3 ms·
> Of course, as you’ve probably surmised, the song isn’t really about the color film. It’s a thinly veiled satire aimed at the communist regime by the artist, t
by hnbad 4y ago
> Of course, as you’ve probably surmised, the song isn’t really about the color film. It’s a thinly veiled satire aimed at the communist regime by the artist, toying with everything from the regime’s attempts to pass its citizens’ lives as being nice to Western audiences to the drabness of communist Germany.
That's not entirely truthful, though? The artist said that the song complained about the drabness of life in socialist East Germany and being confronted with the economy of scarcity (making a color film hard to replace if you forgot to bring it) even present in the moments you escape it (by travelling to places with nicer scenery). But the entire jab at "the regime's attempts" and "Western audiences" seems to be conjecture on the part of the author and isn't in the interview they seem to be referencing.
Also for the record, the artist has somewhat disowned the song because the song's writer was a child abuser and rapist. Another piece of knowledge largely lost to time.
I think the author is a bit too invested in seeing the song in an American Cold War context that doesn't match the experiences of those in divided Germany for whom the Cold War was more about two equally untrustworthy superpowers threatening their annihilation over inconsequential power plays and engaging on continuous proxy wars.
It reads almost like the author thinks Merkel is weeping over memories of how she suffered under the East German government when in reality 2020 alone had plenty of reasons for her to feel sad and the song represents a tiny act of polite rebellion at the end of a reign that culminated in her watching powerless over federal ministers making decisions she disagreed with but would receive the blame for.
- ltbarcly3 4y agoEqually untrustworthy? You must consume a very large amount of Russian media evety day to be able to say that in earnest.
- hnbad 4y agoRussian media hates the Soviet Union other than the vague idea of it as a continuation of a pan-Russian empire, so I'm not sure how you're jumping from "Cold War era US was untrustworthy" to me being pro-Russia (which I'm not, Putin is a fascist). I'm not even pro-Soviet Union or pro-German Democratic Republic (because I'm not a fan of oppressive governments even if they get a red coat of paint). We have a lot more transparency and insight today (in part thanks to the advancement of modern technologies like the Internet) and Germany has matured beyond being a direct pawn in an international conflict (in part because the US won the Cold War and Russia is politically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things). But projecting the current state (and the public perception of it) back on the Cold War era is ahistorical. Did you forget the purge of leftist (not just Soviet-aligned) organizations both under McCarthy but well into the Civil Rights era? The US participation in the Vietnam War, which was protested worldwide not just in the US? The Cuban Missile Crisis? I realize many of these events were perceived very differently in the US but from the POV of a country stuck right in the middle of the two world powers the US was just as likely to pull the trigger (or provoke the other party into doing so) as the Soviets. The Cold War was decidedly not a "just war" (unlike WW2, arguably) but a power play between two nuclear super powers continuously threatening to end the world as we know it at a whim. The fear of nuclear annihilation is why there's still a strong bias against nuclear energy to this day. Positive public perception of the US in Germany was largely an aftereffect of the post-war era and a response to fear of possible Soviet revanchism for German war crimes. Heck, the Marshall Plan was publicly perceived as an act of charity when in reality it was a loans program strongly tied to anti-communism (again exceeding mere "anti Soviet influence" but targeting leftist politics in general) and had the goal of building up Western Europe and West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Say what you will about Americans, US organizations or even how the US government has changed since then, but the Cold War era US government was scary and much like the Soviet Union felt more like a force of nature than a diplomatic ally you could reason with.