Thursday, March 6, 2008

Good Bye Lenin: Ostalgie and Globalization

Germany’s reunification in 1990 created a triumphant return to a single nation, however it also created a crisis of national identity for the citizens of eastern Germany. These people were instantly cast into a new society and forced to follow new economic, moral, and political codes to survive. Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin presents this crisis of national identity in the face of reunification, commercialization, and rapid globalization by employing the popular post-wall social movement of Ostalgie: an East German influenced microcosm of nostalgia. This use of Ostalgie combined with the poignant images of the effects of globalization and cultural conquest allow Good Bye Lenin to acutely problematize the national identity crisis that befell the East German citizens following the destruction of the wall.

Good Bye Lenin draws much of its intellectual significance from the Ostalgie movement. This movement, which derives its name from the German “ost” for east and “nostalgie” for nostalgia, centers “around the proliferation of cultural artifacts such as movies …TV shows…[and] the return of the East German products and objects of consumption” (Jozwiak and Mermann 783). It arose because of the rapid westernization and modernization that occurred in East Germany soon after the country was reunited and the term “German culture” became ill defined as a general term for the entire country. German culture, to the global community, mostly meant West German culture. East Germans had their culture and its attached nationality violated. To worsen this offense many East German factories stopped producing their goods because they were out-produced and out-priced by the long-time capitalist (West German) opponents in the new nation. In effect, East Germans were reincorporated into a new country and a new culture, one that wanted to exclude and possibly ignore their communist legacy. Ostalgie was the countercultural movement to this violation, and was adopted by both former East Germans as well as many West Germans in an attempt to open a discourse on this bleak part of history instead of ignoring it. It offered a return to the past way of life in the 1960s and 1970s and worked as a “psycho-social [expression] of melancholy caused by prolonged absence” (Jozwiak and Mermann 783). Good Bye Lenin “displays prominently many of the products and lifestyles popular among Ostalgie enthusiasts,” including clothes, food, and other parts of material and visual culture (Cook 207). By doing so, it created not only a full German appreciation (and to some extent even an adoption) of Ostalgie, but due to its international appeal, created a global awareness of the issues that faced the people of former East Germany from economic to social and political issues.

The film allegorically recounts the political issues that faced the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany), early in the film. Alex (the main character), his mother Christiane, and his sister Ariane are abandoned by Alex’s father, who defects to West Germany in seeking a better life. Christiane is interrogated by state officials as to why her husband defected and as a result of the entire situation, suffers a mental breakdown where she is separated from her children for six months and during which she contemplates suicide (although she later reveals that Alex’s daily visits prevented her from actually committing suicide) while simultaneously becoming an ardent supporter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In this allegory, the adolescent Alex serves to represent the “alternative community that formed outside of public life in the GDR,” whereas Christiane represents the mass body of people in the fledgling GDR that were disoriented by the sudden shift of ideals and the loss of a strong uniting force, the father (Cook 208). Through this allegory, the GDR is characterized as a broken family unit, something that is not strongly reflected in Ostalgie. As such, Good Bye Lenin cannot fully be read as a text of pure Ostalgie. While Christiane’s back-story is extremely significant in terms of allegorical analysis, Christiane’s main purpose is not as much figurative, as it is a method for one of the main themes concerning the GDR and Ostalgie to appear.



Although portions of the story are out of line with Ostalgie, the main premise of the story serves as a description and critique of the Ostalgie movement. Christiane became an ardent supporter and contributor to the communist GDR. Alex, over the course of years, became increasingly disenchanted with the same issues. Due to these feelings Alex chooses to protest the wall. While the police intervene (and Alex is subsequently arrested), Christiane has a heart attack and slips into a coma that lasts through the reunification of Germany. In her weakened state, however, she cannot handle excitement, and, therefore, could not handle the news that the nation and government she so ardently backed was gone. As such, Alex chooses to recreate a miniature version of the GDR to prevent Christiane from knowing what has happened and, as a result, prevent her death. This plot aptly shows the largest critique of Ostalgie as being “an impossible desire to retain the past” (Hillman 225). The film’s themes and content, though, are “firmly rooted in the Ostalgie wave” according to Roger Cook (40). Though these ideas superficially conflict, they actually represent the same idea. The movement and the film are about maintaining a past culture, and in many ways Christiane embodies this past culture. The death of the GDR’s culture is paralleled by Christiane’s death at the end of the film; however, Alex’s final lines about always remembering his mother as well as his ironic association of her with his fatherland, the GDR, mirrors this impossible desire. Through this situation a strong association with the nostalgia of a former nation becomes apparent, but, simultaneously, the permanence of death for both Christiane and the GDR show the futility of the movement. Therefore, the film’s slightly positive interpretation of Ostalgie, is primarily seen in the Mother-Son dynamics of the plot. With this marginally positive view of Ostalgie, the film actively participates in the critical dialogues of Ostalgie, including the discussion of socialism in the face of a rapidly globalizing and westernizing nation.

The economics of the GDR are portrayed at different times in different ways through the economics of the GDR prior to the break-up of the wall and the globalization of this economy and culture thereafter. Christiane’s birthday, one of the more poignant scenes in the movie, shows the real life economic effects of the reuniting of Germany. During this scene a Coca-Cola banner is unfurled down the side of a building that overlooks her bedroom. This scene is analogous to the unfurling of a communist flag (in the same shade of red) near the beginning of the movie. The Coca-Cola banner is an unmistakable symbol of a global, capitalist, western country. This symbol overtly implies the “western colonization of East German values” (Cook 40). More important than this, though, is Alex’s negative response to the event, which threatened his mother’s life (and through her symbolic purpose, the GDR’s life). The Coca-Cola banner, though, is just one part of “the powerful tide of Westernization forces” that face Alex (Kapczynski 82). Many of the companies that Christiane knew, loved, and relied upon disappeared, with a special focus placed upon food items like Globus green peas, Mocha-Fix Gold Kaffee, and Spreewaldgurken (pickles). Food represents an integral part of any culture, and the disappearance of these items reflects the disappearance of the East German culture due to rapid globalization. The ideas presented by the emphasis on these items supports the notion of an East German culture that had evolved beyond just socialism and communism to a thriving, unique cultural identity. As the culture fades, Alex has to go to greater and greater lengths to preserve the illusion he has created. This illusionary aspect is, perhaps, the most important aspect of the movie. It seems to speak that no matter what attempt is made to preserve a native culture, once it has been globalized (or in this specific instance, Westernized), this culture is just an illusion-- part of a new, less diverse, and vaporous cultural identity.

Good Bye Lenin shows the effects that globalization has had on East Germany. Not only was the GDR lost to the capitalist influence of globalization, but the culture as well, becoming an effective paradigm of occidental society. This transition created a national identity crisis, and while many of these crises disappear under the pressure of global forces, Ostalgie prevented the immediate evaporation and opened an important cultural dialogue on the situation. Through this dialogue and through critical films like Good Bye Lenin that speak through in the dialogue, it is apparent that although a culture can dissolve, it can never fully dissociate. Culture will remain-- whether as a vague idea of the past or a concrete fact of the present.



Works Cited
Cook, Roger F. “Good Bye Lenin!: Free-Market Nostalgia for Socialist Consumerism.” Seminar -- A Journal of Germanic Studies 43.2 (2007): 206-219.

---. “Recharting the Skies above Berlin.” German Politics & Society 23.1 (2005): 39-57.

Hillman, Roger. “Goodbye Lenin (2003): History in the Subjunctive.” Rethinking History 10.2 (2006): 221-237.

Jozwiak, Joseph F. and Elisabeth Mermann. “ ‘The Wall in our Minds?’ Colonization, Integration, and Nostalgia.” Journal of Popular Culture 39.5 (2006): 780-795.

Kapczynski, Jennifer M. “Negotiating Nostalgia: The GDR Past in Berlin Is in Germany and Good Bye, Lenin!” Germanic Review 82.1 (2007): 78-100.

1 comment:

h07oc1 said...

Enjoyed reading your comments on Good Bye Lenin and would like to cite your blog post in a bibliography. Which full name should I state as the name of the author?