12:59 a.m. - Sunday, Apr. 06, 2003
Fassbinder
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks are playing here three days after my birthday. That's extremely good.
So, my oral presentation went terribly well. I had to give one on thursday, and now its official, I am gifted in ALL things oral. Hahaha. But seriously, i was hella nervous, and i didn't want to do it, and for various reasons it kept getting postponed, and that just made me more nervous, and then i did it, and it rocked. Which is a good thing, because if i want to be a professor someday I obviously have to be able to talk in front of a class, and now i know i can. That's sort of a relief.
My presentation was about new german cinema. Rainer Fassbinder in particualr. I showed a clip from the bitter tears of petra von kant, which is a very very strange fucking movie. I love it, and i think the class was into it.
Then i showed a clip from germany in autumn, which is about how in 1977 germany experienced a rash of terrorist activity perpetrated by the red army faction of baader. This group did some harsh, and excellent things, like kidnapping and murdering this dude Schleyer, who was the head of dailmer-benz, and ALSO the head of the german bureau of industry, which is pretty fucking dirty as it is, but then on top of that he was a fromer nazi SS officer? whoa. yeah. so anyway, he GOT IT. Good.
And then all sorts of civil liberties were suspended, and homes were being raided without warrants, and 8 german filmmakers made this rad movie as a response to the hysteria that existed in the country at the time, and to beg the question "what the fuck is democracy, because its really hard to tell when west germany is supposed to be one, but really, it feels more like a resurgent fascist state." scary. so fucking scary.
So, it was a timely clip to show, and film to discuss, and my prof was pretty happy that I broached the subject of just how many paralells there are between the 1977 crisis in Germany, and this crazy bullshit that's going down in the US right now. She asked me a bunch of stuff after my presentation so that i could explain more about it, and so that the class would engage in a discussion about it. We talked about how easy people make it for fascists when they stay silent, and how slippery democracy is...as in, one day you have it, then something bad or serious happens, and you start to think, 'oh, its better not to talk about this, i don't want to cause trouble', and then blam, that democracy is fucking gone.
my german history prof is way cool. it was a good class. and fassbinder movies are so fucking cool. I could watch them forever.
Now i have a paper to write for tuesday, and i haven't started it. lame.
