“The Most Beautiful Face of Socialism”

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-160
Author(s):  
Annette F. Timm
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Gold Medal ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
East German ◽  
Figure Skater ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Sexual Tension

East German figure skater Katarina Witt’s enormously successful career included gold-medal performances at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, turning her into an ambassador for her country and a worldwide media star. Backed by a regime that saw sport as a form of soft politics, Witt and her coach consciously cultivated her fame by increasing the sexual tension of her performances. Timm provides cultural context for the resulting collision between politics, sex, and sport. While certainly not a dupe of her handlers, relaxed East German attitudes toward nudity likely left Witt unable to appreciate how her image intertwined with popular culture images of the Cold War “honey pot.”

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

Stereotypes and Jewish Musical Topics in East German Film: Ambiguities and Allosemitism in Hotel Polan und seine Gäste

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German Film ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The miniseries Hotel Polan und seine Gäste tells the story of three generations of a Jewish family of hoteliers in Bohemia from 1908 to National Socialist persecution. Produced by GDR television in the early 1980s, the series was subsequently broadcast in other European countries and met with a mixed reception. Later on, scholars evaluated it as blatantly antisemitic and anti-Zionist. This essay seeks to re-evaluate these prerogatives by centring the analysis of the miniseries on a close reading of its music—a method not often used in Jewish studies, but a suitable lens through which to interrogate the employment of stereotypes, especially in film, and in light of textual sources from the Cold War era often being reflective of ideologies rather than facts. Employing critical theories of cultural studies and film music, it seeks to identify stereotypes and their dramatic placement and to analyse their operation. It asserts that story, image, and sound constitute both synchronous and asynchronous agents that perpetuate various stereotypes associated with Jews, thereby placing Hotel Polan in the liminal space of allosemitism. Constructed through difference from a perceived norm, Hotel Polan ultimately represents a space in which the egregious stereotype and the strategic employment of types meet. Its deployment of Jewish musical topics specifically shows that it is less their dramatic function that is of relevance, but the discourse that they have the power to enable.

scholarly journals Children’s Literature and Translation Under the East German Regime

2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 241-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Thomson-Wohlgemuth
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
The Status ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This paper describes the status of translation and publication of East German children’s literature during the period of the Cold War. It briefly gives an indication of the high value placed on translation and translators in the socialist regime. Finally it focuses on the main criteria influencing the translation and publication of children’s books with the economic and ideological factors being the most significant and gives brief examples from the East German censorship files.

Cultural Context of Apollo Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Westwood ◽  
Beth Laura O’Leary ◽  
Milford Wayne Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Apollo Program ◽  
International Geophysical Year ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Space Race ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
International Geophysical

This chapter expands on the notion of Apollo Culture in greater detail, beginning with an historic context of the Cold War era. It takes a look at the Sputnik and Vanguard launches during the IGY (International Geophysical Year) Space Race, and explains how these political and social events of the mid-20th century set the stage for the rise and fall of the Apollo program- which required a combination of engineering, marketing, and scientific efforts by the federal government.

“Football More Important Than Berlin”

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-137
Author(s):  
Heather L. Dichter
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Sporting Events ◽  
East German ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Foreign Ministries

In the early 1960s Portugal and the Netherlands confronted the problem of East German participation in the UEFA Junior Tournament and Olympic qualification. Although not very important tournaments, domestic governments feared they would cause a public backlash against themselves and NATO should the East Germans not be allowed to participate. These games became tied up with debates over NATO policies, national interest, and public opinion. The popularity of football prompted some states to attempt to use the national interest exception to the East German travel ban. These football matches brought the Cold War into the smaller NATO member states’ national boundaries. By hosting sporting events the Netherlands and Portugal engaged directly with their NATO allies over Cold War policies with which they did not fully agree or which they believed would cause public opinion problems at home and abroad. NATO diplomats, foreign ministries, and the leaders of national and international football federations spent months in protracted negotiations over whether minor football matches involving the German Democratic Republic would even take place during the height of the Cold War as each group attempted to appear blameless in the court of public opinion.

The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War (review)

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-87
Author(s):  
Una M. Cadegan ◽  
Thomas J. Ferraro ◽  
Anthony Rotella
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Look ◽  
The Cold War

Cold War Legacies: The Migration and Transformation of Popular/Unpopular Culture

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
Roger Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Context ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War

This article reviews two recent collections of essays that focus on the role of popular culture in the Cold War. The article sets the phenomenon into a wide international context and shows how American popular culture affected Europe and vice versa. The essays in these two collections, though divergent in many key respects, show that culture is dynamic and that the past as interpreted from the perspective of the present is often reworked with new meanings. Understanding popular culture in its Cold War context is crucial, but seeing how the culture has evolved in the post-Cold War era can illuminate our view of its Cold War roots.

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