Lynn M. Kutch Kutztown University of Pennsylvania BUGSC Contemporary German Graphic Narratives as Tools for Reading and Interpreting Alltagskultur When learning about a country like Germany, where the distinction between “high” (literature, art, music, philosophy) and “low” culture (pop culture, film, comics) is still heavily emphasized, the concept of teaching culture and cultural competence with graphic texts could seem especially problematic. Given this traditional divide, the recent proliferation of perhaps traditionally low culture graphic novels that treat conventionally high culture themes such as literature, fine art, music and politics, however, provides a curious platform for teaching aspects of German culture, and in particular Alltagskultur . The large and continually growing selection of German graphic novels significantly enriches the resources that German instructors have for teaching cultural competence, and the offerings can considerably enliven discussions of culture in the German classroom. 1 Although today’s students are often labeled as primarily and increasingly visual learners, they do not always have the requisite skills in visual literacy to deduce meaning from images. We as instructors, therefore, must reconceptualize our courses to equip students more adequately to read visual texts, such as graphic novels, both as representations and interpretations of the cultures in which they were created. By learning to view concrete illustrations as manifestations of abstract cultural products, students can approach desired capstone skills, such as distinguishing and analyzing characteristics of the target culture. When instructors encourage students to view graphic novels as sophisticated works of art or cultural products in their own right, students can learn to, Rocco Versace’s words, “read beyond the page in order to ask and
answer deeper questions that the given work suggests about art, life, and the intersection of the two.” 2 In this presentation, I will demonstrate ways that instructors can employ methods of Teaching with Comics to have students analyze cultural cues found in individual frames or series of frames in contemporary German language graphic novels. The technique involves regarding images as if they were texts themselves, which includes more intentionally analyzing compositions, layouts, colors, and lines in order to draw conclusions about cultural messages. Although graphic sources that could be used to teach German culture are numerous and cover many diverse topics, I will work with texts that emphasize Alltagskultur in Germany, namely Ulli Lust’s Fashionvictims : Trendverächter, 3 in which the artist presents a collection of mostly one panel illustrations of observations in and around Berlin, Manuele Fior’s Menschen am Sonntag, 4 which blends a love story with strikingly composed, artistically designed snapshots of Berlin, and Tim Dinter’s Lästermaul & Wohlstandskind , which presents a series of comic strips that appeared in the Berliner Tagesspiegel from 2006-2010. 5 In addition to gleaning information about the culture from the visual components, I will also discuss ways to understand visual renditions as an artist’s interpretation of various cultural aspects. In his foreword to Ulli Lust’s Fashionvictims , Kai Pfeffer uses a series of phrases that perfectly describes the process of reading graphic frames as cultural cues, and also as elements of cultural stories. He designates the frames and short strips as “Der erinnerte Moment,” “festgehalten und ausgestellt;” and argues that “das Ephemere [wird] zwangsläufig signifikant” (7). In addition to the nature of the frames, he also explains the function of the artist who produces them: “Der Alltagsreporter muss Erzähler sein,” (7). Finally, he comments on the role of individual images in storytelling “seine Geschichten stellen sich mitten im Satz ein” (8).
These three approaches emphasize the versatility of this contemporary visual art from, and provide a pedagogical framework that allows the instructor to build on one isolated frame for a series of spiraled activities. Here’s an example from Fashionvictims that shows an everyday scene in the U2 line of the Berlin subway system. In addition to the one captured visual moment, Lust has added some text that could also be read in isolation of the picture. The above assessment that the ephemeral necessarily becomes meaningful invites viewers to identify the cultural significance of this moment. This snapshot could have originated in any subway the world over, so what does Lust want us to notice here, and why is that significant? How, to mention the second part of the framework mentioned above, does Lust’s picture allow her to navigate between roles of Alltagsreporter und Erzähler ? One way to approach this question is to contrast this sample of visual art and the short accompanying commentary with another form of media that could be said to have the same function: photos and blogs. Kiezneurotiker offers the entry “Freakshow oder eine Fahrt mit der U2.” The author provides detailed commentary stop by stop on his observations of the passengers. As the title “Freakshow” implies, these entries take on a highly pessimistic and critical tone of the diverse and disturbing passengers that the author observes. One major difference is that the modern variation on Alltagsreporter , the blog author, tells the whole story, while Lust leaves much of her story up for interpretation. Lust’s viewer is left to imagine the personal stories of these passengers; and even the musician described in the text remains out of view, with only the words of the song he sings “visible,” and dominating the scene with their size. Here’s another sample from Lust’s collection that also provides a single frame, but does not elaborate with any additional text except the title, “Rathauspassagen, Friedrichshain.” In her book, Lust provides many such snapshots of people in the perhaps unnatural and certainly
modern environment of the shopping center. Through these fishbowl-like perspectives, Lust again shows how she is both Alltagsreporter and Erzähler at the same time. The German instructor can use this snapshot of the Berliner Alltag to foster student practice in producing two different kinds of text types: creative and journalistic. First, for the creative aspect, the picture itself serves as a prompt, encouraging students to provide the full story around the moment. Depending on students’ interests or knowledge, they could write about something as banal and alltäglich as the German tradition of Kaffee und Kuchen ; or the picture could inspire essays with more advanced cultural topics such as gender relations or an aging German population. Second, for a journalistic writing sample, students could link offerings of other contemporary media to this drawing in order to write an article about the Berlin consumer scene, and in particular the economic troubles that places like the Rathauspassagen has been experiencing with the arrival of new, competing shopping centers. Adopting themes and language from other media can help to enrich a reading of the graphic media form. For example, can we return to the picture with this idea of “gähnende Leere?” Tom Dinter’s work differs from Ulli Lust’s in that he consistently provides full-length strips that each tell an encapsulated story about a contemporary issue in Berlin. From commenting on the effect of the heightened conversation about smoking in public on people’s health in “Rauchen kann erregen,” (18-19), to presenting a picture of the contemporary scene in Kreuzberg, Dinter combines entertaining presentation with authentic cultural circumstance. “Die nächste Mitte” is a good example of this artistic and cultural combination. On a superficial level, many readers can relate to the social situation: two friends, or on-again off-again boyfriend/girlfriend talk about new things happening in their daily lives, in this case finding a new apartment that one likes and that one can afford. In the course of a few comic panels, the
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