Ecesu Erol
s1361538
Elective:
Censorship and Social Transformation
Dr.
Ksenia Robbe
Word
Count: 1099
Good bye, Lenin!
: A Review
1989. East Berlin. The fall of the Berlin Wall.
Drastic changes in Germany and the reunification process. There is a tendency when
talking about the consequences of the event to focus on political players rather
than the people. The movie Good bye, Lenin! however chooses to focus on a
single family from East Berlin and observe their lives while using the events
simply as background. The social change is reflected through this one family; the transition
of their clothes, furniture, jobs and relations... Through this director
Wolfgang Becker achieves a more personal angle, making it more relatable for
the viewer. We see the nostalgia
for East Berlin, the communist pickles, the abandoned houses as a
representation of what people left behind…
The
main character of the movie is a young man with the name Alex Kerner who joins
an anti-Berlin Wall march one night.
The same night Christiane, his mother a devoted communist, sees her son getting
beaten and arrested by the police. At the sight of this Christiane has a heart
attack and goes into coma not to wake up for eight months. During these months
a lot changes regarding East Berlin and the Kerner family. First free elections
are held, Christiane’s daughter Ariane quits college and starts working at
Burger King, Ariane’s boyfriend moves into the Kerner’s apartment, Alex meets Lara
who enters their lives. When Christiane wakes up, the doctor warns her family
that if she experiences a shock it could lead to another hearth attack which could
be deadly.
Alex seeing the recent news regarding the fall of
the Berlin Wall as a threat decides not to tell his mom about it. He convinces
the doctors that it would be better for her to be home, where he could control what she is exposed to.
The reality becomes danger as Alex becomes the creator
and protector of an illusion.
“It was in October, in the supermarket. There was this enormous queue
and it was really hot and you just passed out.” The first brick of the
newly constructed reality of Alex begins while still in the hospital, after his
mom wakes up. It is the first lie that she is being told, for her own good.
From this point onwards Alex’s
reality will face many obstacles.
Ariane doesn’t agree with Alex’s
idea but she helps him nevertheless. Firstly they have to get rid of the
Western furniture they had bought while bringing back the old Eastern furniture
they had thrown to the streets like many others. They redecorate Christiane’s
bedroom and make sure to not leave behind any signs of change. Alex breaks the
antenna of the radio so that his mom won’t have access to any news. The family
changes back into their Eastern clothing. This is the first steps of the illusion
on which the rest will be built.
We often fall into the mistake of thinking of censorship
in the very literal sense of for example the government banning a book or an
album while overlooking more subtle ways of censorship. In this specific case
of Good bye, Lenin!, Alex becomes the censor as Christiane becomes the one that
is exposed to this censorship, the receiver.
One of the main challenges for Alex
occurs when his mom asks for Spreewald Pickles. This is also one part of the
movie that shows the drastic differences between East and West Berlin and how
they merge from two completely different worlds into one. The contrast is very
visible to the audience especially when Alex goes into the corner store that used
to have empty shelves towards the fall of the Berlin Wall only to see that all
the shelves are full of new products of all kinds imported from around the
world. Alex, unable to buy Spreewald Pickles, will have to find different ways
to keep the illusion going. He digs through garbage cans and abandoned houses
to find old jars of Spreewald Pickles and similar East German products; he
disinfects the ones he finds while also relabeling empty jars to make them look
like the old ones. This process shows how things that appear to be true might
not be so and aimed to be misleading and deceiving, a tool also used often by
the ones in power to manipulate the masses.
Another major challenge that Alex
faces is when his mom asks for a TV. He first starts showing her tapes of old
programs pretending they are new but later on as other challenges arise, such
as the big Coca-Cola ad that covers one side of a building that happens to be
in Christiane view, he has to come up with more structured plans to keep the
illusion strong. These fake news that he produces with his friend also show how
the media is able to manipulate people and how the viewer soaks up the information
given.
The main breaking point of the movie
is the scene in which Christiane gets up and decides to go outside and see how
far she can get. In the elevator she recognizes a Nazi symbol, while getting
off the building she sees Western people moving in, she sees the old furniture
on the streets and ads of IKEA and many cars. This wave of strangeness is followed
by the vision of a helicopter carrying a statue of Lenin. This part of the
movie represents the shattering down of the structured, unreal world of Alex. Later
on Alex will produce more fake news with his friend Denis to explain everything
that she has seen outside. By this point Alex realizes that he is creating the
GDR that he wishes for, finding himself not only as the creator but also a part
of the deception.
Overall, when we look at the ways
of deception that Alex uses they are very similar to ways of censorship that
states use. However in this specific case the audience, like Alex, justifies
the deception, the censorship. Like in many socities that are faced with
censorship, there is resistance in the movie as well, like Ariane, like Lara
who don’t approve the reasons behind this deception. Towards
the end of the movie we see Lara telling Christiane about the reality and the
truth not having the effect they feared, Alex’s worries although relatable turn
out to not be justifiable. Whether to save a moms life or remain in power
censorship will always be justified by the censor and will continue to exist.
In an ideal world censorship would not exist, but I suppose that is a utopia,
just like the one Alex creates.
Good Bye Lenin! Dir. Wolfgang
Becker. Warner Home Video, 2003.
"Good Bye Lenin."
FallOfTheBerlinWall -. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2015.
"Good Bye Lenin!" IMDb.
IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2015.
This analysis provides with a comprehensive summary of the plot, and succeeds in highlighting the climax scenes of the movie. Although, in my opinion too detailed for the audience to feel the need to watch the movie afterwards.
ReplyDeleteI find the analogy between Alex’s behavior as a censor with that of a censor government very accurate. As argued by J. Coetzee, censorship is an expression of paranoia (9). Such Paranoia would help to explain Alex’s obsession with banal elements such as clothes or furniture. Obsessive prohibition of the truth that will gradually required of a productive process of discourse creation through the manipulation of the media. As you highlighted by depicting the scene where Christiane leaves the bedroom, the role of the media is key to naturalize Alex’s fantasy. In your analysis you also hint at the parallel process Alex and Christiane undergo. Both characters experience becoming the censor and being censored.
As mentioned in this analysis, the filmmaker narrows down the experience of the society to one sole family. I wonder if an authoritative and censoring society leads to the reproduction of censorship on a small scale. As you highlighted, the complete avoidance of censorship is just a utopia. In that case, could we argue both Alex and Christiane were prone to censoring as a result of their experience under the communist regimen?
On the other hand, when argued the transition to capitalism leads to structural and radical changes in the family, I wonder whether the example of Spreewald Pickles helps to illustrate your argument. Christiane does not notice the difference in flavor. In fact, she is pleased to see that after all these months “there are things that do not change”. Although the political context changes, there seem to be no relevant change in the core of the family structure, that is, the family relations existent before the Fall. Thus, one may question, whether the underlying message of the pickles episode is, not that of change, but the opposite, the lack of real change for the average Berliner family.
Coetzee, J.M. Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. London: U of Chicago, 1996. Print.
You provide a good description of the movie and how the concepts of censorship are presented, and more specifically, I like the link to state censorship you make, as there are certainly similarities between the movie and general state censorship. What you do very well is linking the events and actors in the movie to the actual concepts of censorship, such as who is the censor, who is the resistance, etc.
ReplyDeleteYou reflect very well on the topic of censorship in general by explaining what censorship is and how it is often perceived wrongly.However, in this paragraph you could have elaborated more on what role Alex takes exactly and what characteristics of censorships are featured and also what roles the other movie characters take, not only Christiane, but also for example how the attendants of the birthday party can be translated into certain concepts within the notion of censorship.
Regarding the structure, I think it is quite good. You jump from general explanations of censorship to certain details that pass by in the movie and then for every paragraph, the link to the general concepts are made. You did not make the mistake of describing too much the plot of the movie and reflecting too little on its representation of censorship. It is quite challenging not to make this mistake, because in order for the reader to understand this representation, a certain amount of descriptive information on the movie plot needs to be provided. I think that you did a very good job by focusing not too much on general events in the movie, but rather on analyzing details in the light of censorship, so that you would make optimum use of the 1000 words that you were allowed to use.
Your review about the movie Good Bye : Lenin ! is an interesting one as you link events in the movie with different forms of censorship. You succeeded to highlight the evolution of the illusion created by Alex Kerner and especially why he created this illusion. The reality becomes danger as Alex becomes the creator and protector of an illusion is an interesting statement as this could be linked to state censors who claim to censor certain texts in order to protect the subjects. It was good that you highlighted the fact that censorship is not always the most literal sense like banning books by governments. Your arguments and the events happened in the movie are done in a structural way which makes it easy to follow and you successfully argue that censors will always justify their censoring in order to protect or help the censored, while this might not be right.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see a little more argumentation regarding how the censoring of Alex turns into self-censoring, as the illusion of the GDR he creates might be the result of him being censored also. I am not sure if Alex really realized that he was creating the GDR that he wished for, or that he created the GDR that he thought was the essential positive side of the GDR. Some parts were not that clear, for example why the Nazi symbol was part of the main breaking points. Also the fact that the Spreewald Pickles were an instrument for misleading and deceiving might be an interesting one, but could have used a little more argumentation.
You do successfully pick apart moments linked to censorship and also explain why these parts or events can be linked to censorship. This is especially effective by linking the used censorship to the most literal form of censorship by governments like Russia or South Africa.