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U.S. Pop Culture Decontextualized: Neoliberalist Ideologies in Socialist East Germany

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U.S. Pop Culture Decontextualized: Neoliberalist Ideologies in Socialist East Germany Mandy Tröger U.S. Pop Culture Decontextualized: Neoliberalist Ideologies in Socialist East Germany This paper sketches a broader critique to the study over economic processes and rationalities” or that of popular culture as it is currently undertaken they have become relatively autonomous. Rather, it in various fields in Western academia. While follows Karl Polanyi’s analysis, which shows that it stresses that popular culture must be taken through the processes of modernity’s structural seriously as a subject of critical inquiry, it contends differentiation (“great transformation”) and the that the divergence from the original agenda of separation of the economic and cultural sphere, the critical cultural studies currently leaves us with latter received a particular political meaning within analytical “blind spots” in the study of pop culture. the public sphere increasingly subordinate to the These blind spots relate to what political scientist laws of the market. The cultural realm, generally in Michael Parenti observed with regard to his field: tension with the marketplace as the sole organizer of the economic sphere, increasingly depended There are political scientists [in on the same as a source of revenue and, thus, is the US] who spend their entire shaped by market demands even if just by creating lives writing about American favorable conditions for the market’s legitimacy. government, the presidency, and To make this point clear, this paper draws from public policy without ever once the historical analysis of the German-German mentioning capitalism, a feat of media context prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall omission that would be judged in 1989, and, more specifically, the role of U.S. pop extraordinary were it not so culture in East Germany in the 1980s. Its overall commonplace. assumption is that the analysis of Western pop culture in a socialist context makes visible what all While there are scholars concerned with the too often remains unquestioned if seen within the connection between culture and the capitalist same ideological paradigm.Four years after World market, they generally focus on the production War II, in 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany side. Issues of symbolic representation of the (FRG), rebuilt by the Western Allies, became a “doctrines of the free market,” however, remain at social democracy integrated into the international the margins. This is surprising for the definition of capitalist market while the German Democratic “power as a social force” that underlies the study of Republic (GDR), occupied by the Soviet Union, symbolic representation in pop culture demands an became the Western border of the communist or all-inclusive scope of analysis. socialist bloc. Consequently, throughout 40 years Contrary to many scholars of culture, this paper of division, West Germany followed a free-market does not hold that “culture ... [tends] to dominate ideology that was closely linked to democratic 10 Picturing the Popular Courtney White, editor, Spectator 34:1 (Spring 2014): 10-17 TRÖGER participation and consumerism while the East is commonplace in the representation of the socio- German ruling party propagated consumption economic realm in pop culture. Especially in a according to needs, not wants, in a socialist period of socio-economic crisis, however, we need planned economy. Economically, however, East to rethink this seemingly apparent connection Germany was never able to disentangle itself from as well as pop culture’s role in representing the the influence of the Western capitalist economy. current socio-economic and political order.U.S. More importantly, as one historian points out, Pop Culture in EuropeSeveral scholars have looked for most of the period from 1949 to 1989, the into the various ways in which U.S. pop culture – “standard by which East Germans judged their from Hollywood movies and music to TV shows or material existence was not their own previous specific brand name products – have been received deprivation of 1945… but the real and imagined and re-adapted to European contexts – a process quality of life across the border in West Germany.” the Dutch historian Rob Kroes calls “creolization.” A reason for this “imagined quality of life” was to Kroes follows scholars such as John Fiske and a large degree due to the uniqueness of the East Henry Jenkins, who emphasize “the capacity of German media landscape. The German-German readers to resist dominant ideologies, [and] to border allowed for the transmission of West construct their own meaning.” In short, no one can German broadcast signals across “enemy lines,” predict how pop cultural products will be adapted which by the 1980s gave West German television and made sense of in a particular cultural context programming a central place in the daily media or by different people. Accordingly, these studies consumption in East Germany. This situation generally stress the cultural transfer between the differed from other cross-border data flows (for U.S. and other nations and redefine debates on instance, the U.S. and Canada) in what Roger “Americanization” in that they insist on local Silverstone calls “the context of values.” In the resistance or re-adaptation of U.S. cultural products midst of a battle between two competing socio- rather than critically analyzing the product itself. economic ideologies, Western media messages Consequently, prominent subjects are local (non- clashed with a propagated value system that – at U.S.) consumer practices, business cultures or least theoretically – claimed legitimacy as the cultural exchanges that emphasize “a cultural and overcoming of capitalism.This paper, arguing that social synthesis that has both accepted and resisted media use (also in a socialist country) closely relates American influence.” These studies have been done to the demands of everyday life, looks at the role of with a particular focus on postwar Germany. U.S. television pop culture in this interplay during This body of work is useful in its emphasis that the 1980s. It follows Jean Baudrillard, who states distribution does not exclude forms of resistance. that the “ideology of consumption” is central to Still, it generally lacks two major points. First, the the modern United States. But while Baudrillard overall focus lies on Western Europe, while the stresses the symbolic and social meanings attached Eastern perspective, if considered at all, is limited to to and communicated by commodities, this paper a few particular case studies. More importantly, as asks for the more profound implications of free- pointed out by U.S. communication critic Herbert market values centering around it. U.S. pop Schiller, even if adapted to specific local contexts, culture emerged out of a “context of values” that cultural messages in Hollywood movies are still emphasizes on individualism and consumerism from Hollywood, and as such, as emphasized by closely aligned to democratic participation, which Hirschman, express and represent the “values of asks for critical reflection. Seen in the socialist the social and historical context that engender context, U.S. pop culture challenged socialist them.” According to Schiller, the international ideals, production shortages and propaganda, while distribution of U.S. mass entertainment products simultaneously propagating and legitimizing free has been taken as a welcomed addition in an market values tied closely to different ideologies of ideological war, in which the overall goal was to human freedom. With the fall of the Soviet Union, introduce people around the world to the merits of neoliberalism remained, and with the acceleration democracy and free market ideologies. and internationalization of the capitalist market it While Schiller and others refer to this PICTURING THE POPULAR 11 U.S. POP CULTURE DECONTEXTUALIZED process as “media imperialism,” the U.S. political “democracy of goods.” Here, it is assumed that scientist Joseph Nye famously coined the term consumers acquire messages about products from “soft power.” Taking a less critical (and arguably a variety of media vehicles on a daily basis. These supportive perspective) on the international spread messages, according to Elizabeth Hirschman, of U.S. influence, Nye differentiates between the convey symbolic meanings concerning the use of more subtle effects of culture, values and ideas in products to express personal values, social norms shaping the preferences of others from more direct and cultural ideologies. This relates to Frankfurt coercive measures, such as military action (hard School scholar Erich Fromm, who points out that power) or economic incentives. Jim McGuigan capitalism, understood not simply as an economic stresses the concept of “ideology” which refers to system but as a social system, influences more than how dominant power relations and inequalities are how we make or spend money. It influences the legitimized at various levels. While these include very essence of our lives and the ways in which abstract theory and professional expertise, he we as human beings communicate and deal with suggests that “everyday language and ‘common one another, the values we hold and how we judge sense’ exemplify the operations of ideology most others accordingly. In the neoliberal marketplace, profoundly in securing consent to prevailing and individuals compete for goods, jobs and power, otherwise questionable arrangements.” Whatever not least to maintain what is dearest to them, the term, all of these scholars identify popular
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