Typisch!

[imomus]

"Typisch!" grumble the Berlin bus shelters; "Typical!" It's not a response to the transport strike currently afflicting the city, but the headline on an elegant series of posters for a new exhibition at the Jewish Museum, Typical: clichés about Jews and others.

"Are black athletes better than white athletes?" asks the blurb. "Do homosexuals have a particular appreciation for art? Are pipe smokers easygoing and do Jews have long noses? The exhibition "Typical! Clichés About Jews And Others" takes visitors on a journey through the world of images which aid us in our orientation every day. The exhibition shows objects, photographs, and audiovisuals that feature people or make statements about them, and explores how popcult objects, bric-a-brac, and historical collectors' pieces spread stereotypical messages."

The tone here is admirably even-handed; stereotypes are "images which aid us in our orientation every day". The text continues:

"At the core of the exhibition is the phenomenon that stereotypes and clichés permeate all areas of life and undergo constant reaffirmation and popularization. The exhibition confronts art, which also contributes to the creation of stereotypes, with objects of trivial culture. They are positioned next to works that grapple with the themes in hand. "Typical! Clichés About Jews And Others" inspires visitors to take a closer look, also at their own thought patterns. It not only sensitizes visitors to the presence of stereotypes in their everyday environment, but also to their brutality, as they are not least a breeding ground for racism and misanthropy."

This last bit troubles me, despite (or because of) the fact that it, too, is a bit of an unexamined cliché. Stereotypes are undoubtedly present whenever racism and misanthropy are present, but it's the causal relationship implied by the eugenic metaphor "a breeding ground" that worries me. Do stereotypes, in and of themselves, "breed racism"? And what happens when you link this idea -- as the Jewish Museum does in this text -- with the idea that stereotypes are everywhere, are necessary and even "helpful in our orientation every day"? Does that mean that "racism and misanthropy are helpful in our orientation every day?"



Whatever we call them -- types, archetypes, stereotypes, isotypes -- and whether we celebrate the brilliant reductiveness of Dick Bruna and Otto Neurath or the evil reductiveness of Joseph Goebbels and Bernard Manning, it seems (this week's theme here at Click Opera!) that essentialism is essential. Someone who couldn't see how much experience consists of repetitive patterns, and couldn't map the new to the old, would be overwhelmed by fresh information all the time and unable to function. Stereotypes embody big, simple ideas about complex masses of data. They're often wrong, but always telling. That's probably why the Jewish Museum has seen fit to swamp Berlin with images of Jews with big noses this month.

"I have already noticed a number of Jewish doctor types amongst the goats," wrote Kafka from the country sanatorium where he was trying to recover from tuberculosis. I know exactly what he means -- I can see those faces now! -- but I'm glad he said it rather than me. It's the same with this Typisch! exhibition. For obvious historical reasons, in Berlin only the Jewish Museum could have mounted it, and filled the city with these stereotyped Jewish faces.



Then again, racial stereotyping is perfectly acceptable in Berlin. The Scots, for instance, can be used as a symbol of all that's "canny" and "mean". Bargain stores like Schotten Eck and Mac-Geiz use Scottishness in their names and their corporate imagery as a direct connoter of bargains; see a man in a kilt, think immediately of an enormous reluctance to spend money. This is interesting because meanness is a stereotypical feature of both Jews and Scots, but only Scots can now be used to connote it.

I haven't yet seen the Typisch! exhibition, but I wonder if those Schotten-Geiz images are in it, since it's about "clichés about Jews and others"? I also wonder if, next to the images of Jean Paul Gaultier's "Collection Juive", there are any examples of Israeli stereotyping of Palestinians, or cartoons depicting European muslims as "Islamofascists". If -- because of what happened in the 1940s -- Jewish stereotyping has been taken off the agenda in 2008 (for all but the Jewish Museum), I wonder if more valuable and relevant 21st century social work couldn't be done revealing persecutions currently taking place, including those persecutions perpetrated by people once persecuted themselves.

We all count the pendulum swings differently, of course. Some are still living in the historical moment defined by the pendulum swing created by the kinetic energy of the holocaust -- in fact, some say the holocaust is such a huge event that this counter-energy will never expend itself and the pendulum will never start swinging back. Others feel that Israel's disproportionate and asymmetrical assaults on the Palestinians, and the fact that stereotyping in the era of the "global policeman" and the "world's sole superpower" favours the Israelis over everyone else simply because they are the Israelis (if the Iranians really wanted carte blanche to develop nuclear weapons without threat of American-led obliteration, all they'd really have to do, in this world, would be to be the Israelis)... well, others feel that all this sets the pendulum swinging the other way.

Finally, though, it's not stereotypes, per se, which brutalize. It's -- surprise, surprise! -- brutality itself. And it's not stereotypes, in themselves, which stigmatize. It's stigma itself. If you're stigmatized, every label used to describe you and every image made of you will embody the stigma. Hence the Euphemism Treadmill.

It may be that there's a kind of time lag between the things people do and the names they're called, and it may be inevitable that museums live, largely, in this time lag. They're always, in other words, fighting old wars, old evils rather than new ones. But when we get over-sensitive to the semiological correlates of historical stigma and brutality while remaining insufficiently sensitive to actual, active stigma and brutality, we risk over-reaction. We also risk portraying all representation of the "other" as negative, and making people so nervous about saying anything about the other that they hide the other from view.



A recent exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg showed German imperialist images of colonial peoples. It was rather startling to see images of black people so widely used in the commercial visual material of a century ago. A new year's card, for instance, showed a German maiden being embraced by a stereotypical negro. The verse underneath ran:

None, for you, is good enough
Elegant dreamer, curly top!
Good, so take yourself a love
Who'll gobble you right up!

Cannibalism, sexual voracity, exaggerated physical difference, all the stereotypes are in play. But look, a black man is embracing a white woman and they're both apparently enjoying it! Today's German New Year's cards wouldn't dare do anything so bold. Images of black people -- and images of Jews -- are entirely absent from them. That's because today's Germans are "more sensitive". Hurrah for progress, half a cheer for the total invisibility of the other, and two-and-a-half for Typisch for bringing the Jewish stereotypes back onto Berlin's streets.

Comments

Cannibals

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't that verse used on 'Hippopotamomus'?

- Jsn

Re: Cannibals

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Don't call us Scots cannibals! Or we'll eat you!

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

The Scots, for instance, can be used as a symbol of all that's "canny" and "mean". Bargain stores like Schotten Eck and Mc-Geiz use Scottishness in their names and their corporate imagery as a direct connoter of bargains; see a man in a kilt, think immediately of an enormous reluctance to spend money.
Not true of me, but abundantly of my dad! He's making me and my sisters pay "expense allocation" every month, and more for me to pay for the DSL I begged him for. This could be because he's an accountant though, I've never heard of Scots being reluctant to spend their money until today.

and the fact that stereotyping in the era of the "global policeman" and the "world's sole superpower" favours the Israelis over everyone else simply because they are the Israelis (if the Iranians really wanted carte blanche to develop nuclear weapons without threat of American-led obliteration, all they'd really have to do, in this world, would be to be the Israelis)
I think I've said this before, but before America declared war on Iraq (or Afghanistan, which we seem to have forgotten about? Where's bin Laden?), I was talking to my childhood friend about it, and he said that "as long as America supported Israel, America will always win wars. The Bible said so." I was against war, he was for it. Also, funny how the WMD was part of the reason for the invasion, but America is hiding some of their own in the Middle East.

Have you ever seen the Dr. Seuss drawn war propaganda, by the way?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We Scots are mean; I can see it clearly in myself. I just call it "postmaterialism" and spin it as the future of mankind, though.

I've never seen those Dr Seuss drawings, no.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Add on to that second anecdote: So does America support Israel anymore? I don't see America winning from the support of Israel. Or from anything at all, really.

[trickseybird.livejournal.com]

Are there any pictures of momus in a kilt?

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Er, no, she's pushing him away. Only it wasn't done to portray pretty young women as looking angry back then (only old shrews get angry!), so it's kind of hard to tell.

It reminds me of gay visibility and feminist issues: are stereotypical, socially acceptable gays and women in mainstream culture better than none at all?

Looking at that picture with its double stereotyping and disempowerment, I'm going with no.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

So if you were designing the posters for the Typisch show at the Jewish Museum, you'd leave it blank, then? Or maybe stick a sticker on a Jewish stereotype saying "Don't try this at home, kids!"

[(Anonymous)]

Mj had the answer - "it dont matter if your black or white"

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

And he should know, having had a go at being both.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Haven't Israeli/Zionist Jews reclaimed their stereotype in a way by using it as a weapon? A large chunk of the political blogosphere seems to be devoted to discussions of Israel/Palestine & anti-semitism. In Medieval Europe, the Jewish stereotype was more than just big noses and thrift - there was that hideous urban myth about killing children and drinking their blood. Now, however, when one draws attention to the fact that the Israeli army murder Palestinian children, it's common to see references made to the blood libel by way of response. Stating a simple fact has become impossible without risking being tarred an anti-semite.

Imagine if there had been mass gassings of 'canny' Scots by less thrifty others. Would you or I now be able to scrounge off people, knowing that no one would dare accuse us of being a skinflint?

brilliant

[(Anonymous)]

stop on my peely whally friend

[(Anonymous)]

What exactly do you mean by 'essentialism'? You don't seem to be using the term as it is used in philosophy etc. If all you mean is that various entities recognised as belonging to a group share some perceptually similar characteristics, then that's simply tautological. If you mean that stereotypes are useful, then well and good, but that's not essentialism.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia's definition works: "the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must have. This view is contrasted with non-essentialism which states that for any given kind of entity there are no specific traits which entities of that kind must have."

For some people in internet debates, essentialism is a sort of secular sin. For me, it's something absolutely inevitable, built into the definitions of language and therefore into the way we think.

[rob-kun.livejournal.com]

Aren't these stereotypes going to become less and less useful as once-distinct ethnic groups continue to intermingle in the so-called 'global village'? Hasn't this probably already happened (were there stereotypes of 'angles' and 'saxons' that have now disappeared?). Aren't the Jewish doctors a little less obvious than in Kafka's time?

I'm still getting my head around the idea of essentialism, but isn't meant to be applied to qualities that stay constant?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the idea of convergence towards a "melting pot" or "global village" -- whatever you think of these scenarios -- is one the pendulum is currently swinging against.

In Measuring Citizenship: Is Japan an Outlier? (http://www.japanreview.net/essays_measuring_citizenship.htm), Japan Review's Paul J. Scalise and Yuki Allyson Honjo set out to check the claim that Japan's citizenship-by-blood, not place of birth policy on naturalization was outside international norms. They found that Japan is not an outlier at all -- most states worldwide do not offer automatic citizenship by birth. In fact, jus solis-conferring states are only prevalent among the Organization of American States. What's more, the trend in developed countries is currently (for better or worse) away from American-style jus solis and towards Japanese-style jus sanguinis.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Do stereotypes, in and of themselves, "breed racism"? And what happens when you link this idea -- as the Jewish Museum does in this text -- with the idea that stereotypes are everywhere, are necessary and even "helpful in our orientation every day"? Does that mean that "racism and misanthropy are helpful in our orientation every day?"

I cant think of a single time where stereotypes have helped "orientate" me as such. What does that even mean exactly? I try to hold back from making snap decisions about people, not because its morally wrong but because I tend to find taking someone at face value and getting to know them as an individual is more relevant and useful to me.

That said, stereotypes are still relevant if you have enough knowledge to deconstruct them.

Take a look at this interview with Konno Asami -- in this clip shes talking about the things that surprised her most about working in the music industry:



It seems to be a world stereotype that gay men are associated with music and the arts. Speaking as a gay guy who works in graphic design, it would seem odd for me to question this stereotype, but I want to scratch the surface of this seemingly universal stereotype.

As a homosexual, it's likely you'll never have a wife and children to support. Society, jobs, housing and wages are ultimately geared around families -- mortgages, marriage, breeding... as such, Living a self-centred gay lifestyle without these constraints allows you to have more money for yourself and to do the things you love more often. This is possibly one of the reasons why there are lots of gays in the music and arts. it's not because straight people arent interested in music and art or that gay men are better at it, its because of circumstances. gay men pretty much spend their entire lives in a man-child state where they never really "grow up" and do the settling down with a wife and kid in the suburbs.

Thats one explanation.

Theres also another angle to it that the gay men who are the most visible to mainstream society are the extroverts -- the effeminates and the artists. therefore mainstream society associates gay men with art and femininity. for all I know, there could be many gay men out there who fall outside the radar because they have a job in a call centre or an office block and never do the gay scene, arent effeminate and mostly get mistaken as straight.

Stereotypes can be fascinating to deconstruct and can to a certain extent present you with truths if you have enough background knowledge to deconstruct them effectively. On an individual level, you're much better off actually getting to know the individual rather than applying labels to them as soon as you see them.

[rob-kun.livejournal.com]

Isn't the idea of gay men living in a 'man-child state' a stereotype as well? I know gay men who have adopted children, and have stable relationships 'in the suburbs'...

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

I wish this exhibition had been on a few weeks earlier, when I was in Berlin; it does sound interesting.

However, when I visited the Jewish Museum, I did see this rather topical image:

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/acb/2314605388/)

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

"Today's German New Year's cards wouldn't dare do anything so bold. Images of black people -- and images of Jews -- are entirely absent from them."

Though with Jews looking largely like anyone else, one can't tell whether images of Jews are absent, omnipresent or somewhere in between. Unless one cleaves to Alan Dershowitz' argument that "the Jews" are assimilating themselves out of existence.

bears

[(Anonymous)]

has it come to this
bear shagging
leave those poor bears alone
sicko
artist
musican
fucks

die Stereotypiche

[(Anonymous)]

Fear of racism doesn't seem to stop Germans from making some brutal class stereotypes, however, i.e. the comedy sketch "Cindy Aus Marzahn," which is essentially (ahem!) the Teutonic version of the ChavScum craze. Speaking of stereotypes, what about inter-milieu micro-stereotyping, such as Williamsburg hipster Robert Lanham's "Hipster Handbook"? I'm probably not alone in recognizing myself in at least one of his "hipster" categories, which I initially greeted as a grim affront to my own Western sense of individuality, but now realize exactly how hard it is to escape. Those who'd wish to escape stereotyping, it seems, must become moving targets. But then again, in this area of Photoshop, even a blur can be depicted.

Re: die Stereotypiche

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Good points, though I think you meant "in this era of Photoshop" at the end there!

I haven't read the Hipster Handbook, but I'm probably in there as "Eurotrash" or something.

[cuteorkill.livejournal.com]

While many of these images were created under the influence of imperialism, racism or other negative reasons, they demonstrate the human tendency to categorize, simplify and organize - and we still do it! I have never seen these particular images before yet, by chance, I practically duplicated the 5 races iconography in this image:

In representing the archetypes of the bear subculture facial features, I arrived at 5 intuitively.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, great stuff! And remarkably close to the Otto Neurath isotypes!

Stereotypes

[geweih.livejournal.com]

In this context I'm a little surprised than no-one has also mentioned the apparent fondness of large sections of the German populace for huge spectacular shows celebrating highly exoticised (and stereotype filled) notions of Africa and Asia.

I was interested that when a version of the African spectacular reached London last year it provoked considerable critical discomfort whereas here, still,the ambivalent ghost of Josephine Baker seems to preside over this discourse (though it may also be the case that "highbrow" cultural commentary here deems these entertainments as not being worthy of analysis).

....... and don't even get me started on the subject of the ever popular "Negreküssen"

Fundamentally (if the use of the word can be permitted without irony in this context) it seems to me that there is an important difference between self-identification (elective and contingent) and the imposition of stereotypes (non-elective and absolute with no 'right of appeal') - where the later thinking leads does not need to be pointed out.

Perhaps this is also however a false binary however as, within the terms of the discussion here, both are perhaps more subject to the flux of public debate and subjective evaluation and re-evaluation than assumed. In the case of the Scots, for example, one man's 'parsimony' is another's 'frugality'.

Re: Stereotypes

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm weird, but all those orientalist stageshows would make me trust the Germans more than the British. They're closer to presenting the other qua other. "My best mate's black, and I don't even notice it any more" is really just a new form of racism.

To exaggerate, perhaps, the choice is between clown and understudy. Camping up the otherness, a la Josephine Baker, is spinning your difference into charm or, at the very least, amusement and curiosity. It's a clear step towards visibility-as-the-other, rather than blending in and sameness. It's "integration", in other words, without "assimilation".

The understudy role is characteristic of societies which can't stand orientalism (because they're PC) or the oriental (because they're ethnocentric). The other-as-understudy can never do enough to prove he isn't different. He's the very opposite of Josephine Baker. He can't talk about "mon pays" at all. First there are calls that he swears an oath of allegiance to the state, then these become requirements that he sit a test on the history of the host country in a historic monument -- the castle reputed to contain King Arthur's bones, for instance -- and answer questions that even natives couldn't answer ("Where is the holy grail? What is represented by the stone of Scone? Show on this map the planned English location for Jerusalem"...)

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

One of the more amusing things about leftists who put on such exhibitions about our unsavory 'past' is the frisson they seem to derive from wallowing in this sort of bilge. They're like the proverbial Sunday school teacher touring the peep shows and enjoying saying things like "scandalous" while sporting a boner. I figure the modern left isn't so much a political movement, as a desire to anger their parents; last thing left to piss off mom and dad is overt racism.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wait, who are the "leftists" here? The people who run the Jewish Museum? Here in Berlin I don't think they'd qualify as firebrand radicals.

cliches about cliches

[(Anonymous)]

hey, stupid hat guy: 'leftists' are, like any massive amalgamation of people, just that: a mixture of positions. pro-war leftists, anti-state leftists, globalisation leftists, anti-trade leftists, etc. etc.

and for what it's worth, what you're describing is the old left, not the new left. much of the new left isn't interested in getting bogged down in identity politics, and hasn't been for years now. if you'd read a book from the last 30 years and stop generalising and employing cliches about 'leftists' you'd know that.

Re: cliches about cliches

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

"stop generalising "

Ah, the standard issue self righteous bleat of the Gen-X-er. Obviously, I hit a sore spot. Perhaps you'd like to go to stuff white people like (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/) and bleat some more over there about people "generalizing."

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

One of the things Blink spent some time on is the negative effects of stereotypes and the way they debase snap decisions. Our brains are seemingly hardwired for stereotypes, but that doesn't make them wrong and leads to ridiculous crap like astrology and "mean" Scots. Not to say that there isn't some truth to any stereotype (there usually is), only to say that stereotypes are broad generalizations, and all broad generalizations are more lie than truth. (Which is my complaint with essentialism and talk of essences.)

BTW, had long talk with the kids at Supercore last night about the concept of flirting. They all either shirked or shrugged at the word and concept, even though they all admitted they did something that fit within what we call "flirting."

Interesting how a thing so second nature to my life doesn't exist as a defined concept in a culture filled with people I'm close to. Reminds me of the time my French friends tried to explain certain words that describe relationships that I've been in but that have no unique word (like the sort of friend / casual lover)).

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

"The songs I write about women are not gratuitous attacks on them, but statements of fact. The song Jewish Princess caused the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith to complain bitterly and demand an apology. I did not apologize then and refuse to do so now because, unlike The Unicorn, such creatures do exist — and deserve to be ‘commemorated’ with their own special opus." - Frank Zappa (http://www.wiki.killuglyradio.com/index.php/ADL)

"Typisch!" sounds like the equivalent of the ADL releasing this precise Zappa song.

But I don't know anything, I'm Irish so I'm drunk all the time and busy living with my Mom until I'm 40 and starving because the potato crops failed.

(Though in my spare time I'm also a corrupt Boston policeman and run for mayor of Chicago! Check out my big red nose! And my little green elf! I'm so damn Catholic it hurts! I DRINK GREEN FUCKIN BEER! HELP!)

When do windowless monads achieve ontological heterogeneity?

[(Anonymous)]

That’s what I can’t work out. Cause I’m Irish.

[trickseybird.livejournal.com]

lol unexpected stereotype moose