9 - Between Blight and Blessing: The Influence of American Popular Culture on the Federal Republic

Summary

Along with Europe and much of the rest of the world, Germany has absorbed abundant amounts of American popular culture while fretting anxiously about its effects. Although there has been a realignment of the formerly hard-bitten, Manichean distinction between spiritual Kultur and practical Zivilisation, German regard for American popular culture has remained ambivalent and highly charged. Many Germans continue to find it appealing or refreshingly fun, whereas hostile critics view it as the relentless onslaught of commercialized vulgarity and meretricious mindlessness, sweeping away distinctively German (and European) culture and character. Aggravating the chronic “wound” of German identity and long-standing qualms about modernity (now, perhaps, postmodernity), American influence in this teeming area is likely to remain a contentious issue, especially when regarded as cultural imperialism or as hegemonic “superculture,” engulfing the world in numbness, dumbness, and self-alienation.

The West German experience with American popular culture has been marked by a contrast between wide (although not necessarily deep) receptivity among many “ordinary” and less-educated Germans - especially youth - and suspicion or hostility from more-educated, opinion-setting sectors, including intellectuals, artists, religious authorities, and custodians of high culture. For many reasons, the German encounter with American popular culture has been especially intense, and the debate about its impact has remained vehement.