarily correlate with the initial purpose of the script, although the result may well have an effect on both the film’s outcome and the public’s reaction. Clearly, the very concept of the bizarrely impossible Sharktopus (2010), little more than a shark’s head with tentacles, hints at the level of earnestness of the movie; in analogy, so does the use of insects in films that overtly play with biblical allusions (Locusts: The 8th Plague, 2005) or reflect scientific theories of insect superiority (Saul Bass’s Phase IV, 1974), suggesting this time a serious intention, regardless of the result, which diverges quite dramatically in these two cases. Aesthetic success aside, the basic element of creature features in all these instances may be reduced to what we might call the confrontation between man and animal. It is equally possible to depict gory slaughter and fairly solemn variants of this struggle – Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) is a good example. Another element that seems to be essential is that usually there will be no significant communication between the antagonists. If the animal (or alien) is humanized, our perception 3 4

Without the intention of proposing genre systematics, it is remarkable how our understanding of genre seems to be layered, and anything but mutually exclusive. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 2nd rev. ed. (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1968), p. 4.

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of the struggle shifts. If both sides are conscious, the resulting conflict is different from the basic psychological issues of defenselessness, the struggle for survival, the fear of unknown danger.5 It makes perfect sense that from a sociohistorical perspective, the rise and success of the creature feature in the 1950s has been shown to correlate with collective fears of the threat of the atomic bomb. Cynthia Hendershot has analyzed several of the early creature features in this regard: Eugene Lourie’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) deals with an atomicbomb test in the Arctic Circle that leads to the thawing of a prehistoric rhedosaurus, which makes its way by water to New York City, wreaking havoc as it goes, and finally doing so within the city itself. A physicist involved in the bomb test, Thomas Nesbitt, with the help of two paleontologists, Dr. Elson and his assistant, Leigh Hunter, along with the military, is able to stop the creature by shooting a radioactive isotope into a wound inflicted on the beast by a bazooka.6 Gordon Douglas’ Them! (1954) chronicles giant ant mutations produced by the first atomic-bomb test, which takes place in New Mexico […]. Them! imagines the potential eclipsing of the human species not by an archaic foe like Beast, but by a new species of ants, a harmless group of insects suddenly made powerful by radiation. To their horror, the humans find themselves lower on the food chain than insects.7

The basic theme is quite clear: it is the destructive potential of the atomic bomb, which is allegorized through creatures that come into being by its very force. It is the flip-side of the coin that may lead to progress and happiness: The Atomic Age offered a double-edged sword to the American public. Atomic energy was portrayed as the force that could lead postwar society to a utopian existence; the atomic bomb threatened to plunge the world into a horrific dystopia.8

And indeed, as Vivian Sobchack perceptively argues, this dichotomy plays a central role for creature features, as the pitfall of a general negative bias towards science is carefully avoided by most of these movies:

 5 6 7 8

Obviously, this is also the reason why alien attacks may be part of a creature feature, but cannot generally be categorized that way. Cynthia Hendershot, Paranoia, the Bomb and 1950s Science Fiction Films (Bowling Green: State Univ. Popular Press, 1999), p. 77. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., p. 75.

124 Daniel Syrovy In the bulk of these Creature films, the giant insect or reptilian mutant, the awakened Rhedosaurus, etc., is, in a sense, “spontaneously generated” by the Bomb, but the antiscientific implications of this must be counter-balanced by the proscientific implications of the fact that science is called upon to destroy the Creature as well.9

It is quite obvious that from this perspective, the emphasis on the man-made monster that is at the center of many creature features is no accident. Regarding the films of the 1950s, this is in fact underscored by a significant amount of scholarship, but the same sociohistoric dimension – in short: the popular success of a number of movies which relate to collective fears about the dangers of scientific progress – may be observed in the 1970s and 1990s, in astonishing parallels which appear not to have been pointed out so far. In the 1970s, it is specifically a wave of eco-horror movies (from Frogs, 1972, starring Ray Milland as an aggressive patriarch who abuses nature until it takes revenge, to Kingdom of the Spiders, 1977) that may be said to capitalize on general fears of environmental pollution, pesticides, etc., which produce mutated animals. All the while, these films still retain a good measure of the ever-present atomic fear (regarding power plants as well as the Cold War). Compared to the 1950s, the movies are far fewer in number, but they are characterized by a singular mood that relates to the general cultural climate Marshall Berman sketched in his All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The gathering energy crisis of the 1970s, with all its ecological and technological, economic and political dimensions, generated waves of disenchantment, bitterness and perplexity, sometimes extending to panic and hysterical despair; inspired healthy and trenchant cultural self-scrutiny, which, however, often degenerated into morbid self-laceration and self-hate.10

In this respect, the creature features of the 1970s reflect a specific social issue, similar to the one we may observe in the 1990s, when, finally, a new theme arises that has little to do with the much exploited atomic threat, even though the two are very much alike in terms of public anxiety in the face of unchecked progress, and, as far as the movies are concerned, will be represented with a lot of the familiar old motives and techniques: it is the theme of genetics, genetic manipulation, and cloning.11

 9 10 11

Sobchack, Screening Space, p. 45. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, The Experience of Modernity (London: Penguin 1988), p. 82. Genetics can be found in the service of medicine, e.g. cancer research (Shark Attack, 1999), or the fight against neurodegenerative diseases (Deep Blue Sea, 1999), for military purposes (Sharktopus, 2010) or agricultural optimization (lacking a shark-related example, Locusts: Day Of Destruction, 2005). The genetically engineered snakeheads in

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Certainly, none of these three themes has an exclusive grip on the creature features of its time.12 Man-made monsters constitute a significant element, but not the only one. Completely natural phenomena can be just as dangerous, and even more vicious. Often, though, their appearance is nonetheless caused by human endeavors: the building of subway tunnels may free giant prehistoric insects (Bugs, 2003), just as atomic energy thawed a giant prehistoric mantis in The Deadly Mantis (1957);13 villains may plant snakes on a plane in order to kill an important witness (Snakes on a Plane, 2006), or smuggle genetically engineered scorpions aboard a – yes – plane (Tail Sting, 2003), with ensuing catastrophic results. But while the topics of greed, ruthlessness, and corporate irresponsibility (even after the giant scorpions kill all but a few of the passengers, their creator refuses to destroy them because of their scientific value and is in turn destroyed by them) are often combined with some new and scary technology for additional impact, they also appear in simpler forms, making perhaps manageable situations considerably worse. The appearance of a shark in Jaws might not have had such a devastating effect had not the mayor refused to close the beaches for financial reasons (“We need Summer Dollars”14). In the case of Jaws, however, that motif does not apply to the second half of the film, which I will return to later. Based as it seems to be on the manifestation and exploitation of collective fears, it is not surprising that the creature feature will often turn to contemporary issues for its content, but this does not solve the question of style and technique. While for certain aspects of the creature feature ‘mode’ quality is not a major concern, the success of a movie will depend to a degree upon the able presentation of its material: the pacing, the visuals and – of high importance for this kind of film – a large dose of suspense. On a stylistic level, Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic (1997) or Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) might not even seem to belong to the same category as Komodo (1999), or Frankenfish (2004). Yet, a direct dependence of the latter on already established and successful patterns of design is quite obvious. In other words, the epigonal nature of many creature features is undeniable. It is in fact curious to observe that the 1990s’ favorite theme of geneticengineering-and-corporate-greed goes back largely to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), making the director – who was himself influenced by

12 13 14

Frankenfish (2004), on the other hand, are modified simply because “there’s no thrill to compare with hunting something that can hunt you back” (DVD, 1:03:21). As Keyvan Sarkhosh pointed out to me, even the topic of atomic threat does not disappear entirely, e.g. in Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla (1998). By way of contrast, the prehistoric piranhas in Piranha 3D (2010) are set free by an earthquake. Jaws DVD, 11:40. The same type of mayor appears in Fangs (2002), where he refuses to call off the Apple Blossom Festival just because of a few bats.

126 Daniel Syrovy 1950s monster movies which he stylized to a great degree for his films15 – provide a foil to countless productions not once but twice in his career,16 as it was his Jaws that may be called the single most influential creature feature of the 1970s. Nonetheless, Jaws was really quite a different beast, featuring an almost mythical shark, without any significant ties to social criticism. Rather than contradict our thesis, however, this fact may even explain why the ‘70s eco-horror was a comparatively low-key phenomenon, as there was no immediate stylistic paragon to imitate, and the hugely successful Jaws did not provide much guidance. Even in the 1950s, what was and wasn’t shown in Them! and several otherfilms of the kind, had a major impact on the way other movies were made (the echo of those giant atomic ants may still be perceived in the huge alien insects of Starship Troopers, 1997). Similarly, the influence of Jurassic Park is seen in a wide variety of movies of the 1990s and 2000s, and on at least two levels (often combined). On the one hand, its set of essential themes (experimental science with good intentions; corruption and hubris; small errors that lead to huge catastrophes17) is basic to many films of the last 20 years. On the other hand, the visuals themselves were again and again evoked or outright copied. Not only may we repeatedly encounter its nighttime jungle atmosphere, combined with torrential rainfall, but quite a number of monsters of the 1990s looked uncannily like Spielberg’s T-Rex; the DVD-case of Komodo boasts of having the same special effects team as Jurassic Park, and indeed the lizards’ heads are basically indistinguishable from the dinosaur. But even the sequels of Anaconda (1997) feature animals that resemble the Tyrannosaurus more than they do any actual snakes. The strange genetically engineered “beast” that is the main attraction of the German TV-production Das Biest im Bodensee (1998) is generally quite inconsistent in its physiology. It has tentacles at one point, and absurdly appears like an otter when it swims, but like a dog when it runs. 15

16 17

It is, for example, the view professed by the documentary American Grindhouse (2010) that in the 1970s Spielberg transposed a certain grindhouse-tradition into the mainstream. But even Pauline Kael, reviewing Jaws in the November 8, 1976 New Yorker (and thus quite some time after its opening in June of 1975), emphasized that “it belongs to the pulpiest sci-fi monster-movie tradition, yet it stands some of the old conventions on their head” (Pauline Kael, ‘The Current Cinema: Notes on Evolving Heroes, Morals, Audiences’, in The New Yorker, November 8, 1976, pp. 136-45, here p. 136). It will be noted that in addition he also produced the spider-horror-film Arachnophobia (1990). Cf. also the “chemical […] that can significantly prolong cellular life” (Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid DVD, 6:10) that is in some way at the core of all the three sequels to Anaconda. The locusts that are resistant “to all known pesticides” in Locusts: Day of Destruction (DVD, 8:27), the “präparierte” (“dissected”) and “mutierte” (“mutated”) rats in Ratten 2 – Sie kommen wieder! (DVD, 25:20; 27:48) and countless others.

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Yet, even this monster has its T-Rex scene, devastating the bathrooms at a public library, in search for the protagonists. In a broken mirror, we perceive a monster that seems almost intercut from a dinosaur film. This movie is an interesting example in any case, for it intermiitantly feels as though the producers were unable to cope with all the stylistic and thematic motives they culled from Jurassic Park. When the movie plays scenes for laughs, it turns into slapstick, while at the same time (and quite incongruently) posing as being concerned with some generic social commentary: When the beast escapes into the Rhine from a laboratory at Mainz, it improbably swims upstream until it reaches Lake Constance; for there, the ex-wife (and ex-colleague) of one of the scientists is taking care of troubled teenagers. It later turns out, her DNA was used in creating the “beast”, she is therefore (in the words of the movie) “its mother”.18 There is a strong dichotomy of male/scientific creation (ultimately fatal) and female/natural creation (the ex-wife is even called Eva) that is further emphasized by the rift between the couple, caused by their disagreements on scientific ambition and “playing God”.19 At the same time, a general wariness of science is expressed: “Nobody had any control over his research: failures, catastrophes, but at the beginning you always meant well.”20 The theme is further complicated when the whole project turns out to have been a military operation all along, an attempt to engineer an exploitable working force for extreme conditions,21 but the assorted critical tendencies do not correspond to the ironic tone of the horror story, and neither do the characters, who by way of a happy ending forget the dead teenagers over a sunset at Lake Constance, toying with the idea of accepting the ministry’s offer to head a new Department of Development, thus quickly rebounding from a severe case of moral indignation at the goings-on. It is hard to attribute most of this to half-digested bits of Jurassic Park, as it is probably disingenuous to blame the weak writing of one movie to the influence of an ultimately well-crafted film. True enough, the theme, visuals, and set design owe quite a bit to its predecessor, but Biest owes just as much to Jaws, which ‘coined’ images that are still basic ingredients of most creature features, especially those that are set near, on, or below the water. Let us finally turnto Jaws, then. Everybody remembers the music cues, the sound effects, the camera placed just at the water level, so that the lens is

 18 19 20

21

Das Biest im Bodensee DVD, 1:03:00 (“Ich bin die Mutter von diesem Vieh!”). Ibid., 1:03:25 (“Ihr […] spielt Gott damit.”) Ibid., 16:36 (“Du bist wirklich naiv geblieben; keiner von uns hat die Kontrolle über seine Forschung gehabt: Fehlschläge, Katastrophen, aber am Anfang war alles immer gut gemeint.”) Ibid., 1:11:20 (“Der Arbeiter der Zukunft wird ein transgenes Wesen sein.”)

128 Daniel Syrovy washed over every now and then. To a crescendo of the music, perhaps combined with an accelerando (real, or perceived), the camera approaches the unwitting character; at the last moment, he gets out of the water; the music suddenly stops. A sequence from Anaconda22 uses the same techniques, the same visual language. It has been quite effective for over 30 years. The basic concept behind such scenes is of course suspense. Hitchcock’s description of it is still among the most evocative: .

The bomb is underneath the table, and the public knows it […] the public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor.23

The public’s knowledge of things the characters ignore is an essential ingredient of suspense and therefore of a successful creature feature; this, however, does not mean visual explicitness. In fact, much of the work is usually done by evocation of a ‘presence’, either by way of camerawork, or by the musical score. The director may choose to place the camera at an angle unlikely for any human character, preferably at a distance to some incidental dialogue, and repeatedly intercut with close-ups to suggest a hidden spectator, like in a scene at the beginning of Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid (2004). There, it turns out that what we have seen was the perspective of a tame monkey, a not very subtle device to play with viewers’ expectations and motivate rather obvious establishing shots, such as a bird’s eye view of the swamp some characters are crossing: we see the shadow of a gigantic anaconda below the surface, and so does the monkey, perched on a tree, screaming in vain to warn the humans. Even in a film like Alien, where for quite a long stretch of time the public understands as little as the characters about the ominous goings-on, the narration does at times resort to these effects. Thus, in one scene a cat recoils, supposedly from the man trying to catch it; but it is really a looming shadow behind him that scares it away: the alien, making a silent entrance. Such animals are quite commonplace in creature features. So much so, in fact, that in his review of Arachnophobia, Roger Ebert calls them “the usual cats and dogs, necessary for the obligatory scene in which they can sense something even when the humans can’t.”24 22 23 24

Anaconda DVD, 28:35-29:36. François Truffaut, Hitchcock, rev. ed., with the collaboration of Helen G. Scott (New York, et al.: Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 73. Roger Ebert, ‘Arachnophobia’, in Chicago Sun Times, July 18, 1990: http://rogerebert. suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900718/REVIEWS/7180301/1023. He also lists several other stock characters which anyone familiar with these films will

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But in the above quoted movies these animals serve another purpose as well: both Anacondas and Alien use the same kind of sequence (part suspense, part surprise) with the actual unknown presence (anaconda, alien) and the presence of those tame animals (monkey, cat). There may be an attack. But the suspense may also be resolved either positively, as when the camera approaches the humans fast and we see the monkey grabbing a banana; or not resolved at all, as in the out-of-the-water scenes described above. There is a fascinating aspect to this, a general conditioning of the public which we should not underestimate. Aware of the film’s title and similar scenes in similar movies, the public has certain notions of genre conventions. From the narrative perspective, these expectations can be exploited for dramatic purposes. It is of course crucial for this kind of movie not to give away too much too soon. But the public has to know what is at stake. Accordingly, there are hardly any creature features that refrain from expository scenes. Jaws serves as a precedent even here. The very first sequence depicts a beach party at night; a couple absconds, the young woman enters the water. The camera shows her from below, to ominous music. Cue the now famous shark theme, and suddenly she is dragged about, and finally dragged under. We then meet Chief Brody, the protagonist.25 In fact, the main characters are hardly ever introduced before the creature’s first appearance; accordingly, they are often investigators, scientists, etc. trying to find out about the victims. In the first scene of Anaconda, a panicking man hurriedly climbs a mast, fleeing something we can’t see. In despair, he shoots himself to avoid being eaten alive. Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid begins with a group of indigenous hunters in the jungles of Borneo. A shot or two later the hunters, unsurprisingly, become the hunted. All of a sudden, a flock of parrots is stirred up by a piercing scream, while the credits are still running. The same principle applies to Ratten 2 – Sie kommen wieder! (2004), produced for German TV, where a young woman is attacked by rats while taking a steamy bath. Frankenfish commences with a fisherman alone on the Louisiana swamps. Needless to say, neither survives the opening sequence. Invariably, the next scene suggests a carefree human environment that is unprepared for what we know is going to happen. We know because we have seen the opening sequence, the film’s title, the tagline on the movie’s

25

recognize: “(a) the old-fuddy doctor, who refuses to accept the alarming evidence; (b) the narrow-minded local policeman, who resents outsiders; (c) the bright young doctor, whose warnings are ignored; (d) the loyal wife and kids; (e) the plain-spoken local woman, who sticks up for the new doc, and of course (e) the scientist, called in at the crisis to shake his head gravely and announce that a deadly infestation seems to be at hand.”  All of this takes place within the first five minutes; the party also serves as a backdrop for the credits.

130 Daniel Syrovy poster, or the first part of the series.26 Compare, for instance, Jaws 2 (1978) with Brody as an emotional wreck, or Aliens (1986), with a traumatized Ellen Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver. Even the entirely different group of people in Anacondas (in Borneo) have heard of what happened to those documentary filmmakers traveling the Amazonas in part one. If narrative originality were of any importance, nobody would be at all interested in most of these movies. But precisely because these movies are based on a tradition, it is fairly simple for them to keep up a decent amount of suspense with a few easy tricks, from time to time throwing in some elements of surprise – in Hitchcock’s terms, an explosion without any prior indication of a bomb. What Pauline Kael observed of Jaws – that “the editing rhythms are very tricky, and the shock images loom up huge, right on top of you” and that “your guts never settle down into a timetable”27 – is still what most creature features strive for. Yet Spielberg himself, it must be observed, rarely went for cheap effects. He must have known that a gradual intensification is paramount. Tail Sting, Frankenfish, and countless other movies run out of steam halfway through, because there is nowhere else to go after they have dismembered, gored, and gutted so many characters. Jaws, despite its establishing sequence of a girl’s death takes a full nine minutes until a shark is mentioned. Even then, ingeniously, it is the word “shark attack” that appears, letter by letter, as typed by Chief Brody into the “probable cause of death” field of a case report form. Generally, Spielberg takes an extraordinary amount of time to introduce the viewer to the shark. We see no shark during the first couple of attacks, but we always hear the musical theme, combined with the visual cues of the underwater camera perspectives and the partly submerged lens we mentioned earlier. After a small shark is caught, genuine retardation of the action sets in, because we suspect but cannot know for certain that this is not the real deal. Later, with the police force on the lookout for the shark, there is a sequence rendered suspenseful merely by way of camera positioning (there is merry music in the background). When a fin appears, panic ensues. It soon turns out that a couple of boys have pulled a prank with a “cardboard fin.”28 We may notice that the shark theme has been missing all along. This notion is reinforced when cries of “Shark! Shark!” can be heard in the next scene, and nobody

26 27 28

In Ratten 2 the characters explicitly say: “Es geht wieder los!” (“Here we go again!”);Ratten 2 DVD, 38:41. Kael, Current Cinema, p. 136. Jaws DVD, 51:00-57:00, quotation at the end.

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on the beach cares. But there it is: the theme. This time, the viewer thinks, it must be real. As indeed it is.29 Perhaps surprisingly, apart from the small shark that had been caught, a couple of shark books chief Brody had leafed through earlier,30 and a large tooth,31 this is our first sighting of the fish, and it happens only at minute 57, just before the end of the first half of the film. The second half once again increases the risk by transporting the protagonists from the safe beaches to a ship out on the ocean, where they hunt the shark but are of course much more vulnerable themselves. Spielberg’s methods remain the same: We do not see the shark, we see what it does. There is a fishing line, suddenly jerked around in the water (the sequence is copied almost literally in Anaconda32); the barrels that are tied to the fish to mark its position may have been dragged underwater instead of moving visibly about, but every once in a while they pop up: the shark is back.33 All in all, though, the second half of Jaws marks a significant change of tone in the movie, exploring what can only be called the mythical dimension of the story. This mythical dimension is something quite common to horror films (in its religious, magical, mythological guises), as opposed to rational and cool science-fiction,34 and it appears in other movies as well, though it is much less often imitated than all those bumpy love stories providing human interest, the overcoming of group conflicts in favor of camaraderie, the additional threat by the human villains of the stories (carelessness, corruption, personal revenge35), up to the very last shot that establishes that something has survived and that a sequel may be on its way. The mythical dimension, on the other hand, is much more elusive and a systematic description seems almost impossible. Nevertheless, let me sketch

 29 30

31

32 33 34 35

Ibid., 57:20. Ibid., 23:52-24:25. This is not only intercut with a shark hunt by two people, whose risk becomes clear by implication, but also subtly used by Spielberg as a further plot point, because one of the pictures shows a shark with a diving cylinder in its mouth, suggesting where Brody’s idea in the finale (the exploding oxygen tank) may originate. Richard Dreyfus’s character loses the tooth in the water, so nobody (except the viewers) believes his warnings. The shark tooth appears as a rodent’s tooth in Ratten 2, a fish scale in Frankenfish, the alien’s shedded skin in Alien, and so on. Anaconda DVD, 46:00.  A buoy serves the same purpose in Frankenfish (DVD, 3:30). Cf. Sobchack, Screening Space, pp. 55-63. The explorer in Anacondas insists on pursuing his mission to the point of violence and murder. The scientist in Ratten 2 withholds crucial information from the protagonists. On the other hand, there are noble sacrifices as when a former antagonist throws himself to the beast in order to save the characters at the last moment in Das Biest im Bodensee. Other examples of both tendencies abound.

132 Daniel Syrovy a few examples. In Jaws, the second-act story of the shark-hunt has a strong symbolic subtext: the former New York policeman Brody, rather uncomfortable on the high seas, is contrasted with the sturdy sea dog Quint on the one hand, who is drawn as instinct driven and manly, and the intellectual scientist Hooper on the other hand, who wants to understand, not fight sharks.36 These are the surroundings in which Brody (in Pauline Kael’s words) “confronts primal terror.”37 In fact, the journey opens with the ship running out of harbor as seen through a gigantic shark’s jaws framed around a window, transposing the scene into what amounts to a fairy-tale beginning. While the shark’s attacks near the beach represented an intrusion into the life of the humans, now it is the quest of the protagonists to seek revenge;38 in this, the second half almost functions as a sequel to the first. In keeping with their other production values, in certain creature features these mythical aspects feel pasted on. A case in point is the phenomenon that could be called pseudo-Faustian, following Marshall Berman’s analysis of the popular 1970s distortion of Faust, at least with respect to Goethe’s complex character, into a figure who “would tear the whole world apart for the sake of insatiable expansion, without asking or caring what unlimited growth would do to nature or to man.”39 When Lucy Lawless in Locusts: Day Of Destruction tells the genuinely naïve scientist who has been engineering locusts to be resistant to pesticides for no other reason than because he was able to (leading to the destruction of vast areas of the U.S., before the crazy plan of stopping the swarms with overdriven high-voltage power lines in fact works out), that if “you screw with nature, then nature will screw with you,”40 this blunt and simplistic warning of the dangers of technology has the very ring of the pseudo-Faustian principle. It is the same theme we have observed in the case of Das Biest im Bodensee.

 36

37 38

39 40

This dichotomy works to the effect that it remains undecided whether the animal is actually evil or just following its instincts. “It’s doing what animals do. It’s no more evil than any other predator,” says a character in Frankenfish (DVD, 39:54); accordingly, when in Jaws: The Revenge (1987) the shark is quite unequivocally painted as hunting down the Brody family, it is not exactly to the advantage of the movie. Kael, Current Cinema, p. 136. Even this simple summary has a certain resonance with the work on myth and storytelling by Joseph Campbell, be it the Creative Mythology part of The Masks Of God, or The Hero With A Thousand Faces; then of course it is his very argument that myths “have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind” (Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. [Novato: New World Library, 2008], p. 1), so this comes as no surprise. At the same time it is an argument rather difficult to counter in the first place, if one accepts Campbell’s premises. Berman, All That Is Solid, p. 83. Locusts: Day Of Destruction DVD, 10:37.

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Still, in the hands of more able writers and directors (like Spielberg) the subtext does add some actual urgency to the stories being told: while teetering on the brink of blatant obviousness, the metaphorical aspect of Ripley’s story in Alien is quite thoroughly worked into the film’s structure. After all, the crew of a starship (called “Nostromo”, in a probably gratuitous Conradreference) is awakened from deep sleep by a computer called “Mother”; when “Mother” is disobeyed, it refuses further cooperation.41 Thankfully, all of this can be understood in multiple ways, be it as a form of natural emancipation, psychological maturing, and certainly sexual awakening (the alien’s phallic physique suggests as much), which ensures that the viewer recognizes the subtext without being able to read the movie as pure allegory; and through all of this, the film’s otherwise rather conventional horror episodes suggest a certain hidden deeper sense. Of course, to all this Freudian symbolism and the basic ‘man versus nature’ scenarios we may add religious imagery, often intermingled with other mythical aspects. During a thunderstorm on the Amazonas, the film crew in Anaconda happens upon the shipwrecked Paul Serone, who asks to be taken along to the next village. It will turn out that he had planned all along to use them for catching a gigantic anaconda, for he is a snake-hunter. But not only that, he is also a failed seminarian, and for him snake-hunting has a perverted mystical and religious dimension. As it happens, snakes figure upon various totems of a local tribe that are shown in some detail. In addition, Serone projects his sexual energies onto these very snakes: “It’s been a long time since I had a woman”,42 he says, and his eventual death is depicted in analogy to a birth canal, being filmed from the snake’s throat.43 All of this is, however, Serone’s rather personal (or, one could argue: priestly) viewpoint; for the others the anaconda, much in keeping with a general tendency of the creature feature, embodies some kind of evil principle, albeit still colored in unmistakably religious tones. A woman on the team confronts Serone: “How dare you? It was you who brought that snake. You brought the devil!” His answer is concise: “There’s the devil inside everyone.”44

41 42 43

44

The issue at hand is the quarantine of an injured crew-member. Anaconda DVD, 53:30. Overwrought as it is, this does in a way correspond to the serpent archetype representing (especially when biting its tail) “the notion of God himself”, also “sexual auto-intercourse” and “perpetual self-fertilization,” (Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary Of Symbols, transl. by John Buchanan-Brown [London: Penguin 1996], p. 846) the serpent being “both male and female, twins within the same body” (ibid., 845). Ibid., 50:09.

134 Daniel Syrovy It is quite clear that none of the aspects we discussed so far is exclusive to the creature feature – they are potential ingredients for every kind of movie. Only in their combination can they be said to constitute a mode or a genre. Furthermore, even though the notion of genre might imply a ‘less pure’ approach to filmmaking, the discussion should have shown conclusively that – the sometimes excessive use of clichés and conventions notwithstanding – the same few elements can make up lots of rather bad but also some quite good films. The quality depends, as always, on the individual skills of actors, directors, writers. In a way, it is easier to dismiss generic structures as second-rate. Certainly, some creature features are clearly imitations of better movies without any grasp of the finer technical points. But some movies may use familiar and successful structures to build something new. We cannot avoid, by way of a conclusion, the implication that the good creature features aren’t merely good by accident, but that they might after all be, in some rare cases, genuine art.

Bibliography Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, The Experience of Modernity (London: Penguin 1988). Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. (Novato: New World Library, 2008). Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary Of Symbols, transl. by John Buchanan-Brown (London: Penguin 1996). Ebert, Roger, ‘Arachnophobia’, in Chicago Sun Times, July 18, 1990, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900718 /REVIEWS/7180301/1023 [accessed Sept. 30, 2011]. Grant, Barry Keith, ‘Introduction’, in: Film Genre Reader III, ed. by B. K. Grant (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2003), pp. xv-xx. Hendershot, Cynthia, Paranoia, the Bomb and 1950s Science Fiction Films (Bowling Green: State Univ. Popular Press, 1999). Kael, Pauline, ‘The Current Cinema: Notes on Evolving Heroes, Morals, Audiences’, in The New Yorker, November 8, 1976, pp. 136-45. Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale, transl. by L. Scott, 2nd rev. ed. by L.A. Wagner (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1968). Sobchack, Vivian Carol, Screening Space. The American Science Fiction Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Ungar, 1987). Truffaut, François, Hitchcock, Revised Ed., with the Collaboration of Helen G. Scott (New York, et al.: Simon & Schuster, 1985).



Sabine Schönfellner Appropriating the Undead: Zombies Outside the Horror Genre This article analyses cultural products of the recent “zombie wave”: In all of these, zombies have been transferred into new contexts outside the horror genre – into a highly intertextual novel (Die Kinder der Toten), into a literary classic (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), into a comedy (Shaun of the Dead), and into satires (Homecoming, Das dritte Lager). The central questions are whether these novels and films adapt features of the classical “zombie narrative” and how their presentation of zombies deviates from “classical” zombies.

Since the mid-1990s, a considerable “zombie wave” (as Russell calls it in his Book of the Dead) has swept these undead creatures into mainstream culture, not into only a great number of films (e.g. Dead Snow, Romeo and Juliet vs. The Living Dead, Silent Night, Zombie Night, Yesterday, Zombieland - opened in 2009 alone), but also into graphic novels (e.g. The Walking Dead) and video games (e.g. Resident Evil).1 Apart from these films, graphic novels and video games, which represent the horror genre, zombies also have made appearances in other contexts. This article analyses the similarities of the zombies in different contexts to “classical” zombies and whether these films and novels share characteristics with “classical” “zombie narratives”. To begin I look at the history of the zombie figure. This historical background leads to the explanation of the characteristics of zombie narratives, followed by an analysis of selected novels and films outside the horror genre.

From the Caribbean into Video Games The term “zombi(e)” or “zumbi” originates in the African Bantu languages and means “enslaved ghost”,2 in Haitian voodoo cults zombies are revived and enslaved by practitioners of black magic.3 In the English speaking world, the term was first used in 1889 in an article in Harper’s Magazine about

 1 2

3

Jamie Russell, Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema (Godalming, Surrey: FAB Press, 2006), 171. Claudio Mattes, ‘Zombie’ in Metzler Lexikon Religion: Gegenwart – Alltag – Medien. Paganismus, ed. by Auffahrt, Christoph and others (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000), pp. 725727 (p. 725);there are also other explanations for the etymological background of the term: „Linguists have claimed that the etymological root of ‘zombi’ might be derived from any (or all) of the following: the French ombres (shadows); the West Indian jumbie (ghost); the African Bonda zumbi and Kongo nzambi (dead spirit). It may also have derived from the word zemis, a term used by Haiti’s indigenous Arawak Indians to describe the soul of a dead person.“ (Russell, 11). Mattes, 725.

136 Sabine Schönfellner Haiti by the amateur anthropologist Lafcadio Hearn.4 The next account was William Seabrooks’ The Magic Island (1929), which recounted the author’s adventures in Haiti.5 The first fictional accounts that feature zombies were films; this fact differentiates zombies from other supernatural creatures: “[...] although creatures such as ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and reanimated corpses were also born in the depths of folk tradition, the zombie is the only supernatural foe to have almost entirely skipped an initial literary manifestation [...]”.6 The first of these films was White Zombie in 1932, followed by I Walked with a Zombie in 1943, which both still rely on the colonial background and the racist implications of zombies:7 “[…] the true horror in these movies lies in the prospect of a Westerner becoming dominated, subjugated, symbolically raped, and effectively ‘colonized’ by pagan representatives.”8 In these films, zombies never constitute a convincingly mortal threat to the Westerners, they “remain little more than exotic set dressing, frightening in their lumbering movements and dull stares”,9 as Bishop explains in his enlightening introduction to the topic, American Zombie Gothic. A significant alteration of the zombie figure was first introduced in the 1960s by George A. Romero; especially his first two films influenced the further development of the “zombie film”-genre.10 In his first feature, Night of the Living Dead (1968), several people seek refuge in an abandoned farmhouse because they are chased by zombies. All but one of them are killed during the night; the last survivor gets killed by security forces, who might be mistaking him for a zombie, in the morning. The film’s innovations are largely due to its assemblage of different sources: “Primarily, voodoo zombie movies set in the Caribbean; Gothic tales of reanimated golems, insatiable vampires, fractured personalities, and haunted houses; and science fiction stories of alien invasion and the resulting paranoia.“11 This assemblage of different sources also affects the characteristics of the zombies; they are a mortal threat to the human beings and no longer will-less slaves. These characteristics will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

Russell, 9. Ibid., 9f. Bishop, 12f. Cf. Russell, 13f. Bishop, 66. Ibid., 92f. In his other films, Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005), Romero continued his critique of society and the evolution of the zombies, but these films have not proven as influential for the genre as the first two (cf. Russell, 190). Bishop, 94.

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Romero’s second zombie film, Dawn of the Dead (1979) highlighted the aspect of critique of society, as it is often interpreted as a harsh critique of US-American “consumer mentality”: “In a disgusting parody of human capitalism, the ghouls eat and eat and eat, yet they always want more.”12 Compared to Night of the Living Dead, the creatures keep some kind of memory, use simple tools, and imitate actions they performed in their former lives: „Most significantly, the creatures are physically and inexorably attracted to the shopping mall.”13Without doubt, Romero’s critique of society was not a central issue for the common audience.14 This can also be seen in the zombie films from the late 1970s onwards which referred to Romero’s influential features, as they concentrated on different themes, e.g. the Italian filmmaker Fulci’s films focus on physical violence.15 In the 1980s, a phase of parody started, Michael Jackson’s Thriller video (1983) being a popular example.16 This comical approach had two main consequences: First, comedies that featured zombies started to humanise the creatures and made “it easier to relate to them”, therefore allowing “those characters altered by the process of zombification [to] take on more of a starring role.”17 Second, it lead to the development of the “zombie subplot”, meaning that “zombie motifs [were incorporated] into larger productions whose main concern isn’t the zombie or zombie invasion itself.”18 The 1990s brought not only countless camcorder-movies by fans from the US and Europe,19 but also the transition into the mainstream, e.g. into video games, graphic novels and popular novels.20 In continuance to the developments of the 1980s, zombies have also “become increasingly sympathetic and complex characters in their own rights.”21 However, in Bishop’s opinion the “most important potential development to the zombie subgenre will likely be the serialization of large-scope storylines, primarily through video games, graphic novels, and season-long television productions.“22

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Russell, 140. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 158; this focus was further developed into the subgenre “zombie porn” (Ibid., 165). Ibid., 15. Bishop, 181. Dendle, Peter, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), 10. Russell, 166. Bishop, 12. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 198.

138 Sabine Schönfellner

Characteristics of the “Zombie Narrative” As the historical overview has shown, the “classical” “zombie narrative” as presented by George A. Romero is a compound of several genres; Bishop, on the other hand, speaks of a “zombie subgenre”23. To avoid the inherent problems of genre classification the following description focuses on the central traits as developed in George A. Romero’s and other influential films and the article henceforth refers to the “classical” representation of zombies in a horror context as “zombie narrative”. While the early films of the 1930s and 1940s still focused on voodoo and hypnosis and can therefore rather be seen as classical gothic films and not distinct “zombie films”24, Night of the Living Dead introduced four central innovations to the zombie: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Zombies are not linked to voodoo religion anymore,25 and are therefore no longer guided by a master.26 They appear in considerably larger numbers than human beings do.27 They eat human flesh.28 They are infectious – the dead come back as zombies, a change which increases the number of zombies rapidly.29

Especially the ideas of a virus that leads to zombification and flesh eating influenced later films: „From that moment onwards cinematic zombies would almost always be flesh-eaters“.30 Even though they appear to be threatening figures, they can be killed easily “by […] deactivating the brain core”.31 They act on instinct alone and are very flat characters, “their essential physical qualities, however, make zombies ideal cinematic monstrosities”.32 By presenting them as walking corpses, “zombie films horrify protagonists and audiences alike with the uncanny fusion of the familiar with

 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Ibid., 19. Ibid. Ibid., 94; Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), p. 6. Bishop, 112. Ibid., 94. Ibid.; Dendle, 6. Bishop, 94. Russell, 68. Dendle, 6. Bishop, 110.

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the unfamiliar.”33 Tellingly, these creatures are not referred to as “zombies” throughout Night of the Living Dead,34 which hints at their differentiation from earlier zombie figures. Another important characteristic of “zombie narratives” is that other human beings prove to be a far greater threat to humans than the monsters, once the survivors have started to protect and defend themselves, since the human beings “can still think, plot and act”.35 “Zombie narratives” can therefore be seen as critical of society, as they demonstrate the societal problems at the time of their production, e.g. Night of the Living Dead refers to the cruelties of the Vietnam War.36 This is furthered by the fact that “the frequency of these movies has noticeably increased during periods of social and political unrest, particularly during wars such as those in Vietnam and Iraq […].”37 Additionally, zombie movies often depict a societal collapse or even an apocalypse.38 Therefore, zombies themselves can be seen as “a symbol of the apocalypse” or “a harbinger of doom” to Western society.39

Zombies Transferred into Other Contexts The following analysis focuses on zombies in novels and films outside the horror genre. Firstly, two high cultural novels – Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten and Pride and Prejudice, which has been transformed into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; secondly, one example of zombies in comedy, the highly referential Shaun of the Dead; thirdly, zombies in political satire – the TV film Homecoming and an episode of the Austrian satire TV programme Die 4 da. All examples are products of the recent “zombie wave” that started in the 1990s.40 The works analysed in the first and third category are the only ones available; in the case of Shaun of the Dead, one exemplary comedy has been chosen and the choice will be further explained in the analysis. The analysis concentrates on the following points: how the zombies are represented in the novels and films, meaning whether they have the same characteristics as in the “zombie narratives”, and in how far the new narratives can be seen as critical of society and as depicting an apocalypse. 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid. Russell, 68. Bishop, 24. Bishop, 95. Ibid, 13. Russell, 8. Ibid. See fn. 1.

140 Sabine Schönfellner

1. Zombies Woven into Text – Zombies and “High Culture” Die Kinder der Toten (1995) (“The Children of the Dead”) presents two of Elfriede Jelinek’s recurring topics: the return of history and the undead.41 The novel takes place in a boarding house in Styria, where the dead return, and which is entombed in a mudflow in the end. The text refers to a number of different hypotexts, ranging from canonized texts to pop culture,42 including reminiscences to the horror genre43 – e.g. The Carnival of Souls (1962).44 In addition to the intertextuality and the numerous wordplays, the novel’s structure is further complicated by the ambiguous narrative voice: is the novel seems to be narrated by several voices that comment critically on the events and refer to themselves as “we”.45 The narrative has no closure, as a car accident from the beginning is repeated in the end. Therefore, several critics doubt that the novel is accessible and open to understanding.46 On top of that, the novel is accused of leveling the discourse about the Shoah into a “pastiche-collage” by combining it with elements of trash literature and film.47 Three central undead figures can be identified: the philosophy student Gudrun Bichler, the professional skier Edgar Gstranz and the widowed Karin Frenzel.48 These three also reappear as doppelgängers and should therefore not be considered to be individuals but prototypes: “Sie sind Übersetzungen unterschiedlicher Ausprägungen des Faschismus und

41 42

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45 46

47 48

Julie Miess, Neue Monster: postmoderne Horrortexte und ihre Autorinnen, Literatur – Kultur – Geschlecht (Grosse Reihe, 56) (Köln, Wien: Böhlau, 2010), p. 239 Alexandra Pontzen, ‘Pietätlose Rezeption? Elfriede Jelineks Umgang mit der Tradition in Die Kinder der Toten’, inElfriede Jelinek – Tradition, Politik und Zitat: Ergebnisse der Internationalen Elfriede Jelinek-Tagung, 1.- 3. Juni 2006 in Tromsø, ed. by Sabine Müller and Cathrine Theodorsen (Wien: Präsens, 2008), pp. 51-69 (p. 53f.). Miess, 240. Wilson, Ian W., ‘Greeting the Holocaust’s Dead? Narrative Strategies and the Undead in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten’, Modern Austrian Literature, 39, No. 3/4 (2006), pp. 27-55 (p. 31). Miess, 246; Wilson, 38f. cf. e.g. Just, Rainer, ‘Zeichenleichen – Reflexionen Über das Untote im Werk Elfriede Jelineks’ (online: http://www.univie.ac.at/jelinetz/index.php?title= Rainer_ Just:_Zeichenleichen_Reflexionen_%C3%BCber_das_Untote_im_Werk_Elfriede_Je lineks, 21 May 2007, retrieved on 17 August 2011); Löffler, Sigrid, ‘Am Eingang zur Unterwelt. Zum neuen Roman von Elfriede Jelinek: Die Kinder der Toten’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Beilage, 11 August 1995, p. 57; Wilson, 37. Pontzen, 67f. Further undead include two sons of a forest ranger, a senior citizen couple, a schoolboy and thousands of spectators at a “Zillertaler Schürzenjäger”-concert (Ibid., 57).

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Jelinek’sche Prototypen, Konzentrate des Gesamtwerks.”49 The living beings do not seem to notice them or the fact that they are dead, so that it is difficult to distinguish where the text refers to dead and where to living people.50 The undead are not only changing through disappearances and reappearances, they also decompose and interexchange: Die Toten fließen ineinander, sie penetrieren sich mit ihren Zersetzungssäften und Pflanzenwurzeln, welche ihren mit Erde gefüllten Leibesöffnungen entwachsen. Ihre Körper tauschen sich aus in der Kopula der Verwesung. Sie verschlingen sich gegenseitig und verzehren sich selbst [...].51 (“The dead flow into each other, penetrate themselves with their corrosive fluids and plant roots growing from their orifices filled with earth. Their bodies communicate in the copula of decay. They devour each other and consume themselves.”)

While the zombies in Jelinek’s novel do not have a master, they can hardly be classified as simple, infecting flesh-eaters and it is also hard to distinguish the dead from the undead, so they resemble the creatures in usual “zombie narratives” only superficially. Therefore, they do not seem to be part of the horror genre and mainly serve as points of reference to National Socialism, Austrian stereotypes, and the corporeal disgust and splatter of horror films. Nevertheless, the novel can be understood as critical of society due to its references to contemporary and past societal problems in Austria. Furthermore, the novel adopts a central feature of the horror film: a lack of closure hinting at continuing horror.52 The novel also depicts an apocalyptic event, a mudslide; but it does not occur – as would be usual for zombie narratives – at the beginning or during the main part narrative, but at the end. In contrast to Jelinek’s novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) is not a “high culture”-novel, it merely takes one as a starting point: Jane Austen’s classical novel is mixed up with a zombie plague and turns the Bennett sisters into well-trained Shaolin fighters against the zombies. It can be seen as a “borderline case” to the next category, zombies appropriated for comedies, and even other examples for such mash-ups might be found (e.g. the film Romeo and Juliet vs. The Living Dead from 2009). However, Seth GrahameSmith’s novel proved influential, since it has become a bestseller inspiring

 49

50 51 52

Miess, 241; cf. Pontzen, 56; Wilson, 30; Gsoels-Laurensen, Jutta, ‘Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten: Representingthe Holocaust as an AustrianGhost Story’, The Germanic Review (2007), pp. 360-382 (p. 367). Just, ‘Zeichenleichen – Reflexionen Über das Untote im Werk Elfriede Jelineks’. Ibid. Wilson, 42.

142 Sabine Schönfellner several follow-ups.53 Furthermore, there could be a base for this development already in the original: In an article for the New York Times, Brad Pasternak is quoted calling Austen’s novels “sort of acid baths”54 and specifies his statement in a later article: “Austen’s prose subliminates satire, anger and pain into political exchange.”55 Following that interpretation, GrahameSmith’s version merely lifts the restraints and brings the problems to the surface. The zombification in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies results from a “strange plague”56 that has been devastating Great Britain for over 50 years and against which no cure has been found yet.57 While some of the creatures move fast and attack their victims swiftly,58 others do not notice human beings and eat cauliflowers instead, which they mistake for brains.59 The zombie plague leads to a certain degree of emancipation, as especially Elizabeth and Jane are trained to become skilled fighters and explain to their mother that as fighters they would be capable of coping without husbands.60 In the course of the novel, several carriages and houses are attacked, but the Bennett sisters and Mr. Darcy always manage to survive thanks to their supernatural fighting abilities (while others are eaten by zombies). The zombies are all flesh-eaters, are not guided by a master, appear in great numbers and their condition is infectious; but some move fast and attack swiftly and are therefore a mortal threat to the humans, while others move slowly and do not attack humans, for which no explanation is given. On the whole, the zombification does not have a deep impact on the narrative, the undead are only used as staffage for the central love story.

53

54

55 56 57 58 59 60

Schuessler, Jennifer, ‘Undead-Austen Mash-Ups’, The New York Times, 13 December 2009. (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05E3DC1E39F930A25751C1 A96F9C8B63, retrieved on 17 August 2011). Schuessler, Jennifer, ‘I Was a Regency Zombie’, The New York Times, 21 February 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/weekinreview/22schuessler.html, retrieved on 17 August 2011). Schuessler, ‘Undead-Austen Mash-Ups’. Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books, 2009), p. 8. Ibid., 125. Ibid., 27f. Ibid., 302. Ibid., p 85; additionally, Mr Bennett is of the opinion that his daughters should devote their attention to their training and not to finding valuable husbands (ibid., p. 8) and Charlotte Lucas only settles for the dull Mr Collins because she has been infected and wants to have some quiet months as a wife before she dies (ibid., 99).

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Zombies and Comedy – “Zombedies” As already mentioned, the appropriation of zombies for comical purposes started in the 1980s. The most influential film among these early “zombedies”61was The Return of the Living Dead (1985), which presupposes that Night of the Living Dead was based on true events and that the zombies are coming back; this film “also paved the way for an entirely new micro-genre, the ‘splatstick’ comedy.”62 Zombies even appeared in romantic comedies, one example being Graveyard Alive (2003), which features an undead nurse who starts to infect all the hospital personnel.63 At first sight, Shaun of the Dead (2004) is a typical example of this development; advertising claimed it was a “romantic comedy, with zombies”.64 But the film does fit into more than one category: “As a genre film, Shaun of the Dead defies simple classification, slipping easily from comedy to romance to satire to horror and back again, but it ultimately operates as part of the larger zombie tradition.“65 Furthermore, it is highly referential to classical “zombie narratives” and contemporary developments, “featuring a host of living dead in-jokes, plenty of riffs on twenty-first century England and a neat awareness of the impact of the Resident Evil videogame on the zombie's changing fortunes.“66 Therefore, the film offers many points for analysis. At the beginning of the film, Shaun and his best friend Ed wake up one London morning in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Together with Shaun’s mother, his ex-girlfriend Liz and two other friends, they seek refuge in a pub. Only Shaun and his once-again girlfriend survive the final battle against the zombies. The film uses typical aspects of the zombie genre to satirical ends. Already the opening sequence pays its respects to Romero’s critique of society and consumerism – it shows people during their daily routines of shopping and going to work, with blank faces and slightly staggering, so the viewer might mistake them for zombies. Additionally, while characters can get hold of weapons easily in American zombie movies, Shaun of the Dead shows that Great Britain is different. In the beginning, Shaun and Ed have to grab household tools and even LPs to defend themselves, later on they take a shovel and a cricket bat; when they find a shotgun in the pub, no member of the group is capable of handling it properly. 61 62 63 64 65 66

Bishop, 181. Ibid., 186. Ibid, 181. Russell, 181. Bishop, 189. Ibid, 181.

144 Sabine Schönfellner The film also presents the typical warnings about the ensuing chaos and the attempts by TV journalists to explain the events. An emergency broadcast warns viewers not to leave the house and not to attempt to reach loved ones.67 But Shaun and Ed decide to ignore the warning, Ed even asks: “Do you believe everything they bring on TV?”68 At the end of the film, several TV show commentators are about to give an explanation, but Liz switches channel every time before a sentence is finished, e.g. “[...] the phenomenon resulted from the use of highly dang...”69 or “[...] claims that the virus was caused by RAS-infected monkeys have been dismissed as bull...”.70 The zombie infection follows the classic development: a person bitten by zombies dies and then returns undead. Furthermore, the zombies are slow, stagger and cannot talk; they only moan, and they have an insatiable hunger for flesh. They pose a mortal threat because they appear in great numbers. However, other human beings sometimes pose an even greater threat to the survivors, e.g. as Shaun’s already infected mother hides her wound or as one member of the group opens the pub doors to save her boyfriend, who has been abducted by the zombies, and thereby exposes the rest of the group to the monsters. The film is clearly critical of society, as it likens the everyday life of normal British citizens to that of mindless zombies in the beginning; this is even emphasised, as it takes Shaun a while to notice the change in his fellow citizens, since at first sight they only appear as numb and passive as usual. Finally, 21st century’s consumer society has even found an unconventional way to deal with the zombie apocalypse: The “surviving” zombies are domesticated at the end of the film and used for mindless temporary jobs or are the topic or participants of talk and game shows.71 Shaun also keeps his friend Ed in his garden shed like a dog and visits him to play video games as they used to. All in all consumer society proves much more robust than in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead – it not only overcomes the zombie apocalypse, but even profits from it.

2. The Return of Soldiers and Nazis – Zombies in Political Satire Shaun of the Dead can already be seen as an example for the use of the “zombie narrative” for satirical ends, but two other examples take the satirical 67 68 69 70 71

Shaun of the Dead, Wright, Edgar, dir. (DVD, 2005), 36.42-51. Ibid., 36.51-53. Ibid., 1.27.51-52. Ibid., 1.28.43-45. Ibid.,1.27.33-1.28.33.

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even further. In the TV show episode Homecoming (2005),72 hundreds of dead soldiers come back from the war in Iraq to vote the president out of office; one episode of the Austrian satire show Die 4 da presents a mockumentary about the fictional film genre Das dritte Lager (2008). Both mix the “zombie narrative” with political developments –in Homecoming, contemporary events at the time of the production; in Das dritte Lager, the historical development of a political party.73 In Homecoming one of the US presidents’ press relation officers, David Murch, narrates the story of how his superiors tried to stop the zombies dead soldiers returned from the war in Iraq to vote in the presidential election - from voting. While Murch starts to doubt their plans, one of his superiors falsifies the count of votes. This makes even soldiers from past wars come back. In the end, Murch is killed and then accompanies the zombies. The zombie epidemic was started by Murch himself: during a TV show, the mother of a fallen soldier asks him critical questions about the war. He answers that if he had one wish, he would wish for her son to come back.74 Characteristically for zombie films, the human beings are more harmful than the zombies, those move slowly and do not harm anyone; this is e.g. demonstrated in a scene where one of Murch’s superiors orders doctors to experiment on a zombie even though it is obvious that he still feels pain.75 However, the creatures cannot be killed – it is said that if zombies are hacked to pieces, those pieces continue to move.76 They only stop and collapse once they have been allowed to vote. Their ability to speak is unusual – it allows them to convey their message verbally, too. The directness of this message is also demonstrated at the end: Murch explains in voice-over that the government has gone into exile and the zombies have taken over to ensure that no one is sent to war again.77 This can be seen as a final apocalypse, at least from the point of view of the politicians, but it is not explained whether the zombies continue to kill and infect other human beings. 72

73

74 75 76 77

The film is episode six, season one of Masters of Horror, a series in which every episode is an independent film; it is based on the short story Death and Suffrage (2002) by Dave Baley (cf. the interview with Baley: http://www.tabula-rasa.info/ Horror/DaleBailey.html, retrieved on May 2 2011). Only one earlier example of such a mixture of political satire and zombies can be found: The film Deathdream (1972), in which a GI returns from Vietnam as a blooddrinking zombie. (Russell, 72). ‘Homecoming’, Masters of Horror, Dante, Joe, dir. (Season 1, Episode 6) (DVD, 2005), 09.04-09.08. Ibid., 23.18-26.06. Ibid., 24.49-50. Ibid., 54.13-59.

146 Sabine Schönfellner The film plays upon the political situation at the time of its production in several ways: while it is never explicitly said which war is ongoing – it is only referred to as “over there” – there are obvious parallels to the war in Iraq, e.g. when the dead soldier’s mother explains her doubts: “They told us there was a threat to America. But the weapons of mass destruction weren’t there. The nuclear program wasn’t there.”78 In another scene,79 the zombies are kept as prisoners behind a fence in orange jump suits, which is later called a “concentration camp”80 by a talk show host and reminds viewers of the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. Other minor references include the initials of Murch’s superior, “K” and “R”, which refer to Georg W. Bush’s advisor Karl Rove and the appearance of the political commentator Jane Cleaver, which reminds one of Ann Coulter.81 All in all the film conveys its message explicitly, which is also obvious in another of Murch’s comments: “The face of this war had always been ugly. We’ve tried to hide it from the public. But then, they were among us, these dead young men, these monsters.”82 Another political satire that includes zombies is an episode of the Austrian satire show Die 4 da, a mockumentary about the fictional film genre Das dritte Lager (“The third camp”), following its development from its beginning in 1955. In reality, this “third camp” corresponds to political parties in Austria that support nationalistic ideas, the FPÖ and the BZÖ. In the following analysis, I am therefore going to highlight how the fictional accounts and names refer to real ones. Every scene, film, and film character has its real life counterpart. Their names combine (part of) the real name with horror film elements, as e.g. “Jörgula” refers to “Jörg Haider” or the abbreviation “BZÖ” is explained as the name of a new film movement, “Beste Zombies Österreich” (“Best Zombies Austria”), while in reality it abbreviates the name of the political party “Bündnis Zukunft Österreich” (“Alliance (for the) Future (of) Austria”). Rarely, the real life counterpart is alluded to by appearance, as e.g. the new “Jörgula” actor shares physical characteristics with H.C. Strache. The mockumentary shows important steps in the development of the “third camp”, e.g. the rise of the “Jörgula”-films from the 1980s on, referring to the rise of Austrian right-wing politician Jörg Haider, who is turned

 78 79 80 81 82

Ibid., 08.12-08.18. Ibid., 38.25-40. Ibid., 44.35. Her car’s number plate is also “BSH BABE” (Ibid., 03.45), which can be interpreted as “Bush Babe”. Ibid., 33.00-10.

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into a successful vampire-figure. Other important steps are the commercialisation in 2000 (when the FPÖ became part of the government) and the “Knittelfeld-Kettensägenmassaker” (alluding to the real putsch in the party that took place in the small town Knittelfeld and resulted in the division into two parties, FPÖ and BZÖ; “Kettensägenmassaker” means “chainsaw massacre”). Finally the movies of the 2000s are discussed, which introduced a successor of the “Jörgula”-figure and were meant to be parodies, but taken seriously by the audience; they have their real life counterpart in the rise of Haider’s successor in the FPÖ, H. C. Strache.83 Film clips and posters are commented on by a speaker from the off; two experts, a philosopher and a film critic give their opinions on the developments. Additionally, a film fan gives his opinion, his name, “Horst Unmündl”, alludes to him being an uneducated man who states his opinion frankly and directly. At the end of the episode, the zombies reach another narrative level: Unmündl has turned into a zombie and, accompanied by others, he attacks the two experts in the film studio. The title “Wir sind wir – Die Wiederkehr der Zombies” (“We are We – The Return of the Zombies”) is superimposed on the screen and a voice from the off says that this film will be “coming soon to a theatre near you”.84 In contrast to usual zombies, the zombies in Das dritte Lager can speak, but usually only repeat slogans or speak slowly, thereby appearing dimwitted. Interestingly, “Jörgula” is said to be a zombie too, even though he appears to be a vampire – the explanation is that he is a zombie at the core.85 This leads to the conclusion that these creatures are depicted as zombies because it is not primarily themselves, but their ideas that are undead or revenants, as those originate in National Socialism. By using these ideas as subtext for gory horror movies that have become more and more attuned to the expectancies of a mass audience, “das dritte Lager” could in the end be accepted in the popular mainstream, as a film genre as well as political parties.

Conclusion – Zombies as Gothic Reminders Zombies should be interpreted as “gothic” figures, because they are “figures uprooted from older schemes of mythology and legend that, because of their uprooting, can come to suggest very current cultural fears and uncer83 84 85

‘Das Dritte Lager’, Die 4 da, Schalko, David, dir. (Season 2, Episode 7) (DVD, 2008), 15.46-47. Ibid., 23.30. Ibid., 08.00-08.03.

148 Sabine Schönfellner tainties”.86 In this respect, the current fears at the times of their production have to be taken into account, as “gothic” as well elicits as appeases these fears.87 This explains the connection between zombie films and contemporary upheavals like e.g. wars88 and highlights that they “graphically represent[…] the inescapable realities of an untimely death (via infection, infestation, or violence) while presenting a grim view of the modern apocalypse in which society’s supportive infrastructure irrevocably breaks down.“89 From the given examples, the connection to current problems is especially obvious in Homecoming. Die Kinder der Toten and Das dritte Lager were not produced in times of political upheaval, but they also deal with them. Even more than Homecoming, they use zombies in a critique of society as representations for problems that have been thought of as suppressed and are resurfacing. As the analysis has shown, the function of reminding of fears as well as appeasing them can be transferred from classical “zombie narratives” into other novels and films. However, only the two “comedies” manage to appease the fears by finally overcoming the zombie apocalypse: In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the undead are minor characters and therefore cannot threaten the social order; Shaun of the Dead satirically criticizes the stupor of everyday life in modern society, but shows a cynical overcoming of the zombie apocalypse in the end. The other three examples concentrate on representing the fears, and while the two Austrian examples, Die Kinder der Toten and Das Dritte Lager, even lack closure, Homecoming presents a solution by having the zombies take over the government. On the whole, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the example that deviates farthest from the “zombie narrative”, because it only uses the monsters as extras for the central love story. But all five examples adopt certain characteristics of the “zombie narrative” and most of them portray the zombies in classical fashion.

86

87

88 89

Hogle, Jerold E.: Foreword to Bishop, Kyle William, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), 1-4 (p.3). Steve Bruhm, ‘The Contemporary Gothic: Why we need it’ in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, (Cambridge Companions to Literature), ed. by Jerrold E. Hogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 259-276 (p. 260). Bishop, 13. Ibid., 11.

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Bibliography Primary Sources

Austen, Jane, and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books, 2009). ‘Das Dritte Lager’, Die 4 da, Schalko, David, dir. (Season 2, Episode 7) (DVD, 2008). ‘Homecoming’, Masters of Horror, Dante, Joe, dir. (Season 1, Episode 6) (DVD, 2005). Jelinek, Elfriede, Die Kinder der Toten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1997). Shaun of the Dead, Wright, Edgar, dir. (DVD, 2005).

Secondary Sources

Bishop, Kyle William, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001). Bruhm, Steve, ‘The Contemporary Gothic: Why we need it’ in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, (Cambridge Companions to Literature), ed. by Jerrold E. Hogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 259276. Dendle, Peter, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001). Gsoels-Laurensen, Jutta, ‘Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Kinder der Toten: Representingthe Holocaust as an Austrian Ghost Story’, The Germanic Review (2007), 360382. Hogle, Jerold E.: Foreword to Bishop, Kyle William, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001), 1-4. Just, Rainer, ‘Zeichenleichen – Reflexionen Über das Untote im Werk Elfriede Jelineks’ (online:http://www.univie.ac.at/jelinetz/index.php? title=Rainer_Just:_Zeichenleichen_-_Reflexionen_%C3%BCber_das_ Untote_im_Werk_Elfriede_Jelineks, 21 May 2007, retrieved on 17 August 2011). Löffler, Sigrid, ‘Am Eingang zur Unterwelt. Zum neuen Roman von Elfriede Jelinek: „Die Kinder der Toten“’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Beilage, 11 August 1995, 57 Mattes, Claudio, ‘Zombie’ in Metzler Lexikon Religion: Gegenwart – Alltag – Medien. Paganismus - Zombie ed. by Auffahrt, Christoph and others (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000), 725-727. Miess, Julie, Neue Monster: postmoderne Horrortexte und ihre Autorinnen, Literatur - Kultur – Geschlecht (Grosse Reihe, 56) (Köln, Wien: Böhlau, 2010).

150 Sabine Schönfellner Pontzen, Alexandra, ‘Pietätlose Rezeption? Elfriede Jelineks Umgang mit der Tradition in Die Kinder der Toten’ in ,Elfriede Jelinek – Tradition, Politik und Zitat: Ergebnisse der Internationalen Elfriede Jelinek-Tagung, 1. - 3. Juni 2006 in Tromsø, ed. by Sabine Müller and Cathrine Theodorsen (Wien: Präsens, 2008), 51-69. Russell, Jamie, Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema (Godalming, Surrey: FAB Press, 2006). Schuessler, Jennifer, ‘I Was a Regency Zombie’, The New York Times, 21 February 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/weekinreview/ 22schuessler.html, retrieved on 17 August 2011). Schuessler, Jennifer, ‘Undead-Austen Mash-Ups’, The New York Times, 13 December 2009 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res= 9E05E3DC1E39F930A25751C1A96F9C8B63, retrieved on 17 August 2011). Waller, Gregory A., The Living and the Undead: from Stoker’s Dracula to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1986). Wilson, Ian W., ‘Greeting the Holocaust’s Dead? Narrative Strategies and the Undead in Elfriede Jelinek’s DieKinder der Toten’, Modern Austrian Literature, 39, No. 3/4 (2006), 27-55.

Stefan Tetzlaff Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series, or: Why Family Guy Does not Copy The Simpsons While superficially seen The Simpsons and Family Guy share a vast amount of themes, situations, and characteristics, a closer look reveals pivotal differences in respect to plot structures and narrative devices. Applying Teun van Dijks approach to text grammar as well as Roland Barthes’ model of kernels and catalysts the frequent reproach of plagiarism does not hold as the two series prove to differ fundamentally regarding their structural handling of the grotesque.

Preface In September 2005, Mad Magazine presented a very symbolic front page: A TV-family centers around the endearingly stupid Homer Simpson,1 while these figures have been merged with the Griffins, the main characters of the series Family Guy, forming a special family portrait. Peter Griffin, who is kind of a next generation Homer, is still recognizable but has been transformed into a hybrid of his original self, where Family Guy and the The Simpsons humorously coalesce. What is coded in this transmogrification is the tenor of TV critics, who have disparaged Family Guy since its first season went on air in 1999. Discussions concerned with both The Simpsons and Family Guy sooner or later all come back to the issue of plagiarism and identical jokes. The bottom line is mostly to evaluate Family Guy as a shiftless copy of the original model, which is twelve years older and has long since become a prestigious staple in television’s high culture. Fans remark on all kinds of similarities in message boards, and the unbiased spectator often must admit that a significant congruence exists, particularly with respect to the character tropes, plot structures, or micro-levelaspects like single punchlines, or pittoresque slapstick situations.2 However 1

2

For an in-depth analysis of Homer’s character see Raja Halwani, ‘Homer and Aristotle’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 7-23. For instance, one certainly cannot deny the resemblance between the scene in which Homer tries to eat potato chips (The Simpsons, Season 6, Episode 20, “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds”), only to watch one chip after the other being fetched from his hand by one of the recently gotten puppies, and the scene in which Peter can’t manage to eat popcorn at the cinema, because of an endangered bird living in his newly-grown beard, which snaps forward whenever he tries to eat (Family Guy, Season 3, Episode 13, “Brian Wallows and Peter Swallows”).

152 Stefan Tetzlaff in all fairness, these congruences can be observed as functioning in both directions. After all Family Guy is already running its ninth season, and its popularity meanwhile has induced an inversion of the relations between the original model and its competitor. So who copies whom? As interesting as this question might be, a literary analysis offers a different attitude. Such a comparison employs a view that regards the structural differences between the two series, yet maintains that both function as originals and thereby constitutes a wider textual conception. Similarly, this effects the more general question regarding the additional value of literary criticism as a media science. Considering internet wikis and similar accumulations of knowledge within a global context, there is hardly any detail left for comparison or analysis. Those wikis and message boards form huge pools of meticulous annotations, which are compiled, checked, and corrected by uncounted members of the fan base. As a matter of fact, these web portals perform intertextuality and discourse analysis on a very primitive, but nevertheless incredibly detailed level – and for free. The present thesis concerns itself with the perspectives of literary criticism that go beyond those mere data collections, primarily because the assumption that The Simpsons and Family Guy are much more different than they seem cannot be proven by just listing numerous details in wikis, rather such a differentiation requires a technically specialized analysis.

1. Macrostructures and Kernels In the 1970s the Dutch linguist Teun van Dijk conceived his approach to textual grammar as a system of macrostructures. His Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition3 springs from the Chomskyan generative approach towards syntax, which considers the overt sentence or utterance only as the most basal or ‘macro’-level.

Teun A. van Dijk, Macrostructures. An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1980). For an elaborate illustration, see Tekstwetenschap. Een interdisciplinaire inleiding (Utrecht/Antwerpen: Het Spectrum, 1978) [no English translation available].

3

Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series 153

Fig. 1: Propositions and macro-levels The smallest units of meaning string up to form the text as a chain of individual propositions (p1 … p10). Following van Dijk, it is macro-rules that enable the merger of propositions to nodes on a higher level. Ascending from one macro-level to the next, information is condensed or sorted out, until finally the shortest possible phrasing of the text’s kernel aspects presents itself. Thus the underlying deep structure becomes visible in form of macro-rules, algorithms of transformation that describe how a proposition group is subsumed to a denser assertion. Accordingly, a composite deletion-construction comes from a group of propositions like: Peter walked to his car. He unlocked it, got into it and started the engine. He drove to Springfield. He arrived at Springfield and got off the car again. Which can be condensed to: Peter drove to Springfield. Besides such simplifying operations, there are also more complex rules, for example with generalization. In the course of generalization, a sequence of micro-propositions is substituted by a superconcept, e.g. a more general term. Thus the sequence: There was a hammer, a screwdriver, a saw and several pliers lying on the floor. Can be condensed to: There were tools lying on the floor. While the true complexity of van Dijks approach cannot be estimated from these two brief examples, these simple macro-rules nevertheless reveal some basic differences in terms of narration and plotline between The Simpsons and Family Guy. While both series are known for their absurd scenes and actions, which are often not only improbable, but physically impossible, the

154 Stefan Tetzlaff status of these grotesque moments within van Dijks model forms a crucial point for comparison. The flying penguins from The Simpsons’ episode “Brake My Wife, Please” (Season 14, Episode 20) form a proposition that doesn’t even pass the first application of macro-rules. A summary of the episode’s main plot elements won’t include penguins, because the episode primarily deals with Marge running over Homer, only to realise that she has unsolved anger issues with him; the scene with the penguins is completely obsolete with respect to the storyline. This bundle of propositions is deleted immediately, when ascending to higher nodes of macro-propositions. This manifests a crucial characteristic of The Simpsons, where the series is full of grotesque and fantastic scenes – but that these decidedly non-realistic elements are largely implemented in such a way that they don’t proceed to the next higher macro-level. To put it simply: When collecting the plot’s main ideas for a summary, these scenes are dropped first. Family Guy reveals the opposite tendency; grotesque and fantastic scenes are action-bearing elements and constitutive parts of the highest macrolevels. When the Grim Reaper pays the Griffins a visit, it is not a marginal gag, but a pivotal plot element, since Peter has to do his sick leave cover. Equally, when Stewie glides through the air by means of his over-stretched skin, this is no picturesque interjection, but the effect of a life after the abuse of anabolic steroids. And, while the few seconds of Bart’s dog acting like a parody of Snoopy are in no way connected to the episode’s storyline, the Griffin’s dog Brian can not only speak properly and has his own car, but he is the specific focus of at least one-third of Family Guy’s episodes. Most distinctness can be drawn from a comparison of parallel scenes, which fans often tag as plagiarisms. For instance, The Simpsons has an identical scene to the one mentioned above, where an old man flies on loose flaps of skin after having jumped off a highboard. However, this scene is presented through a pan shot, and again it has got nothing to do with the plot (unlike the pendant in Family Guy, where Stewie’s steroid damaged skin is the plot). Instead the story deals with Homer forgetting about the senior citizen’s athletics tournament that his father is participating in. The episode is then mostly concerned with young people’s attitude about the elderly and Homer’s relationship to his father. The senior springboard diver and his flying skills are not essentially connected to the plot and could be deleted without further notice. Even the Grim Reaper shows up at The Simpsons’, but unlike in Family Guy, a special frame surrounds his appearance, namely one of the famous ‘Halloween Specials’. These episodes are diegetically excluded from the series’ run of events and thereby allow for everything that would ordinarily be

Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series 155

impossible within the frame of a regular episode. Usually these elements are zombies, aliens, and the death of as many key characters as possible. This concept conversely reveals the series’ self-conception as tendentially realistic, since its ‘real’ episodes are confined to a realistic framework of action. Thus The Simpsons shows kind of an evasive structure. In microcosm, this is performed by Itchy & Scratchy, a parodistic version of Tom & Jerry that often deals with the same topic as the framing episode, but on a level of grotesque cartoon violence. On the higher level, it is the ‘Halloween Specials’ that function as a residual category for all those violations of a realistic setting, which do not fit into a regular episode. These elements nevertheless occur on Family Guy on a regular basis. The absence of something like a ‘Halloween Special’ with the Griffins can be explained easily – it is just not necessary. The application of Roland Barthes’ model of ‘cardinal functions/nuclei’ and ‘catalyses’ shows a similar result. Barthes assesses two main categories for every narrative structure: On the one side every narrative has nuclei, i.e. elements which bear the action, carry vital information, and initiate consequent events. On the other side, there are catalyses, a kind of filler material that can be deleted without affecting the narrative structure, because it does not contain decisive actions or turning points: In order to classify a function as cardinal, all we need verify is that the action to which it refers opens (or maintains or closes) an alternative directly affecting the continuation of the story, in other words, that it either initiates or resolves an uncertainty. If in a fragment of narrative the telephone rings, it is equally possible to answer or not to answer the call, procedures that are bound to carry the story along different paths. On the other hand, between two cardinal functions, it is always possible to bring in subsidiary notations, which cluster around one nucleus or another, without modifying its alternative nature: the space separating “the telephone rang” from “Bond picked up the receiver” can be saturated with countless minor incidents or descriptions, such as “Bond made his way to the desk, picked up the phone, put down his cigarette.” These catalyses are still functional, insofar as they enter into correlations with a nucleus, but their functionality is toned down, unilateral, parasitic.4

4

Roland Barthes, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, in New Literary History, 6.2 (1975), 237-272 (p. 248). – A semiotic approach to The Simpsons via Roland Barthes’ theory of the myth is given by David L.G. Arnold, ‘“And the Rest Writes Itself”: Roland Barthes Watches The Simpsons’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. By William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp.252-268.

156 Stefan Tetzlaff Employing Barthes’ terminology with The Simpsons, the nuclei are tendentially realistic. Even recently the more illustrious episodes from 2010 and 2011, in principle all deal with friendship, honesty, being single, homosexuality, TV, or money. Elements of the grotesque and fantastic in The Simpsons, however, mostly act as catalyses and could be skipped without altering the course of the action. With Family Guy it is the other way round. Everyday occurrences serve as catalytic filling material, while the plot is based on nuclei that deal with infants reaching for world domination, talking dogs, or drugs that turn people gay. When illustrating the previous considerations as a schematic diagram, the difference between the two series can clearly be detected. Each season is depicted by a line listing up the episodes in chronological order, beginning with season one at the top of the chart. Yellow marks episodes that, in the sense of Barthes or van Dijk, are realistic, i.e. their nuclei could by large happen in real life. These episodes sort out fantastic (in this case catalytic) elements mostly on the way to the first macro-level. Red marks episodes with nuclei that consist of grotesque elements ascending to the higher macro-levels. It is obvious that there are of course red episodes with The Simpsons and yellow ones with Family Guy. The overarching tendency, however, is more than evident.

Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series 157

The Simpsons

Fig. 2: The Simpsons, Seasons 1-23 (grey = ‘Halloween Special’)

Family Guy

Fig. 3: Family Guy, Seasons 1-10

2. Metonymicalizations Conforming this tendency towards realistic settings, The Simpsons features a narrative device that can be conceived as ‘metonymicalization’. Based on

158 Stefan Tetzlaff Roman Jakobson’s notion of metonymy as “a relation of contiguity”,5 in terms of narrative devices, metonymy describes the subsequent integration of a seemingly grotesque incident into a realistic causal nexus. In concrete terms, this means scenes like the following: Amazed by the news of a projected movie about their favourite superhero Radioactive Man Bart and Milhouse’s caps fly straight up to the ceiling as if blown off by their excitement. This typical cartoon routine is immediately grounded by a physical explanation: The caps are sucked in by the air vent of a wrongly calibrated air conditioning system. [The Simpsons, Season 7, Episode 2: “Radioactive Man”] When three teenage witches curse Springfield with a spell of blindness, they themselves are astonished that half the citizens actually darken. But metonymicalization follows directly with Homer and Lisa discovering that moonshiners had fed their toxic sewage into the town’s drinking water supply, thereby causing temporary blindness as a result of poisoning. [The Simpsons, Season 21, Episode 7: “Rednecks and Broomsticks”] This propensity for metonymicalization is not a crucial, but nevertheless serves as unique characteristic of the series, because Family Guy totally lacks any kind of related devices. Only once will the Griffin family employ a kind of a parodistic derivative of the abovementioned structure. When in “Da Boom” (Family Guy, Season 22, Episode 3) earth experiences the nuclear holocaust initiated by the millennium bug, the Griffins find themselves in devastated wastelands populated by mutants. The basic rule that at the end of the episode everything should be back to the initial state doesn’t hold – except that everything turns out to be a dream, and it actually is this slightly unimaginative version of metonymicalization that is deployed here. It is remarkable though, with regard to where the device aims, namely into some kind of diegetic nirvana. The episode admittedly appears to be a dream, but not within the consciousness of one of the characters. “Da Boom” happens to be the dream of Bobby Ewing, a character from Dallas, a completely different TV-series that obviously isn’t diegetically apt for such a crossover. When in 1986 Patrick Duffy, alias Bobby Ewing, leaves Dallas, soap fans are upset and TV ratings drop rapidly. Finally the producers get Duffy to rejoin the series and use the abovementioned trick to explain Bobby’s seemingly resurrection after having been dead for over 30 episodes. Eventually, when Pamela Barnes wakes up she finds Bobby showering and realizes the past few weeks had just been a dream. 5

Roman Jakobson, ‘Two Aspects of Language and two Types of Aphasic Disturbances’, in On Language (Cambridge et al.: Harvard University Press, 1990). pp. 115133 (p. 129).

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This very scene was re-shot with the original cast but a different, familyguy-related dialogue that once more acts out “the radically transgressive humor of Family Guy”.6 The scene closes with an allusion to the actual paradox: The question from the Dallas-universe put forth by Duffy, what is Family Guy anyway? And last but not least, he asks this while viewing directly into the camera’s eye.

3. Duplicative Medialization This metonymicalization that reduces itself to absurdity is part of a narrative device crucial to Family Guy. By and large, this device is part of a narrative strategy that can be called ‘duplicative medialization’. What is meant here is a nesting structure, within which self-reflexive comments themselves are embedded again into a commenting frame. A scene from the first season’s second episode “I Never Met the Dead Man” serves as a good example: After accidentally damaging the towns TV broadcasting tower, Peter dreams about awakening in a house that’s being carried through the air by a hurricane, while outside the window people fly by. Including the musical score, this scene is taken exactly from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Peter’s dream is framed by the spared medium of televison. This first level of film references is structurally identical to movie citations,7 as employed by The Simpsons (for example, when Bart escapes Homer in a one-to-one adapted scene from Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark [The Simpsons, Season 3, Episode 23, “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love”]). Family Guy citations like these have a second level, which exponentiates the effect. What would have been Dorothy’s friends in the original scene (literally framed by the window) are now other TV-characters from different series. When ALF, Gilligan, Jeannie (from Dream of Jeannie), and Samantha Stevens (from Bewitched) hover by, the movie citation itself once more embeds 6

7

Erwin Feyersinger, ‘Metaleptic TV Crossovers’, in Metalepsis in Popular Culture, ed. by Karin Kukkonen and Sonja Klimek (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2011), pp. 127157 (p. 135). Considering citations and allusions especially with The Simpsons Irwin and Lombardo give a basic definition of the phenomenon: “By definition, an allusion is an intended reference that calls for associations that go beyond mere substitution of a referent.” (William Irwin and J.R. Lombardo, ‘The Simpsons and Allusion: “Worst Essay Ever.”’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 81-92 (p. 82)). See also: William Irwin, ‘What is an Allusion?’,The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59.3 (2001), 287-297.

160 Stefan Tetzlaff protagonists within its own medium. What has been a quote becomes a quote that itself quotes TV elements and opens a mise-en-abyme like structure. This duplicative medialization constitutes a paradigm with the aforementioned pseudo-metonomicalization and another device that fosters a crucial difference when the show is compared to The Simpsons. This distinct narrative strategy of Family Guy is a diegetic inconsistency that can be apprehended in the term ‘paradox hybridization’.

4. Paradox Hybridization It is primarily Brian and Stewie who are affected by this phenomenon. Meanwhile the establishing question can be: Who understands the baby? When Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd – later revealing their identity as secret agents – move to the Griffins’ neighbourhood, they have a chat with Peter. Later they recruit Brian and Stewie; this of course involves a conversation with the two of them. While Brian is installed as always understanding his pal Stewie during their homo-erotically charged disputes of love-hate, the other characters remain vague in this respect. Most of the time it appears to be undecided whether Lois or Chris definitely do understand the baby or not. That implies two hermeneutically overt models alternating from scene to scene: 1. Stewie talks to a person (x); this person has a conversation with another person (y), but y doesn’t understand Stewie. The very same code is presented as identical and non-identical. 2. The same person understands Stewie one time, and another time under the same circumstances he’s just a gabbling baby to him. Scenes in which Lois perceives Stewie’s threats as babbling, alternate with those where she forbids him to say such things. To buy blueprints for a transporter at a Star-Trek-Convention, Stewie needs to talk. Actually building an operable model of the teleportation device to beam the entire cast of Star Trek – The Next Generation into Stewie’s nursery consequently lines up with other terrific attainments of the brilliant baby. One day Stewie travels around within Peter, steering a miniature submarine based on the cult movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). His mission (to eliminate further siblings – that means competitors) is just as remarkable as several time machines, dimensional travel, or a remote control for his older brother Chris. Still at the same time Stewie displays typical characteristics of a baby which conflict directly with his quantum mechanical expertise. When Lois

Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series 161

pushes his crib through the door, Stewie objects that only round things fit through angular shapes. After having passed unscathed, he wonderlingly admits that he has to “get better at shapes” ( Family Guy, Season 9, Episode 16, “The Big Bang Theory”).This allusion to a well-known educative chil-dren’s toy refers to a hybridisation within the character of the Griffin’s baby. The contradictory attributes arranged in Stewie are not assigned to different viewpoints or states of reality, but the series plays with the diegetic indeter-minacy of a baby holding a laser gun and demanding, in Shakespearean dic-tion, to change his diapers – because the mechanics of this process demand too much of him. The series addresses this switch deliberately. When Meg discovers her dark side, she is called a psycho. Being asked who said so, the whole family points at Stewie, who comments: “Oh, so now everybody understands me!” (Family Guy, Season 8, Episode 11, “Dial Meg for Murder”) And while “E. Peterbus Unum” (Family Guy, Season 2, Episode 18) shows Peter proclaiming his property as free state, the clotûre is placed in a classroom of the future, where this very episode is shown within a history lesson. Here as well, the series exposes its awareness of the question of questions, when one of the students asks: “I don’t get it, so … can the family understand the baby, or what’s the deal with that?” This phenomenon is one of the crucial narrative devices of the series and can be observed plainest with Brian, a character completely organized by means of this hybridization. The family’s dog is person and pet at the same time, not depending on perspective or storyline, but as inextricable conjunction. While, for the animal, it is normal not to be domesticated from the beginning, the intellectual writer Brian experiences his own defecational behaviour as self-humiliating. The necessary diapers and ‘potty training’ address the pet that is family member, substitute teacher, and car driver as well. And, when Peter goes missing and is declared dead, Brian marries Lois to provide a father figure for the family. He reacts in the same vein when he is invited to be a radio host; when a talent scout praises his voice, Brian explains his attraction to the medium by his animal instincts: “I listen to a lot of radio. Peter and Lois leave the radio on when they go out so I feel like somebody’s home.” (Family Guy, Season 5, episode 2, “Mother Tucker”) These comments on the series’ own diegetic structure are even more distinct in the many situations that show Brian humanly aware of the animal constitution that his actions pattern. In simple, but nonetheless paradox terms, he reflects about the inability to reflect. Thus political controversies are terminated by a dog whistle. Similarly, because the political activist Brian is nondenominational, Meg lets him fetch

162 Stefan Tetzlaff a wooden cross to evangelize him (Family Guy, Season 7, Episode 11, “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven”): Meg: Hey Brian, in hopes that you open your heart to god I wanted to give you this cross. Brian: No, I don’t want a cross. Meg: Would you want it if I threw it over there? Brian: No, please don’t do that. Meg: You gonna get it boy? Brian: No, please, no. Meg: Go get it boy. Brian: Hurhurhurhur. Whether as radio host or hybrid of drug dog and police officer with a fatal attraction to the evidence, Brian is the point of culmination in the series’ paradoxical hybridization. It is the eighth season’s episode “Dog Gone”, which serves as a paragon for this extraordinary narrative strategy. In microsleep, Brian, of all things, runs over another dog. Shocked at first, he buries him, but after a while his conscience compels him to confess. The Griffin family reacts amused and replies that the victim is just a dog; as a result, Brian becomes an animal rights activist. This phenomenon of not only alternating but simultaneously subsisting of differing concepts of reality is an exclusive characteristic of Family Guy and does not occur in The Simpsons.

5. Self-reference With respect to self-reflexive allusions, every single episode of both series contains material for an analysis of its own.8 Nevertheless, from the perspective of general tendencies, there are significant differences. With The Simpsons the self-reflexive factor is mostly not perceivable for the characters. Homer’s diagnosis of cartoons as serving to humor the basest instincts (“Oh Marge, cartoons don’t have any deep meaning. They’re just stupid drawings that give you a cheap laugh.” [The Simpsons, Season 3, Episode 2, “Mr. Lisa goes to Washington”]) becomes evident in the viewer’s eye, when being presented Homer’s lower back. The allusion though develops within the extra-

 8

For the repeated self-reference in The Simpsons as a Fox TV show see: Jonathan Gray, Watching with The Simpsons. Television, parody, and intertextuality (New York/London: Routledge 2006).

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literary reception and remains hidden from the characters as they do not see this from the camera’s perspective. While The Simpsons adapt the style of the series 24 for an entire episode – an allusion that cannot be noticed by the series’ characters9 – the selfreflexive elements with Family Guy are completely overt. When Stewie threatens the ad banner at the bottom of the screen, he crosses the very same metaleptic10 verge that remains untouched with The Simpsons most of the time. Less subtle, but alike in principle, are other scenes with figures from The Simpsons lecturing about the mechanics of cartoons. The very moment Lisa and Bart discuss TV logic (“Oh Bart, cartoons don’t have to be one hundred percent realistic.” [The Simpsons, Season 5, Episode 8, “Boy-Scoutz N the Hood”]), Homer walks by the window although already sitting on the couch. With nobody except the viewer noticing, Homer’s reduplication of the scene fits the abovementioned principle. And so does the scene when Homer comforts Lisa about her bodily shapes by explaining how to draw a Simpsons cartoon. With Family Guy, those allusions work differently. Normally the series addresses its own materiality within the frame of the characters’ conscience, i.e. their scope of mind is oriented in disregard of the viewer, whereas The Simpsons employ a more conventional, mostly non-metaleptical form of selfreference beyond its characters’ insight. When Brian is provisionally substituted by another actor who doesn’t know his lines, Stewie cuts the scene angrily, illustrating the exact difference between the two series. The ensemble of Family Guy considers itself as such, and their self-reflexive allusions aim at breaking the illusion as well as the immersive effect.

9

10

For the “form of quotationalism employed by The Simpsons” see Carl Matheson, ‘The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 108-125 (p. 110). In respect to cinematic devices Keyvan Sarkhosh differentiates between ‘narrative metalepsis’ and ‘fictional metalepsis’, the former showing the characters’ contact with narrative devices and the latter describing “transgressions between embedded fictional worlds” (Keyvan Sarkhosh, ‘Metalepsis in Popular Comedy Film’, in Metalepsis in Popular Culture, ed. by Karin Kukkonen and Sonja Klimek (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2011), pp. 171-195 (p. 192)). Revealing that a fictional world from 1999 is the invention of a character from a TV series in 1986 at first sight seems to count for a ‘fictional metalepsis’. One may nevertheless take in consideration that this form is transgressed itself by not crossing between two embedded worlds but embedding these formerly unconnected diegeses in the first place.

164 Stefan Tetzlaff Addressing the viewer to interrupt the episode for a music clip is a fancied running gag with the Griffins – mostly when facing an irresolvable kernel in the storyline, which is overcome after the music without further notice. While The Simpsons also addresses its viewers, the gesture revealingly goes along with its own metonymicalization: When at first it seems as if the barkeeper Moe points at the series’ TV audience, the next moment a pan shot displays the scene within diegetic coherence. The camera angle simply was identical with the view of regular guest, Barney Gumble, and what could first be taken for a metaleptic shift is immediately grounded as a visual trick. Nevertheless, The Simpsons, long before Family Guy, started to employ narrative devices that address the viewer and present the series as a designed performance. These devices, however, go along with such evasive structures as the one of installing ‘Halloween Specials’. When Lisa in “Skinner’s Sense of Snow” (The Simpsons, Season 12, Episode 8) appears as a reindeer, wishing “Merry Christmas from the Simpsons”, this metalepsis deliberately is placed midway through the credits and from the side of the screen as if leaning into the diegesis once more. Equally exclusive comes an episode anchored by the minor character of Troy McLure, who presents alleged fan mails, alternative scenes, and flashbacks to the authentic prototype of The Simpsons, as short clips for the Tracy Ullman Show. As this meta-perspective does not fit the regular concept, the episode in question is made a ‘Simpsons Special’. The handful of episodes that relate to the Simpsons as actors of the series The Simpsons are enclosed figments, and there is no case in which a running narrative is interrupted by this vector.11 The same difference appears with citations from other medial forms. Visiting Congress in “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington” (The Simpsons, Season 3, Episode 2), Lisa sees her idealistic view on politicians corrected; it is in a sad daydream that the representatives turn to caricatures in the well-known style of the Washington Post’s political cartoons. This perspective also appears in Family Guy, but with a substantial difference – Stewie and Brian actually travel to the universe of the Washington Post cartoons. In “Road to the Multiverse” (Family Guy, Season 8, Episode 1), which comments on the US-series Sliders, the baby and the dog pass through numerous parallel universes, using a dimensional controlling device. The eminent changes in texture are well reflected upon by the travelers, who

11

When Brian and Stewie, on the other hand, answer fictitious fan mail in “Family Guy Viewer Mail #2” (Season 10, Episode 22), this is more of an exception, because usually Family Guy employs a contrary strategy by presenting itself as staged, to wit repeatedly within the course of action, not uncommonly at kernel moments.

Narrative Devices in Contemporary Animated Series 165

excitedly comment about the ‘Disney-‘ and the ‘Flintstones-universe’, the ‘badly drawn universe’, the ‘real life’, and the ‘3D-universe’. And that’s where the difference lies: The Simpsons also portrays such encounters – but framed within ‘Halloween-Specials’ or the protagonists’ imaginations. Thus Homer also travels through a Tron-like 3D-space, and another time extinguishes the dinosaurs by travelling through time with a modified toaster. He thereby changes the timeline for the present, and the Simpsons’ house turns into the exact Flintstones-style, as is seen in Family Guy, but with the difference of being evacuated to a ‘Halloween Special’. And when Homer’s father falls in love with Marge’s mother, Homer imagines what his kids would look like if he and Marge were siblings. Homer sees blonde hair, no overbite and five fingers on each hand – a horrific sight. But similar to addressing the viewer and travelling to parallel universes, the grotesque is evacuated; this time into the figure’s imagination. In conclusion, the structural devices of Family Guy and The Simpsons can be depicted in their crucial differences as follows: The Simpsons Unrealistic propositions remain at the micro-level. Nuclei: realistic, catalysts: grotesque Tendencies of metonymicalization Ø Ø Citation

Family Guy Unrealistic propositions often bear the action and are part of the higher macro-levels. Nuclei: grotesque/fantastic, catalysts: realistic Ø (occasional parodistic approaches to metonymicalization) Duplicative medialization Paradox hybridization ‘Metaleptic’ citation (transcending the figure’s scope of mind)

166 Stefan Tetzlaff

Bibliography Arnold, David L.G., ‘“And the Rest Writes Itself”: Roland Barthes Watches The Simpsons’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer,ed. By William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 252-268. Barthes, Roland, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, in New Literary History, 6.2 (1975), 237-272. Feyersinger, Erwin, ‘Metaleptic TV Crossovers’, in Metalepsis in Popular Culture, ed. by Karin Kukkonen and Sonja Klimek (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2011), pp. 127-157. Gray, Jonathan, Watching with The Simpsons. Television, parody, and intertextuality (New York/London: Routledge 2006). Halwani, Raja, ‘Homer and Aristotle’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 7-23. Irwin, William, ‘What is an Allusion?’,The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59.3 (2001), 287-297. Irwin, William and J.R. Lombardo, ‘The Simpsons and Allusion: “Worst Essay Ever.”’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 81-92. Jakobson, Roman, ‘Two Aspects of Language and two Types of Aphasic Disturbances’, in On Language (Cambridge et al.: Harvard University Press, 1990). pp. 115-133. Matheson, Carl, ‘The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life’, in The Simpsons and Philosophy. The D’oh! Of Homer, ed. by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), pp. 108-125. Sarkhosh, Keyvan, ‘Metalepsis in Popular Comedy Film’, in Metalepsis in Popular Culture, ed. by Karin Kukkonen and Sonja Klimek (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2011), pp. 171-195. van Dijk, Teun A., Macrostructures. An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1980). van Dijk, Teun A., Tekstwetenschap. Een interdisciplinaire inleiding (Utrecht/Antwerpen: Het Spectrum, 1978).



Paul Ferstl Wrestling with Narratives: Reflections on the Montréal Screwjob The so-called Montréal Screwjob (November 9, 1997) is attributed with an unparalleled effect on the development of professional wrestling. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze this effect in the context of structuralist narratology, interpreting the Screwjob as a metalepsis in order to explain its impact on the subsequent construction and reception of wrestling events.

The arguably most notorious moment in professional wrestling, at least of the 1990s, is the so-called Montréal Screwjob. It took place on November 9, 1997 at the Molson Centre in Montréal, in the context of a major event of the then World Wrestling Federation: the Survivor Series. 20,000 people attended the live show, along with an international TV audience. The Screwjob is attributed with an unparalleled effect on the development of wrestling. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the process in order to answer the following questions: Why did this incident become so famous? In which ways did it differ from traditional forms of storytelling in wrestling, and what was its impact on the subsequent construction and reception of wrestling events? To this end, it will first be required to give a brief introduction to the history and workings of professional wrestling and the relevant cultural and economic factors that defined wrestling in the 90s.

Wrestling Wrestling has a bad reputation which according to Dalbir S. Sehmby is mainly based on five factors: “its status as low art, its historical development, its liminal existence, its spectacle of excess, and its form of hybrid media.”1 The origins of wrestling are found in popular entertainment, >...@ stemming from traveling carnivals and vaudeville-type shows. In terms of both its audience and its performers, such traveling shows occupy the lowest rung on the artistic scale. Performers begin their training through traveling venues, graduating to more respected and static stages, such as Broadway, where the audience comes to see them. Professional wrestling is linked to folk traveling shows via the nomadic nature of the business; that is, entertainers try to gather audience from town to town. What remains from its folk roots is the

 1

Dalbir S. Sehmby, ‘Wrestling and Popular Culture’, in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 4.1 (2002), http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol4/iss1/5, p.2 of 12 pages.

168 Paul Ferstl huckster element: traveling shows are associated with a form of advertising that brands both the entertainer and the spectator with negative connotations.2

Nevertheless, it soon achieved some success in the 20th century. According to David Hofstede, the first time wrestling was aired on U.S. television was on 30 July 1948; between 1949 and 1951 ABC, CBS and NBC launched their own wrestling programs: “the first channel surfer could find wrestling shows six nights a week“.3 The 1950s and 1960s are generally considered the first “golden age of wrestling” -– the international breakthrough of American wrestling took place in the 1980s. Regionally based wrestling promotions, which served the market in the U.S. were supplanted by the rise of cable television and the aggressive competitive strategies of the World Wrestling Federation under its owner Vince McMahon. The WWF and its flagship Hulk Hogan achieved notable international success, with major events that brought thousands of people into the stadiums and attracted millions of television viewers worldwide. Even today, the marketing of the television wrestling shows reminds one of the carnivalesque origin of the genre. Both the performers and their audience are still closely associated with low social status.4 Wrestlers are still working without health insurance and retirement plans, unions are almost unheard of. Only a few wrestlers – even the superstars of the field – are able to cross over into other entertainment sectors – the most successful recent example is former wrestler Dwayne Johnson, who rose to superstardom in the late 90s under the name “The Rock”and became a successful actor afterwards. Wrestling is live entertainment and located in no man’s land between acrobatics, martial arts and theatre. A strong association to the circus still remains. Sharon Mazer defines wrestling as follows: [...] professional wrestling is a sport that is not, in the literal sense of the word, sporting; a theatrical entertainment that is not theatre. Its display of violence is less a contest than a ritualized encounter between opponents, replayed repeatedly over time for an exceptionally engaged audience. The colorful characters presented and the stories told both in the wrestling ring and in the television programming that contextualizes matches are simultaneously archetypal and topical, open to straightforward readings but in that openness resistant to simple readings of dominant cultural values. Although it is most often compared by scholars to the medieval moral play, or psychomachia, as in Middle English 2 3 4

Ibid., p. 3. David Hofstede, Slammin’: Wrestling’s Greatest Heroes and Villains (Toronto: ECW Press, 1999), p. 9. Cf. Sehmby, p. 3.

Wrestling with Narratives 169 drama professional wrestling’s presentations of virtue and vice are more ambiguous than might be apparent at first glance, the event more carnival than Mass. Rather than simply reflecting and reinforcing moral clichés, professional wrestling puts contradictory ideas into play, as with its audience it replays, reconfigures, and celebrates a range of performative possibilities.5

In his essay Le monde où l’on catche, Roland Barthes connects wrestling – with its large, exaggerated gestures – with ancient Greek theatre. Simultaneously, wrestling copies and parodies another sacred ritual of Western culture – the competition between athletes. Wrestling offers sporting competition and catharsis at the same time.6 Barthes explicates: But what wrestling is above all meant to portray is a purely moral concept: that of justice. The idea of ‘paying’ is essential to wrestling, and the crowd’s ‘Give it to him’ means above all else ‘Make him pay’. This is therefore, needless to say, an immanent justice. The baser the action of the ‘bastard’, the more delighted the public is by the blow which he justly receives in return.7

It is an idea of justice that might seem ironic considering the predetermined outcome of the competition. But in fact, wrestling is about the pure surface. The spectator willingly waives the skepticism that inevitably imposes itself in the face of extremely impressive athletic feats – and cedes to the“male soap opera,” as wrestling is frequently described. It is exactly this willingness to become engaged in something unbelievable that is a pleasure in itself: “The pleasure comes in seeing what cannot be believed, yet is constantly asserted to us as undeniably true.”8 The fictional nature of the events hides in the background; still, it is clear that wrestling is for the most part determined by tensions between reality and fiction. In contrast to narratives that are clearly marked as fictional, the wrestling audience is exposed to a multitude of signs that claim mediation of “reality”: Like sports viewers, wrestling spectators watch action unfold live, where mistakes and other markers of live television reveal themselves. At the same time, they follow a scripted fictional narrative with known conventions. Thus, the wrestling spectator occupies a marginal space, between non-fiction and fic5 6 7 8

Sharon Mazer, Professional Wrestling. Sport and Spectacle (Jackson: University Press, 1998), p. 3. Cf. Sehmby, p. 5. Roland Barthes, ‘The world of Wrestling’, in Mythologies, selected and translated from the French by Annette Lavers (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), pp. 13-23, here p. 19. Henry Jenkins, ‘Never trust a Snake!: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama’, in Out of Bounds. Sports, Media, and the Politics of Identity, ed. by Aaron Bakerand Todd Boyd (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1997), p. 48-80, here p. 65.

170 Paul Ferstl tional modes of watching, for wrestling itself occupies a marginal space, between non-fiction and fictional modes of telling. Such marginality places wrestling as metadrama.9

The play within a play, self-reflective references and intertextual allusions are standard fare in wrestling. Additionally, the distinction of (especially hypo-) diegetic levels is blurred – in the course of the performance, the distinction is drawn by the audience: “In wrestling, when a form of play within a play occurs, it is most commonly not revealed until later in metadrama as the narrative (as a surprising twist) or if it is revealed as a premise, then it is a play within a play-through parody.”10 The fusion of narrative levels, the constant recourse to deception and bluffing is part of the form’s concept: the end of each wrestling match is called a “work”, a deception, and to mislead the audience is the central goal. It is not merely about suspension of disbelief: “rather, the ultimately successful ‘work’ makes the viewer actually believe or doubt what is real and what is not real.”11 This concerns the creation of the impression that a wrestler has actually been injured, an easy task as serious injuries during matches are quite possible and occur regularly, but that is not the only method to nourish the spectator’s doubt. The absolute respect for the unity of the storylines, the insistence on the“authenticity” of wrestling stories in regard to the outside world – a concept called “kayfabe” in the wrestling subculture – lasted until the early 90s. Kayfabe enmities were maintained in public, even when the wrestlers involved were friends in private. In 1987, a minor scandal occurred when Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Iron Sheik were stopped in a car by the police while ‘under the influence’. From the perspective of the wrestling community, the problem was not the consumption of drugs, but the fact that the two alleged enemies had taken them together and were obviously on amicable terms. In 1997, Henry Jenkins wrote: “The fiction is (upheld) that all of this fighting is authentic, spontaneous, unscripted. WWF narrative preserves that illusion at all costs. There is no stepping outside the fiction, no acknowledgment of the production process or the act of authorship.”12 But the times were already changing. The counterpart to a “work” or the “kayfabe” principle is called a “shoot” – an act or statement that is not fixed in advance, that lets the person behind the wrestling persona emerge, and which uncovers the fictionality of wrestling narratives. Metalepses that reveal the extradiegesis behind

 9 10 11 12

Sehmby, p. 7 Ibid. Ibid.  Jenkins, p. 64.

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the ongoing narrative occur both intentionally and unintentionally – an unlikely camera angle alone is enough to show that the live broadcast of a surprising turn of events is in fact a mere planned act.13 The possibility of a malfunction in the narrative act adds an additional challenge for the spectator: Theoretically, since any match can be a “work” or a “shoot,” a choreographed bout may through accident or through an actual conflict between the performers, turn into a “shoot.” Thus, within the fictional domain, the play within a play exists either as a climactic narrative twist or as a premise for parody. Slipping out of the fictional domain, a match may have moments of accidental or deliberate violence. Whatever the case, wrestling constructs a spectator position of marginality, along an axis of unknowing. Opposed to the traditional spectator position of privileged knowing, the wrestling spectator takes on a discomforting role, teetering along the margins of fictional knowing and nonfictional uncertainty.14

This uncertainty constitutes the big attraction of wrestling: the position of a wrestling fan is an invitation to constant speculation, a wavering between belief and disbelief, being torn between reality and fiction. In the words of Sharon Mazer: Professional wrestling fans are always in a process of becoming insiders. They are self-conscious about coming to see what they see and to know what they know, which is always more than they saw or knew in the past. They don’t so much suspend disbelief as they sustain it while looking for moments in which to believe.15

The 1990s16 In the early 1990s, the competitive situation on the American wrestling market intensified. The weakened NWA was bought by media entrepreneur Ted Turner and renamed WCW – World Championship Wrestling. Financial investments and prime time TV were used to put pressure on the market leader, the World Wrestling Federation. Under the new head of WCW, Eric Bischoff, the following measures were implemented: stars of the 80s were bought to tap into the nostalgia felt by the now grown-up fans of the 1980s. Young  13 14 15 16

Cf. Mick Foley, Foley is Good. And the Real World is Faker than Wrestling (New York: Harper, 2007), p. 84. Sehmby, p. 7. Mazer, p. 6. For a detailed wrestling history of the 1990s (especially regarding the WCW), cf. R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, The Death of WCW (Toronto: ECW Press, 2004).

172 Paul Ferstl talents were poached with lucrative contracts from the free market or the WWF. Cooperations with exotic (at least from the U.S. point of view) wrestling promotions in Mexico and Japan were established. Two hours of prime time on Monday night on TNT allowed the WCW show Nitro to contend directly with Monday Night Raw, the show of the WWF. The resulting “Monday Night Wars” (in order to be ahead in the Nielsen TV ratings) led to extreme efforts on both sides, resulting in a heyday of wrestling. On 27 May 1996 WCW succeeded in a highly respected coup as former WWF stars Scott Hall and Kevin Nash appeared in Nitro. They gave the impression that they acted as part of the WWF and had come to annihilate the opponent company and its wrestlers – and the storyline’s potential was magnified when the eternal hero Hulk Hogan changed sides, turned “heel” (villain) and proclaimed the New World Order of Wrestling, an organization with the hostile takeover of WCW in mind.17 New features such as avant-garde-looking video clips (which were allegedly fed illegally into the program of the WCW by the New World Order) resulted in a breakthrough success – based on the previously outlined precarious observation situation of wrestling fans between belief and disbelief. The WWF was financially pressurized: in comparison, their program was old-fashioned and predictable. Attempts to rely on the increasingly popular concept of the anti-hero and a more aggressive sexualization only slowly took effect. The situation got worse when Bret Hitman Hart’s contract was due to expire in 1996. At that time, the Canadian Hart was probably the biggest star of the WWF with many fans in North America and especially in Europe, a second generation wrestler with a great reputation in- and outside the business. Despite lucrative offers from the competition, the WWF convinced Hart to stay – for less money than the competition had offered, but with an unheard-of 20-year contract. Yet it came to a break in 1997, when the owner of the WWF, Vince McMahon, stated that he could not pay because of financial difficulties and invited his employee to enter into fresh negotiations with WCW. Hart himself was not happy with the new direction of the WWF. He had grown up in a conservative wrestling tradition and concerned because of the program change – the WWF was certainly no longer aiming to be “family-friendly”. Hart was also unhappy with the situation of his persona: for many years, the “Hitman” had been a hero, praised for his endurance, technical skill and a never-say-die-attitude. By 1997 he had to change into a fervent Canadian nationalist, following McMahon’s instructions. The

 17

Chris Jericho claims in his autobiography that the Japanese wrestling company WAR had already used a similar storyline in the early 90s with the so-called Fuyuki-Gun. Chris Jericho, A Lion’s Tale. Around the World in Spandex, with Peter Thomas Fornatale (London: Orion House, 2008), pp. 262-263.

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“Hitman” criticized the USA and gradually turned into an object of hate. After long hesitation Hart signed with WCW.

Screwjob: Construction and Events18 At the time of Hart’s upcoming move to WCW he was WWF World Heavyweight Champion, WWF’s most prestigious title. McMahon was worried that Hart would appear on WCW as the WWF champion (which would have meant a tremendous loss of reputation) so he asked Hart (as it was his right as the owner of the wrestling promotion) to lose the title to his competitor Shawn Michaels at the next major WWF event in Montréal. Hart refused, citing a clause in his contract that gave him creative control of the last 30 days of his employment. A Canadian hero, Hart, who identified to a high degree with his wrestling persona,19 did not want to lose before a Canadian audience. Furthermore, a strong mutual aversion between him and Shawn Michaels, a representative of the new wrestling generation, had turned into a very real hostility. McMahon agreed with Hart on a finish which should lead to disqualification without a title loss: Michaels would force Hart into the latter’s own finishing move, the submission hold known as “Sharpshooter” – Hart would reverse the hold, then other wrestlers would storm the ring, melee would follow, resulting in disqualification. Instead, McMahon had the bell rung while Hart was still in the Sharpshooter, thus implying the Hitman had submitted. Without his knowledge, a reigning

 18

19

For accounts of the Screwjob, its build-up and its aftermath cf. Shawn Michaels and Aaron Feigenbaum, Heartbreak & Triumph. The Shawn Michaels Story, (New York: Pocket books, 2005), pp. 263-280. Bret Hart, Hitman (London: Ebury Press, 2009), pp. 390-462; Dave Melzer ,Wrestling Observer Newsletter, November 17 1997; The Death of WCW, pp. 106-116; Wrestling with Shadows, Dir. Paul Jay, with Bret Hart. Ottawa: The National Film Board of Canada and High Road Productions, Inc., 1998. Bret Hart contributed regularly to the newspaper Calgary Sun. In his first column (15.11.1997) after the Screwjob, he wrote: “My career ended with my evil boss, that no-good Shawn Michaels and a cowardly referee, in the saddest way I ever imagined. They killed me. Oh sure, Bret Hart is okay. I always will be. But the Hitman, well, they murdered him, right there in front of the world. I spit in McMahon’s face and dealt with him accordingly in the dressing room, but it still hurts a lot. I never thought they’d do such a horrible thing to the hardest working, most dependable, honest and loyal hero the WWF ever had. The WWF can go to hell, they’re going there anyway. And as for me, I’ll come back to life soon enough in the WCW, where I vow only to do my best, keep my promises and smile – as Canada slowly turns the WWF off. We’ll see who kills who.” (http://www.brethart.com/bio/columns/firstcolumn-after-infamous-Montréal-screw-job)

174 Paul Ferstl champion had been dethroned in front of his home audience. Or in Bret Hart’s words: he had been screwed.20

Screwjob: Aftermath How may an event like a wrestling match be perceived? What are the sources one can rely on to state “what happened”? On a first level, the live audience must be considered – to them it was immediately evident that something out of the ordinary had happened. The television broadcast offered a manipulated view: it featured a live commentary of the events that sought to interpret the incident as a regular wrestling event – additionally, the television coverage ended abruptly and four minutes earlier than scheduled. The television audience – as opposed to the Molson Centre – did not witness that Bret Hart stayed for several minutes at ringside, destroying technical equipment and signaling the letters W-C-W to the fans. Rumors circulated on the Internet on the same day, supplied with additional material by insiders. Over the years, documentaries were created, and in various autobiographies – for example by Hart and Michaels – the events were unfolded and fictionalized again, with different interpretations.21 Several versions exist: especially the question of who was actually involved is controversial, and different people lay claim to the idea for the Screwjob itself or for the means of its execution. Both WCW and WWF had to react – WCW condemned McMahon’s actions and celebrated Bret Hart’s imminent arrival. McMahon had to prevent a revolt among his wrestlers and reconcile the fans with the situation. Apart from moral judgments and private individual fates – undoubtedly, Bret Hart had been deeply offended as a person and as a professional, who had been working for years for his employer, showing impeccable work ethic and missing only two shows in his entire career; who in great loyalty had turned down lucrative offers and had been forced to leave – the effects of the Screwjob on wrestling itself are particularly interesting. The position of the WWF – never to admit the fictional character of their matches – needed to be changed. In general, more light was thrown on wrestling as an artifact, especially in the context of parodies. But it was mainly the WCW that declared the fraction of the narrative by metalepsis as the new main principle of storytelling. The WWF, however, designed a new “fiction”, 20 21

Wrestling with Shadows. Dir. Paul Jay, with Bret Hart. Ottawa: The National Film Board of Canada and High Road Productions Inc., 1998, 1:23-1:24. The latest being the DVD set WWE: Greatest Rivalries – Shawn Michaels vs Bret Hart (WWE Home Video, 2011).

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which was directly derived from reality: Vince McMahon, who had hitherto kept a rather low profile as the owner and creative director of the company, was turned into a wrestling persona – “the evil boss Mr. McMahon”, a perfect antagonist for the newly created rebellious anti-heroes of the WWF. McMahon had betrayed both the tradition of the business as well as a superstar from a highly regarded wrestling family – instead of dwelling on excuses, he repeated his actions again and again, now tailored specifically to the reaction of the public. This assured the hatred of the wrestling community and could be converted directly into sales, for as the wrestler Shawn Michaels (referring to advice by Tully Blanchard) noted, “the key to making it in this business is simple: you make them yell the loudest for the longest.”22 The reasons for this reaction are ultimately irrelevant – it is only the effect that counts. As part of the storylines surrounding Mr. McMahon, Screwjob scenarios were regularly used as a back link. In the meantime, the WCW frustrated fans by inexplicable twists and turns, sudden championship title changes, and the use of actors in wrestling matches who were not even half as heavy as their opponents. It generated the general impression that even the company itself did not take their own stories seriously -– one might say that postmodernism had erupted in WCW. The former head-to-head race ended with the WWF listed on the stock exchange and McMahon a billionaire; and the WCW was sold to the WWF in 2001 for a rather small sum of money. Wrestling may be understood as a fictional text that aims to disguise its fictionality. Yet, the tension between reality and fiction is of great importance: for fans, dealing with their skepticism is a special incentive to show interest in wrestling. But the Screwjob was quite a special case: when illusion collapsed, the fictionality of the events became clear, and the fight, the rivalry, the struggle for power and the championship was revealed as what it was – not “fake”, “scripted” and fictional, but a reality surpassing the fiction by far. Metalepsis occurs regularly in wrestling – however, a metalepsis that emits very strong signals of fictionality has to be reintegrated as soon as possible by selection and combination and fed back into the intradiegesis. Otherwise the illusion is permanently shattered, and the pleasure of watching wrestling is decreased. Thus, the Screwjob is to be regarded as a stroke of luck that has been interpreted in different ways: while WCW was trying to repeat it, the WWF integrated its effects. The following performance figures suggest that in wrestling, disillusionment – as pure navel gazing – is rejected by the fans. It is no secret anymore that wrestling results are predetermined; 22

Michaels, Heartbreak and Triumph, p. 5.

176 Paul Ferstl the constant reference to this fact is not likely to captivate anyone. The Screwjob brought success, not as a strategy, but as a catalyst. Possibly, the relationship between reality and fiction in wrestling is best illustrated by Wolfgang Iser’s triad of “the real, the fictive and the imaginary”.23 In the present context, the “real” would be understood as the world beyond the match situation as such that lies ahead a given performance and forms its fields of reference. The “fictive” would be understood as an intentional act, as the sum of references to the “real” and their use in the performance. The imaginary is to some extent the image that the viewer constructs from the effects of the fictive in wrestling – images and ideas, which by tradition and re-use are integrated into the world of the “real” and form a new basis for acts of fictionalizing, a continuous narrative, a short circuit with reality. In the situation of the wrestling spectator, between belief and disbelief, the Screwjob and its recognition reveal themselves as some sort of double bluff: the match situation, which as a “work” has to affirm the faith, is broken by a “shoot” and leads to disbelief – but both “work” and “shoot” are invalidated by the power of the narrative effects. As a metalepsis, the “shoot” furthers the collapse of the illusion and thus disbelief, but it only leads to the realization that this revelation of the inner workings of wrestling transcends its fiction and thus strengthens the narrative. In the Screwjob there was a real betrayal, raw emotion and the ruthlessness that comes along with millions of dollars. It is no wonder that many of the television viewers had watched the end of the show with satisfaction – it had the flair of a grand staging with exemplary intensity. How were they supposed to know that it was real? When the already fuzzy boundaries between “real” and “fake” in wrestling are increasingly blurred, when narrative traditions have an influence on the lives of the performers themselves, when the ever anew narratively evoked imaginary feeds into a cycle with reality to create new fiction – then an ideal point has been reached, for the wrestling fan swaying with pleasure between belief and disbelief. It was a fallacy to perceive the Screwjob as a mere metalepsis, and to accept it as a model for storytelling. Deception as a lifestyle is not supposed to be openly preached – for then, the faithful will stay away.

23

Cf. Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993).

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Bibliography Barthes, Roland, ‘The world of Wrestling’, in Mythologies, selected and translated from the French by Annette Lavers (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), pp. 13-23. Foley, Mick, Foley is Good. And the Real World is Faker than Wrestling (New York: Harper, 2007). Hart, Bret, Column 15.11.1997, in Calgary Sun. (http://www.brethart.com/ bio/columns/first-column-after-infamous-Montréal-screw-job) Hart, Bret, Hitman (London: Ebury Press, 2009). Hofstede, David, Slammin’: Wrestling’s Greatest Heroes and Villains (Toronto: ECW Press, 1999),. Iser, Wolfgang, The Fictive and the Imaginary. Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993). Jenkins, Henry, ‘Never trust a Snake!: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama’, in Out of Bounds. Sports, Media, and the Politics of Identity, ed. by Aaron Bakerand Todd Boyd (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1997), p. 48-80. Jericho, Chris, A Lion’s Tale. Around the World in Spandex, with Peter Thomas Fornatale (London: Orion House, 2008) Mazer, Sharon, Professional Wrestling.Sport and Spectacle (Jackson: University Press, 1998). Michaels, Shawn and Aaron Feigenbaum, Heartbreak & Triumph. The Shawn Michaels Story, (New York: Pocket books, 2005). Reynolds, R.D. and Bryan Alvarez, The Death of WCW (Toronto. ECW Press, 2004). Sehmby, Dalbir S., ‘Wrestling and Popular Culture’, in CLCWeb:Comparative Literature and Culture, 4.1 (2002), http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/ vol4/iss1/5. Wrestling with Shadows, Dir. Paul Jay, with Bret Hart. Ottawa: The National Film Board of Canada and High Road Productions, Inc., 1998.

Esteban Sanchino Martinez The Logic of Metallica out of the Spirit of the Drastic: Reflections on Serious Writing in Popular Culture A distinction between high and popular culture must be regarded these days as a distinction which is not readily justified from a perspective of cultural poetics. The music and lyrics of the most successful heavy metal band in the world, Metallica, prove it. This kind of popular music expresses the aesthetics of the drastic, which is not only contradictory to modern aesthetic formalism, but also appears as a counter-concept to the pop cultural category of camp. For the development of post-modern pop culture this aesthetics is of enormous importance because it also appears to be a mainstay and an immanent critique of pop culture. One does not write with his neuroses. So the writer is not a sick person, but a doctor, doctor of oneself and the world Gilles Deleuze Writing is therapy for me James Hetfield

The current discourse, which has as research topic the interrelations between a supposedly clear defined high culture and an often undervalued popular culture proceeds in an utterly heterogeneous way. A first reading of the relevant contributions to this issue makes obvious that contemporary approaches at defining a theory of western popular culture are formulated from very different perspectives. In his book Cultural Theory and Popular Culture John Storey has mapped the most significant definitions of what popular culture means and differentiates at least six positions: Popular culture is seen 1) as the culture of the outnumbering demographic groups, 2) as the “Other” of the high culture, 3) as mass culture, 4) as folk culture, 5) as a terrain of exchange, negotiation and battle between high- and mass culture and finally 6) as the dissolution of the borders between commerce and culture.1 It is easy to perceive that the notion of popular culture shows the character of what Michel Foucault calls a discursive formation. The term ‘popular culture’ not only refers to a complex range of objects, but also to the relations among the institutional players and to the selected phenomenon. In other words: popular culture is a hard-fought notion which is eminently

1

John Storey, Inventing Popular Culture. From Folklore to Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 5-15.

180 Esteban Sanchino Martinez linked with processes of legitimization and distinction.2 From a philological view it is striking that here, the idiosyncratic aspects of the products of popular culture (songs, movies, books) are at no time conceived in poetological categories. For that reason Hans Otto Hügel has developed a theory based on a hermeneutic perspective and the aesthetics of perception in his works Lob des Mainstreams (“Praise of the Mainstream”) and Handbuch Populäre Kultur (“Handbook of Popular Culture”). Hügel argues that it would be productive to define popular culture as the culture of entertainment (“Unterhaltung”), while high culture would mean a culture of art and seriousness. He states that entertainment – as an oscillating process of reception between seriousness and flippancy – is the hallmark of popular culture and is thus to be distinguished from the serious process of reception and high art: Art is admittedly not always fixed on the contemplative, but across all fields the idea is still prominent that it is in opposition to adaptation and conformity. That there is something that seeks to formulate the new, tests limits, shakes and disturbs our certainties, that does not have a right to exist in public speech, in fulfilling audience expectations and therefore demands our undivided attention. In a word that art is something else and provides something other than entertainment or popular mainstream. The hypothesis that high culture and popular culture mingle together is true only insofar as it aims at the social and habitual framework under which we pursue pleasures in high culture and pop culture. The mixing hypothesis, however, cannot relate neither to their aesthetic function nor to their modes of reception.3

Linking popular culture with entertainment does not seem wrong, however it suppresses the fact that there is a number of products that are part of popular culture and that also have the aesthetic function of art, as Hügel 2

3

I use the term‘distinction’ in accordance with Pierre Bourdieus sociological theory developed in Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Paul Patton. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). „Kunst ist zwar nicht immer aufs Kontemplative festgelegt, aber immer noch hält sich, und zwar quer durch alle Sparten und Szenen, die Idee, daß es ein Gegenteil zur Anpassung und Konformität gibt. Daß es etwas gibt, das Neues zu formulieren sucht, Grenzen austestet, unsere Sicherheiten erschüttert und stört, seine Daseinsberechtigung nicht in Publikumssprache, im Erfüllen von Publikumserwartungen sieht und daher unsere ungeteilte Aufmerksamkeit verlangt. Mit einem Wort, daß Kunst etwas anderes ist und etwas anderes gibt als Unterhaltung bzw. populärer Mainstream. Die These, daß Hochkultur und Populäre Kultur, Kunst und Unterhaltung sich durchmischen, stimmt also nur insoweit, als sie auf den sozialen und habituellen Rahmen zielt, unter dem wir hochkulturellen und popkulturellen Vergnügungen nachgehen. Die Vermischungsthese läßt sich aber weder auf deren ästhetische Funktion noch auf deren Rezeptionsweisen beziehen.“ Handbuch Populäre Kultur, ed. by Hans-Otto Hügel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003), p. 13. English by E.S.M. (my emphasis).

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defines it. Moreover, the thesis of different aesthetic functions and associated modes of reception is anything but unproblematic. By far, the mode of reception of a cultural product is regulated not only by its aesthetic function nor its analyzable structure, but above all by the historical handling developed along with a specific cultural product. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu brings this fact to the point, when he makes it clear that it is at first glance an established “aesthetic view” which de-historicizes the (canonical) works of art and thus simultaneously mystifies them.4 Bourdieu reminds us that each product of culture, whether belonging in general to high culture or to entertainment pop culture, is a result of field-specific struggle of definition, and his valuation rises not only from the purely formal and substantive criteria of the particular work of art. Players who – as a consequence of their economic and social circumstances – do not find their way into the privileged position of a legitimate “pure” aesthetic mode of reception are not familiar with the many implications which are indispensable for the seriousness of established works of art, like for example James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, Paul Celan’s poetry or Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. For those players art will in fact not take place as a serious communicative process in the sense of Hügel. In Hügels definition a certain cultural elitism still resounds which identifies high culture with the concept of education and popular culture with entertainment. However, I cannot follow this logic because whether a cultural product will ultimately be counted to high culture is first of all always a matter of the historical institutionalization of this specific product.5 First of all, popular culture should be considered as a specific field of cultural production, which stands transversely to other established fields and to certain areas of our differentiated industrial societies (politics, economics, religion, literature, etc.). It absorbs significant elements from other fields and synthesizes them in a unique way.6 On the basis of some preliminary comparative and philological remarks about a paradigmatic Metallica song (Damage, Inc., 1986), I want to plead in favour of a theory of popular culture which includes the aesthetic function of art and its modes of reception as well because one cannot make a clear 4 5

6

Pierre Bourdieu, Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, translated by Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 285-313. A particularly striking example is the transfer of Shakespeare’s works from the field of popular culture into the exclusive high culture during the nineteenth century. See also Storey: Inventing Popular Culture, pp. 32-40. Thus we have, for example, a cult of personality in popular culture that recalls the religious practice of the veneration of saints; we have a wide acceptance of economic processes for capital accumulation; we have politically motivated products; and finally there are works which pursue the classical ideal of detachment and contemplation.

182 Esteban Sanchino Martinez distinction between “high” and “popular” just on basis of textual properties. An unbiased perspective, coming from literary and cultural studies, can significantly help to unmask the classification into “high” and “popular” as an ideological and socio-political motivated struggle for the interpretational sovereignty of what is “good”, meaning valuable, and what represents “worthless” art. The modern difference between these two terms finally comes from an illusion, grounded in the emergence of exclusive, autonomous cultural practices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and, as Bourdieu says, “is ultimately based on the power of the dominant to impose, by their very existence, a definition of excellence which [is] nothing other than their own way of existing.”7 Even if the exclusive access to certain products can no longer have the same hegemonic role as it did 50 years ago, it is especially the specific aesthetic view (that is the serious engagement with a cultural product) which marks the difference between art and entertainment today. This fact should be countered with an attempt at serious reflection on pop cultural phenomena. With more than 100 million copies sold, Metallica is certainly the most successful heavy metal band of all time. In their first identity-establishing period, lasting until 1990, Metallica has produced highly influential music, belonging to a genre which has been most controversially discussed since its beginningsǤ8 Metallica was founded in 1981, and if one wants to understand the existing aesthetic features in this kind of music, one has to take a closer look at the genesis of the genre ‘heavy metal’. Its roots primarily lie in bluesrock, and, to a certain extent, also in classical music. In addition, in some performances there are close links with the adjacent punk genre. Especially speed and thrash metal were directly influenced by punk groupsǤ9 Formative bands such as Black Sabbath (1969), Judas Priest (1969), Iron Maiden (1975) or Motörhead (1975), all of which include significant elements of what defines the core of heavy metal in its sonic, verbal, and visual dimensions have emerged and developed in industrially structured areas of the West. Events such as the failure of the hippie-utopia, the collective experience of a long, brutal – and senseless – war in Vietnam, and the constant threat of nuclear disaster are just a few important sources of inspiration for the lyrical and musical form of this musical genre which was extremely popular in the 1980s. Likewise, the fact that the leading Western countries in the 1980s 7 8 9

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Paul Patton. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984) p. 255. Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal. The Music and Its Culture (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2000) pp.1-4. Metallica, for example, was significantly inspired by the music of the Misfits, as can be seen on the covers of Last Caress, Green Hell or Die, Die My Darling.

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were ruled by conservative governments – which Greil Marcus had called “the fascist bathroom”10 (Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl) – plays a nonnegligible role for the dynamics of artistic expression in heavy metal. “Heavy metal was born amidst the ashes of the failed youth revolution,”11 as Deena Weinstein puts it briefly and succinctly in her standard work on heavy metal. For this reason, it is not surprising that the predominant topic in the lyrics of heavy metal music is the notion of death, followed by the subject of sex which also forms a textual constant in this music genre. In this context, Weinstein speaks of the “chaotic” and “Dionysian” foundation of all heavy metalǤ12 During the 1980s, Metallica aesthetically stands in opposition to equally successful ‘glam’/‘hair’ metal bands like Twisted Sister or Mötley Crüe. Both sub-genres – ‘glam’ and ‘thrash’– belong to heavy metal for reasons of musical structure, but they are nevertheless irreconcilable in their ostentatious aesthetics. The partly kitschy and campy elements of ‘glam’ are firmly rejected by the concept of ‘thrash’ metal, ideally represented by Metallica’s first period: While ‘glam’ is working with makeup, glitter and colorful outfits, toupees, catchy hooks, and lyrics with sexual content, ‘thrash’ wants to represent an “aesthetic of purity”, often expressed and underlined by dark clothing, an uncompromisingly hard and fast, less rhythmic guitar playing, and lyrics which are focused on the different motifs of alienation. Beyond the field of heavy metal, Metallica’s songs undoubtedly stand in a tradition of modernistic storytelling which can be taken as characteristic for a number of U.S.-American writers: the song For Whom the Bell Tolls is a musical adaption of the same-titled novel by Ernest Hemingway; Welcome (Home) Sanitarium is based on Ken Keseys novel and film One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That Thing that should not be and Call of Ktulu are in turn inspired by the reading of H.P. Lovecraft’s fantastic short horror story “Dagon”; and finally One (for this song Metallica won a Grammy Award in 1990) is a musical variation of Donald Trumbo’s story Johnny got his gun. For motivic, metaphoric, and methodic reasons, Damage, Inc., which has been picked out as an example, can be regarded as representative for the first important phase of Metallica’s music. Damage, Inc. is the last song on the album Master of Puppets, released in 1986, which in turn is considered by a multitude of heavy metal fans and magazines as the best heavy metal album

 10 11 12



Greil Marcus, In the Fascist Bathroom.Punk in Pop Music 1977-1992 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). Weinstein, p. 13. Weinstein, p. 35-43.



184 Esteban Sanchino Martinez of all timeǤ13 The overarching theme of this album is unmistakably the manipulation of the human individual through various entities such as Christian faith, war, the exclusion mechanisms of modern health systems, drug abuse or abuse by one’s own pathological psyche. Metallica: “Damage, Inc.” (Master of Puppets 1986) (Hetfield/Ulrich/Hammett/Burton)

Dealing out the agony within Charging hard and no one’s gonna give in Living on your knees, conformity Or dying on your feet for honesty 5

10

15

13

Inbred, our bodies work as one Bloody, but never cry submission Following our instinct, not a trend Go against the grain until the end Blood will follow blood Dying time is here Damage, Incorporated Slamming through, don’t fuck with razorback Stepping out? You’ll feel our hell on your back Blood follows blood and we make sure Life ain’t for you and we're the cure Honesty is my only excuse Try to rob us of it, but it’s no use Steamroller action crushing all Victim is your name and you shall fall

See, for example, the “ALL-TIME 100 Albums” of the TIME magazine, http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1955625,00.html (28.09.2011).

Spirit of the Drastic 185

20

25

Blood will follow blood Dying time is here Damage, Incorporated We chew and spit you out We laugh, you scream and shout All flee, with fear you run You’ll know just where we come from Damage, Incorporated

30

35

Damage jackals ripping right through you Sight and smell of this, it gets me going Know just how to get just what we want Tear it from your soul in nightly hunt Fuck it all and fucking no regrets Never happy endings on these dark sets All’s fair for Damage, Inc. you see Step a little closer, if you please Blood will follow blood Dying time is here Damage, Incorporated

1. Damage, Inc. – Incorporated Damage? OMINOUS I’M IN US Metallica, Some Kind of Monster Apart from the fact that the four stanzas of the song–in contrast to the chorus – are mostly connected with the relatively simple rhyming couplet, a first cursory reading already renders obvious the fragmentary, partly awkward syntax of some lines: “Living on your knees, conformity” (3), “Bloody, but never cry submission” (6), “Slamming through, don’t fuck with razorback” (12), or “Steamroller action crushing all” (19) have, for example, a raw syntactic structure which can hardly be described as poetic. But when we turn our attention to the semantic organization of the text and to its modes of





186 Esteban Sanchino Martinez speech, a certain complexity is readily apparent. What at first sight might appear like an odd fragmented personal testimony of a ruthless murderer, soon becomes deconstructed by means of a close reading. Even the title expresses a semantic tension: “Damage, Inc.” hints, through the graphical representation of the abbreviated “Incorporated”, at a private corporation in which the damage (in the sense of “aggression” or “brutality”) is already symbolically integrated into the company’s name. At the same time, however, the title can also evoke a physiological and psychoanalytic discourse. In this way, “Damage, Inc.” could mean something like an absorbed or incorporated defect in the psychological sense. This polysemy of the title becomes clearly manifest on closer inspection. The first verses, for example: “Dealing out the agony within/Charging hard and no one’s gonna give in” are structured in such a way that they could relate both to a psychological process of decay as well as to unscrupulous profit maximization. Decisive for this overlay of different semantic fields two verbs are (“to deal” and “to charge”), each having sememes of a physiological/psychological and an economic discourse. Quite similar the situation is in line five which states: “Inbred, our bodies work as one.” The terms “inbred” and “bodies” are completely ambiguous in relation to the semantic context, and can be understood in a more economic and psychological sense. In the first case, this statement could come from a group of entrepreneurs who speak of their corrupt or close-knit cooperation between the competent bodies (the committees of their corporations). At the same time, an ego could still be talking to us here. It is an ego that has previously reported of the inner struggle with itself (“Dealing out the agony within”), and now indicates that its mental disorder has existed from the beginning, or is a product of inbreeding. In this way, “our bodies” could refer to the painful experience of a personality disorder. In the course of reading the semantic ambiguity is stabilized mainly by two grammatical choices: Firstly, the ostentatious use of gerunds and secondly, their irritating use of personal pronouns which cause a fragmentation of the otherwise unifying narrative subject. The gerundival constructions, associated with the unconventional use of personal and possessive pronouns, give the text an irreducible equivocality. The reader is confronted with gerunds playing a substantive function; as infinite verb forms they have no tense or person marker so that the text remains in the present tense and has an impersonal structure. In the third and fourth line we can find adjectival possessive pronouns which can be taken as paradigmatic for the entire text, and they perpetuate the multiperspectivity in two ways: Not only do the linguistic peculiarities of English produce a graphical indistinguishability between the second person singular and the plural, but also the syntactic

Spirit of the Drastic 187

relations between the verbs and nouns prevent the fixation of a clear meaning. The reader is permanently thrown back to the different levels of meaning which the narrative subject evokes: a deep psychological conflict and the amoral actions of a company. One could say that we are dealing here with a dramatic monologue, yet without being able to clearly identify the subject of speech. The climax of the text can be found in the chorus line, which assimilates the different interpretative approaches: in its objective, trans-individual sound and in view of the context as a classic Aristotelian axiom “The Blood will follow blood” appears as an immediately obvious certainty. The following line in the chorus – which again represents a substantival gerund – seems like the inevitable deduction from the previous one: if the earlier events are presented in the form of infinitives, then the “here” of the “Dying Time” appears in a certain way omnipresent, as a sort of nunc stans of which Schopenhauer has written that it is the “rigid immobility of what is actually existing, which is at all times one and the same.”14 Finally, in a kind of conclusion the semantic ambiguity of the title comes to the fore again: “Damage Incorporated” –here, significantly, without the common abbreviation. Therefore, it is impossible to definitively determine what is exactly meant in the text. Furthermore, within the frame of the lyrics there is another remarkable line at a central location one can read “Honesty is my only excuse” (17). This first-person singular standing expression seems like a justification for the acts enumerated in the text, and it works like the expression of an inner monologue as the aggressive actions emanate from the first person plural.15 If this disarming apology (the cause is called “Honesty”) is predicated by an ego – although the reported violent actions are usually starting from a plural number –, it provokes the image of a subject ensnared in a dramatic self-talk.16 Moreover, a comparative look at the other songs on Master of Puppets reinforces the reading of the internal problem. Battery, the first song of the album, uses the same methods as Damage Inc.(up to the ambiguity of the title), and the song can be read as a reflection on a crazed person which can no longer keep its murderous aggression under control; in Welcome (Home) Sanitarium, the question of the personal state of mind is the 14 15 16

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, translated by E. F. J. Payne, Vol. 2 (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), p. 481. See: “You’ll feel our hell on your back” (13), “We chew and spit you out / We laugh, you scream and shout” (23-24).  One might recall the famous scene from Martin Scorsese’s film TAXI DRIVER, where Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is looking at himself in a mirror and says: “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

188 Esteban Sanchino Martinez crucial issue; and, finally, the famous theme song Master of Puppets describes a deadly drug addiction in which, interestingly, at times the drug itself ‘occupies’ the narrator’s voice. Thereby, the struggle of an addict with his addiction becomes a particularly dramatic narrative style.Apart from the outlined interpretation above, the song text comprises lines which have a particular “life of their own”, adding an even more fragmentary and montage character to the text. Lines like “Living on your knees, conformity / Or dying on your feet for honesty”, “Go against the grain until the end”, or “Fuck it all and fucking no regrets” function as a direct appeal to the listeners or readers and transcend the proposed levels of textual meaning. It is not surprising that many Metallica fans are able to relate to these lines. Hügel’s criteria for art have been fulfilled, i.e. [t]hat it is an opposite of adaptation and conformity. That there is something that seeks to formulate the new, tests limits, shakes and disturbs our certainties, that does not have its raison d’êtrein public speech, in fulfilling audience expectations, and therefore demands our undivided attention.17

In an emphatic sense, an artistic performance arises at this point due to the combination of an ambitious musical structure and the sophisticated use of linguistic ambiguity, which together constitute a piece of music that, in this exchange of extremely energetic, visceral sound and lyrics about the different types of human alienation, had certainly not been heard before in the history of music. Metallica’s “Living on your knees, conformity/Or dying on your feet for honesty” seems to be a direct response to Hügel’s definition of art as the “opposite of adaptation and conformity”, but no one would argue that Metallica is part of the field of ‘high’ culture. Metallica’s music is clearly part of the commercial, Western popular culture of mass media. But at the same time, this kind of music is not synonymous with what is commonly understood as the concept of pop-cultural entertainment: “We’re real serious about the words,” says vocalist James Hetfield,18 and our task must be to take this statement in turn seriously, which appears to be clearly verified by a textual analysis and to draw consequences for an adequate academic description of pop-cultural products that are neither part of the superficial mainstream nor of classical high culture.

 17 18

Handbuch Populäre Kultur, ed. by Hans-Otto Hügel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003), p.13. English by E.S.M. Cf. Jon Pareles, ‘Heavy Metal, Weighty Words’, in New York Times, 10.07.1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/10/magazine/heavy-metal-weightywords.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (16.09.2011).

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2. Some Kind of Dirty Realistic Monster Damage, Inc. is certainly not representing any semiotic consideration in the sense of Derrida’s deconstruction in which the subject appears as an effect of the infinite play of difference, and not of fixable language. We are not dealing here with an intellectualist and metapoetical fiction. Yet it is rather a subversion of the concept of subject, but not by means of a stylized, selfreflexive critique of language and representation as in “high cultural” products – as one can see in the works of Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Celan, Octavio Paz, or in Kazimir Malevitch’s painting Black Square; the criticism of a unifying narrative subject is rather generated by a poetically psychological realism which revolves around the confession of a (morally) dysfunctional entity. The conscious playing with the meaning-generating language is not crucial – even though it is likely if the polysemy of Damage, Inc. is well intended – but the mimetic relation to a reality level which, for instance, has very little to do with the idealistic aesthetic of “pure pleasure” or an aesthetic of artificiality, of kitschy or campy pop cultural products. Metallica’s music and performances are shaped by a strong anti-Kantian aesthetic, and at the same time differ from the sensuality of the popular mainstream. While camp, according to Susan Sontag, has as a specific mode of experience, a preference for the ironic and decorative – and thus shares with the aestheticism of modernity the primacy of form over content – the traceable aesthetics in Metallica’s music is associated with the representation of life threatening reality. Whereas camp confronts us as with an artificiality of art and ironic exaggeration, the emergent drastic in Metallica’s music can be taken as the unpopular “twin” of the ironic and artificial products within the pop-cultural field, with their experience of the fragility and irrevocably transience of human life, or as the French philosopher Clément Rosset would say, of the “cruelty of the real”.19 Regarding Metallica’s music, one might be tempted to speak of an ‘update’ of the sublime (in the tradition of Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant and Jean-François Lyotard). However, the difference between the principle of the sublime and those cultural products which could be coined as ‘drastic’20 is significant. The aesthetic category of the sublime stands in the psychological-epistemological genealogy of the Cartesian sub-

 19 20



Cf. Clément Rosset, Joyful Cruelty. Toward a Philosophy of the Real, translated by Daniel F. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) p.70. German author and journalist Dietmar Dath uses this term to describe the specific aesthetic quality of some pop cultural phenomena. Cf. Dietmar Dath, Die salzweißen Augen. Vierzehn Briefe über Drastik und Deutlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005).



190 Esteban Sanchino Martinez ject-object paradigm. As is well known, Lyotard describes it as the principle which aims at the representation of the non-representable.21 In the experience of the sublime, the subject is not capable of illustrating a concept by a sensible object – for example, the idea of the simple, or the nondecomposable. Through this crack which runs between the conceptual idea and the imagination (i.e., the Kantian Einbildungskraft) a feeling of delightful horror, of pleasure is produced which results from pain.22 As Lyotard clarifies, the reference to something non-representable, whether affirmative or in a nostalgic way, is crucial to this aesthetic concept of the sublime.23 Drastic works, however, oscillate between imagination and concept. The aesthetic experience of the drastic does not aim at a conceptual abstraction which cannot be displayed by imagination. Instead it emphasizes human sensibility as such; it mainly produces a high number of intelligible images which are situated thematically and motivically in the oppressed realms of western Christian-bourgeois culture. In accordance with Gilles Deleuze we could say that a different image of thought is present in drastic cultural products of popular culture which puts into question the interplay of subjectobject relations in the field of aesthetics.24 The articulated horror in the lyrics of Metallica does not have its roots in the fantastic – a feature which separates Metallica from other heavy metal bands, nor does the horror flee into a metaphysical legitimation or present itself as an already explained supernatural. Rather it is the interior of the human being that is responsible for the atrocities. Therefore, Metallica’s music receives a strong existentially realistic strain. We already faced this problem in Metallica’s lyrics where the subject and object are no longer clearly defined, where the lethal damage also seems to come from outside and deep from within at the same time. Interestingly, there is a strong correlation with what Julia Kristeva calls abjection: When I am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects and thoughts I call by such a name does not have, properly speaking, a definable object. The abject is not an ob-ject facing me, which I name or imagine. Nor is it an ob-jest, an otherness ceaselessly fleeing in a systematic quest of desire. What is abject is not my correlative, which, providing me with someone or something else as

21

22 23 24

Cf. Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?’ in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) pp. 71-82.  Ibid., p. 77-78. Ibid., p. 79. Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Pattern (New York: Columbia University Press 1994) p. 165-167.

Spirit of the Drastic 191 support, would allow me to be more or less detached and autonomous. The abject has only one quality of the object – that of being opposed to I.25

This phenomenon is also evident in the creation and representation of the zombie in modern horror film, a being which is neither subject nor object.26 One might think of the character Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho, who appears as a subjectless shell which embodies the perversions of the late capitalist commodity culture – a culture reduced to mere superficiality. Finally, one might take into consideration the negotiations of subjectivity in cinematic and literary pornography in order to understand that all these seemingly disparate products belong to one specific aesthetic experience. These works are primarily not sublime, obscene, grotesque, ugly, or beautiful. Instead, they establish a relation to reality by their ostentatious libidinous and destructive energy which, from a romantic, intellectual, formalistic view represents something like a Baudrillardian act of terror on the cultural order.27 When the Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer writes in his Repertorium: “It is all the more a work of storytelling, the less you can get an idea of it on the basis of a table of contents,”28 it is precisely not camp in the sense of Sontag which stands in opposition to Doderer’s intellectual-formalist idea of “true” art. What is sanctioned by both Doderer and Sontag is an overly strong focus on the substantive aspects of a work, especially when it comes to the rigorous presentation of real cruelty. Interestingly, in her Notes on Camp Susan Sontag also deals with Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls – a novel to which, as already mentioned, Metallica refers to in an eponymous song (For Whom The Bell Tolls, 1984) –, and she argues that works of this kind of literature are “bad to the point of being laughable, but not bad to the point of being enjoyable […] They lack fantasy.”29 Regardless of whether

 25 26

27

28 29



See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 10. Cf. Keyvan Sarkhosh, ‘›Trash‹ als ästhetische Kategorie der Postmoderne’, in Comparative Arts. Universelle Ästhetik im Fokus der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft.Beiträge zur XIV. Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Achim Hölter (Heidelberg: Synchron 2011), pp. 367-377. I am referring to Jean Baudrillard’s essay ‘L’esprit du terrorisme’, where Baudrillard reflects the symbolic dimension of terrorism in Western capitalism. Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and other Essays, translated by Chris Turner (London / New York Verso 2003) pp. 1-35. Heimito von Doderer, Repertorium: Ein Begreifbuch von höheren und niederen Lebens-Sachen, 2nd ed. (München: Beck, 1996), p. 72. English by E.S.M. Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on Camp’, in Against Interpretation and other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1967) pp. 284-285.



192 Esteban Sanchino Martinez Hemingway’s novel is really bad to the point of ridiculousness, the significant difference between Sontag’s concept of camp and the pop cultural “drastic” becomes obvious in a musical style and genre as created and performed by Metallica, for instance: Their songs, such as For Whom The Bell Tolls and Damage, Inc. are never meant to delight in the sense of Sontag, and the“lack of fantasy” can also be described as an excessiv description of unpleasant reality. In 1986, the Thrasher Magazine interviewed Metallica in 1986. Among the questions and answers we read: Metallica is playing a quicker, raw but polished sound that most people say is a violent type of music. Do you think that’s the way the world is happening? Are you guys really screaming at people, saying, “Look what’s happening”? Kirk: Yeah, I think you’ve got a point there. People can relate to that because it’s more like the world as it really is. I mean, let’s face it, the world is not a pretty place. The world is pretty sick. There’s a lot of ugly things out there and no matter how much you try and escape you always have to wake up and face the fact that the world is fucked up and ugly.30

To a large extent, Kirk Hammetts statement can certainly be taken as the standard answer to the question as to why many people like to listen to heavy metal music at all. But the answer offers further insights: In addition to the hard and intense musical experience it is the anti-idealistic, totally unromantic relation to the extra-linguistic reality, which is expressed in the texts. This must be regarded as an important formula for the ongoing relevance of heavy metal in popular music. The “purely” aesthetic, disinterested view of the influential Kantian aesthetics is the diametrical opposite of the extractable poetics in Metallica’s music. First of all, behind the idealistic conception of the aesthetical valuable stands the separation from the physical necessities of life preservation and the suspension of life-world constraints. Even the birth of modern aesthetics in Germany with Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750/58) is associated with the inflation of intellectual values which in turn is based on the platonic separation of spiritual and physical with a clear preference for the incorporeal.31 Metallica’s music is characterized by the relentless depiction of social facts (war, mental disorder, oppression, etc.) which can be understood as the dark side of “The Ameri 30 31

‘Metallica’ in Thrasher Magazine 6, 8 (August 1986), p. 64-74 (p. 68). See also http://allmetallica.com/info/interviews/thrasher86.php (16.09.2011) Plato, Gorgias, 493a: “IJ‫ܞ‬ȝ‫ܘ‬Ȟı‫ޒ‬ȝȐ‫ۂ‬ıIJȚȞ‫ۏ‬ȝ‫ݶ‬Ȟı‫ݨ‬ȝĮ” (“The body is the tomb of the soul”).

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can Way of Life”. Right here, equivalences which transgress the confined limits of the separted arts can be drawn; in the 20th century, a sizable part of American literature works with similar guiding principles. In 1981 – and thus in the year of Metallica’s foundation - Raymond Carver, one of the major American writers of the late 20thcentury, postulated a program contrary to this afore-mentioned idealistic aesthetic tradition: I get a little nervous if I find myself within earshot of sombre discussions about “formal innovation” in fiction writing. Too often “experimentation” is a licence to be careless, silly or imitative in the writing. Even worse, a licence to try to brutalise or alienate the reader. Too often such writing gives us no news of the world, or else describes a desert landscape and that’s all – a few dunes and lizards here and there, but no people; a place uninhabited by anything recognisably human, a place of interest only to a few scientific specialists.32

One might say, Carver’s chief concern is a kind of “poetics of reality” which requires a stylized writing, but at the same time, its subject is not selfreflexive art but rather the existential problems of (ordinary) people. Metallica’s lyrics and their inherent motives show a certain affinity for this contemporary literary movement which is also known as Dirty Realism.33 Metallica’s lyrical and musical compositions violate the basic aesthetic principle of distinction which is essential to the followers of a “pure” art. They infringe upon the primacy of a dominant “poetic function” as described by Roman Jacobson, and violate the principle of the semiotic “reflection taste” which has set a tacit axiom of the primacy of form over content.34 Such a rejection of formalistic, metapoetical writing and the relation to an existential topic is even more firmly expressed in Cormac McCarthy’s understanding of literature. In one of his few interviews he explains: “The ugly fact is books are made out of books,” he says. “The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” His list of those whom he calls the “good writers”– Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner –precludes anyone who doesn’t “deal with issues of life and death.” Proust and Henry James don’t

 32

33

34



Raymond Carver, ‘A Storyteller's Shoptalk’ in New York Times, February 15, 1981(my emphasis). See also http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/01/21/specials/carvershoptalk.html (16.09.2011) The term ‘Dirty Realism’ was coined by Bill Bufford in Granta Magazine 8, published in summer 1983. This literally style comprises authors, for instance like Charles Bukowski, Cormac McCarthy, Raymond Carver or Richard Ford. Roman Jakobson, ‘Linguistics and Poetics’, inStyle in Language,ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960) pp. 350–377.



194 Esteban Sanchino Martinez make the cut. “I don’t understand them,” he says. “To me, that’s not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange.”35

Conclusion Not only a ‘phenomenon’ like Madonna has emerged as a result of cultural industrial upheaval, but also Metallica, not just the James Bond series, but also the bloody gore and splatter films of the Italian director Lucio Fulci, not only books by Nick Hornby, but also novels such as American Psycho, and they all belong to the complex field of western popular culture. A close look at this field shows that apart from an established majoritarian culture, there also exists a minor but nonetheless effective form of mass popular culture. From the perspective of a particular cultural poetics, and in the context of our zeitgeist, minoritarian phenomena of popular culture (which have the emphatic character of art) do in fact appear more interesting than those works which can be defined as high culture. Some of these “minor” works quite explicitly polemicize against the fact that for several decades the West has been living in a culture dominated by mass media industry. “Only the possibility of setting up a minor practice of major language from within allows one to define popular literature, marginal literature, and so on”,36 write Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book on Kafka, and their statement can be applied to the phenomenon of popular culture as a whole: Not only does entertainment as an important factor of the pop cultural mainstream receive its firm and classifiable contours from its relationship to high culture, but it is also – and even more – the result of competitive positions within the pop cultural field. Pop cultural ‘phenomena’ such as Metallica can be regarded as an immanent critique of the pop cultural products which represent a purely superficial and cynical commercialism and which, in their poetological programs, suppress the real dark sides of human life. Especially from high cultural perspective, mass media popular culture may indeed come along as an all-enslaving system of profit maximization and flattening, but it also permanently creates the objective conditions for aesthetic acts of resistance out of itself, as for example in Metallica’s music.

35

36

Richard B. Woodward, ‘Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction’, in New York Times, April 19, 1992. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/mccarthyvenom.html (16.09.2011)  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1986) p. 18.

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Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean, ‘The Spirit of Terrorism’, in The Spirit of Terrorismand other Essays, translated by Chris Turner (London / New York Verso 2003) pp. 1-35Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Paul Patton. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). Bourdieu, Pierre, Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, translated by Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). Carver, Raymond, ‘A Storyteller’s Shoptalk’ in New York Times, February 15, 1981. http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/01/21/specials/carvershoptalk.html (16.09.2011) Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan (Minnesota: Universitiy of Minnesota, 1986). Doderer, Heimito von, Repertorium: Ein Begreifbuch von höheren und niederen Lebens-Sachen, 2nded. (München: Beck, 1996). Handbuch Populäre Kultur, ed. By Hans-Otto Hügel (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003). Hügel, Hans-Otto, Lob des Mainstreams.Zu Begriff und Geschichte von Unterhaltung und Populärer Kultur (Köln: Halem, 2007). Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Lyotard, Jean-François, ‘Answering the Question: What is the Postmodern?’, in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp 71-82. Marcus, Greil,In the Fascist Bathroom. Punk in Pop Music 1977-1992 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). ‘Metallica’ in Thrasher Magazine 6, (August 1986), p. 64-74. Metallica, Master of Puppets (Elektra, 1986). Pareles, Jon, ‘Heavy Metal, Weighty Words’, in New York Times, 10.07.1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/10/magazine/heavy-metal-weightywords.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (16.09.2011). Plato, Gorgias, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, translated by Lane Cooper (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Rosset, Clément, Joyful Cruelty. Toward a Philosophy of the Real, translated by Daniel F. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation, translated by E. F. J. Payne, Vol. 2 (New York: Dover Publications, 1969). Sontag, Susan, ‘Notes on Camp’, in Against Interpretation, and other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1967), p. 275-293. Storey, John, Inventing Popular Culture.From Folklore to Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003).

196 Esteban Sanchino Martinez Weinstein, Deena, Heavy Metal. The Music and Its Culture (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2000). Woodward, Richard B.,‘Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction’, in New York Times, April 19, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/ specials/mccarthy-venom.html (22.09.2011).



Ulrich Meurer Becoming Line: On Some Features of Philosophy in Salut, Deleuze! Doxa opposes the conceptual ‘heights’ of philosophical writing to the ‘low’ realms of popular imagery. While a philosophical comic book thus appears as impossible hybrid, the non-conceptual or affective components of thinking and the possibility of ‘mental images’ or ‘noosings’ both challenge the division between intellectual speculation and graphic depiction. In this context, Martin tom Dieck’s and Jens Balzer’s comic book Salut, Deleuze! may at times be shrugged off as mere illustration and reductionist popularization of thought. Meanwhile, the comic book seems to attempt the transformation of pictorial likeness into a decidedly Deleuzian, non-individual and machine-like principle of ‘faciality’. From there, it heads for a deterritorialization of face and landscape and leaves classical concepts of codification or individuality behind. In so doing, Salut, Deleuze! adumbrates a graphic ‘line of flight’ and hints at philosophy’s vital connection to nonphilosophy.

1. Ascensional Psychism Thought is characterized by its diverse and manifold directions: in the ‘Eighteenth Series’ of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze delineates an extensive mental topography, he traces a set of axes and orientations along which philosophical thought may develop. In the process, the pre-Socratic philosopher is described as a speleologist or caver who always stays at the bottom of things and is immersed in the earth: Empedocles hurls himself into the crater of Mount Etna (and Diogenes Laertius asserts that only his brazen sandal comes back).1 On the other hand, there are those who do not expect lore and wisdom to come from the autochthonous deep, but “laterally, from the event, from the East”:2 the Megarians, Cynics, and Stoics are constantly thinking at and about the surface, they think amidst the quasi half-baked and ephemeral occurrences, right in the middle between the riches of profundity and the promises of idealism. And it is precisely this last concept, the realm of Platonic ideas, which marks the third and certainly most familiar direction of thought: “The popular and the technical images of the philosopher seem to have been set by Platonism: the philosopher is a being of ascents; he is the one who leaves the cave and rises up. The more he rises the more he is purified.”3 Morality, ascetic ideals, the discarnate first cause, the lofty idea of thought, all this belongs to the elevated – philosophers inhabit an intelligible heaven.

 1 2 3

Cf. Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of the Philosophers, 8.69. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, ed. by Constantin V. Boundas, trans. by Mark Lester (London: Athlone Press, 1990), p. 129. Ibid., p. 127.

198 Ulrich Meurer Although thought is thus defined by a great variety of spatial orientations, from the abyss of a volcano to the ΎϱΗΐΓΖΘЗΑϢΈΉЗȞ, although it might take place here and there or up and down, the prevalent image of philosophy is that of a cloudy apogee. From this point of view, i.e. from the perspective of nonphilosophy, there is neither difference nor distance between the height of Plato, the depth of Empedocles and the middle of Diogenes: all is altitude. Moreover, if we assume for the moment that such position reckonings cannot be anything other than relative and retroactive, it becomes obvious that it is ‘popular culture’ and its inherent doxa which allots height to the ‘high culture’ of philosophy and defines its own position in contrast to it.

2. Show and Tell Socrates doesn’t write, but involves people in dialogues. Plato writes these dialogues down. Kant writes from early in the morning to his lunch hour, afterwards he confines himself to reading. Nietzsche writes aphorisms using a typewriter which was sent from Denmark in 1881, Derrida knows that even what is not written is writing. Deleuze and Guattari write together, and no one understands how this is possible… The written word is typical for philosophy. Notable, however, is every philosophy outside of writing, when someone jumps into a volcano or, for love of the moon and stars, falls into a well – while the witty Thracian maidservant’s laugh at the philosopher’s tumble nevertheless attests to her popular notion of thinking.4 Even further outside philosophy than these anecdotes (the an-ekdoton being precisely what remains unedited, what is not written down or ‘given out’), even farther away lies the image. Philosophy writes, but it hardly ever produces images. And whenever it does, its images are still located inside the realm of language: allegory, myth, symbol, hypotyposis (Kant’s hand-mill…).5 Therefore, what is a ‘philosophical comic book’ supposed to be? Can it exist at all? According to Scott McCloud’s theory of comics in the form of a comic, that would be an impossible hybrid, for occidental civilization is based on the fundamental decision between writing and image, while graphic novels and comic books tend to override this decision with their characteristic indecisiveness. To him, cultural evolution means segregation until pure writing and, on the other hand, pure images appear. One is the domain of concepts, the other belongs to the field of the visual, while pop 4 5

Cf. Plato, Theaitetos, 174a. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. by Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), p. 352.

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and mass products, which in their infantile manner do not want to make up their mind, are located in between and form mostly word-imagecombinations: “Words and pictures together are considered at best a diversion for the masses, at worst a product of crass commercialism.”6 And while numerous examples could be given to invalidate or at least qualify McCloud’s hypothesis, one of them being of course his own book which uses the comic medium for decidedly conceptual and often non-visual purposes, the common partition between word and picture, high and low, Georges Seurat or John Keats and Cap’n Crunch or Batman is constantly recapitulated and confirmed by McCloud’s study itself. In fact, Understanding Comics concludes in the slightly conservative tone of resigned intellectualism that “any artist wishing to do great work in a medium using words and pictures will have to contend” with the “general public’s perceptions of ‘great’ art and ‘great’ writing”,7 which means that his work will neither be ‘great’ nor able to deliver abstractions.8 Even worse: is ignorance not already inherent to the image alone? Is the image not marked by a deficit of thought – even and especially without writing? God forms man in his likeness from clay and carves his breath, his name, into the image. He does not inscribe himself into something given (the arbitrary ‘datum’ of the clay), but into something made (the artificial ‘factum’ of the image) and thereby commits a highly aggressive act. According to Vilém Flusser, the inalterable essence of all writing from its very beginning is its being iconoclastically directed against the image: “Inscriptions are the torn pieces, the cadavers of images. […] The writing incisor turns against the images we have made of and from the objective world.” And: “All writing is basically shocking. It shocks us out of our prescriptive notions. It tears us away from images that meant the world, and ourselves in it, to our consciousness as it was before writing.”9 However, outside that crepuscular sphere of imagination and the magic of likeness of pictures we can

 6 7 8

9



Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 140. Ibid., p. 150. Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff asserts, however, that even though images seem to dominate a comic book’s mediation process, the referential relations between panels are in fact mainly established by dialogue and the overall structures of meaning are always determined by linguistic elements. See Bernd Dolle-Weinkauf, ‘Das heimliche Regiment der Sprache im Comic’, quoted in Susanne Werner, Grafien des Comics. Der Comic als Aufschreibesystem der grafischen Kulturtechniken des 19. Jahrhunderts, (diploma thesis, Faculty of Media Studies at the Bauhaus-University Weimar), http://tu-dresden.de/ Members/susanne.werner/bilder/diplom.pdf [22.08.2010], p. 9. Vilém Flusser, Does Writing Have a Future?, trans. by Nancy Ann Roth (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), p. 14-15.

200 Ulrich Meurer finally invent linear history, develop concepts, and learn how to think, while the ahistorical, non-conceptual and thoughtless image stays behind.

3. Noosigns Therefore, what is a ‘philosophical comic book’ supposed to be? Can it exist at all? To begin with, this would presuppose that it contained concepts which stand in correlation to each other (this, in turn, might serve as a provisional definition of ‘thought’). Firstly, Deleuze and Guattari assert that “philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts.”10 But when it is philosophy’s task to constantly create new concepts, when – just like science and art – it is profoundly creative, then it does not take place in the field of reflection and even less so in the field of representation: “Concepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies. There is no heaven for concepts.”11 Consequently, they are always primary and do not reproduce or image anything. But at the same time, philosophy exceeds the purely conceptual, and this could be an opportunity for thought to find a place outside the limits of the written word. Thus, Deleuze can write about painting and cinema; he could write about comic books, and it is still philosophy. You see, I think concepts involve two other dimensions, percepts and affects. That’s what interests me, not images. Percepts aren’t perceptions, they’re packets of sensations and relations that live on independently of whoever experiences them. Affects aren’t feelings, they’re becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them. […] Affects, percepts, and concepts are three inseparable forces, running from art into philosophy and from philosophy into art.12

Hence, images are no matter of interest, but they seem the most adequate instances to retain or actualize affects and percepts, the depersonalized sensory perceptions and emotions abstracted from any subject. They are capable of carrying the non-conceptual part of the concept. Therefore, is there, after all, a philosophical comic book – composed not so much of secondary images and resemblances, but of percepts and affects?

 10 11 12



Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 2. Ibid., p. 5. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 137.

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Secondly, comics do not only present; they also produce series (therein differing from the cartoon). And although much may speak against it – the lack of mechanical movement and regulated intervals, the variable speed of the reception process, the indistinct phases, the analysis of sequences into single frames while their synthesis is completely delegated to the reader –, despite all that, the comic book resembles cinema at least in its serial construction. This is demonstrated rudimentarily (and therefore all the more distinctly) by the beginning of Neue Abenteuer des unglaublichen Orpheus (Die Rückkehr von Deleuze) [New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)],13 the second volume of a duo of comic books which make up this article’s subject matter: the initial six images – that is, the panels of the entire first page – are almost completely black; it is not until the third picture that a few limy streaks and scratches mark the squares’ homogeneous dull surface, and finally, the bottom edge of the page’s last panel seems dipped in fog or gnawed at by the storyline’s pale early light. Here, the darkness of Hades and the author’s ink, the narrative’s setting and its medial and material basis become visible at the same time. Moreover, the principle of the series appears as an unmistakable analogy to the cinematic connection of photographic frames. In his article on the ‘joke of eternal recurrence’, the picture sequence of this first page reminds Josef Früchtl of those wellknown mostly short moments at the beginning of old black and white movies in which, accompanied by sizzling and crackling noise, unexposed material is projected and the film presents itself awkwardly in a state of mechanical reproducibility.14 In the black photogram and empty panel it becomes apparent that both media actuate the sequencing of individual pictures: they relate elements, they apply combinatorics.

13

14

Martin tom Dieck, Jens Balzer, Neue Abenteuer des unglaublichen Orpheus (Die Rückkehr von Deleuze) (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001). The comic’s individual episodes were first published 2001 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Cf. Josef Früchtl, ‘Die ewige Wiederkehr – ein Witz’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 8-10 (p. 8).

202 Ulrich Meurer

Hades, ink, a series of film frames…15 At any rate, film has been able to invent the mental image or image of thought through a particular combinational usage of its series. Deleuze refers to Hitchcock and his achievement “to introduce the mental image into the cinema and to make it the completion of the cinema, the perfection of all the other images”.16 This certainly doesn’t mean that it represents a character’s thoughts, or a pure thinker or thinking. Instead, Deleuze bears on an image that converts objects with a proper existence outside of thinking into objects of thought. This is done by producing connections, “as many shots as there are frames, each shot showing a relation or a variation of the relation. […] The essential point, in any event, is that action, and also perception and affection, are framed in a fabric of relations. It is this chain of relations which constitutes the mental image.”17 The strictly framed images, the 15 16 17

All images in this text are reproduced by kind permission of the artist. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1, The Movement-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 200. Ibid.

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figures and entities constitute a web or texture; and they do not add up to a plot, but to an argument (or rather a ‘context of justification’). Still using the example of Alfred Hitchcock, Deleuze’s Time-Image introduces the term ‘noosign’ for such a camera-consciousness which poses questions, leads to objections and provocations, even generates theorems, hypotheses or experiments.18 Hence, the images themselves are no matter of interest, but their coupling seems to generate or contain thought – actually a relation between objects and characters. Only the relationality of the series makes it possible to convey a mental process. Therefore, after all, the possibility of a philosophical comic book – composed not so much of frames, but of sequences? Furthermore, the preface to Difference and Repetition states that “a book of philosophy should be in part a very particular species of detective novel, in part a kind of science fiction.”19 And directly subsequent to this Deleuzian demand for philosophical ‘pop literature’ which may still be generously regarded a metaphor: “The time is coming when it will hardly be possible to write a book of philosophy as it has been done for so long […]. The search for new means of philosophical expression was begun by Nietzsche and must be pursued today in relation to the renewal of certain other arts, such as the theatre or the cinema.”20 Or perhaps the comic book, outside traditional writing, modeled on cinematic relations and thinking in perceptive and affective images – for the comic seems to exhibit entirely new ‘graphies’ (media-based systems of writing) and thereby makes thinkable what could not be expressed before.21

4. Salut, Deleuze! Martin tom Dieck and Jens Balzer’s comic22 deals with a (and shortly after with more than one) familiar philosopher: after his death, Gilles Deleuze arrives in a pallid rural intermundium, planted with large-leaved scrubs, where he meets the ferryman Charon to take him across the river Styx (or Lethe). The uneventful passage through sudden gloom gives them an opportunity for nightly discussions about the possibility of repetition in death, processes

 18 19 20 21 22



Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis, MN: University of Michigan Press, 1989), p. 23. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (London, New York, NY: Continuum, 1994), p. xix. Ibid., p. xx. Cf. Werner, Grafien des Comics, p. 4. Martin tom Dieck, Jens Balzer, Salut, Deleuze! (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 1998).

204 Ulrich Meurer with or without an end, and eternal variation. On the other shore, Deleuze is cordially welcomed by Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan while Charon rows off into the darkness – only to pick up Deleuze a second, third, fourth and fifth time and set him over: as tom Dieck has drawn not more than nine pages with four panels each, the book arranges them five times consecutively; Balzer then inserts slight differences into the recurring picture sequence by altering the dialogue for every episode. Thus, the transition to Hades in Salut, Deleuze!, and also the philosophical colloquies and the invention of a time machine in its sequel New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze), appear as explorations of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. This raises various questions, for instance whether Salut, Deleuze! is not only concerned with philosophers but also with philosophy, and what is more, whether it can be called a philosophical comic. Is it a representation of a person or a figure, a representation of thinking, or a thought by itself? Finally, does a comic book in some cases, precisely by dealing with a philosopher, eliminate all its chances to ‘be’ philosophical? First and foremost, Salut, Deleuze! presents Gilles Deleuze – not necessarily the one who is born in the year 1925, works as an assistant at the Sorbonne, teaches in Vincennes and so forth. Yet definitely the one who writes Difference and Repetition (the book serves as a prop in some of the picture book’s panels) and also the one who, in 1995, almost like Empedocles flies out of his life (for this gives reason to his meeting the ferryman Charon and crossing the river). Deleuze thus seems to be fashioned from few, if not just one biographical coordinate – namely the last – and one or two pieces of bibliographical information.

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Deleuze arrives in the underworld Furthermore, his outward appearance might be said to resemble or ‘follow’ more intuitively than explicitly the main features of a Deleuzian habit and physiognomy; and finally, the figure is embellished with the notorious hat,23 coat and a manageable number of seemingly characteristic phrases: “But I thought that this would be the real task of philosophy today: to think

 23



According to J. Vogl, this hat reduces life to an emblematic short form; just like compacting Foucault to his glasses and bald head, the hat helps to install a regime of instantly recognizable ‘hellish’ props. Cf. Joseph Vogl, ‘Deleuze aux Enfers’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 13-14 (p. 13).

206 Ulrich Meurer thought – beyond consciousness, without losing hope and trusting in the body.”24 And also: “You have to try to comprehend the ‘same’ as repetition! Identity as becoming!”25 However, Michaela Ott finds fault with this method of converting the philosopher into a ‘stick figure’. She calls it an act of betrayal to flatten him out to a recognizable comic strip character, while he advocates becoming impersonal and invisible, wants to dispose of himself in his thinking, practices philosophy in the manner of a geologist with non-anthropomorphic concepts like lines, maps, diagrams and strata in order to de-personalize the subjective family romance in geographical dimensions.26 Paradoxically, the comic draws portraits of the most fervent critics of ‘identity’, it fabricates the image of a person who is involved in the abolition of the intentional self.27 Similarly, with regard to the Deleuzian phrases and familiar sounding collocations, Joseph Vogl sees the philosophy of such living dead as Deleuze and Foucault, Barthes and Lacan, who in this comic book celebrate their happy postmodern resurrection, compressed in a simple catchphrase. It is the slogan which remains as the most efficient manifestation of thought in the meager times of mechanical reproduction and popular culture: The text becomes a pop song, the mindset mere attitude, and theory a whim. […] He who cites does not have to know, but only to knowabout; he who cites inevitably forgets meaning and context, and through endless duplication and repetition he produces – however delicately – that cast shadow which could be named ‘culture’. Culture means ruminating, copying and mimicking, culture means abridgement and reproduction, parody and persiflage: Orpheus in the underworld, Deleuze & Co. in a cartoon.28

Given that these objections were legitimate, tom Dieck and Balzer’s comic would certainly be no philosophy, not even history of philosophy which may not need its own head but could unselfconsciously depict the minds of others. In fact, Gilles Deleuze, whose books on Hume, Spinoza, and Nietzsche make the history of philosophy a central issue of his earliest creative period, calls it a not particularly reflective discipline resembling portrai24 25 26

27

28

tom Dieck, Balzer, Salut, Deleuze!, p. 28, trans. by U.M. Ibid., p. 38. Cf. Michaela Ott, ‘Deleuze begraben?’, in Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 14-15 (p. 14). Cf. also Marco Stahlhut, ‘Vier Freunde sollt ihr sein’, in Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 5-6 (p. 5). Vogl, ‘Deleuze aux Enfers’, p. 13, trans. by U.M.

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ture in painting.29 However, it tries to produce mental or conceptual portraits that, just like in painting, want to set up resemblances – but never by means of reproduction, for that would be nothing more than a mere repetition of what Hume and Spinoza and Nietzsche have already said before. Therefore: no likeness, no hat or coat; no slogan or password attempting to condense a whole philosophy and as a result make it coagulate!

5. Dictate A marginal note: At the end of the above mentioned essay, Joseph Vogl does not truly reveal whether he wants to reproach Salut, Deleuze! with mere grimacing and shallowness or whether it is precisely the automat-like humor and shadowy duplications which may allow Deleuze to greet us from the comic’s pages; for according to him, thought can only begin where it has ceased and become a farce or mechanical sequence. Perhaps, Vogl’s deft and non-categorical indecisiveness is a typical reaction to certain products of ‘popular culture’ that one could ‘acquire a taste’ for (one can invariably ‘acquire a taste’ for every one of them). Talking about pop limits the speaker’s freedom in a very particular manner and thus may constrain Vogl to be diplomatic. “I do not think much of comic books” – obviously, this would be entirely indefensible. The respective enunciator arouses suspicion; he exposes himself as an intellectual bourgeois and believing advocate of an alleged high culture. To him the work of art means an expansion of his proper subjectivity, and culture industry raises his immediate mistrust. (Even Deleuze himself, after having written quite favorably about John McEnroe,30 Daniel Mann’s B-movie Willard,31 the Marx Brothers,32 Edith Piaf,33 or Alice in Wonderland,34 is at times suspected of such cultural snobbery, of depicting

 29 30 31

32 33 34



Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 135. Cf. ibid., p. 132. Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia [II], trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 233. Cf., amongst others, Deleuze, Cinema 1, p. 199. See the section on ‘O as in opera’ from the French television interview L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze with Claire Parnet, directed by Pierre-André Boutang (1988-89). Cf. Deleuze, Logic of Sense. Ted Striphas, in his blog entry on ‘Deleuze and high culture’, states that “Deleuze’s engagement with the writings of Lewis Carroll is one of the few examples I can think of in which he engages with [what] might be called ‘popular’ artifacts. (I also vaguely recall [Deleuze and Guattari] making a passing reference to actor Robert De Niro’s ‘becoming crab’ somewhere in A Thousand Plateaus.)” See Ted Striphas, ‘Deleuze and high culture’, Differences & Repetitions (blog),

208 Ulrich Meurer “the popular as the undesirable other, or worse, an enormous homogenising machine depriving art of its place and value in contemporary society. In this respect, at least, Deleuze is very much like Adorno, utterly modernist”35!) That is why the comic can and must not be disliked – especially not in academic circles dealing with camp aesthetics and the Terminator. To esteem comic books shows the capability to congenially combine spontaneous jouissance with an alert and critical comprehension, while the middle class intelligentsia does not enjoy and has long ceased to be critical. This is the dictate of pop culture: it only allows enthusiasm (which is of course ‘always already’ interspersed with irony); as one discovers its mythical structures, it always appears richer and more substantial than the artefacts themselves seem to be aware of. It does not permit to be rejected, and whoever attacks it is therefore forced to exaggerate his audaciousness and spite (“I know, it looks as though I cannot realize or relish the hidden charms... but nonetheless, this or that looks like nothing to me, not complex, at best complicated.”)

6. White Wall / Black Hole Having said this, and because I don’t want to appear defiant, can there be made anything – or maybe even philosophy – from Deleuze’s face, his speech balloons and the entire narrative? Is there more in Salut, Deleuze! than portrait, citation, and dead repetition? At least a certain potentiality (which for Deleuze is of no smaller value than any actuality)? Possibly, the face of tom Dieck and Balzer’s Deleuze-character provides a starting-point. It is

35

05.02.2006, http://striphas.blogspot.com/2006/02/deleuze-and-high-culture.html [16.09.2011]. Ian Buchanan, Deleuzism. A Metacommentary (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p.175. For fairness’ sake it must be said that, according to Buchanan, Deleuzian theory can nevertheless “account for the peculiar events and phenomena of popular culture […] if we can disentangle [them] from the amorphous matrix of capitalism Deleuze identifies them with [...]. This would amount to the discovery and articulation of a form of creativity unique to mass culture.” Meanwhile (and putting Buchanan’s judgment further into perspective), Timothy Murphy and Daniel Smith’s comprehensive application of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts to popular music states: “Clearly, their claims for pop as an inventive and intensive usage of the heterogeneous elements of different sonorous territories are a far cry from the pessimistic account of popular or mass culture articulated by T.W. Adorno in his writings on popular music (primarily commercial jazz) and the culture industry.” Timothy S. Murphy, Daniel W. Smith, ‘What I Hear Is Thinking Too. Deleuze and Guattari Go Pop’, Echo, 3.1 (spring 2001), http://www.echo.ucla.edu/Volume3Issue1/smithmurphy/index.html [16.09.2011].

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reduced to a set of angular verticals bordering its wan, oblong form; half of its length is taken up by the thin and drawn-out shape of the nose, a mere parallel to the face’s boundary lines; a few filiform horizontals mark the position of the mouth – pushing against the chin so as to nearly drop out of the face’s margins – and the eyebrows; inlaid in this complex of dominant verticals are two amygdaloid eyes ringed with shadow and sometimes without iris or pupil. (While the additional use of acrylic and watercolor in Salut, Deleuze! produces a still relatively differentiated shading and tonality, the sequel employs only black ink due to its primary publication in a newspaper and thereby flattens and simplifies the design even further.36) In short, what remains is the ‘sign’ or ‘function’ of a face, it should not be considered as likeness but as ‘faciality’.

In other words: beyond all representational aspects one encounters the relatively abstract character of a face which doesn’t want to be a portrait and thus transcends recognizability or citation, precisely those elements that repeatedly suggest themselves as agents of ‘pop’. And then, as it no longer resembles, there may be two different interpretations of this face (which could build a bridge to the 7th chapter of Deleuze and Guattari’s Thousand Plateaus and consequently connect the representations of pop and the presentation and creation of concepts): Firstly, the comic seems to perform a decapitation. While the body always possesses a certain spatiality or volume, a depth with cavities and pro 36



Cf. Brigitte Helbling, ‘Archaisches Gemüse’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (09.10.2001, online archive), http://www.ksta.de/jks/artikel.jsp?id=1002629214891 [18.09.2011].

210 Ulrich Meurer tuberances, the head is henceforth separated from this body. As long as it belonged to the body, it was a head; now it becomes a face and a surface, facial traits, lines, wrinkles; long face, square face, triangular face; the face is a map, even when it is applied to and wraps a volume, even when it surrounds and borders cavities that are now no more than holes. The head, even the human head, is not necessarily a face. The face is produced only when the head ceases to be a part of the body.37

In so doing, i.e. by separating the head from the body and its volumes, by flattening out the head into a face, a plane is produced that consists of two components, a white expanse and a black hole. That is the basic formula of faciality.38 Before it displays individuality, a face is primarily an assembly and proportion of flat and hole. The result is twofold: a face indicates both signification and subjectivity because Deleuze and Guattari regard the white plane as the surface on which signifiers and meaning can be inscribed, and the black hole as opening from which the subject emerges. In its most abstract form, the face thus originates from a machine in which signs and the I are allowed to constantly reproduce themselves. The employment of a machine also explains the inhuman quality in every face. It is not necessarily a personal expression, but a function of proportions that can also be discovered in the filmic close-up (on this A Thousand Plateaus and The Movement-Image agree)39 and might just as well be found in a landscape. In such cases, the landscape receives a face, it is treated like a face, it resembles a face. This is due to the face emanating from the aforementioned abstract machine which can pertain to anything, not only to a head or body, but to a clock,40 a kettle,41 or – with regard to the beginning of Salut, Deleuze! – to the scrubland on both sides of a country lane. “Grasses seem to play a role (all of the same height and threefold). […] This is a

37 38

39 40 41

Deleuze, Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 170. In Cinema 1, p. 88, Deleuze differentiates further between ‘faceification’ [visagéification] and ‘faceicity’ [visagéité]: The first term describes the face as an outline, as an “encircling line which traces the nose, the mouth, the edge of the eyelids […]: it is a surface” and therefore obviously related to the concept of ‘faciality’ in Thousand Plateaus. Meanwhile, ‘faceicity’ denotes a face which is characterized and taken by affects; it works “through dispersed features taken globally; fragmentary and broken lines which indicate here the quivering of the lips, there the brilliance of a look, and which involve a content which to a greater or lesser extent rebels against the outline.” This concept seems to approximate the face’s ‘deterritorialization’ discussed below.  Cf. Deleuze, Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 171f., and Deleuze, Cinema 1, p. 87f. Cf. Deleuze, Cinema 1, p. 87. Cf. ibid., p. 91.

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world of light. (Here, everything resembles itself.)”42 In an instant, a complementarity between face and landscape can occur, so that the latter is no longer an arbitrary background to the former. Instead, the face deterritorializes, disconnects from the body and spills over into its surroundings until the one is revealed in the other. “What face has not called upon the landscapes it amalgamated, sea and hill; what landscape has not evoked the face that would have completed it, providing an unexpected complement for its lines and traits?”43

Merging panels 2 and 1: the complementarity of face and landscape With a closer look, the signification/in-signification of the face spreads through the entire comic book; it affects the figures, the landscape, the very black night into which bright specks and blotches are inserted as features belonging to a depersonalized face: the dark and distant riverbank with its small wooden jetty on which the four philosophers with hand lanterns take their leave of Charon thus becomes an assemblage of circular white halos and symmetric lines: everywhere faces which in their general function evidently resemble Deleuze and Guattari’s sketches of ‘facies’ from the Thousand Plateaus:44

 42

43 44



Mirjam Schaub, ‘Orpheus auf Odyssee’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 6-8 (p. 6), trans. by U.M.  Deleuze, Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, p. 173. Ibid., p. 183.

212 Ulrich Meurer

The four philosophers by the riverbank / two ‘face-machines’ From the countenance of Deleuze to the landscapes of nocturnal ink, this would be one – first – possible version of the face in tom Dieck and Balzer’s comic; no longer a simple portrait of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze that aims at mere likeness, but a philosophically generalized form which is produced by the abstract machine of ‘white wall / black hole’. This is more than Deleuze becoming a ‘stick figure’, namely an extensive concept of faciality that endows the comic book with philosophical ‘height’. But at the same time this generalized face disposes of the full body, of all polyvocality45 or multidimensional semiotics; it passes over to flat signification and discrete subjectivity. By creating a face, the body, its environment and objects are codified, as the face effectuates the “landscapification of all worlds and milieus”.46 In the end, the only thing that remains is this single face, a mask, a quasi political or ideological plane of expression. It is an utterly un-Deleuzian face!47

7. Swimming through the Eyes (with Henry Miller) Secondly, then, a different reading: Salut, Deleuze! does not implement the plane significations and codifications of the face (transcending the ‘portrait’), but practices its gradual decomposition or disintegration, leading over to 45 46 47

Cf. ibid., p. 179f. Ibid., p. 181. Its being detached from the body is made explicit in Jan Baetens analysis of tom Dieck’s aesthetics: “les personnages […] portent, selon une expression qui est à prendre au pied de la lettre, des visages, c’est-à-dire des masques.” [“In the truest sense of the word, the characters are wearing their faces like masks.”] Jan Baetens, ‘Un dessinateur qui pense. A propos de Martin tom Dieck’, Image & Narrative, 3 (March 2001), http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/illustrations/janbaetens 3.html [16.09.2011].

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what Deleuze and Guattari call the ‘body without organs’ (transcending the ‘face’). When faciality already deterritorializes the body and converts the stratum of the organism’s ‘depth’ into a ‘flat’ signification and subjectification,48 one can, on the other hand, go beyond this still ‘negative’ deterritorialization and move in the direction of another, positive one, by strange true becomings that get past the wall and get out of the black holes, that make faciality traits themselves finally elude the organization of the face – freckles dashing toward the horizon, hair carried off by the wind, eyes you traverse instead of seeing yourself in or gazing into in those glum face-to-face encounters between signifying subjectivities.49

This movement leads to the dissolution of the face; Deleuze and Guattari envision its grand future as destruction en route to the insignificant, a ‘positive’ deterritorialization that would result in the face no longer possessing features as they are scattered all over the world, fulfilling the destination of man to elude subjectivity. And one wonders, whether Salut, Deleuze! might perhaps be aiming assiduously at exactly this. Certainly, this dissolution means hard work, for faces are constructed to persist. They have a strong organization, they are stable, significant, resistant. The face has the strength to hold an entire complex of features in its square or circle. Nonetheless, it can also lose its significance – “you will be able to set faciality traits free like birds”50 – and thus go a step further, not back to the body but forward to a becoming:

 48

49 50



Cf. Deleuze, Guattari, Thousend Plateaus, p. 172: “[The] face represents a […] deterritorialization. We could say that it is an absolute deterritorialization: it […] removes the head from the stratum of the organism, human or animal, and connects it to other strata, such as significance and subjectification.” Ibid., p. 171. Ibid., p. 189.

214 Ulrich Meurer

Hardly determinable whether ear or eye; and where begins or ends the nose? What are these traits connected to? What are they continued with? Before, we were confronted with a portrait of Deleuze which had as its complement the landscape’s grasses and large leafed plants. It resembled a face, while at the same time this face’s adjacencies also became facial and merged in an allencompassing analogy. Now, under ideal conditions, such binary structures break down: “There is no more face to be in redundancy with a landscape [...], each perpetually bringing the other to mind [...]. Each freed faciality trait forms a rhizome with a freed trait of landscapity.”51 Deleuze and Guattari call this new – former – face a ‘living block’ or a ‘connecting of stems’; its features leave the organized and closed flat and transform into moving and mutable complexes which share some of its traits with an unknown – former – landscape. This is the second version of the face in tom Dieck and Balzer’s comic, no simple portrait, no philosophically generalized form; instead the beginning of the face’s disintegration, so that eventually one could ‘swim through

51

Ibid., p. 190.

Becoming Line 215

the eyes’52 and thus find Deleuzian philosophy realized in the comic medium. It might be regarded as ‘becoming line’, the transformation of the continual, encircling demarcation into a line of flight, a movable line that escapes the necessities of the face and practices the conversion from a subjective being into a de-personalized process.

8. Et (Cetera) In addition to reading the various faces in Salut, Deleuze! and gauging their philosophical potential, one can of course refer to numerous other aspects of the comic’s form and structure. For example, with regard to the relation between thinking and body the question arises to what extent Martin tom Dieck’s nearly abstract drawings of Deleuze can be regarded not so much as the depiction of a person, but rather as an epitomization or enunciation of his thought. Beyond any visible equivalence between the style of drawing and Deleuzian philosophy, the figure’s air, appearance, statements and meaning might add up to a ‘conceptual persona’. It remains to be examined if this ‘Deleuze’ is more than a personification, symbolization, or manifestation, if he is an organ or focal figure of thinking who ranks with the Greek ijȓȜȠȢ, Plato’s Socrates, Descartes’ idiot, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, or, for that matter, Deleuze’s nomad – all of them personae who “carry out the movements that describe the author’s plane of immanence [and] play a part in the very creation of the author’s concepts”.53 This comic-book-persona could be an execution of Deleuzian philosophy, an agent of his thinking who by mere ‘coincidence’ bears the same name as the philosopher Deleuze himself.54 Admittedly, Michaela Ott’s short essay on Salut, Deleuze! brings the conceptual persona into play only to emphasize that the comic’s Deleuzedouble is inconsistent with its model’s thought in that it still obeys the principle of likeness.55 On the other hand, René Aguigah, in a text entitled “Why Pop-Philosophy?”, seems to qualify Ott’s critical verdict by pointing out that tom Dieck’s Deleuze owns no fingernails but primarily a forehead. In fact, the comic book approaches the center of Deleuzian philosophy, so that

 52 53 54 55



Here (p. 171) Deleuze and Guattari’s Thousand Plateaus quote Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (New York: Grove Press, 1961), pp. 121-123. Deleuze, Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 63. Cf. ibid., p. 64: “Conceptual personae are the philosopher’s ‘heteronyms,’ and the philosopher’s name is the simple pseudonym of his personae.”  Cf. Ott, ‘Deleuze begraben?’, p. 15.

216 Ulrich Meurer Aguigah discovers in some of its most beautiful moments a characteristic manner of thinking which does not come to a halt in fixed icons.56 Directly associated with the issue of ‘conceptual personae’ is the question whether Salut, Deleuze! does not only speak about difference or repetition, but realizes these principles, which were introduced by Deleuze’s habilitation treatise of the same title. Can the recurrences, the loop structure of the protagonist’s at least five – always slightly modified – returns to the underworld be seen as an ‘enactment’ of iterating differences in the perennial same, an implementation of Différence et répétetion? The narrative’s characterization seems to confirm this hypothesis: while Charon reacts with mild disbelief and irritation at the plot’s dense repetitions, ‘Deleuze’ himself is completely at ease with the apparently causeless loops. Moreover, as he explains the natural and necessary interlacement of variation, replication, and constancy to his companion, and as the comic thus discusses its own configurations, the reader cannot help but notice an exceptional interweaving of content and form. In order to illuminate the general aesthetic preconditions of such a correspondence between a comic’s composition and (philosophical) topic, Jan Baetens sets about itemizing the structural ‘subroutines’ responsible for the visual logic and relation between panels in Martin tom Dieck’s work, using the example of The Innocent Passenger:57 He indicates that, apart from thematic aspects, the mental form or ability for ‘thinking by drawing’ is closely linked to the material basis of the medium and also results from a combination of four main techniques (of which three can be applied to Salut, Deleuze! without any difficulty). First, tom Dieck tends to implement circular or spiral structures; the narrative returns to its point of origin, though not without distinguishing the initial from the concluding situation – or the first from the following narrative cycles – by inserting a number of new details or written elements. The resulting consistent and uniform structure is perfectly visualizable and transforms the plot into a diagram, a schematic representation which, in fact, enables the convergence of form and (philosophical) concept. Secondly, the clarity of the storyline is supported by its extreme simplicity. The mise en page holds no surprises and maintains its original number and arrangement of panels throughout the entire comic. It does not disrupt the initially chosen rhythm or ‘line’ by introducing breaks, accelerations, or other discordances, the effect being an enforcement of the ‘diagram’ and its theo56

57

Cf. René Aguigah, ‘Wozu Pop-Philosophie?’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 10-12. Martin tom Dieck, Der unschuldige Passagier (Alsfeld: Arbeitskreis Stadtzeichner Verlag, 1993).

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retical potential. Thirdly, the author strictly synchronizes panel and event. This constraint – no panel without event (i.e., no padding out of the image sequence), no event without panel (i.e., no concealed narrative essentials), no panel with more than one event – accounts for much of the narrative’s mental elegance and conceptual transparency.58 Baetens’ list certainly brings to mind the abovementioned function of the ‘noosign’ as a mentally interconnected sequence of elements. And on such a basis, by transferring tom Dieck’s general practice of image combinations to the concrete case of Salut, Deleuze!, Martin Stingelin interprets the comic’s narrative repetitions as media-specific application of Deleuze’s creative aesthetics carried out in five times thirty-six picture panels.59 Even Michaela Ott discovers a Deleuzian inspiration behind the comic’s basic order and five recurring sequences with minimal variations which, when laid on top of another, do in fact ‘nomadize on the spot’.60 But with reference not to narrative or formal, but discursive repetitions, she doubts that the comic does justice to Deleuzian thought: “We not only experience the return of Deleuze in seminar rooms, but even more so in medial contexts. We must ask whether this return implies the deepening that he wished for, towards the unthought in his own thinking. Where it rises above the already-thought.”61 Finally (with this I return to the beginning), it could be argued that tom Dieck and Balzer’s comic-diptych demonstrates philosophy’s unique relation and particular proximity to nonphilosophy.62 Perhaps it is in perfect accordance with Deleuze’s thesis about the ‘common sequences’ which make for a sudden solution of philosophical problems in a nonphilosophical environment. Time and again, Gilles Deleuze declares that in the arts, sciences, and in philosophy creative encounters and intersections are indispensable (as if the solution always came ‘from elsewhere’), so that painting may unex58 59

60 61 62

Cf. Baetens, ‘Un dessinateur qui pense’, n.p. Martin Stingelin, ‘Unerschöpflich ist das Revier der Weisheit’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 2-4 (p. 2), trans. by U.M. Cf. Ott, ‘Deleuze begraben?’, p. 15. Ibid. Cf. Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 139: “I realized how much philosophy needs not only a philosophical understanding, through concepts, but a nonphilosophical understanding, rooted in percepts and affects. You need both. Philosophy has an essential and positive relation to nonphilosophy: it speaks directly to nonphilosophers. [...] Nonphilosophical understanding isn’t inadequate or provisional, it’s one of philosophy’s two sides, one of its two wings.” Cf. also Aguigah, ‘Wozu Pop-Philosophie’, p. 11: “In this context, flirting with the project of pop-philosophy appears quite consistent […], a thinking which does not exclude intuitive and emotional approaches, an understanding that does not end with the limits of formal education.” (trans. by U.M.) 

218 Ulrich Meurer pectedly find itself in mathematics or André Robinet’s history of philosophy in Xenakis’ computer-music.63 When facing a certain challenge, any discipline can thus resort to another in which the respective question is already settled. It remains only to figure out which insisting issue of philosophy has already been solved by the comic.

Bibliography Aguigah, René, ‘Wozu Pop-Philosophie?’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 10-12. Baetens, Jan, ‘Un dessinateur qui pense.A propos de Martin tom Dieck’, Image & Narrative, 3 (March 2001), http://www.imageandnarrative.be/ inarchive/illustrations/janbaetens3.htm [16.09.2011]. Buchanan, Ian, Deleuzism. A Metacommentary (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). Deleuze, Gilles, ‘À propos des nouveaux philosophes et d’un problème plus général’, supplement to Minuit, 24 (1977), n.p. Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 1, The Movement-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 2, The Time-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis, MN: University of Michigan Press, 1989). Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (London, New York, NY: Continuum, 1994). Deleuze, Gilles, The Logic of Sense, ed. by Constantin V. Boundas, trans. by Mark Lester (London: Athlone Press, 1990). Deleuze, Gilles, Negotiations, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995). Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia [II], trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994). Flusser, Vilém, Does Writing Have a Future?, trans. by Nancy Ann Roth (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 63

See Gilles Deleuze, ‘À propos des nouveaux philosophes et d’un problème plus général’, supplement to Minuit, 24 (1977), n.p.

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Früchtl, Josef, ‘Die ewige Wiederkehr – ein Witz’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 8-10. Helbling, Brigitte, ‘Archaisches Gemüse’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (09.10.2001, online archive), http://www.ksta.de/jks/artikel.jsp?id=1002629214891 [18.09.2011]. Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgement, trans. by Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987). McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993). Murphy, Timothy S., Daniel W. Smith, ‘What I Hear Is Thinking Too. Deleuze and Guattari Go Pop’, Echo, 3.1 (spring 2001), http://www.echo.ucla.edu/Volume3-Issue1/smithmurphy/index.html [16.09.2011]. Ott, Michaela, ‘Deleuze begraben?’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 14-15. Schaub, Mirjam, ‘Orpheus auf Odyssee’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 6-8. Stahlhut, Marco, ‘Vier Freunde sollt ihr sein’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 5-6. Stingelin, Martin, ‘Synopsis. Wie das Ritornell “Salut, Deleuze!” das Möbiusband “The Return of Deleuze” aus sich hervortreibt’, in: Literatur als Blätterwerk. Perspektiven nichtlinearer Lektüre, ed. by Jürgen Gunia and Iris Hermann (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2002), pp. 127-141. Stingelin, Martin, ‘Unerschöpflich ist das Revier der Weisheit’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 2-4. Striphas, Ted, ‘Deleuze and high culture’, Differences & Repetitions (blog), 05.02.2006, http://striphas.blogspot.com/2006/02/deleuze-and-highculture.html [16.09.2011]. tom Dieck, Martin, Der unschuldige Passagier (Alsfeld: Arbeitskreis Stadtzeichner Verlag, 1993). tom Dieck, Martin, Jens Balzer, Neue Abenteuer des unglaublichen Orpheus (Die Rückkehr von Deleuze) (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001).



220 Ulrich Meurer tom Dieck, Martin, Jens Balzer, Salut, Deleuze! (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 1998). Vogl, Joseph, ‘Deleuze aux Enfers’, in: Interpretation und Kommentare zu “Salut, Deleuze!” und “New Adventures of Incredible Orpheus (The Return of Deleuze)”, supplement to the comic book (Zurich: Arrache Coeur, 2001), pp. 13-14. Werner, Susanne, Grafien des Comics. Der Comic als Aufschreibesystem der grafischen Kulturtechniken des 19. Jahrhunderts, (diploma thesis, Faculty of Media Studies at the Bauhaus-University Weimar), http://tudresden.de/Members/susanne.werner/bilder/diplom.pdf [22.08.2010].

Monika Schmitz-Emans Alphabetical Writing between Information, Entertainment, and Experiment. Playful Variations of Lexicography in High and Popular Culture1 Recently, both writers and readers of literary fiction have developed an increased interest in alphabetically structured texts and books, especially in forms of lexicographic writing as a model that can be used in order to create or describe intradiegetic worlds. There is a broad range of different examples based on formats that are conventionally used in order to obtain factual information – such as encyclopedias, conversation lexica, and dictionaries. The examples presented refer to different traditions: not only to the history of alphabetical lexicography, but as to the format of the list and to the genre of spelling books. – Among the alphabetical lexicographical books different groups and genres can be distinguished. They represent critical philosophical reflection about concepts and discourses as well as texts based on autobiographical experience and personal ideas. And there are quite different kinds of contributions to entertainment literature as, for instance, to literary Fantasy, but also to entertaining and obviously ‘useless’ representations of anachronistic, old-fashioned or otherwise ‘outlandish’ subjects of knowledge and imagination.

1. On the Popularity of Lexicographic Forms Lexicographic writing is ‘in’: compendia and dictionaries of all kind as well as pseudo-lexicons and pseudo-dictionaries, with the boundaries between them permanently blurring – a fact which seems to be constitutive of the popularity of these forms. The popularity of lexicographic books evident in a flood of new publications and their presence in bookstores leads to two conclusions: firstly and evidently, our community of knowledge craves for original information in viable form, and secondly, this community of knowledge similarly longs for a playful treatment of this desire for knowledge and for indulging in parodies. How intense the reflexivity (and, accordingly, the critical stance) of these plays are, can only be decided individually. Often, the play remains an end in itself. The knowledge and pseudo-knowledge on language is particularly affected by the lexicographic boom; publications dedicated to words and the use of language meet a big audience. Not all of them, however, serve the mere purpose of information and teaching. In many cases, these publications appeal to an aesthetic mode regarding their subjects – the mild estrangement regarding irritating forms, the nostalgic view on the past. Such an audience is targeted by Bodo Mrozek’s Lexikon der bedrohten Wörter (“Dictionary of Endangered Words”) whose title is a play on lists of endangered 1

Translated from German by Mark Schmitt.

222 Monika Schmitz-Emans animal species. On the one hand, these words are thus zoomorphised in an exaggeration of the idea of ‘vivid language’, and on the other hand, structures and contents of biological knowledge are being transposed on linguistics as a form of cultural studies in a slightly ironic way. Mrozek’s collection of words is a compilation of word-mummies. In order to make the issue of temporality evident, the cover simulates an old and used book: the cover seems ragged and edgeless. Reading this collection of words is a trip into the past.2 Whereas Mrozek’s and similar publications pursue an interest in cultural reflexivity, other entertainment-lexicographers translate their linguistic inspiration into books in the tradition of nonsense literature. One representative example of this follows the tradition of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (which with its cynical stance in turn draws on models from the period of Enlightenment), albeit highlighting the funny and entertaining aspect rather than Bierce’s satiric social criticism: Douglas Adams and John Lloyd’s The Meaning of Liff, a compendium published in 1983. It lists place names and comments on them in a unique way: the words are being used as signifiers for sensations, situations, and states which lacked an English name before. The idea to this dictionary indirectly seems to go back to Paul Jennigs’ essay “Ware, Wye and Watford” from the 1950s. The general stance of this dictionary, however, continues Lewis Carroll’s idea of portmanteau-words (i.e., hybrid neologisms) including their (pseudo) explanations by Humpty Dumpty. Adams and Lloyd’s dictionary reached many readers and was followed by a sequel called The Deeper Meaning of Liff in 1990. Only to a certain extent, however, this book is a ‘fun-lexicon’ since it hints at an actual lack of appropriate words – even though the words proposed in this dictionary might not be what we need. Further, it evidently is connected to a form of parody of scholarly knowledge. Sven Böttcher published a German adaptation of Adams and Lloyd’s pseudo lexicon entitled Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz, using strange-sounding German place names. Now, the form of pseudodefinitions which is constitutive of The (Deeper) Meaning of Liff and which the authors themselves have coined “daffynition”, has become a common and unique text form. It has its own Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffynition), and the BBC has even created a radio-slot called “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”, which contributes to the Uxbridge English Dictionary (“making up daffynitions”).3 Apart from books and

 2

3



Accordingly, some of the lemmas are: Abgunst, ablappen, Abspielgerät, Abtritt, Achtgroschenjunge, Adenauerhut, Affe [in this case meaning backpack], Affenfett, Affenzahn, Afterarzt, Aftermieter, Amisette, Ampelmännchen etc. “A daffynition (portmanteau of daffy and definition) is a pun format involving the reinterpretation of an existing word, on the basis that it sounds like another word (or

Alphabetical Writing 223

radio-programmes, the internet is intensely contributing to alternative lexicography.4 However, pseudo- and fun-dictionaries offer a unique punchline: they look like ‘real’ dictionaries and thus draw on a culture of knowledge which relies on the book as a medium. Cover design and paratexts of books like Mrozek’s Lexikon der bedrohten Wörter and Adams and Lloyd’s The (Deeper) Meaning of Liff are part of this playful arrangement. Such an entertaining parody of alleged mediation of knowledge is manyfaceted formally and content-wise. It ranges from trivial nonsense to ‘serious’ forms of ambitiously constituted ‘alternative knowledge’.An example of this nonsensical subgenre is the new edition of Die große Brocklaus: Das komplett erfundene Lexikon (“The Big Brocklouse: The completely invented lexicon”, 2010) by Oliver Kuhn, Alexandra Reinwarth and Axel Fröhlich, a pseudo-lexicon mimicking the Brockhaus which describes a whole world of invented objects – following the tradition of lexicographics of the imaginary, and mostly employing rather trivial groaners.5



4

5



group of words). They are similar to transpositional puns, but often much less complex and easier to create. Some daffynitions may be puns. For example, ‘raisins are the wrath of grapes’ is a play on the title of the book The Grapes of Wrath. A subclass of daffynition is the goofinition which relies strictly on literal associations and correct spellings, such as ‘lobster = a weak tennis player’.” ‘Daffynition’, in Wikipedia. The Free Encylcopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffynition). Cf. for instance http://www.odford.co.uk/: (The Odford English Dictionary. The Online Home for Funny Definitions and Word Play) and http://www.jimwegryn.com/ Words/Daffynitions.htm – http://www.jimwegryn.com/Words/Goofinitions.htm. – Fullers’s Dictionary of Definitions also has the pendant Fullers’s Dictionary of Daffinitions (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffynition). Cf. the publisher’s advertisement (http://www.droemer-knaur.de/buecher/ Die+gro% C3%9Fe+Brocklaus.362213.html): “Die große Brocklaus versammelt alle bisherigen Wissenslücken in einem Band. Mit garantiert unbekannten Stichwörtern, vom lange verschollenen elften Gebot über die Entdeckung des Ostpols bis zur unschönen Zahl Pu. ‘Ein Leben ohne Brocklaus ist möglich, aber witzlos.’ Viggo von Besser-Visser. ‘Wenn Sie Molwanien kennen, dann werden Sie dieses Buch lieben.’ Prof. Roman Tisch, Staatsminister für Kunst und Kultur, Vulgarien.” (“The Big Brocklouse gathers all existing knowledge gaps in one volume. With guaranteed unknown keywords from the long lost eleventh commandment about the discovery of East Pole to the ugly number Pu. ‘A life without Brocklouse is possible, but pointless.’ Viggo von Wisenheimer. ‘If you know Molovia, then you will love this book.’ Prof. Roman Tic, State Minister for Arts and Culture, Vulgaria.) – Critics have drawn attention to the predecessors of the mostly positively reviewed Brocklaus: cf. Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 7 January 2011:“Der großartige Douglas Adams schrieb einst ein Lexikon der unbekannten Wörter: Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz gab Dingen Namen, die keine hatten. Zum Beispiel der Stelle zwischen Nase und Oberlippe, die sich so komisch einkerbt […]. Vor diesem Hintergrund haben es Nachfolger schwer. Tapfer aber schlägt sich die Brocklaus […]. Auch erfreuen unbekannte Länder (‘Syran’) und Wissenschaftsquatsch. Total gaga. So wie die Welt eben ist.” (“The great

224 Monika Schmitz-Emans Sometimes it seems to be a matter of perspective whether lexicographic books will be read as entertainment, joke, or nonfiction books. Reviews of the Langenscheidt-dictionary Mensch-Hund (“Man-Dog”), for instance, occasionally emphasize the utility of such help in the communication between two- and four-legged beings. 6 Dog-fanciers are particularly grateful for such help.7 Rather disturbing, however, is the fact that even the dictionary MannFrau (“Man-Woman”) has sometimes been understood as an actual manual, and is being advertised as such in the book’s paratexts. Once more, the way of perception decides whether one is inclined to consider such books useful or amusing – or whether one would rather avoid any of the two positions.8

2. From A to Zett: Implications and Connotations of a Text Pattern For examples of alphabetically structured texts as variations of an entertaining subgenre, several traditions of text design have to be regarded. These forms are, firstly, that of the alphabetically organized compendium of knowledge (the alphabetical lexicon, the encyclopaedia), secondly, the list, with the variations of the word list as well as the abecedarian text, and, thirdly, the spelling book. (a) The tradition of alphabetical lexicography First of all, the alphabetical structuring of a book is an important strategy for providing various bodies of knowledge in a more or less neutral way. His-

6 7 8

Douglas Adams once wrote a dictionary of unknown words: The Meaning of Liff gave names to things that had none. For example, the spot between the nose and upper lip which carves so funnily [...]. Against this background, successors have a rough ride. However, the Brocklouse puts up a good fight [...]. Unknown countries (‘Syran’) and scientific nonsense know how to please. Totally gaga. Just the way the world is.”) Cf. Martin Rütter, Langenscheidt Hund-Deutsch/Deutsch-Hund (Berlin: Langenscheidt, 2009). Cf. http://www.treff-hundefreunde.de/forum/erziehung-verhalten/18989-martinr%FCtter-langenscheidt-legen-erste-verst%E4ndigungshilfe-mensch-hund-vor.html. Cf. Mario Barth, Langenscheidt Frau-Deutsch/Deutsch-Frau (Berlin: Langenscheidt, 2004). From the advertisement: “Schnelle Hilfe für den ratlosen Mann. Frauen sprechen einfach eine andere Sprache als Männer. TV-Comedian Mario Barth leistet Verständigungshilfe und führt […] in die vertrackten Geheimnisse weiblichen Sprachgebrauchs ein.” (“Quick help for the helpless man. Women simply speak a different language than men. TV comedian Mario Barth provides help of understanding and leads [...] into the intricate secrets of female language use.” – http://www.langenscheidt.de/produkt/837/Langenscheidt_Frau-Deutsch_DeutschFrau-Buch/978-3-468-73122-8)

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torically, the alphabetization of encyclopaedic texts must be regarded as an important caesura.9 It emphasizes the renunciation of any conception of metaphysical order and ontologically informed systematics. The alphabet renders obsolete the restraint to consider the single object as part of a totality in terms of a meaningful system since it objects single things to the order of names – names which are furthermore different in each historical epoch and each language area. The alphabetical form thus offers the possibility to compile information of various kinds, even interdisciplinarily since singular objects do not need to be integrated into any kind of systematic any more. The thing represented only needs a name, nothing else. And the reader can access “his” knowledge on his own by browsing through the lexicographic or encyclopaedic text, merely guided by cross-references. Such a suggestion of “neutrality” of presenting knowledge certainly offers interesting possibilities for playing. For instance, when the seemingly “democratic” and heterogeneous assemblage of knowledge leads to strange and unlikely combinations or when the reader is led through a chaos of pseudo-information. The employment of the alphabet as a basic structure for organizing (pseudo-)information can arouse different, and even contradicting, expectations – at times even simultaneously: on the one hand, the alphabetization of knowledge represents a fragmentation of this knowledge; everything is being represented in single articles with no inherent relation. On the other hand, alphabetical compendia suggest a totality of knowledge. Whoever informs their readers from A to Z, allegedly offers everything that there is to know. The alphabetical sequence of information is not motivated by the nature of the objects represented. However, the alphabetical representation is connoted with the conception of a methodological approach from “A to Z”. Alphabetically organized texts are reminiscent of didactic strategies, approaches to “serious” mediations of knowledge and “real” knowledge of things and languages – which are the reasons why these strategies offer the potential for games and subversion: ideas of a “useless”, an “alternative”, and of a “questionable” knowledge. The (seemingly) orderly alphabet recalls the contingency, historicity, and cultural specificity of all organizations of knowledge. When this order is playfully presented as a “real” and ontologically grounded order, nonsense can blossom, and parodist as well as other counter-discourses can be experimented with.

9

Cf. Andreas Kilcher, mathesis und poiesis. Die Enzyklopädik der Literatur 1600 bis 2000 (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2003).

226 Monika Schmitz-Emans (b) The tradition of the list Lists compile similar objects which, in the case of the alphabetical list, use the objects’ names.10 The degree of “similarity” can diverge in some cases; if regarded as a variation of the list, the alphabetical compendium’s (lexicon, encyclopaedia) objects may only be similar in that they bear a name that allows for inclusion in such an alphabetical list. If the words themselves are the list’s objects, as in the case of the dictionary, one may find a lot of variations and disparate aspects on the level of word meanings. But the word list as such limits these variations. Another form which inspires alphabetical lists as well as dictionaries is the abecedarius: this text form is based on the collection of words, phrases, enunciations following a certain rule: the alphabetical sequence as such has to be represented by the single passages (words, phrases etc.) of the text. The linguistic structure is superior to any factual relations. Abecedarian texts thus have an affinity to humoristic and grotesque ways of writing, to nonsense and plays of words per se. In some abecedaries, a sense of humor manifests itself which is based on the connections of discrepancies; on contrasts and strange combinations. The contrasts produced can critically reveal absurdities within the construction of knowledge. Sometimes, however, the joyful display of the heterogeneous dominates. (c) The tradition of the spelling book In a specific way, the spelling book, intended to be an introduction into the world of words and letters, substitutes any other order by an order of names and words. Alphabetical spelling books situate heterogeneous and discrepant things by arranging them according to their first letters. Thus, strange relations between objects and irritating discursive connections result. Walter Benjamin has described this characteristic and has examined the strange habit of assembling things according to their place in the alphabet.11 Benja10 11

On the list as text form cf.: Umberto Eco, Vertigine della lista (Milan: Bompiani, 2009). Cf. Walter Benjamin, ‘Aussicht ins Kinderbuch’, in Gesammelte Schriften IV/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp. 609–610; ‘ABC-Bücher vor hundert Jahren’, in Gesammelte Schriften IV/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp. 619f.. Benjamin explains how “die Buchstaben schon früh [begannen], einen Hof von Gegenständen um sich zu bilden. Die Älteren unter uns haben noch den Hut dienstfertig beim h hängen, die Maus harmlos am m knabbern sehen und das r als den dornigsten Teil der Rose kennen gelernt. […] Die kleinen illustrierten Gegenstände, die bis dahin verlegen um den herrschaftlichen Buchstaben herumgelungert hatten, oder gar in Kassetten, eng wie die Fensterchen in bürgerlichen Hausfassaden des 18. Jahrhunderts, gepreßt worden waren, gaben plötzlich revolutionäre Losungen aus. Die Ammen, Apotheker, Artilleristen, Adler und Affen, die Kinder, Kellner, Katzen, Kegeljungen, Köchinnen, Karpfen, die Uhrmacher, Ungarn, Ulanen erkannten ihre Solidarität. Sie beriefen große Konvente ein, Abordnungen aller A’s, B’s, C’s

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min’s reflections on this text genre have not only offered important theoretical ideas but have also stimulated literary writers.12

3. Philosophical, Literary, Artistic, and Avantgardist Alphabets Our contemporary community of knowledge has not only inherited the encyclopaedist age’s project of a permanent and infinite accumulation of knowledge but also its critical reflections on such knowledge, its preconditions, consequences, and its ways of representation and mediation. From the project of Enlightenment emerge the idea of “counter-knowledge” and an “anti-lexicography”. With partly strange and irritating consequences, and as a complimentary project to the history of established discourses of knowledge, it has inspired philosophers, writers and artists of the 20th and 21st century to work with alphabetic forms with the intention to use it for an opposition to conventional knowledge. Critical observations of periods and discourses as well as the need for representing personal experiences, convictions, and favourite subjects in an “open”, nonlinear form have been intentions of such projects. (a) Compendia criticising ideologies and discourses Carl Einstein, Carl Sternheim, and Gottfried Benn planned an Encyclopädie zum Abbruch bürgerlicher Ideologien (“Encyclopaedia for the breakdown of bourgeois ideologies”) which, however, had only been partly completed. In a sketch of the first volume of the journal Documents, a note by Einstein on a Dictionnaire des idéologies is included. This project is reminiscent of Flaubert’s huge, yet also incomplete compendium of flowery phrases and ideas (Sottisier). The surrealist avant-gardes produced a number of projects (“antidictionaries”) such as the Abbreviated Dictionary of Surrealism by André Breton



12



usw.erschienen, und es ging auf ihren Versammlungen tumultuarisch zu.” (“Already at an early stage the letters began to build a yard of objects around themselves. The older ones among still have the hat officiously hanging next to the h, the mouse nibbling harmlessly on the m, and have come to know the r as the thorniest part of the rose. [...] The illustrated small items that had previously been shyly hanging around the noble letters, or had even been pressed into caskets – neatly like the windows in bourgeois house fronts of the 18th century – suddenly uttered revolutionary paroles. The wet nurses, pharmacists, artillerymen, eagles and monkeys, children, waiters, cats, pin boys, cooks, carps, the watchmakers, Hungarians, Uhlans saw their solidarity. They convened large conventions, delegations of all A’s, B’s, C’s, etc. appeared, and the situation at their assemblies was tumultuous.” – p. 619f.) Cf. Yoko Tawada, Spielzeug und Sprachmagie in der europäischen Literatur. Eine ethnologische Poetologie (Tübingen: Konkursbuch, 2000).

228 Monika Schmitz-Emans and Paul Eluard (1938), a collective project by Isabelle Waldberg, Robert Lebel, and Marcel Duchamp (1947)13 as well as the Nuova Enciclopedia by Alberto Savinio. A Dictionnaire critique resulted from the collaboration of Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris, and others; it was published in diverse editions of the journal Documents: Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie between 1929 and 1930.14 In their German translation, the editors Kiesow and Schmidgen talk of the individual tradition of “antiakademische[r], revolutionäre[r], erfinderische[r], unbegreifliche[r] und poetische[r] Wörterbücher, die das Alphabet eines anderen Wissens buchstabieren” (“anti-academic, revolutionary, inventive, inscrutable, and poetic dictionaries which spell out the alphabet of a different knowledge“, 120). Quite recently, Kiesow himself contributed to this tradition by publishing an Alphabet des Rechts (“alphabet of law”) which owes much to Foucault’s thinking.15 (b) Personal alphabets and “dictionnaires” The “personal alphabet” can be distinguished from the “anti-dictionary” and the “new encyclopedia” by its focus on a figure drawn by the text: the lexicographer. Alphabetically organized self-portraits are “anti-autobiographies” in that they subvert the idea of sense and purpose suggested by linear and chronologically narrated biographies. They present a fragmented ego – an ego that is dependent on words and ways of writing and which thus defies authenticity. In several implicitly and explicitly alphabetical texts, Roland Barthes connects his personal motivation to a critique of discourses.16 The textform of the personal alphabet, already inspired by Salvinio is a mode of self-depiction and reflection used by many representatives of recent autobiography. It is the presentation of a self-portrait fragmented into different articles and splinters, a “broken” yet “mobile” one that knowingly embraces contradictions and ruptures. Carlos Fuentes offers a list of key-

 13

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Encyclopædia acephalica: Comprising the Critical Dictionary and Related Texts edited by Georges Bataille and the Encyclopædia Da Costa edited by Robert Lebel & Isabelle Waldberg, ed. by Georges Bataille, Robert Lebel, Isabelle Waldberg and Marcel Duchamp (London: Atlas Press, 1995). Kritisches Wörterbuch. Beiträge von Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris u.a., ed. and tansl. by Rainer Maria Kiesow and Henning Schmidgen (Berlin: Merve, 2005). Rainer Maria Kiesow, ‘Prospekt’, in Alphabet des Rechts (Frankfurt a.M.: Eichborn, 2004), pp. 18-20. NJǘIJƫǏǑij‫ޒ‬Ǎ۞İı‫ޒ‬Ǎ Barthes, ROLAND BARTHES par roland barthes, (Paris: Seuil, 1975) and Le plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973).

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words as a self-portrait (“En esto creo”);17 Gisela Dischner portraits herself in the Wörterbuch des Müßiggängers (“An idler’s dictionary”).18 With his personal “dictionnaire”, the philosopher Andreas Urs Sommer stands for the idea of critically and auto-reflexively paving new paths of thinking, and thus follows the tradition of Enlightenment writings.19 The performance artist Christian Boltanski, a specialist of playful and alienating forms of self-expression, has compiled an alphabet for the words shaping his oeuvre, and this in turn has inspired the linguist Paolo Fabbri to extend the play with information and associations that connect Boltanski’s words with the spheres of lexicography and literature.20 (c) Dedoxification The abecedarian concept clearly stimulates the focus on a core vocabulary which then triggers the re-thinking of habits and rituals, the institutions and codes of our culture – and it also stimulates new reflections of the ego, and the search for the alien and the other within the self. Despite their differences, all projects are drawn towards the fragment, the anti-systematic, and the experimental. In comparison to that, G. J. Lischka’s poetisches ABC (“poetic alphabet”), a compendium of new and alternative art forms of the 1980s, appears rather conventional.21 Every new art form is being represented under a letter of the alphabet without, however, any relation to contents or terminology. Yet this example also proves that the artistic avantgarde appreciates the alphabetic form just like the anti-systematic, antidogmatic and “dedoxifying” philosophers and discourse critics.

4. Entertainment Literature. Regarding the Popularity of Alphabetically Organized Texts In a certain sense, lexicographic presentations in the genre of fantasy literature do also mediate an alternative knowledge. But is this alternative knowledge comparable to the alphabetic presentations that Einstein, Bataille, Ki17

18 19 20 21

Carlos Fuentes, En esto creo (Barcelona: Biblioteca Breve, 2002). The alphabetically ordered articles in this book include accounts of personal experience and essayistic reflections. Gisela Dischner, Wörterbuch des Müßiggängers (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2009). Andreas Urs Sommer, Die Kunst, selber zu denken. Ein philosophischer Dictionnaire (Frankfurt a.M.: Eichborn, 2002). The alphabet is included in Christian Boltanski, A cura di Danilo Eccher. “Pentimenti”Bologna, May-Sept. 1997 (Milano Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 1997). ALLES und noch viel mehr. Die KatalogAnthologie der 80er Jahre. Das poetische ABC, ed. by Gerhard Johann Lischka (Bern: Benteli, 1985).

230 Monika Schmitz-Emans esow, or Fuentes, Barthes and Boltanski are concerned with? What is for sure is that authors and readers of fantasy literature appreciate the alphabetic form: a particularly popular form of alphabetic text is the “lexicon” on literary representations of fictional worlds. Apparently, many fantasy-aficionados crave for “ordered” knowledge about the heroes, monsters, settings, and requisites that their imagination is occupied with. Thus, the popularity of a text can be measured due to its representation in lexicographic works. Lexicographic texts on fantasy worlds serve different functions. First, they help giving an overview on the vast range of characters and actions within fantasy worlds; they organize the complexity of its contents. Secondly, lexicographic texts can further enhance the fictional world; these compendia enfold further information and can also contribute to the fictional world’s diegesis. Thirdly, lexicographic methods increase the impression that these worlds actually exist and are thus similar to role plays.22 Many examples of lexicographic descriptions of fantasy worlds can themselves be regarded as a form of fantasy literature – a “parasitic” one since they are dependent on preexisting fantasy worlds as a basis. Yet one has to discriminate between those lexicons that have been authored by the fantasy-writers themselves and those written by other authors. For the reception of these lexicons, however, the question of authorship is not necessarily relevant. (a) The Tolkien paradigm John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s oeuvre has stimulated a vast range of lexicographic works instigated by the author himself – a typical example of the cooperation and partially personal union of author and lexicographer. Tolkien, driven by an affinity towards scholarly modes of representation, created an elaborate topography, multiple peoples, their stories and cultures including languages and alphabets for his “Middle-earth”.23 Thus, his repertory of representations exceeds that of alphabetic encyclopedias, and even draws on older variations of encyclopedic representation. Since the 1920s, the professor of English philology was occupied with the detailed construction of the imaginary world that provided the setting for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Apparently motivated by the idea that an increased complexity makes for an increased persuasiveness of his fictions, Tolkien created a whole fictional

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Alphabetical structures are also constitutive in guides to role-playing games. Characters and other elements of their worlds are comprised and described in lists, most of them alphabetically. Cf. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Shaping of Middle-Earth. The History of Middle Earth (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).

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cosmos by his paratexts. Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-Earth emphasizes the realism that this cosmos suggests. Even after Tolkien’s death, Middle-earth remained the subject of new cartographic, historiographic, and lexicographic endeavors;24 the exploration of Middle-earth is informed by (popular) scientific and scholarly organizations of knowledge such as annals, historiography, geography, encyclopedias, linguistics, and folklore. The alphabetic representation of Middle-earth is but a part of these endeavors – and the mere fact that other (systematic and chronological) methods of representation are employed as well shows that Tolkien’s readers do not perceive Middle-earth as a fragmented cosmos supporting a representation in single articles. Rather, the main aim is the suggestion of a coherent, spatially, chronologically, and categorically ordered whole. The alphabetic order promises an “A to Z”, i.e., a representation that is as comprehensive as possible – a completeness of knowledge. David Day,25 Robert Foster26 and Wolfgang Krege27 have presented Tolkien’s world in encyclopaedic compendia which have been reviewed by Middle-earth specialists with regard to their reliability. In fact, the comprehensive presentation of a world by literary and paratextual means is possible: one simply has to repeat what its creator has already said, even if it is in a different chronology. The same goes for the languages of Middle-earth which only “exist” since Tolkien has created them. Ruth S. Noel, author of the Mythology of Middle-earth, has written a language guide entitled The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (1974) whose design resembles that of a pocket dictionary: “A complete guide to all fourteen of the languages Tolkien invented. Contains a dictionary of all non-English words, an English/Elvish glossary, rules of grammar and pronunciation; translations, how to write Elvish and other alphabets and runes.”28 This dictionary includes an introduction on “Languages in Tolkien’s Middle-earth” which outlines the peoples’ languages in this imaginary cosmos; a second part is devoted to the “Elvish Languages”, and the third part, the “Tolkien Dictionary”, lists the vocabulary of fourteen “Tolkien Languages”, with added phonetic refer-

 24

25 26 27 28



Tolkien not only forged his world in texts but also in drawings and paintings, charts, registers and annals. His son Christopher has continued this work, and so do others until this day. David Day: Tolkien, The Illustrated Encyclopedia. (London. Mitchell Beazley, 1992). – David Day, Tolkien’s Ring, illustrated by David Lee (London: Mitchell Beazley, 2001). Robert Foster, The Complete Guide to Middle-earth (New York: Ballantine, 1978). Wolfgang Krege, Handbuch der Weisen von Mittelerde. Die Tolkien-Enzyklopädie. Mit Karten und Illustrationen von J.R.R. Tolkien (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1996, 24th ed. 2005). Ruth S. Noel, The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. A Complete Guide to all Fourteen of the Languages Tolkien Invented (Boston: Mariner Books, 1980).

232 Monika Schmitz-Emans ences. Here, the presentation is also devoted to the suggestion of a complete and full knowledge. These and other examples show that the sphere of fantasy literature hosts an encyclopaedic concept which dates back to the era of alphabetic encyclopaedias and their implications: in the case of imaginary worlds which have been shaped in an author’s literary oeuvre and exist only there, in the realm of words and visual presentations, the idea of a complete knowledge is once again imaginable. This knowledge is “alternative” or “different” mainly with regard to its suggestion of totality. (b) Abecedarius and totality: The case of Michael Ende Michael Ende’s novel Die unendliche Geschichte (“The Neverending Story”) connects to abecedarian writing: the chapters start with letters in alphabetical sequence, and in order to make this structure visible, the letters have been graphically designed. The writer has subjected himself fully to this system: wherever letters were used with which little or no words start out, he simply invented new names. Once again, the alphabet is connoted with the idea of totality. Whereas the plot finally brings its line of events full-circle, represented in the symbol of an oval-curved snake, the alphabet similarly contributes to the interpretation of an imaginary world in its totality. Ende’s Unendliche Geschichte, however, differs from Tolkien in that the prominence of the alphabet highlights the fact that this world has been built of letters. After all, its literalness and constructedness make it representable in its totality. Such ideas of totality suggest the representation “from A to Z” in lexicographic form. Hence, Die unendliche Geschichte is another example of popular fantasy literature which by now has received its own lexicon. In 2009, Patrick and Roman Hocke have published a Phantásien-lexicon whose cover hides the fact that it has not been written by Ende himself – probably as a marketing scheme.29 The lexicographic discourse oscillates between diegetic and reflexive modes of representation – and thus, the mediation of knowledge is open to enhance fictions. The lexicon’s structure transports the notion of a totality of knowledge. An introduction explains Phantásien’s relevance, Ende’s place in literary history, his topics, imagination and poetics, his interest in the subconscious and dram-images.30The alphabetic articles are connected with each other by referential arrows. The lexicon promises to “open the door to Phantásien”. On the one hand, it claims to provide in29

30

Michael Ende, Die unendliche Geschichte. Das Phantásien-Lexikon von Roman und Patrick Hocke (Stuttgart: Thienemann, 2009). On the dust-jacket, the authors’ names are not even mentioned. Cf. ibid, pp. 11-18.

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formation on Ende’s cosmos, and on the other, however, it wants to take part in the creation of imaginations. The lexicon describes Ende’s novel and its world like a literary work, and at the same time refers to Phantásien as if it was a real place, thereby paraphrasing Ende’s own descriptions of it. The lexicographic form serves the intensification of an illusion and at the same time attempts at analyzing the novel as such. Information on the fiction and its simultaneous continuation form a conglomerate in the tradition of Ende’s thinking which also combines diegesis and reflection. Expectedly, letters and alphabets are appropriately considered by Patrick and Roman Hocke.31 The lexicon depicts letters on the inside of its cover and thus lets them frame the actual text – in line with the alphabetic structure of the book. Roman and Patrick Hocke deliberately follow in Ende’s steps when taking up his idea that letters can produce whole worlds. Phantásien seems destined to become subject of an alphabetic book. (c) Continuing fantasy fictions by lexicographic means Alphabetic compendia are being used by authors of fantasy literature in order to enhance their fictional worlds in more detail. Joanne K. Rowling’s alphabetic information on her Harry-Potter-world is a continuation of the intrafictional diegesis, and comments on them which helps to link the world of the fictional characters with that of the reader. In addition, it has (self)parodist characteristics. Rowling’s small book on the fauna of Harry Potter’s world, whose design is already reminiscent of nonfiction books, informs about “fantastic beasts and where to find them”. And it seems to be a book which is actually used in Hogwards: several graduates have apparently scribbled into this book. Its content offers an overview on the different species which people Harry Potter’s world and is thus a scientific lexicon.32 The preface has been authored by the fictitious magician Albus Dumbledore – however, it classifies the beings described in this book as inventions (p. X). When alphabetically organised information self-evidently belongs to imaginary worlds, it is close at hand to integrate it within such a world. Christopher Paolini offers an example of such an integration.33 His Eragon ends with a page on which phonetic details for unconventional words are  31

32 33



Cf. the first article: “A, das” (“A, the”) which states: “Alle Geschichten dieser Welt, ob sie nun phantastisch oder realistisch sind, erfunden oder fast wahr, sind aus einer Kombination dieser Buchstaben [des Alphabets] geschrieben. Ist das nicht ein Wunder?” (“All stories in this world, whether they are realistic or fantastic, invented, or almost true, are written from a combination of these letters [the alphabet]. Is not this a miracle?” – p. 19). Newt Scamander [=Joanne K. Rowling], Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them (London: Bloomsbury, 2001). Christopher Paolini, Eragon. Inheritance Book One (London: Corgi Books, 2005).

234 Monika Schmitz-Emans offered. It is followed by a glossary whose playful position towards its fictitious objects is evident.34 An alphabetic list of foreign words and their translations (cf. pp. 599-601) follows. Another glossary presents vocabulary from the language of the dwarves (cf. pp. 601, 602), followed by a list of words from the language of the Urgals (p. 602). Walter Moers construes another kind of connection between a fantastic world and lexicography. In some of his fantasy novels, he suggests the existence of a lexicon which describes the imaginary worlds depicted in them.35 He quotes from this lexicon without ever representing it in its entirety. The case of Moers emphasizes the fact that a proper fantasy world needs a lexicon. If Zamonien36 (“Zamonia”) exists, it must be described in a lexicon somewhere – and there must be persons who read these works. Zamonia’s fictitious lexicographer Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller in Die 13 ½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär (“The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear”) is a universal scholar. In Ensel und Krete, the fictitious author Hildegunst von Mythenmetz consults Nachtigaller’s lexicon, instigating several “scholarly” digressions. In Die 13 ½ Leben, excerpts from this lexicon are interspersed in the text. In Ensel und Krete, information on terms and objects derived from this lexicon can be found in footnotes. Beings of various kinds are subject of this lexicography: animals, plants, mixtures between the two, rocks, and other natural phenomena, as well as culture, politics, professions, important characters, and several curiosities. The articles quoted by the narrator suggest an alphabetical order. However, it is only readable in fragments – the whole, after all, is an imagination. Although Moers at times tends to groaners and trivial word play, his variation of fantasy literature bears slightly subversive traits and 34

35

36

Part 1 of the glossary, “The Ancient Language”, is introduced with the remark: “Note: As Eragon is not yet a master of the ancient language, his words and remarks were not translated literally, so as to save readers from his atrocious grammar. Quotations from other characters, however, have been left untouched.” (p. 500) Walter Moers, Die 13 ½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär. Die halben Lebenserinnerungen eines Seebären; mit zahlreichen Illustrationen unter der Benutzung des Lexikons der erklärungsbedürftigen Wunder, Daseinsformen und Phänomene Zamoniens und Umgebung von Professor Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller (Munich: Goldmann, 2001). – Walter Moers, Ensel und Krete. Ein Märchen aus Zamonien von Hildegunst von Mythenmetz.Aus dem Zamonischen übertragen, illustriert und mit einer halben Biographie des Dichters versehen von Walter Moers.Mit Erläuterungen aus dem Lexikon der erklärungsbedürftigen Wunder, Daseinsformen und Phänomene Zamoniens und Umgebung von Professor Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller (Munich: Goldmann, 2002). Zamonien (Zamonia) is a world in which many novels by Walter Moers take place (Die 13 ½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär, Ensel und Krete, Rumo und die Wunder im Dunkeln, Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher, Der Schrecksenmeister). A map locates Zamonia as an island in the ocean. The world of Zamonia does not come close to the hermetic completeness of Tolkien’s world. But Moers alludes to the existence of lexicographic and cartographic presentations and quotes them.

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aesthetic appeal since it suggests the fictionality of an A-to-Z-representation – and thus indirectly distances himself from the idea of a total knowledge and the preexistent order of things. Concluding, one can say that the idea of a “total” and systematically ordered world is taken up once again in the conceptions and descriptions of fantasy-worlds although it has already become obsolete in historically developed discourses of knowledge. The form of the alphabetic compendium is used as a vehicle for such an anachronistic idea, emphasizing the notion of a completely graspable knowledge. This combination works due to the fact that both the forged worlds as well as its lexicons consist of texts. The idea of a proper representation of such knowledge can only persist when texts quote other texts. Moers’ parodist play with the idea of competent lexicography hints at a moment of ironic distance from such dreams of completeness.

5. Compendia of the Old-fashioned, Anachronistic, Useless, and Outlandish Lexicographic projects which aim at representing a total world from A to Z neglect the aspect of historicity. “Middle-earth” might have a past, but not a history in the modern sense, and the Unendliche Geschichte can be repeated infinitely. The lexicons thus represent these worlds primarily in relations which are indifferent towards time. A different kind of lexicography can be found in alphabetic texts which highlight the historicity of their subjects. The alphabet has proven to be a good framework for the vanished and the vanishing. This text form seems to be popular as well, and at the same time relates to critical discourses of contemporary knowledge and consumerism. Via negationis, such aspects can be found in compendia of the rejected, monstrous, futile, disgusting, and disturbing. Since such compendia are often concerned with vanishing things, they are closely related to questions of time and history. They highlight the contingency of discursive formations by relativizing the distinction of the normal and abnormal, the familiar and the eccentric. In such a lexicography of the decaying, monstrous, and eccentric – a genre which seems very popular with readers –, the transition between entertainment and “critical” literature is of importance. The enjoyment provoked by the confrontation with the deviant at times connects with a critical reflection of the seemingly stable pillars of our culture and knowledge: of our rituals, ideas, institutions, our cultural achievements and codes of knowledge, our icons and concepts of “normalcy”, our moral and intellec-



236 Monika Schmitz-Emans tual concepts of order. These are some examples of this unique mixture of the joy of the deviant and critical tendencies: (a) The vanishing lexicon as topic of lexicographic presentations. The time has come to write a “last lexicon”, the editors of this very “last” lexicon claim. According to their preface, the era of encyclopaedia has come to an end.37 The editors claim that the encyclopaedia in the tradition of 19th century compendia has become an anachronism, and with it the enterprise to give an overview of human knowledge in consonance with the four standards of “Aktualität, Objektivität, Selektivität und Präzision” (“actuality, objectivity, selectivity, precision”, p. 19). The “last lexicon” is based on the evaluation of old encyclopaedias, among them a range of Brockhaus- and Meyer-lexicons as well as other lexicons such as Zedler’s Großes vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste (Halle/Leipzig 1732–1754). The “last lexicon’s” self-description offers specific conceptions of lexicography: a) The knowledge compiled in the lexicon is perceived as historic and potentially ageing, especially since it is mostly represented in quotes; knowledge is historically and culturally relative. b) All compiled knowledge must be regarded in comparison with a surfeit of non-represented knowledge: every representation of knowledge is selective and therefore necessarily incomplete. c) The presentation of knowledge in the “last lexicon” wants to make the historicity and contingency of such compilations visible even beyond the level of content; this can only be accomplished by employing an aesthetics which is self-referential. The introduction (“Zur Epoche der Enzyklopädien”, pp. 5-26) highlights the aspect of lexicographic representations as well as its own treatment of historic modes of representation.38 37 38

Letztes Lexikon. Mit einem Essay zur Epoche der Enzyklopädien, ed. by Werner Bartens, Martin Halter and Rudolf Walther (Frankfurt a.M.: Eichborn, 2002), p. 20. Indirectly, the paratext articulates a critically and political approach: “Die Lexika sind, im Guten wie im Bösen, Teil der deutschen Geschichte. Sie machten sich immer wieder zu Verstärkern und Lautsprechern des Zeitgeistes und riskierten nicht allzu oft – am ehesten noch im Vormärz – oppositionelle Töne. Das ‘Letzte Lexikon’ verfolgt beide Spuren. / Es reagiert auf die erhöhte Umlauf- und Rezeptionsgeschwindigkeit des Wissens nicht mit atemloser Hektik, sondern im Gegenteil mit der Wiederentdeckung enzyklopädischer Langsamkeit. Wir schreiben in der prekären Gewißheit, daß es heute auch darauf ankommt, zu wissen, was man nicht wissen kann und muß, was vor dem Verschwinden gerettet zu werden verdient und was nicht. Wir sind nicht fixen Wahrheiten, sondern deren Zeitkernen auf der Spur. Unser Projekt leistet sich den Luxus, Einsichten und Erkenntnisse ohne ängstliche Seitenblicke auf ihr Verfallsdatum zu sammeln und einer vergeßlichen Zeit wieder in Erinnerung zu rufen. / Die Lücken und Untiefen, Verstiegenheiten und Bocksprünge, Stilblüten und Stilbrüche älterer Lexika registrieren wir dabei mit Staunen und heiterer Gelassenheit, aber ohne Häme, Besserwisserei oder Triumphgeschrei – Das ‘Letzte Lexikon’ […] reiht sich in die aufklärerischen Traditionen des Genres ein, glossiert und

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The “last lexicon” is a meta- and an anti-lexicon at the same time: it is a meta-lexicon because it triggers reflection of lexicography by quoting, paraphrasing, and compiling – and it is an anti-lexicon because it does not intend to present up-to-date knowledge. Instead, emphasis is put on the temporality of all knowledge. The lexicon’s bottom line is not: “this must be common knowledge” but rather: “this once used to be common knowledge”. The style of writing is primarily shaped by two strategies: a) most articles mention their lexicographic sources explicitly by paraphrasing and quoting its contents. b) Some articles merely consist of quotations from older lexicon articles. In both cases, the knowledge is presented as historicized.39 Wherever it can be expected that the reader will relate his own knowledge to some of the lemmas, the articles surprise with irritating information (cf. “Hund”, pp. 164f.; “Papst”, p. 227). Some articles are devoted to rather unconventional forms of knowledge:40Like a museum, the lexicon “rescues” particularly those fragments of knowledge outside and beyond high culture or newsworthiness. Lexicons which call themselves “conglomerate” present themselves as alphabetically structured yet not assorted junk rooms. They draw attention to what has long been forgotten or is about to be forgotten.

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ironisiert aber auch die Widersprüche und Exzesse jenes Prozesses der Vermehrung und Verfeinerung des Wissens, die ohne Konzessionen an Markt und Macht nicht zu haben waren.” (“The lexicons are, for better or for worse, part of German history. Again and again, they made themselves being amplifiers and loudspeakers of the zeitgeist and not too often did they risk to utter oppositional tone – most likely still in the pre-March era. The ‘Last Lexicon’ pursues both tracks. / It reacts to the increased circulation and reception speed of knowledge not with breathless rush, but rather with the rediscovery of encyclopaedic slowness. We are writing in the precarious certainty that nowadays it is important to know what you are not able and not allowed to know, and what deserves to be saved from disappearing and what not. We are not on the scent of fixed truths, but of their temporal core. Our project affords the luxury of gathering insights and knowledge without anxious glances at their expiration date and to bring them back to the mind of a forgetful time. / In doing so, we notice the gaps and shoals, eccentricities and leaps, howlers and stylistic inconsistencies of older dictionaries with wonder and sereneness, but without malice, condescension or cheer of triumph - The ‘Last Lexicon’ [...] joins the enlightened traditions of one of the genre, but also glosses and ironizes the contradictions and excesses of that process of multiplication and refinement of knowledge which could not be obtained without concessions to the market and power.” – Ibid., pp. 12-13) An example for (a) can be found in the article “Abenteuer” (ibid., p. 27), an example for (b) in the article “Aberglaube” (ibid., p. 27). Cf. “Eierkunde. Kein Wunder, daß die Universitäten in den letzten Jahrzehnten kontinuierlich an Attraktivität verloren haben, bieten sie doch so interessante Unterdisziplinen wie die Eierkunde nicht mehr an.” (Ibid., pp. 101f.; the science in question is a “Hilfswissenschaft der Vogelkunde”, ibid., p. 102.)

238 Monika Schmitz-Emans (b) Lexicography of disappearance A carefully compiled special issue of the magazine du, titled “Liftboy, der. Ein Alphabet des Verschwindens” (liftboy, the. An alphabet of disappearance”), deals with cultural developments, objects of everyday life and their dependency on time.41 The magazine’s alphabet lists a number of things, institutions, habits and ideas which are about to disappear from our everyday culture. With a focus on cultural encodings, the magazine even includes animal species. Many of the articles are typical products of the 1960s and 1970s; they remind of everyday life in Switzerland and East- and WestGermany and convey a nostalgic tone.42 It remains doubtful if these things belong to desirable knowledge, and if so, there certainly are better sources. But dealing with these things, however, stimulates one’s fantasy, and the seemingly neutral alphabetic order supports this effect since it highlights the strange aspects of these things in simply listing them without any systematic relation. (c) A compendium of eccentric phantasies The Thackeray T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases43 is an alphabetical compendium dedicated to bodily abominations produced by human imagination, and thereby parodies the discourse of medicine, ignoring the border between the imaginary and the real. Inspired by medicine casebooks, it describes and classifies imaginary diseases, and particularly refers to diseases described in literary texts, myths, and the collective imagination.A (pseudo-)paratext, the “Medical Guide Key” (p. 2), explains the logos employed in the articles.44

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du. Zeitschrift für Kultur 782, Dec. 07/Jan. 08. Some of the lemmas: der Alpenbock, der Blick auf die Armbanduhr, das Attachéköfferchen, die Aussentoilette, der Bäcker, der Baiji, das Bakelit, der Ballermann 6, der Bilderrahmen, der Blocher, die Blumenwiese, die Botanisiertrommel, der Brief, der Brustbeutel, der Bumperfatscha, das Butterfass, die Buttons … Dr. Jeff Vandermeer & Dr. Mark Roberts (eds.), The Thackeray T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. 83rd ed. (San Francisco, Portland: Night Shade Books, 2003). A first logo, resembling a prohibition sign, means “Discredited”: It signals that a disease is labelled “implausible” (i.e. phantasmatic). Allegedly, this sign represents diseases which physicians have classified as fictitious. Should any disease actually be proven fictitious, it will be erased from the book. Cases of doubt remain in the book (cf. p. 2). Another sign signifies „infectious“ diseases: readers can get infected with the mere idea of such a diesease. Implicitly, this sign refers to hypochondria as a form of imagination. A third sign means “quarantined”, meaning that these diseases actually have infected their inventors.

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d) An alphabetic collection of eccentrics In his Narratorium, Ulrich Holbein has compiled a lexicon of human eccentricity. The subtitle of his book bespeaks his affinity towards abecedarian writing.45 In the articles of this 1008 page book, persons are portrayed who behaved outside the box, led a conspicuous life, or were otherwise known for their eccentricity. The lexicon strictly ignores the line between fact and fiction – the 225 persons listed in the book’s index are ordered chronologically according to their biographical dates, but the Narratorium includes both historical as well as literary figures. All persons portrayed are being listed with their occupation, social position, and distinctive character traits. The list includes members of both Western and Eastern cultures. Holbein’s Narratorium connects to the traditional description of the world as a ship of fools.46Stylistically, the articles attempt at continuing the idea of a universal eccentricity and creative foolishness – this is certainly for fans only. Visual collages complement the texts which paraphrase and quote a comprehensive amount of sources. (e) Enjoying the damaged between play and cultural criticism Damaged things and ways to repair them, or to compensate for their irreparability, are the issues of a lexicographic book which is also an exhibition catalogue and an artist’s book: Vänçi Stirnemann and Fritz Franz Vogel’s ¿flickgut! Panne, Blätz, Prothese.Kulturgeschichtliches zur Instandsetzung.47 In the article on “Flickgut” (“patchwork”) everyday objects, ambiances, and practices connected with repairing or correcting damaged or failed objects are being presented. In front of the eyes of the reader and the spectator (the

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Ulrich Holbein: Narratorium: Abenteurer. Blödelbarden. Clowns. Diven. Einsiedler. Fischprediger. Gottessöhne. Huren. Ikonen. Joker. Kratzbürsten. Lustmolche. Menschenfischer. Nobody. Oberbonzen. Psychonauten. Querulanten. Rattenfänger. Scharlatane. Theosophinnen. Urmütter. Verlierer. Wortführer. Yogis. Zuchthäusler. 255 Lebensbilder (Zurich: Ammann, 2008). The introduction is titled “Heilige und unheilige Narren im Anmarsch und Abflug”: “Kleine Narrenkunde für Anfänger: Die Welt wimmelt von Normalnarren und Extremnarren, und zwar jede Welt.” (“Holy and unholy fools advancing and departing”: “Short Foolology for Beginners: The world teems with normal and extreme fools, and that each world.” – Cf. p. 5) M. Vänçi Stirnemann and Fritz Franz Vogel, ¿flickgut! Panne, Blätz, Pflaster, Patch, Prothese: Kulturgeschichtliches zur Instandsetzung (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2004). The content represented has been part of several exhibitions (Winterthur 2004, Berlin 2005, Memmingen 2006) (cf. www.flickgut.ch). The lemma “Flickgut” is ambitious. “Flickgut” is that with which something is patched or mended, but the compound can also be separated and read as an imperative: “flick gut!”, or as an incomplete sentence: “Flick(en) (ist) gut!” – A sentence which needs mending as well. On is also reminded of “Gut” meaning “Besitz” (possessions, goods); “Flickgut” would thus be a hint at the book as a collection of goods etc.

240 Monika Schmitz-Emans book is abundantly illustrated), a world is being created which is marked by time in the process of falling apart and decaying as well as in the process of getting repaired. Manifold patches, scars, and mendings appear as traces which time has left on the surface of things. Practices of repairing and according devices appear as omni-present – and as a threat which keeps the world together. This is the first impression that ¿flickgut! makes: the fragility of things, be they natural or man-made, constructed for immediate use or for permanence. Everything that is being depicted here is meant to pay their debt to nature. This world is a virtual pile of decay, with the busy menders resisting this process just as the crippled inhabitants of this world insistently search for their crutches and patches. The typographic design of this book underlines the notion of deformity: the prints on cover, title page and many headlines suggest a faulty printing process by showing blurred letters. Whether the photographic sequences show scarcely mended houses, vehicles, or plumbings, whether it be trash bags, torn-down buildings and rubble, broken glass, torn tapestry, roadwork, gaps in walls, damaged fences or fallow landscapes – one thing is for sure: we live in a completely mended world. This not only includes repaired asphalt drives and jeans but also patchwork: policemen, glued tape, handcuffs and hearing aids.48 An important leitmotif in ¿flickgut! is the damaged human body; it includes many striking illustrations from the realms of medical sciences and surgery.49 In order to assist the reader in resisting the fragility of things, the book offers him some instruments which can be found in a paper pocket included at the end of the book. A notebook with a “damage sketch” (a brochure of an insurance company called “Die Mobiliar. Versicherungen & Vorsorge”) which illustrates possible causes of damages in connection with legal liabilities, a brochure of the glue-brand Henkel, an alphabetic list of verbs signifying processes of repairing and mending, a safety pin, and a plaster which reminds the reader of his own vulnerability and the fragility of the world as a whole.

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Often, the relation of the lemmas to the topic of damage and repair is not evident – in these cases, it is the explanatory entry which illuminates the connections and associations. It is, so to speak, a patch between lemma and the world of patches. An “Ablass” (“indulgence”) is thus a “religious patching”. Images of damaged, infected, mutilated bodies and means of their compensation remind the reader of the fact that he himself is nothing but patchwork as well.

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6. Some Concluding Remarks What connects experimental, avant-gardist, critical, and counter-discursive alphabetic texts with fantasy- and entertainment-lexicons? Is there some common denominator beyond the mere alphabetical structure? The different examples prove that the alphabet offers an organizational model which enables the representations of manifold things – including mere products of the imagination and the fields of knowledge surrounding them. It thus works as a pattern which can be applied to the familiar and unfamiliar, everyday things and fantasy worlds – and thus especially allows for the treatment of remote topics in lexicographic forms, including detailed descriptions, contextualization and comment. Furthermore, the lexicographic form suggests a certain relevance of those things which it represents – a notion which is particularly important for the depiction of fantasy worlds. The fragmentary and “open” form of the lexicon might be a reason for avantgardist and experimental writers to treat the unusual analogous to the familiar in their alphabetic texts. The result is a many-faceted play with concepts of order challenged by that which defies orders – a play with processes of formal integration which react to the non-integrated. It might be that lexicography intends to integrate its subjects into the sphere of “relevant knowledge” – but it might just as well be that relevance as such becomes the object of deconstructive play. The interplay of conventional knowledge and “other” knowledges can be entertaining as well as subversive and critical. In any case, such alphabetic compendia ignore the borders between the entertaining and the popular on the one side, and the critical and high culture on the other side. Often, it is a matter of perception whether one interprets these “other” lexicons as primarily entertaining or as a contribution to a literary culture which innovatively questions common conceptions of order.

Bibliography Adams, Douglas and John Lloyd, The Deeper Meaning of Liff (London: Pan Books, 1990). Adams, Douglas and John Lloyd, The Meaning of Liff (London: Pan Books, 1983). Barth, Mario, Langenscheidt Frau-Deutsch/Deutsch-Frau (Berlin: Langenscheidt, 2004). Barthes, Roland, Le plaisir du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1973). Barthes, Roland, ROLAND BARTHES par roland barthes (Paris: Seuil, 1975).



242 Monika Schmitz-Emans Benjamin, Walter, ‘Aussicht ins Kinderbuch’, in Gesammelte Schriften IV/2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1972), 609-615. Böttcher, Sven, Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz (Frankfurt a.M.: Heyne, 1992). Breton, André and Paul Éluard, Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (Paris: Galerie Beaux Arts, 1938). Christian Boltanski. A cura di Danilo Eccher. “Pentimenti”, Bologna, May-Sept. 1997 (Milan: Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 1997). ‘Daffynition’, in Wikipedia. The Free Encycloedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Daffynition. Day, David, Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (London: Mitchell Beazley, 1992). Day, David, Tolkien’s Ring. Illustrated by David Lee (London. Mitchell Beazley, 1994). Encyclopaedia acephalica: Comprising the Critical dictionary & related, ed. by Georges Bataille, Robert Lebel, Isabelle Waldberg and Marcel Duchamp (London: Atlas Press, 1995). Ende, Michael, Die unendliche Geschichte (Stuttgart: Thienemann, 1979). Flaubert, Gustave, Dictionnaire des idées reçues (Paris: Aubier 1978). Foster, Robert, The Complete Guide to Middle-earth (New York: Ballantine, 1971). Fuentes, Carlos, En esto creo (Barcelona: Alfaguara, 2002). Hocke, Roman and Patrick, Michael Ende, Die unendliche Geschichte. Das Phantásien-Lexikon (Stuttgart: Thienemann, 2009). Holbein, Ulrich, Narratorium: Abenteurer. Blödelbarden. Clowns. Diven. Einsiedler. Fischprediger. Gottessöhne. Huren. Ikonen. Joker. Kratzbürsten. Lustmolche. Menschenfischer. Nobody. Oberbonzen. Psychonauten. Querulanten. Rattenfänger. Scharlatane. Theosophinnen. Urmütter. Verlierer. Wortführer. Yogis. Zuchthäusler. 255 Lebensbilder (Zurich: Ammann,2008). Kiesow, Rainer Maria and Henning Schmidgen, Kritisches Wörterbuch. Beiträge von Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris u.a.. (Berlin: Merve, 2005). Kiesow, Rainer Maria, Das Alphabet des Rechts (Frankfurt a.M.: Eichborn, 2004). Kilcher, Andreas B., mathesis und poiesis. Die Enzyklopädik der Literatur 1600 bis 2000 (Munich: Wilhem Fink, 2003). Krege, Wolfgang, Handbuch der Weisen von Mittelerde. Die Tolkien-Enzyklopädie. Mit Karten und Illustrationen von J.R.R. Tolkien (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1996). Kuhn, Oliver, Alexandra Reinwarth and Axel Fröhlich, Die große Brocklaus: Das komplett erfundene Lexikon (Munich: Droemer, 2010).

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Letztes Lexikon. Mit einem Essay zur Epoche der Enzyklopädien, ed. by Werner Bartens, Martin Halter und Rudolf Walther (Frankfurt a.M.: Eichborn, 2002). ‘Liftboy, der. Ein Alphabet des Verschwindens’, du. Zeitschrift für Kultur 782, Dec. 07/Jan. 08. (eds.), ALLES und noch viel mehr. Die KatalogAnthologie der 80er Jahre. Das poetische ABC, ed. by Gerhard Johann Lischka (Bern: Bentelli, 1985). Moers, Walter, Die 13 ½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär. Die halben Lebenserinnerungen eines Seebären; mit zahlreichen Illustrationen und unter Benutzung des Lexikons der erklärungsbedürftigen Wunder, Daseinsformen und Phänomene Zamoniens und Umgebung von Professor Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller (Munich: Goldmann, 2001). Moers, Walter, Ensel und Krete. Ein Märchen aus Zamonien von Hildegunst von Mythenmetz.Aus dem Zamonischen übertragen, illustriert und mit einer halben Biographie des Dichters versehen von Walter Moers. Mit Erläuterungen aus dem Lexikon der erklärungsbedürftigen Wunder, Daseinsformen und Phänomene Zamoniens und Umgebung von Professor Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller (Munich: Goldmann, 2002). Mrozek, Bodo, Lexikon der bedrohten Wörter (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2005). Naismith, Jon, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Iain Pattinson, The New Uxbridge English Dictionary (I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue) (London: Harper Collins, 2008). Noel, Ruth S., The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. A Complete Guide to all Fourteen of the Languages Tolkien Invented (Boston: Mariner Books, 1980). The Odford English Dictionary. The Online Home for Funny Definitions and Word Play, http://www.odford.co.uk/. Paolini, Christopher, Eragon – Inheritance Book One (London: Corgi Books, 2005). Rütter, Martin, Langenscheidt Hund-Deutsch/Deutsch-Hund. (Berlin: Langenscheidt, 2009). Savinio, Alberto, Nuova enciclopedia. (Milan: Adelphi, 1977). Scamander, Newt (=Joanne K.Rowling), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. (London: Bloomsbury, 2001). Sommer, Andreas Urs, Die Kunst, selber zu denken. Ein philosophischer Dictionnaire. (Frankfurt a.M.: Eichborn, 2002). Stirnemann, M. Vänçi and Fritz Franz Vogel, ¿flickgut! Panne, Blätz, Prothese. Kulturgeschichtliches zur Instandsetzung. (Marburg: Jonas, 2004). Tawada, Yoko, Spielzeug und Sprachmagie in der europäischen Literatur. Eine ethnologische Poetologie.(Tübingen: Konkursbuch, 2000). The Thackeray T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. 83rd Edition, ed by Jeff Vandermeer and Mark Roberts (San Francisco, Portland: Night Shade Books, 2003).

244 Monika Schmitz-Emans The Uxbridge English Dictionary, http://www.alspcs.com/main.html. Wegryn, Jim: A Barrel Full of Fun. Daffynitions, http://www.jimwegryn.com/ Words/Daffynitions.htm. Wegryn, Jim: A Barrel Full of Fun. Goofinitions, http://www.jimwegryn.com/ Words/Goofinitions.htm. All links have last been accessed 8 March 2011. Dictionnaire Critique: Einstein, Carl and George Bataille, ‘Dictionnaire Critique’, in Documents. Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 2 (1929), 117-118. Einstein, Carl, George Bataille and Michel Leiris, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire Critique’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 3 (1929), 169-170. Einstein, Carl, George Bataille and Robert Desnos, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 4 (1929), 215-220. Leiris, Michel, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 5 (1929), 275-297. Bataille, George and Jacques Jacques, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 6 (1929), 329-334. Leiris, Michel, Marcel Criaule and George /Bataille, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 7 (1929), 381-382. Leiris, Michel and Arnaud Dandieu, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’ in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 1 (1930), 41-44. Leiris, Michel and Marcel Criaule, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 2 (1930), 103. Leiris, Michel, Marcel Criaule and George Bataille, ‘Chronique. Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 4 (1930), 235-236. Bataille, George, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 5 (1930), 299-300. Leiris, Michel and Marcel Criaule, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’ in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 6 (1930), 367-369. Leiris, Michel and Zdenko Reich, ‘Chronique.Dictionnaire’, in Documents.Doctrines, Archéologie, Beaux-Arts, Ethnographie 7 (1930), 433-436.





Notes on Contributors Norbert Bachleitner is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna. His fields of research include the relations between English, French and German Literature from the 18th to the 20th century; the history of literary translation and transfer; the modern novel; digital literature; and the sociology of literature, especially the history of the book and censorship (for further information see http://complit.univie.ac.at/die-abteilung/wis senschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/bachleitner-norbert). Moritz Baßler, born 1962, Professor of Modern German Literature at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, studied German Literature and Philosophy at the Universities of Kiel, Tübingen, and with Tony Kaes at California, Berkeley, wrote a dissertation on expressionist prose (Die Entdeckung der Textur, 1994), introduced the New Historicism to Germany (ed. New Historicism, 1995), became assistant of Helmut Lethen in Rostock, published a study on contemporary pop literature (Der deutsche Pop-Roman, 2002) and a habilitation on context theory (Die kulturpoetische Funktion und das Archiv, 2005). Research on cultural theory and popular culture, including pop music. Die-hard textualist. Paul Ferstl, born 1981, studied Comparative Literature and German Language and Literature at the Université libre de Bruxelles and the University of Vienna where he has been teaching since 2006. Teaching and research assistant at the University of Vienna 2011-2012, since 2009 assistant editor of the Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft (Rodopi, Amsterdam). Ongoing doctoral dissertation dealing with interactions between literature and comics. Among his recent publications is (no) free lunch. Eine interdisziplinäre Sammlung von Aufsätzen zu sozialen Grundrechten (as co-editor; 2012). Achim Hermann Hölter, born in Dülken (Germany), MA 1985, PhD 1988 (Ludwig Tieck – Literaturgeschichte als Poesie), Habil. 1993 (Die Invaliden), Wuppertal Univ, 1995-97 Heisenberg scholarship Bonn Univ., also teaching Bochum Univ. and Düsseldorf Univ., 1997-2009 full prof. Münster Univ. – chair of comparative literature, since 2009 dto. Vienna Univ. 1999-2005 vice-pres., 2005-11 president of the German Comparative Literature Association (DGAVL). Member of diverse literary and cultural associations. Publications on German and international literary history and aesthetic questions, e.g.: Die Bücherschlacht (1995); Marcel Proust. Leseerfahrungen deutschsprachiger Schriftsteller von Theodor W. Adorno bis Stefan Zweig (1998); Frühe Romantik,

246 Quote, Double Quote frühe Komparatistik. Gesammelte Aufsätze zu Ludwig Tieck (2001); (ed.): Comparative Arts. Universelle Ästhetik im Fokus der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft (2011); (ed. cum al.): Metropolen im Maßstab. Literarisches und filmisches Erzählen mit dem Stadtplan (2009); Wortgeburten (2009); Produktive Rezeption (2010); Handbuch Komparatistik. Theorien, Arbeitsfelder, Wissenspraxis (2013). Ulrich Meurer studied Comparative Literature in Munich and received his PhD in American and Media Studies at Constance University. He is the author of Topographien. Raumkonzepte in Literatur und Film der Postmoderne (2007), has edited several books on cinema and widely published on media philosophy and the relationship between written word and (moving) image. Currently he holds the position of Visiting Professor for Film and Media Sciences at Vienna University. Esteban Sanchino Martinez is a PhD student of the Graduate School “Practices of Literature” at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. He earned his MA in philosophy from the University of Münster. His current research interests are in the areas of popular culture, literary studies as cultural studies, and poststructuralism. Keyvan Sarkhosh, born in 1981 in Hildesheim/Germany, has studied Comparative and German Literature, Philosophy and Social Anthropology at the University of Münster, Germany, and received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna. MA 2006 with a thesis on “Photography – Comic – Film. A Structural Comparison of their Narrative Potential from the 19th to the Early 20th Century”. PhD 2013 with a dissertation on “‘Cinema of Disintegration’. Narration and World Constitution in the Films of Nicolas Roeg”. He has been teaching and research assistant of Comparative Literature at the University of Münster/Germany from 2006 to 2009 and at the University of Vienna/Austria since 2009. From 2008 to 2011 he was secretary of the German Comparative Literature Association (DGAVL). Monika Schmitz-Emans, Professor of Comparative Literature at the RuhrUniversität Bochum. 1984 PhD at the University of Bonn (German literature), 1992 Habilitation, venia legendi (German and Comparative Literature), 1992-1995 Professor of Modern European Literature (FernUniversität GHS Hagen). Since 1995 Professor of Comparative Literature (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), 1997-2004 Officer in the AILC/ICLA executive council, 1999-2005 President of the German Comparative Literature Association (DGAVL). Since 2005 Member of Academia Europaea, since 2007 President of the German Jean Paul Society, 2001 Distinguished Visit-



Notes on Contributors 247

ing Max Kade Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (USA), 2009 Visiting Professor at the Tateshina Seminar of the Japanese Society for German Studies Tateshina, Japan, 2011 Distinguished Visiting Max Kade Professor at the University of Wisconsin/Madison (USA). Publications: Einführung in die Literatur der Romantik (2004); Fragen nach Kaspar Hauser. Entwürfe des Menschen, der Sprache und der Dichtung (2007); Poetiken der Verwandlung (2008); Franz Kafka. Epoche – Werk – Wirkung (2011); Literatur-Comics. Adaptationen und Transformationen der Weltliteratur (2012). Sabine Schönfellner studied Scandinavian Studies and Comparative Literature in Vienna and Aarhus. She received a BA in Scandinavian Studies in 2010 and a Mag. Phil. in Comparative Literature in 2012 with a thesis on “Discourse, Discipline and Biopolitics – An Analysis of Current Works of Science Fiction on the Basis of Concepts by Michel Foucault”. She has worked as a tutor and student assistant at the Department of Comparative Literature in Vienna. She obtained a MA in German as a Foreign Language in Vienna. She is currently a PhD-student at the department of German Literature at the University of Vienna. Daniel Syrovy, born in 1984, studied Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna where he has been teaching since 2008. Apart from crawling things, his research interests include Habsburg Censorship in the 18th and 19th centuries, the history of love poetry and Early Modern European (French, German, Spanish, Italian) literature. His doctoral dissertation (2012) investigates “Problems of Genre in the Novels of Miguel de Cervantes and Charles Sorel”. Stefan Tetzlaff graduated from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in 2008 with a MA in German Philology (major), Philosophy (minor) and Comparative Linguistics (minor). He was admitted to the Graduate School “Practices of Literature” at Münster University and is beneficiary of both the Stiftung Bildung und Wissenschaft (2009-2011) as well as the University of Münster (PhD bursary, 2012-2013). His doctoral thesis is concerned with a textual approach to Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. After his research stay at the Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg (2010-2011) he was active as research associate for the DFG research training group “Literarische Form” (2012). Marion Wittfeld obtained an MA in Literature, Cultural and Media Studies at the universities of Siegen and Vienna. Ongoing doctoral dissertation investi-



248 Quote, Double Quote gating “Frauenzeitschriften im Nationalsozialismus und ihre Rolle bei der Vermittlung von Geschlechterbildern und gesellschaftspolitischen Vorstellungen” at the Institute of German Language and Literature at the University of Vienna. Fellowships: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (DOC) 2010-2012, Forschungsstipendium der Universität Wien (March-August 2012). Theodor Körner Award 2013. She is a journalist (Online-Zeitung der Universität Wien, reviews for Informationsmittel [IFB]: digitales Rezensionsorgan für Bibliothek und Wissenschaft) and teaches at the University of Applied Sciences of the bfi Vienna.