Don't Need No Thought Control : : Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall / / Gerd Horten.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Horten, Gerd,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (268 p.)

The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, Don’t Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay of popular unrest, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policies under Erich Honecker. It shows how the widespread influence of (and public demands for) Western cultural products forced GDR leaders into a series of grudging accommodations that undermined state power to a hitherto underappreciated extent.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Disempowering a Dictatorship: Media and Consumer Culture in East Germany -- Chapter 1. Successful Media Campaigns in East Germany in the 1960s and 1970s: The Vietnam War and the 1972 Olympics -- Chapter 2. Fade Out: Hollywood Movie Imports and the Cultural Surrender of the GDR Film Control in the 1970s and 1980s -- Chapter 3. The Westernization of East German Television in the 1970s and 1980s -- Chapter 4. Fighting against All Odds: GDR Popular Music and Youth Radio in an International Context -- Chapter 5. Western Consumer Culture or Bust: Intershops and East German Consumption Policies in the 1970s and 1980s -- Epilogue. Out with the Old—in with the New? Wende, Ostalgie, and the Serpentine Unifi cation -- Bibliography -- Index