Minimal utopias
Minimal Utopias is a radio play by Thomas Raab , produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk in 2009 and broadcast for the first time on July 5th of the same year. The almost 40-minute production directed by Katja Langenbach deals with the wishes of consumers and how they are served by advertising.
Contributors
- Director: Katja Langenbach
- Assistant director: Imke Hansen
- Sound and technology: Winfried Messmer, Regine Elbers
- Editor: Katharina Agathos
Roles and speakers
- Advertiser - Oliver Losehand
- Ordinary consumer - Bernd Moss
- Radio announcer - Gudrun Skupin
- Sociologia - Christine Diensberg
- Philosophia - Helga Fellerer
- Children - Alice Hein, Theresa Jarczyk, David Herber
Content and structure
In a prologue , alternating between radio announcer , normal consumer , advertiser and sociologia , a definition of the term “ utopia ” is first provided: “Utopia is a term for the mostly literary, but also sociological or philosophical designs of a primarily ideal community in a fictitious, spatial and temporally removed from the actual world nowhere [the Blue Lagoon] ”.
The following is the explanation of the home buying trend. Now the radio announcer refers to Thomas More's Utopia , in which he describes the living situation in Utopia's capital. This is followed by the first statistics of the advertiser and the definition of the minimal utopias. The title and author of the radio play are then named.
In the main part of the piece, the alternating characters determine the structure of these minimal utopias, obstacles in the realization of these as well as wishes and fears, discussed and usually summarized by the radio announcer. The advertiser pulls one statistic after the other up his sleeve, Sociologia and Philosophia argue about the predominance of the habitus of the people. Normal consumers explain their plans, which range from looking for an apartment near a school for their daughter to building a summer bungalow, and what stands in the way of realizing them: While some fear losing their job due to the Economic crisis, the others flee from the increasing number of foreigners in their district. Your minimal utopias show cracks: How will the economy develop in the future? Can i afford financing a new home? What is politics doing for us? The following applies to everyone: "[They] look [at] new houses in [their] free time."
The explanations of the protagonists are interrupted again and again by the children's choir, which always has a suitable saying or children's song on their lips. These often run through several times in a row and thus overlap with the words of the next speaker. On the level of sound processing, some repeatedly used "background noise" can be determined: the rattling of keys, door opening, door closing, bottle uncorking, clinking glasses, a doorbell (which is particularly used in the verbal war between Sociologia and Philosophia), door buzzer, the gentle splashing of water, etc. ., which symbolize the building and inauguration of or moving into the new dwellings.
There are also repetitions of content: For example, the advertiser's “Welcome to the Blue Lagoon” or the statement “We attach too much importance to thinking” and “The appearance of a house symbolizes the life structure of its occupant”.
Individuality is only pretended to the “individualized normal consumer”. Because in the end the listener learns that all the characters in the radio play live in a house in the Blue Lagoon, an idyllic model housing estate with buildings that are entirely based on the needs of the ten normal consumer categories that enable the advertiser to target group marketing. Minimal utopias are a prerequisite for the predictability of the average consumer. "Happiness can be planned."