University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Publications 2-2018 Slumming with Cindy: Class, Precarity, and Performance in Cindy aus Marzahn’s Trash Comedy Kathrin M. Bower University of Richmond,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.richmond.edu/mlc-faculty-publications Part of the German Literature Commons Recommended Citation Bower, Kathrin M. "Slumming with Cindy: Class, Precarity, and Performance in Cindy aus Marzahn’s Trash Comedy." German Studies Review 41, no. 1 (February, 2018): 123-142. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Slumming with Cindy: Class, Precarity, and Performance in Cindy aus Marzahn’s Trash Comedy Kathrin Bower ABSTRACT The restructuring of unemployment and welfare benefits under Hartz IV hit for- mer East Germans already suffering economically since unification particularly hard, forcing many into a condition of precarity for which the governing ideology held them responsible. Frustrated in her search for suitable work, Ilka Bessin adapted the self-management model advocated by the reforms to transform her story of marginalization and failure into a comedy success as Ossi trash princess Cindy aus Marzahn. Cultivated by commercial television, Bessin’s Cindy was a product, purveyor, and critic of Germany’s neoliberal economic policies, illustrat- ing the fraught, collusive relationship between politics and popular culture.