Belatedly Jumping In

After leaving Cim to her own devices for a couple of weeks, I've finally managed to get my domestic ducks lined up well enough to add my two cents.

I've enjoyed reading Cim's blogs—seems like old times, so to speak--, but what speaks to me immediately is the comment made by c-franklin to Cim's blog on Battlestar Galactica and Rescue Me (two shows unavailable in the wastes of German TV) about "the model of TV as escape." One of the things Cim and I had in common in grad school was our firm belief in the intellectual and pedagogical value of fun (thanks to R: L. Rutsky). Personally, I don't see the need to make distinctions between escape and engagement, entertainment and enlightenment. Most recently I have begun to think about this in terms of intoxication, not as in vino veritas or through the wonders of psychedelics, but rather a kind of entertainment intoxication that allows me the rethink precisely because I get to escape, if only for a little while. It may be an exaggeration of style, as in a film like From Hell, or a quirk of narrative form, like in Memento, or even just an idea that occurs to me while I watching or reading that gives me what I can only call a rush. Humans have an innate need to alter their perception, to be intoxicated, otherwise fetuses wouldn't briefly clamp their umbilical cords to cut off the oxygen supply and give themselves a little rush. And that's why we went to all that trouble to come up with movies and TV: both provide an easy fix.

Unfortunately, I live in a country where TV is truly a wasteland, with only a few bright spots being imported or copied from more visually enlightened cultures. I'll get to why I think this is another day. Right now our TV landscape is particularly barren because of the Soccer World Championships. This afternoon, most of Germany will close down from 4:00-6:00 pm so that flag-waving, face-painted fussball fans can forget about everything else but the thrill of possibly routing world power Ecuador. Both teams are already qualified for the next round. The outcome today is essentially meaningless. Nevertheless, normal and normally thinking Germans are overcoming a half-century's fear of showing any form of nationalism in their enthusiasm for soccer. One might understand why Ecuadorians would get all excited and feel a sense of national pride. But Germans? Since WWII Germans have done whatever they could to distance themselves from the notion of the Volk, calling themselves Europeans rather than Germans, identifying more with the continent than the land. The intoxication of the World Championships seems to be allowing them to reengage German-ness in a way nobody really needs to get too worried about. And in the bargain they get to forget about the high level of unemployment, the imminent tax-hikes and the crisis in medical care for a few hours.

I'm just holding my breath waiting for the next season of Lost to begin. Matthew Fox speaks incredible German….