The little shop girls go to the cinema

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Little Shopgirls Go to the Cinema (1928) is one of the essays that Siegfried Kracauer published in the Frankfurter Zeitung . He worked for them from 1924 to 1933. At the time, the newspaper was considered the ideologically left-wing paper.

Argumentation structure and theses

In the essay "The little shop girls go to the cinema", Siegfried Kracauer creates a "sample album" of cases of moral ethics. Morals that the film presents to the viewer and that, according to Kracauer, they neither question nor want to question. Kracauer notes that a “limited number of typical motifs” appear again and again in movies. From the analysis of these motifs and the critical questioning of their connections and the social situation, Kracauer develops the following theses, which he explains using a series of analyzed film motifs:

Central theses

1) Films reflect society Film producers have to orientate themselves towards the taste of the audience, because film is an industrial joint product that needs buyers.

2) Films show society as it wishes to see films are the “daydreams of society”: Kracauer sees film as a confession of society: In film, its suppressed wishes are expressed and fictitiously fulfilled. This also includes historical films, such as those about the First World War . These films are "not an escape into the other side of history, but the direct expression of society's will."

3) Historical films are in their real destiny attempts to dazzle The more intensively films deal with the present or the immediate past, the more their courage diminishes: disparities and revolutions are only discussed as long as they take place in the past. A historical film is intended to distract from current grievances and prevent real revolutions by strengthening the theoretical sense of justice.

4) The film is used to consolidate the prevailing social structures. The film manages to keep the audience in a constant state of absent-mindedness, which saves them from confronting themselves and their environment. For example, in film - as in real life - a private misfortune is forgotten by the public. The rescue of an entire class is prevented by that of a single person.

5) The epitome of the film motifs is at the same time the sum of the social ideologies that are disenchanted by the interpretation of these motifs . According to Kracauer's analysis, the recurring film motifs embody the central social ideals. Films that show the true picture of society look crazy, but are essentially healthy. If a film reveals immoral acts, it has a terrifying and demoralizing effect on the audience. They are only officially valid as long as they are exercised in secret: the film depicts events as they are instead of preserving the dignity that makes them possible! The film motif and social ideal are disenchanted. Since the audience in the cinema would like to distract themselves from the real problems, such a film will not be successful. Kracauer is only left with the written disenchantment in his numerous essays.

Critical classification and opinion on the text

The title According to Kracauer, the employees in the cinema of the 1920s make up the majority of the visitors: A visit to the cinema helps to forget the harsh everyday stress. At the same time, this forgetting serves intellectual guidance. It has to keep the people stupid so that it does not lose power. Kracauer criticizes the elite's retention of power and the lack of chances for the socially needy, who - as he further criticizes - don't dare to step out of their misery.

Why does Kracauer call his text The little shop girls go to the cinema and not The people go to the cinema ? It is - then and now - not just little shop girls or, to put it more distantly, young employees who go to the cinema. By choosing his title on the one hand, Kracauer draws a line between the new female professions (e.g. stenographer) and new female consumers in the Weimar Republic . He sees the rise of employees in connection with the feminization of mass culture. On the other hand, he is not very progressive and repeats the equation of lower culture and femininity. The question posed by the feminist critics is appropriate: Why then did Kracauer go to the cinema himself?

The Employees In his essay Asylum for the Homeless , he continues the criticism of the employees, whom he describes as “mentally homeless”: “The higher,” says Kracauer, “For him (the employee) it is not salary but shine. It does not result from collection, but from diversion “The misery at home is forgotten in the glamor of the establishments. The female employees in particular are criticized again: "'Serious conversations,' she said [after Kracauer:" A stenographer who tends to reflect "], 'only distract and distract from the environment that one wants to enjoy.' If a serious conversation is thought to have distracting effects, then it is relentlessly serious about distraction. ”In addition to his criticism, Kracauer does not make any specific demands that could be implemented.

Siegfried Kracauer To whom Kracauer addresses in his essays, it is not clearly clear from what has been written. Does he want to actively serve a specific purpose with his writing? Does he want to make the employees aware of their situation? Does he want to clarify? “A lot about him,” says Adorno, “was reactive; Philosophy not least a means of self-assertion. "

The writer and philosopher Kracauer repeatedly explores the “exoticism of everyday life” in his writings. He wants to recognize the reflection of time in the surface appearances and surface expressions of the mass and get closer to its true core. In his considerations, Kracauer starts from the form, not the content. The focus of his interest are media perception and the staged conveyance of content. Kracauer takes different standpoints in his considerations and takes the liberty to contradict himself. That makes it difficult for us as readers to classify it, since it eludes any black and white painting.

Gertrud Koch writes in her book Kracauer as an introduction : “Kracauer does not try his hand at the report, as usual around 1920/30, but with the mosaic. For Kracauer, a mosaic is a conscious combination, a construction. This is the only way to get closer to reality. The report is a photograph. "

With his approach, Kracauer represents a counterpoint to the literary direction Neue Sachlichkeit , his approach is not a documentary but a philosophical one. Kracauer understands his observations as more comprehensive and criticizes the fact that the objective observations of New Objectivity, such as Alfred Döblin ( Berlin Alexanderplatz ), remain on the surface and thus "a facade that hides nothing (...)."

Kracauer describes and observes, he examines everyday life and under his gaze false floors become apparent. Everyday objects are described by him and exposed as fetish ; usual actions become a farce under his gaze . In observing everyday life, he penetrates the shimmering and protective facade of the usual establishments, structures and ways of acting and brings to light what, in his opinion, is hidden behind them. His friend Theodor W. Adorno writes about him in his essay The Wonderful Realist. About Siegfried Kracauer : "(...) his thinking (was) actually always [sic!] More intuition than thinking"

The conclusions that Siegfried Kracauer draws from his observations are often bleak. During his development he cultivated the role of the outsider, which seems to have been inherent in him: the parents have little time for their only child and from an early age Kracauer is dissatisfied with his appearance. By 1933 at the latest , as a young man of Jewish origin, he was at the mercy of National Socialist propaganda and the persecution of Jews under Adolf Hitler and initially emigrated to Paris .

The essay “The little shop girls go to the cinema” is one of Kracauer's texts in which his argumentation structure is easy for the reader to understand. Interesting parallels can be found in the application of his argument to today's cinema culture.

literature

  • Siegfried Kracauer: The ornament of the mass (1927). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • Siegfried Kracauer: The Employees (1930). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • Theodor W. Adorno: The Whimsical Realist. About Siegfried Kracauer. In: Collected writings 11. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1971, pp. 388–408.
  • Gertrud Koch: Kracauer for an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 1996.
  • Emilie Altenloh: On the sociology of the cinema: the cinema business and the social classes of their visitors (Jena 1914). Medienladen, Hamburg 1977.
  • Patrice Petro: Joyless streets: women and melodramatic representation in Weimar Germany (1957). Princetown University Press, Princetown, New Jersey 1989.
  • Heide Schlüpmann: A detective that cinemas: Studies on Siegried Kracauer. Stroemfeld / Nexus, Basel 1998.

Web links