Trussed thrust
Jun. 15th, 2006 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusAs I write this late on Wednesday night, there's a palpable tension in the Berlin air. The whole city -- except me, obviously -- is watching a protracted, so far painfully goal-less contest (so my BBC results ticker tells me) in which the German and Polish teams battle for supremacy. It's tense not only because Germany and Poland are neighbours in today's peaceful Eurozone, but because, as we all know, the most devastating war of the 20th century broke out when one of these nations invaded the other. As if to recall that war, the evening is wracked with explosions and the sound of crowds shouting.
Ah, apparently Germany has scored, has won, and now "goes to the brink of qualification for the knockout". I'm actually rather dreading what will happen if Germany wins the World Cup. Such things, as the British found in 1966, can trigger big changes in the psyche of a nation. Eleven men can put a swagger in the stride of 60 million. Whether you think this is a good thing or not comes down to how you feel, generally, about swagger.
Cycling up Prenzlauer Allee this afternoon I saw an O2 billboard showing a man watching the World Cup on his mobile phone. On his knees on a bed placed incongruously in the middle of an empty football arena, the man was making the familiar "phallic thrust" gesture with his fist -- a gesture which, in football, means "goal!" and "victory" but in Freud would mean "sticking it in" and "killing": Eros and Thanatos.
German culture has always been quite explicit about this; it's "admitted to consciousness". We know from Buchner's Woyzeck and Brecht's Drums in the Night that it almost doesn't matter whether the thing being "stuck in" is a phallus or a bayonet: for the delusional prostitute-killer or the Great War soldier, the message is clear: "when he kills," said Brecht, "he comes". This terrible connection, this "thrust", is why peace is always, and should always be, tempered by socialization, repression and guilt. That equation of penis and knife is always waiting, just at the edge of every society, to be made explicit.
I wasn't surprised to see that the phallic gesture -- the civilised-looking man on the bed, for once untrammelled and making that uncharacteristic thrusting-winning-saluting-killing gesture -- had been crossed out with two strips of green tape.
It wasn't the first time I'd seen that image crossed out. For some reason it had worried certain Berliners, people like me who think that guilt and repression are necessary, and that to encourage triumphalism is to play with fire, to mess with the strong force. Almost every example I've seen of the poster has had the "thrust" trussed -- the unapologetic man crossed out or covered up. It's as if Berliners -- some of them, anyway -- are saying something like: "This is not the time to reverse the current of guilt, moderation and anti-nationalism which has prevailed in Germany since our defeat in the last war."
But reversals do seem to be happening. A call comes in from a German friend. "It's football hell out there," he tells me, "you really have to watch out for your life if you're on a bicycle tonight. People in their cars aren't caring, they aren't looking. I never saw this before in Berlin!"
Something else rarely seen in Germany is Germans proudly brandishing their national colours. Suddenly flags and face-painting are booming. Even my Spanish friend Mario is thinking of getting into the flag-on-face painting thing. He's heard that face painters can earn €300 a day doing it. I can think of only one other reversal in national character so swift: the way New York, not a big displayer of US flags, suddenly had them everywhere after 9/11. Now, even bus windows are blocked by gigantic stars-and-stripes flags. If you're in the wrong seat, you literally can't see chunks of real New York for the proud red, white and blue.
Riding around Berlin today on my bike, I was thinking.... well, see what you make of this. National identity is not something fixed, but something dialectical. It's always reacting against some recent event, swinging the way fashions swing; correcting perceived imbalances, making amends, defining itself negatively against its own past or the present of others. This has the peculiar result that countries can completely change places because of their perceived identities.
Take Germany and Britain, and take the matter of surveillance. In East Germany the STASI, the secret police, were surveying everyone. When communism fell, it was understood that this would no longer be the case. Now, Germany has relatively few surveillance cameras. Britain, which never had a STASI, is now the world's most surveyed country: as Liberty reports, "There is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. If you live in London you are likely to be on cameras 300 times a day."
The current "fashion" in former Eastern Germany is to "refute" the system that brought us the STASI. The excesses of the STASI have, for the moment, innoculated us Berliners against high surveillance. We're still travelling away from that. Britain has no such innoculation. Because the UK never had the STASI, its government is free to assemble a mechanism of surveillance which is STASI-like in every detail. We changed places, because we were reacting to different things. Blair could invade Iraq because Britain had no Hitler invading Poland in living memory; Schroeder couldn't, because Germany had.
Similar reactive repulsions have been seen in other societies. New York's sudden turn against street crime, for instance, as the 80s turned into the 90s, or the way the British and French completely traded greetings codes. Whereas in the 18th century it was the French who shook hands and the British who kissed, in the 20th it was the British who shook hands and the French who kissed. And now we're just on the cusp of seeing that polarity shift once again, at least in metropolitan areas like London which, as Malcolm McLaren pointed out when he ran for mayor, are increasingly adopting "Latin" styles... sitting at cafe tables on the pavement, being emotionally effusive, perhaps because the weather's changing, or, more likely, as a cultural reaction against the old image of British people as frosty and formal.
I don't say identity is random. What I say is that it's dialectical: liberalism is held in a close binary tension with fascism, and people who've experienced fascism know this all too well. At any given moment, national character (or even city identity, if it's particularly strong) may be swinging towards or away from a fixed set of traits. Thesis and antithesis (to use the classic Hegelian terminology) make up the cardinal points between which the pendulum swings. That's why I believe the former fascist states, Germany and Japan, are, in many ways, currently some of the most liberal around. Guilt and reaction make it so. And I don't want some stupid little thing like winning the World Cup changing that.
Ah, apparently Germany has scored, has won, and now "goes to the brink of qualification for the knockout". I'm actually rather dreading what will happen if Germany wins the World Cup. Such things, as the British found in 1966, can trigger big changes in the psyche of a nation. Eleven men can put a swagger in the stride of 60 million. Whether you think this is a good thing or not comes down to how you feel, generally, about swagger.
Cycling up Prenzlauer Allee this afternoon I saw an O2 billboard showing a man watching the World Cup on his mobile phone. On his knees on a bed placed incongruously in the middle of an empty football arena, the man was making the familiar "phallic thrust" gesture with his fist -- a gesture which, in football, means "goal!" and "victory" but in Freud would mean "sticking it in" and "killing": Eros and Thanatos. German culture has always been quite explicit about this; it's "admitted to consciousness". We know from Buchner's Woyzeck and Brecht's Drums in the Night that it almost doesn't matter whether the thing being "stuck in" is a phallus or a bayonet: for the delusional prostitute-killer or the Great War soldier, the message is clear: "when he kills," said Brecht, "he comes". This terrible connection, this "thrust", is why peace is always, and should always be, tempered by socialization, repression and guilt. That equation of penis and knife is always waiting, just at the edge of every society, to be made explicit.
I wasn't surprised to see that the phallic gesture -- the civilised-looking man on the bed, for once untrammelled and making that uncharacteristic thrusting-winning-saluting-killing gesture -- had been crossed out with two strips of green tape.It wasn't the first time I'd seen that image crossed out. For some reason it had worried certain Berliners, people like me who think that guilt and repression are necessary, and that to encourage triumphalism is to play with fire, to mess with the strong force. Almost every example I've seen of the poster has had the "thrust" trussed -- the unapologetic man crossed out or covered up. It's as if Berliners -- some of them, anyway -- are saying something like: "This is not the time to reverse the current of guilt, moderation and anti-nationalism which has prevailed in Germany since our defeat in the last war."
But reversals do seem to be happening. A call comes in from a German friend. "It's football hell out there," he tells me, "you really have to watch out for your life if you're on a bicycle tonight. People in their cars aren't caring, they aren't looking. I never saw this before in Berlin!"
Something else rarely seen in Germany is Germans proudly brandishing their national colours. Suddenly flags and face-painting are booming. Even my Spanish friend Mario is thinking of getting into the flag-on-face painting thing. He's heard that face painters can earn €300 a day doing it. I can think of only one other reversal in national character so swift: the way New York, not a big displayer of US flags, suddenly had them everywhere after 9/11. Now, even bus windows are blocked by gigantic stars-and-stripes flags. If you're in the wrong seat, you literally can't see chunks of real New York for the proud red, white and blue.
Riding around Berlin today on my bike, I was thinking.... well, see what you make of this. National identity is not something fixed, but something dialectical. It's always reacting against some recent event, swinging the way fashions swing; correcting perceived imbalances, making amends, defining itself negatively against its own past or the present of others. This has the peculiar result that countries can completely change places because of their perceived identities.
Take Germany and Britain, and take the matter of surveillance. In East Germany the STASI, the secret police, were surveying everyone. When communism fell, it was understood that this would no longer be the case. Now, Germany has relatively few surveillance cameras. Britain, which never had a STASI, is now the world's most surveyed country: as Liberty reports, "There is one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK. If you live in London you are likely to be on cameras 300 times a day."
The current "fashion" in former Eastern Germany is to "refute" the system that brought us the STASI. The excesses of the STASI have, for the moment, innoculated us Berliners against high surveillance. We're still travelling away from that. Britain has no such innoculation. Because the UK never had the STASI, its government is free to assemble a mechanism of surveillance which is STASI-like in every detail. We changed places, because we were reacting to different things. Blair could invade Iraq because Britain had no Hitler invading Poland in living memory; Schroeder couldn't, because Germany had.
Similar reactive repulsions have been seen in other societies. New York's sudden turn against street crime, for instance, as the 80s turned into the 90s, or the way the British and French completely traded greetings codes. Whereas in the 18th century it was the French who shook hands and the British who kissed, in the 20th it was the British who shook hands and the French who kissed. And now we're just on the cusp of seeing that polarity shift once again, at least in metropolitan areas like London which, as Malcolm McLaren pointed out when he ran for mayor, are increasingly adopting "Latin" styles... sitting at cafe tables on the pavement, being emotionally effusive, perhaps because the weather's changing, or, more likely, as a cultural reaction against the old image of British people as frosty and formal.
I don't say identity is random. What I say is that it's dialectical: liberalism is held in a close binary tension with fascism, and people who've experienced fascism know this all too well. At any given moment, national character (or even city identity, if it's particularly strong) may be swinging towards or away from a fixed set of traits. Thesis and antithesis (to use the classic Hegelian terminology) make up the cardinal points between which the pendulum swings. That's why I believe the former fascist states, Germany and Japan, are, in many ways, currently some of the most liberal around. Guilt and reaction make it so. And I don't want some stupid little thing like winning the World Cup changing that.
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old topic
Date: 2006-06-14 10:53 pm (UTC)http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/hindemith.paul.html
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-14 10:55 pm (UTC)10 years ago
Date: 2006-06-14 10:58 pm (UTC)We always want the camera to be in the correct hands, but when its in the government's are we actually going to see the "uneditited" version of the truth? There was speculation that video could be altered, that we could easily see something that may not be there with a few sugestions and a few other things left out.. but we never concluded if this CCTV was actually a good thing..
Re: old topic
Date: 2006-06-14 11:03 pm (UTC)Re: 10 years ago
Date: 2006-06-14 11:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-14 11:42 pm (UTC)Sorry--couldn't resist. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-14 11:49 pm (UTC)I don't think that the generally liberal philosophies which have been [in part], by the way, running the German economy into the ground, will be compromised at all by a win in a sports event; there have been years for the common sense of a certain kind of socialism and tolerance to run deep. There is something in us all that gets turned on by schadenfreude, but that is human, and within the context of common decency, should be appeased and understood, rather than repressed...For repression diminishes the true knowing of one's self and becomes the arsenal of future explosions of aggressive mayhem.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:01 am (UTC)what kind of music do "World Cup people" listen to? What's blasting in Berlin right now? I mean i have no hope for anything good...but at my work we're trying to find albums to feature for a World Cup promo and I have no idea what to suggest except "something German".
SIGH.
i'd rather blog about potatoes than watch football.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:05 am (UTC)Since you've made your opinion of this sport (and those who enjoy it) abundantly clear, I'm not expecting you to change your mind. However, I think you can find a better argument for why an appreciation of the game is tantamount to violence/nationalistic aggression/rape/etc. After all, describing things as "phallic" is the opening critical gambit of your average 13 year old.
Perhaps you could compare the soccer ball itself to ovaries, and argue that the desire to kick it is roughly equivelent to wanting to boot one's own mother in the crotch?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:58 am (UTC)There are a lot of camera systems in California. "It's for your convenience." There are actually a lot, lot, lot of surveillance systems, at intersections and in stores. It's always for my convenience! I tell you, if I'm shoplifting, the least convenient thing would be a surveillance camera.
You speak of sports gestures as a sort of mimicry of sex, but perhaps or sex behavior also mimics sports? It feels like some fantastic Matthew Barney fantasy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 03:10 am (UTC)I'd guess the hands are usually emulating pulling the thrustee's hips back toward the thruster's, though I won't be the one to tell you it couldn't be the thrustee's arms, or even hair being used for a handle.
the gesture is pretty well sanitized beyond recognition though. most of my middle school students actually pull their arms straight down, so they look more like they're pulling the air horn of a big truck.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 04:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 04:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 06:10 am (UTC)Likewise, formerly communist states seem to have swung to the far-right. Neo-Nazi gangs are a growing problem in Russia, Poland, and East Germany. In Beijing, the Chinese skinhead scene seems to be gaining momentum as well.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 06:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 07:14 am (UTC)The guys that laid the foundations for the two countries in question (I'm much more knowledgeable about the Japanese side) were Americans. However, they were "greatest generations", FDR, new deal, power to the people Americans, from the days when the US used to be the cutting edge of socialism and democracy.
Instead of just having "liberalism" as a short-lived reaction to extraordinary circumstances, like the states, these two republics are both rooted in said ideologies.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 08:30 am (UTC)Why would winning this competition make Germany shift to the right when 6 previous victories haven't?
Potato information to help you blogg :)
Date: 2006-06-15 08:57 am (UTC)When the potato was a newly introduced food to Europe and that when this was happening there were no "instructions" on how to cook it and so many people in Europe were actually poisoned by eating the wrong parts of the potato, or green ones..
When ever people bring up the "soya scare" tactics for vegans and how "soya isn't healthy" its good to remember the potato history.. People in fact have been eating Tofu for thousands of years. Its not healthy for the human body to eat any raw beans that have not been either boiled, sprouted or fermented- the fault is in the processing, just as it was with the potato.
Happy blogging.. :)
Dorian
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 09:24 am (UTC)Yet I guess, what worries me the most about the ongoing championship is its tendency to obliterate any other event or news and the absolute impossibility to escape it. Last Friday I visited a friend in order to watch "The Ruling Class" which I had been looking forward to for a couple of weeks, but had to delay the movie for at least an hour or so, because the outside noise made by drunk football fans outperformed Peter O'Toole by sheer volume alone.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 09:46 am (UTC)You worry too much about the World Cup. The thing is, it's not the unleashing of the dark force of nationalism, it's the taming of it. It's a (relatively) harmless outlet for something that in other circumstances could be very harmful. Sometimes, the World Cup message might even turn out to be a positive liberal one. There was much talk of French multiculturism (black/blanc/beur) after France's win in 98. For Brazil, I think it's one of the few occasions Brazilians feel they have a positive image on the international arena (otherwise it's all crime, poverty and favelas).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:01 am (UTC)Re: 10 years ago
Date: 2006-06-15 10:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:22 pm (UTC)hahaha!
Offside
Date: 2006-06-15 01:31 pm (UTC)A player is in an offside position if:
he is nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent
A player is not in an offside position if:
he is in his own half of the field of play
he is level with the second last opponent
he is level with the last two opponents
Commiting an Offside Offence
A player in an offside position is only penalised if, at the moment the ball touches or is played by one of his team, he is, in the opinion of the referee, involved in active play by:
interfering with play
interfering with an opponent
gaining an advantage by being in that position
I hope you're all taking notes because there will be a test afterwards...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 01:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 02:09 pm (UTC)Schwarz Rot Geil ("black, red and wicked" - todays BILD-Zeitung's title)
Date: 2006-06-15 02:58 pm (UTC)the street was crowded by people wearing ridiculous rubber foam hats with small footballs attached, spotting strange face make-up in black-red-mustard and the german flag in all shapes and sizes.
especially the flag thing is something that was regarded as intolerable and absolutely uncool only a few years ago. interestingly that changed with the german refusal to involve in the iraq intervention. this was internationally regarded as something that gave germany some reputation especially among young people all over the world and helped to give birth to a new german self-confidence that was noticeable through all cultural disciplines. suddenly deutsch = Pop.
in the end it's all about some 'pampering' of our oppressed, complex laden german soul...
i really hope that the german team, which seems to be too über-energetic, will fail once more through their own doggedness, and that the new german pride will
by the way: as far as i know it's my brother-in-law who is art-directing the german O2 campaign...
and quite off topic:
on http://meinwalkmanistkaputt.blogspot.com/ you can dowload two charmingly odd tracks of Holger Hillers very first project 'Träneninvasion'
eRiC
oops
Date: 2006-06-15 03:07 pm (UTC)i really hope (...) that the new german pride will
give way to that familiar sense of guilt.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 03:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 04:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-15 05:29 pm (UTC)Anti Football
Date: 2006-06-15 09:04 pm (UTC)Dominic
domrex2@aol.com
Re: Anti Football
Date: 2006-06-15 09:27 pm (UTC)Do you think it's necessary for every football fan to get angry when someone else dares to observe football from a perspective other than the traditional one of routing for one team or the other? We're all "avowed cultural relativists" here, so couldn't the discussion be a little more enlightened? Instead of "Who said football sucks? I'm gonna kick their ass!"? Just by responding in a confrontational manner, you're making his point for him. Enjoy your Strong Force.
Re: Potato information to help you blogg :)
Date: 2006-06-15 10:26 pm (UTC)are you a potato historian?
Re: Anti Football
Date: 2006-06-15 11:49 pm (UTC)Fascinating post, by the way. one of my favorite so far.
Potato history?
Date: 2006-06-16 05:33 am (UTC)Actually I've been constantly pressured by the husband to write a cookbook- why exactly I'm not certain: My mind has been thinking about time travel lately, and so reading history about food and stuff has inspired me to eventually write a "Vegan Back in Time" cookbook (although lots of thought has happened, not much time on that becuase I've really got to get a few paintings out of me before I seriously write anything.)
I brought up the idea "what if you went back in time, what kind of food could you find, what kind of recipes could you make from what was available THEN... but they'd have to be vegan of course"
I haven't even got the one publishing project out of the way I teamed up with someone on, my experience with layout has to get better before I go anyfarther.. so I'm writing in limbo at the moment on anything that hits my mind...perhaps something will come about, perhaps not.
Potato history is interesting anyway, just as the history of the import of peas.
Re: 10 years ago
Date: 2006-06-16 05:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-16 09:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-16 12:38 pm (UTC)