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Silhouette of a cowboy: Confusing your own nostalgia with literary quality
Photo: Grant V. Faint/Getty Images
After two and a half weeks of radio silence, Sigmar Gabriel took to Twitter with some unusual pathos to announce that he was going to do something big;
yes, he, the old transatlantic, will pass on his knowledge to his children, just as the indigenous peoples of North America once did to their descendants.
In a similar rhythm, Thuringia's FDP head of state, Thomas Kemmerich, confessed to us the day before yesterday, just as emotionally as Gabriel, his tears and attuned to the longevity of this literature :
Thanks to Karl May we know: the indigenous peoples of North America knew no pain.
But even he couldn't guess: German politicians are built close to the Silbersee.
It is possible that the meaning of the name Winnetou, which is known to be »Burning water«, refers precisely to these passionate tears.
Read Winnetou.
cried.
#WinnemeToo.
For two and a half weeks, Gabriel had no impulses that could elicit a statement on world events from him.
Sure, maybe it was the summer slump or he went on vacation on Twitter;
maybe he just doesn't have that much interest in how hard the coming autumn will be for many citizens who get gas, electricity or other energy - and apart from the war and things like that, not much has happened.
But in the case of Karl May's literary legacy, he evidently felt the need to defend his oeuvre.
And of course he and Kemmerich were not alone in that.
Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, for example, also admitted to having read 45 of May's books.
She emphasized that she was neither a racist nor a colonialist.
With the rebellious impetus of people who use aronal® in the morning and elmex® in the evening to demonstrate their incorruptible bite, reading adventure novels is now being celebrated by political figures;
a gesture and pose that we already know from many other contexts, but it was only now that I felt tempted to come up with a term for this rather childish attitude: defiant pride.
Here, too, it can be perceived in perfect form.
Artifacts that are publicly criticized for understandable reasons - in this case a new Winnetou book by Ravensburger Verlag on the children's film "Der Junge Chief Winnetou", but consequently generally Karl May books - are demonstratively seen as horcruxes of one's own steadfastness with regard to social change presents.
One proudly exhibits one's ability to defy critical voices and celebrates one's own reactance as militant self-assertion.
No, you don't let your childhood be ruined!
No, you don't allow yourself to be turned into a villain just because you mistake your own nostalgia for literary quality, and want to protect your own preferences by allegedly being unassailable!
learn, develop,
work through societal mistakes?
What's next?
Would anyone like to criticize that Karl May spread anti-Semitic resentments?
An important aspect of defiance is that it channels what it accuses others of: a reaction out of hurt feelings.
Because a common argument in any criticism of art and consumption is that you can't let a few people with a few hurt feelings dictate what culture, canon or climate protection should look like.
The demonstrative adorning oneself with the criticized expression of insult is that one should suddenly be someone other than the one one always thought one was;
now, for example, one should be someone who likes a colonialist text;
someone whose choice of words reproduces racism;
or someone whose actions harm the environment - impossible!
In this defense, »an autobiographical founding myth is drafted,
who wants to defend the political innocence of his own childhood«, as the literary scholar Johannes Franzen put it in his clairvoyant analysis of the Winnetou case.
A myth as adventurous as Winnetou himself.
The insult is followed by a "right now" that fishes for approval and fraternization.
So photos of schnitzels with hunter's sauce posted with defiance, accompanied by the Z-word;
pictures of chocolate kisses that are described with a racist term;
narcissistic SUV selfies, combined with obstinate statements that they will only drive extra fast, take extra hot showers or listen to Layla extra loud.
But this pride of defiance can also be seen in solidarity dance videos that followed Sanna Marin's party gate.
This supposed resistance is also evident here, which apparently considers the idea of the striking "not letting something to be taken" to be steadfast.
This is tragic for private individuals, but also almost irrelevant if their little luck consists in emphasizing their own nonconformity by continuing to read Pippi Longstocking to their children with the N-word or if you consciously know this one Ikea in Würzburg, the offers boiled potatoes instead of fries for environmental reasons, now
not
more visited.
Political actors, however, make political use of this defiant pride insofar as it is an extremely practical feeling in their lamentation about restriction and self-victimization: First, one does not have to comment on the valid criticisms or even react, one surfs on a moaning wave of self-righteousness and does it Critics as scapegoats.
Secondly, you can sit out thankless issues such as the gas surcharge, the cum-ex scandal, public transport or the fact that half the population will be poorer in autumn.
No, with a chest swollen with defiant pride, it is instead presented how really great unreasonable one is, regardless of what experts say , those affected , publishers, organizers - or, on the other hand, they are often least listened to: the aesthetic feeling.
Because misanthropy is not only harmful, but in most cases also incredibly ugly and tasteless.
Reproductions of racism in particular are exoticism trash that has failed in terms of craftsmanship and has nothing to do with reality, because it can only ever work with clichés.
Defiant pride on display does not listen to any of these voices.
why?
He wants to offer a simple offer of political identity and excitement, a rather small-minded idea of freedom (small-minded because it simply ignores the curtailment of the freedom of others), which is so morally charged that being in favor no longer has to be justified in terms of content.
As a result, this simulation of an attitude - born of an insult, disguised as a conviction - leads to an undermining of the political, because we are no longer talking about the relevant fears of the population and the groundbreaking decisions of the rulers in relation to rising costs, the war, the pandemic or the climate, but about tears of defiance.
I hope that the political players celebrating this defiance