Narratives of transformation and resistance: a cultural studies approach towards a critical understanding of the New German Cinema.

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the social and economic significance of the arts and cultural production, or 'creative industries'. Research into the relationship between the latter and community changes has been brought to the fore by the introduction of interactive media technologies, and by the need to understand and conceptualise them culturally.

However, this is not to say that the issue is a completely new one and thus, in this article, I aim to investigate film-first in general, and then specifically the New German Cinema (NGC), and its complex interconnectedness with the postwar West German society. I would like to highlight, though, the fact that one finds different voices within this cinematic movement, and that it is less homogeneous than the term 'New German Cinema' might suggest.

Initially, it has to be noted that the feature films of the Nac can be broadly categorised as political interventions, since they use the medium's capacity to make 'narratives for change' discursively available to a mass audience. However, these productions are not straightforward political propaganda but rather fictional texts, which are composed in a range of different ways (formally, as well as in terms of their story content). Hence the NGC has to be seen as a project within which diversity (in the form of complex articulations) is held together by the aim to create 'new films' for a 'new society'. In this vein, film can be theorised as a practice that is part of a social process (Turner, 1993).

A distinctly cultural studies approach to film is useful in this analysis. Since 'culture' became redefined by cultural studies as 'a whole way of life', subject to construction processes within society and carried out on the basis of shared beliefs, specifically symbolic systems such as literature and film have become prime research targets. As a consequence of wanting to understand how film might be part of the particular culture under analysis, cultural studies scholars such as David Morley (1993) and Roger Bromley (2001) have looked more closely into film itself as a specific means of cultural (re-)production.

Subsequently, film has been examined as a cultural product and as a social practice, valuable both for itself and for what it can tell us about the systems and processes of culture. Today, the analysis of film is not restricted to film studies but is a common practice in many disciplines, including cultural studies.

However, although film is the object of study within various cultural studies investigations, it is hardly ever the final target of inquiry, but rather part of a broader argument about representation. This makes film one case study within the vast area of cultural production, and the methods applied to its analysis are not confined to it as such, but are transferable to the examination of other media.

This introduction of the concept of film as a social practice leads me to the discussion of the NGC as an example of changes within the media landscape in post-war West Germany. For this purpose, the 'old' German cinema and its respective productions have to be understood as a point of departure for the NGC. Here I am thinking especially of the so-called 'Heimat' films: a genre which, with regards to production and reception figures, dominated the 1950s cinematic scene in West Germany.

In narrative terms, these films perpetuate an unproblematic sense of community, which is rooted both in the past and in tradition, linked to a bounded space that mainly takes the shape of a rural idyll, and generally seems to be a timeless allusion to essentialist notions of communality. The films' realist mode and linear plotlines call on the audience to identify with the protagonists, who are usually caught up in romantic and happy-ending love stories.

A prime example of the 'Heimat' films' hero is the forester in Grun ist die Heide (Green Is The Heath, Deppe 1951). Firmly positioned within a rural community, he is a mediator between the realm of nature and the social sphere, looking after the forest and its animals and protecting both (from the poacher, for example, who in general is portrayed as a misguided loner) while at the same time acting according to the interests of the community of which he is part, and to which the forest belongs.

He is a civil servant with a good salary and a romantic little house within the forest itself, who controls, regulates and administers the wilderness, bearing resemblance to a somehow civilising practice.

In essence, he is a caretaker and preserver who, far removed from the actual act of killing, enjoys being out in nature, watching 'his' animals. He shows respect for God's creation, be it an animal or a human being. His occupation is much more than just a job for him: it can be seen as a way of life. In relation to his peaceful mission, his rifle seems to be no more than a decorative insignia of power, rather than an actual instrument for taking life.

So what, exactly, did the cinematic and socio-political critique of these productions consist of? The films' kitsch aesthetic, and their (intentional or unintentional) refusal of any form of problematising German society in this period, produced a confrontational stance among a group of young German filmmakers who were enjoying success at international festivals.

As a reaction to this socio-political and cinematic crisis, the directors of what was to become known as New German Cinema claimed the death of this outdated form of German cinema, and announced the birth of a new one. They expressed their cinematic aims and intentions most notably in the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962--a title that indicates the programmatic nature of the movement, and the impact the filmmakers were hoping to achieve in artistic as well as in socio-political terms (Elsaesser, 1989).

The reactionary nature of the 'Heimat' films genre became one of the prime targets of the NGC. Between the end of the 1960s and the late 1970s, the NGC produced a range of so-called 'anti-Heimat' films, within which the format of the aforementioned 'Heimat' films was radically under attack. The NGC (in opposition to the escapist tendencies of the former productions) turned towards society in an attempt to critically analyse communal ways of being-in-the-world that seemed to be symptomatic of the post-war West German society.

For instance, in Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich (I Love You, I Kill You, Brandner 1971) the 'Heimat' films' hero is fundamentally challenged. To start with, he is a hunter and not a forester, which changes his relationship to nature in the sense that he is not a caretaker or preserver of the forest. Furthermore, he is not employed by the community but acts on his own behalf, therefore representing individual freedom and independence instead of security and allegiance to a larger social whole.

Through the way he dresses--wearing a black leather jacket and, overall, appearing like a member of a motorcycle gang--he presents himself as a rebel, not wanting to belong to a community. Thus, while the forester in 'Heimat' films is associated with the realm of civilisation and hence with society and culture, the hunter in the abovementioned NGC production can be seen as part of the natural world or even wilderness, which renders his relationship with society conflictual, if not antagonistic.

Another major difference between the two figures is that the forester's rifle is only decorative whereas the hunter actually uses his gun to hunt down and kill, perpetuating an aura of aggression and violence instead of peace and harmony. Besides, the hunter kills for money as the mayor pays him for every wolf or wild dog he shoots and brings to his doorstep.

Hence killing is portrayed as a means of survival, making the hunter the biggest beast of prey in the forest. At the end of the film, a poacher is captured and executed by two policemen in front of the mayor's house, whereupon the hunter shoots both guardians of the law--a situation which can be regarded as a societal shift from civilisation to nature, since civilised means of communication and interaction are replaced by the use of overt violence. Thus one could conclude that nature prevails over civilisation in an act of murderous aggression, which bears a resemblance to terrorism.

Besides the figurative replacement of the forester in Grun ist die Heide with the hunter in Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich, the portrayal of communality in this latter production is also radically different from its predecessor. In some senses, Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich can be seen as a 'narrative of transformation' that unravels what lies beneath the idyllic and sugary icing of the 'Heimat' films' narratives. In Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich, a sense of community is supplied by pills that have the effect of enhancing the villagers' happiness and lulling them into a state of indifferent endurance; a life without aims and passions, but also bare of conflict and chaos. This 'drugged communality' is, however, only a temporary solution to wider social issues such as emotional homelessness, lack of communication and the failure to make one's life meaningful.

Ultimately, the members of this community are comparable to 'zombies': they are not yet dead, but they are also not fully alive any more. Deviancy is rendered impossible by the police's policy of drugging the 'wrongdoer' back into 'normality', so that effectively the community becomes unchallengeable.

This causes the latter to be frozen in time and space, with its form of 'failed communality' kept in check by the invisible power structures of the state. Made in 1971, the film clearly addresses and criticises existing socio-political and communal issues in post-war West Germany. This brief figurative analysis of a symptomatic character in 'Heimat' films and his counterpart in an 'anti-Heimat' production, leads to reflections on some key features of the social context within, and for which the NGC made its films and to an investigation of how the latter was a society of deep socio-political changes.

West German post-war society can be characterised as a community dominated by escapism; by silence about the Second World War and, in particular, about the Holocaust; withdrawal from political issues generally; the 'inability to mourn' (an expression coined by Alexander and Margarethe Mitscherlich's 1967 book with the same title); the cementing of the German-German division; cultural re-education by the Allied forces and a desire for light entertainment and distraction.

It was against this cultural backdrop and its artistic articulation that the NGC emerged. Founded in 1962, the NGC resonated with the emergent new social movements and cultural politics of this period, represented by the students' movement, the peace movement and second-wave feminism. Shortly after, the terrorist Baader-Meinhof group (also known as the Red Army Faction--RAF) also emerged. This concurrence of different social groups (including the NGC) concerned with transforming or, in the case of the terrorists, even destroying, existing communal ways of being shows the interconnectedness of the different social and cultural practices of the time.

The alternative social forces and their cultural exchanges, which occurred in West Germany in the 1960s and '70s, are epitomised by Holger Meins, the filmmaker, activist and terrorist. To start with, Meins was a political filmmaker who studied at the prestigious film academy in Berlin from 1966 to 1968, where he produced short feature films as well as agitprop films such as Uber die Herstellung eines Molotow-Cocktails (About the Production of a Molotov Cocktail, Meins 1968).

The latter was shown at cultural political gatherings, such as at the socialist German students union (SDS). Meins increasingly moved beyond filmmaking as a discursive social practice, and towards 'narratives of transformation' that were expected to have a more immediate effect than the earlier feature films.

He became more and more involved with the activities of the German student movement and, in 1969, moved, together with other activists, into 'Kommune 1' (Commune 1). From 1970 onwards, he completely stopped filmmaking and focused solely on direct political action, which finally led to him becoming a member of the Red Army Faction from 1970 up until his death in 1974. His life story is portrayed in Starbuck Holger Meins: Ein Potrat als Zeitbild (Starbuck Holger Meins: A Portrait as an Image of Its Time), which was published as a book in 2001 and made into a film in the same year.

Both the written and the film version are in collage form, consisting of photographs, scenes from his films, letters and other documents by him and about him, and interviews conducted by Gerd Conradt with a wide range of German intellectuals who, besides having known and worked with him, were actively involved in the national project concerned with 'challenging and changing Germany' in one way or another.

Peter Lilienthal, a filmmaker associated with the NGC, taught Meins at the German film and television academy (DFFB) in Berlin. Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, who were also members of the NGC, met Meins during his time at the film academy. They became friends, and dedicated their film Moses und Aron (1974) to him, since he died on the day they finished editing it. Wim Wenders, another NGC director, worked with Holger Meins on his first film Summer in the City (1970), and included a dedication to him in the opening sequence of his later film Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend, 1976). Rudi Dutscke and Otto Schily, activists of the extra-parliamentary opposition (APO), went to Meins's funeral in November 1974, where Dutschke raised his fist at the coffin and said: 'Holger, der Kampf geht welter!' (Holger, the fight continues!). Schily was one of the lawyers who defended the RAY terrorists in court. Moreover, together with Hans-Christian Strobele, who met with Meins when the latter was forced to live in hiding, Schily co-founded the German Green Party and is today minister of the Interior, while Strobele is also still a member of parliament. Peter Schneider, spokesman of the German student movement, met Meins through the later RAF terrorist Jan Carl Raspe, and became his friend. Lastly, together with Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, Meins belonged to the core of the RAF. He died in prison as a consequence of a communal hunger strike.

This network of personal relationships, which shows the NGC as part of the counter-hegemonic formation in postwar West Germany, is exemplified by the film Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, NGC team work, 1977-8), a filmic expression of the NGC'S interest in and engagement with German society at the time. It is a combination of feature film and 'Zeitgeist' documentary, which was realised as a team project involving a range of NGC filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge.

Composed of fictional and non-fictional episodes, it tries to come to terms with the events of autumn 1977, which culminated in Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Bader and Jan Carl Raspe being found dead in their high-security prison cells in Stuttgart-Stammheim.

In addition to being an investigation of the immediate present, the film moves beyond the 'now' to relate these incidents to Germany's past, especially to fascism, and thus to contextualise and frame filmmaking in this period within the German society of their parents' time. For instance, see Fassbinder's moving dialogue with his mother about democracy and her role within it.

Holger Meins and Deutschland im Herbst can be described as belonging to the post-war generation, which had been born during or shortly after the war, and whose members were in search of adequate forms of articulating their frustration with their parents' failure to confront the problematic past, while at the same time working towards a changed community. In the course of their work they thus produced filmic essays on issues that, according to them, had to be confronted and talked about.

Deutschland im Herbst and Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich serve as examples of the NGC's critical representation of community. The NGC broke the silence, and invited dialogue into a society that, although formally a democracy, was still suffering from authoritarian and even Nazi residues. In this respect, the NGC had a democratising influence on post-war West German society, since it helped to create an alternative public sphere and thus prepared the ground for change.

In order to achieve this, its films often employed an 'anti-' or non-identification strategy (similar to Brecht's 'Verfremdungseffekt') in order to engage in a dialogue with the audience, and make them aware that they had a responsibility to get involved in the meaning-making process. Eike Wenzel (2000) speaks, in this respect, of films as 'memory spaces'-a concept that he develops by analysing films made by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, Harun Farocki, Hartmut Bitomsky and Alexander Kluge.

The latter said 'goodbye to yesterday' in the form of a challenge to the dominant narrative conventions of realism. He avoided composing his narratives, such as Abschied yon Gestern (Yesterday Girl, 1966) and Die Patriotin (The Patriot, 1979), in a linear fashion, since this would have alluded to the ultimate intelligibility of the world.

Instead, he confronted the audience with a disorienting composition of broken and incomplete story-pieces drawn from a range of documentary and fictional sources, which presented itself as a work-in-progress rather than as a finished narrative.

Through his editing techniques, Kluge created multi-layered and knowingly inter-textual collages, which turned his films, in the words of Wenzel, into 'accessible memory spaces'. By this, Wenzel means that the audience is invited to come forth with its own memories and understanding of images, sounds and signs, which can then be negotiated with those of the film. Kluge's narratives were transformational in two ways.

First, they questioned seemingly fixed hegemonic knowledge and its corresponding truth-claim, and secondly, they provoked the audience to engage with film as a 'building site for meaning making': to use it as a space for the development of new and creative imaginings. This ethic saw the cinema as a democratic forum actively working towards communal change, rather than as a dream factory luring the audience into pleasant but ultimately pacifying viewing experiences.

To conclude, although we have little way of concretely assessing the direct social impact of NGC on Germany's socio-cultural condition between 1962 and 1989, it can be said that its particular political stance, and its transformation of the narratives and generic forms, conceptualised and provided a cultural space for political dialogue in a largely silent community.

It set an agenda of cultural politics issues for an alternative public sphere. Moreover, since the NGC was the first cultural-political movement of the 1960s to occur in post-war West Germany, it might even be seen as an 'avant-garde for social change'.

Bibliography

Bromley, R. (2001) From Alice to Buena Vista: The Films of Wim Wenders (Praeger) Westport, Connecticut.

Conradt, G. (2001) Starbuck Holger Meins: Ein Portrat als Zeitbild (Espresso) Berlin.

Elsaesser, T. (1989) New German Cinema: A History (Macmillan) London.

Mitscherlich A. & M. Mitscherlich (1967) Die Unfgihigkeit zu trauern. Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens (Piper) Munschen.

Morley, D. & K. Robins (1993) 'No place like Heimat: Images of home(land) in European culture', in E. Carter, J. Donald & J. Squires, (eds.) Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location (Lawrence & Wishart) London, pp. 3-31.

Turner, G. (1999) Film as Social Practice (Routledge) London.

Wenzel, E. (2000) Gedachtnisraum Film: Die Arbeit an der deutsehen Geschichte in Filmen seit den sechziger Fahren (J. B. Metzler) Stuttgart.

Filmography 

Abschied yon Gestern (Yesterday Girl, Alexander Kluge, 1965-6)

DerAmerikanische Freund (The American Friend, Wim Wenders, 1977)

Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, NGC team work, 19778)

Die Patriotin (The Patriot, Alexander Kluge, 1979)

Grun ist die Heide (Green Is The Heath, Hans Deppe, 1951)

Ich liebe Dich, ich tote Dich (I Love You, I Kill You, Uwe Brandner, 1971)

Moses und Aron (Moses and Aaron, Jean-Marie Straub & Daniele Huillet, 1974)

Summer in the City (WimWenders, 1970)

Starbuck Holger Meins (Gerd Cortradt, 2001)

Uber die Herstellung eines Molotow-Cocktails (About the Production of a Molotov Cocktail, Holger Meins, 1968)