Performing the Modern German

What can contemporary German cinema tell us about current German society and its problems? This book analyses the performances of gender, ethnicity and nationality in a wide range of films, revealing how modern German identity is produced in response to the restructuring of German society post-unification.

Since the late 1990s, German cinema has gone through a period of astonishing productivity and success that has made it the focus of scholarly analysis once more. What can contemporary German cinema tell us about current German society and its problems? What are the distinguishing features of filmmaking in Germany today? This book analyses the representation of individual and collective behaviour in post-unification German cinema. It looks at performances of gender, ethnicity and nationality in a wide range of contemporary German films. Using Performance Theory as a framework, the book discusses how modern German identities are presented as conformist, liberating or subversive responses to external challenges. Theoretical considerations regarding the efficacy of performance and the dialectical relationship between transgression, resistance and normalization form the background for an analysis that investigates contemporary German films in terms of their function within the restructuring of post-unification German society.

Autorentext

Matthias Uecker is Professor of German at the University of Nottingham. He has published books on documentary writing in the Weimar Republic (Wirklichkeit und Literatur, 2007), Alexander Kluge's television productions (Anti-Fernsehen?, 2000) and cultural politics in the Ruhr area during the Weimar Republic (Zwischen Industrieprovinz und Großstadthoffnung, 1994), as well as numerous articles on German literature and cinema.

Zusammenfassung
«[Eine] lobenswerte, theoretisch fundierte Untersuchung [...], die dem englischsprachigen Fachpublikum wertvolle Hinweise auf die Auseinandersetzung der jüngsten Generation deutscher FilmemacherInnen mit ihrer Realität liefert.» (Wolfgang Schlott, MEDIENwissenschaft 4/2014)

Inhalt

Contents: The Power of Performance - When Is a Man a Man? Performances of Conflicted Masculinity - Jewish Drag: Ritual and Identity in the Performance of Jewishness - East is East? Performative Constructions of East German Lives - Between Otherness and Hyphenation: Turkish-German Performances - Against Normality? Performing Rebellion and Resistance - Perform or Else! Conformism, Achievement and Subversion in the Performance Society - The Pursuit of Normality: Performed Identities in Current German Cinema.