Fun society

Celebrating teenagers

Fun society is a (mostly derogatory) term that has appeared in the German feature pages since the 1990s and was intended to describe the attitude towards life of parts of German society in the years of the previous stock market boom, the so-called new economy hypes .

According to Fritz Vilmar, he was supposed to criticize a lifestyle in which hedonism and consumerism were in the foreground, but efforts to bring about social change took a back seat. According to Karin Knop, this development is said to have been accompanied by a noticeable boom in comedy programs on private television broadcasters.

Concepts of the "fun society"

Left perspective

The term was initially used mainly by some old leftists in the tradition of criticizing consumer society and the cultural industry. The flattening attested to it is rated as a triumph of the culture industry in the sense of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adornos .

Conservative perspective

The term was emotionally charged because it seemed to undermine the “ classic German” claim to “ profundity ”, for example picked up by conservatives from the Protestant church . The fun society appears here as the result of the hostility to tradition (including Americanization ) of culture, as a celebration of arbitrariness.

Culture pessimistic perspectives

The Union Move in Munich took place until 2001. Over the years there have been fewer and fewer participants

The end of the fun society swung verbally for a long time in the undertone of public discussions, for example in the subtitle of a publication by the journalist Peter Hahne , since hedonism as the basis of social life should not enjoy general acceptance. Hahne justified this u. a. with quotes from Thomas Gottschalk and Jürgen Klinsmann .

In The World of Fun Society , Heimo Schwilk contrasts the community of responsibility in the tradition of the population theorist Meinhard Miegel . According to this, Schwilk assigns the fun society to the " individualistic " culture, which, in contrast to the collectivistic family-oriented culture, threatens decadence and ruin.

Albert Wunsch's 2003 book Farewell to Fun Pedagogy is also strongly culturally pessimistic .

literature

Heiner Boberski : Adieu, fun company. Do we want to amuse ourselves to death? , Edition Va Bene, Vienna / Klosterneuburg 2004, ISBN 3-85167-162-7 .
Lutz Hachmeister : The phantoms of the humor analyst . In: Tagesspiegel , April 7, 2001 (On the development of the term in the media)
Peter Hahne : No more fun. The end of the fun society , Johannis , Lahr / Schwarzwald 2004, ISBN 3-501-05180-8 .
Josef Kraus : fun education. Dead ends of German school policy , University, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-8004-1374-4 .
Christian Rickens : The new philistines. On the fatal longing for an outdated society , Ullstein, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-550-07896-X .
Gerhard Schulze : The adventure society: cultural sociology of the present . 2nd updated edition, Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-593-37888-4 .
Neil Postman : We're having a great time. Formation of judgment in the age of the entertainment industry , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-10-062407-6 .

Web links

Wikiquote: Fun Quotes

Individual evidence

↑ Fritz Vilmar: Raise the language discussion on the regular table level. July 8, 2001, accessed on March 6, 2010 (does not prove what it is supposed to prove): "In the whole fun society, as far as the German language is concerned, you can only call" Land unter ":"
^ Hospice movement in the fun society . In: Rundblick Elsdorf from December 21, 2001.
↑ Karin Knop: Comedy in Series. Culture and media theory . Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, p. 90, ISBN 3-89942-527-8 , ( online ).
↑ taz from January 23, 1993 Article by Josef Otto Freudenreich about Peter Neururer at 1. FC Saarbrücken
↑ The fun society needs the cold shower from Alexander Schuller on www.welt.de
↑ Halloween is "an expression of the fun society" . In: Welt online from October 31, 2008.
↑ Peter Hahne: No more fun !: The end of the fun society . Johannis, Laar / Black Forest 2004, ISBN 978-3501051801 .
↑ See H. Schwilk: The citizen returns, Welt am Sonntag of September 30, 2001 and [1]

[1] Fritz Vilmar: Raise the language discussion on the regular table level. July 8, 2001, accessed on March 6, 2010 (does not prove what it is supposed to prove): "In the whole fun society, as far as the German language is concerned, you can only call" Land unter ":"

[2] Hospice movement in the fun society . In: Rundblick Elsdorf from December 21, 2001.

[3] Karin Knop: Comedy in Series. Culture and media theory . Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, p. 90, ISBN 3-89942-527-8 , ( online ).

[4] taz from January 23, 1993 Article by Josef Otto Freudenreich about Peter Neururer at 1. FC Saarbrücken

[5] The fun society needs the cold shower from Alexander Schuller on www.welt.de

[6] Halloween is "an expression of the fun society" . In: Welt online from October 31, 2008.

[7] Peter Hahne: No more fun !: The end of the fun society . Johannis, Laar / Black Forest 2004, ISBN 978-3501051801 .

[8] See H. Schwilk: The citizen returns, Welt am Sonntag of September 30, 2001 and [1]