SELLING OUT REBELLION. TRIVIAL LITERATURE IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

• Authors: Bialik W.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This is an essay in the criticism of ideology and deals with the so-called trivial literature (mass, popular, pulp fiction) in the Federal Republic of Germany before the reunification of Germany. The author brings to light the underlying indoctrination structures which (even) under the appearance of 'rebellion' depict the world as good and unchangeable. He advances the thesis about a discrepancy between the declarative surface protest against some negative social phenomena (national stereotypes, authoritarian state, racism, etc.) and the actual though concealed consolidation of such mental clichés and prejudices of the mass reader is the author's main thesis. The caution not to overstep the 'horizon of expectations', in other words attention to address the readers' needs had been preceded by a process of shaping those needs. Analysis of this type of manipulation makes it possible to formulate the thesis that the reader had been shaped, not to say 'produced', by the authors of mass literature. It is not the readers who buy this literature, but paradoxically, it buys them. West German trivial literature is therefore an instrument of 'social pedagogy'. The manipulated reader was (is) sold to this literature and not the other way round, so the reader was (is) 'sold' to a certain option of the socio-political system of that historical period.

Keywords

EN

GERMAN TRIVIAL LITERATURE; MANIPULATED READER; MASS LITERATURE; TRIVIAL LITERATURE

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Instytut Zachodni. Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy im. Zygmunta Wojciechowskiego w Poznaniu
• Journal: Przegląd Zachodni
• Year: 2008
• Issue: 1(326)
• Pages: 65-86
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Bialik W.

• W. Bialik, Instytut Zachodni, Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy, ul. Mostowa 27, 61-854 Poznan, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA04909313