Deutschland 83 & Narrative

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NARRATIVE

Social norms:

  • Importance of family
  • Politeness
Is the Narrative linear?
It's completely linear, everything is told in that chronological order.

Multi Strand Narrative?
Different narratives that are linked, clear dramatic narratives that stick to different protagonist. Not the case with Deutschland 83 as we have one clear protagonist and we follow his story. We can say that Stranger Things follows a multi-strand narrative whereas Deutschland 83 doesn't it follows one clear protagonist.

Todorov:
The equilibrium in Deutschland 83 is:
We begin in the east, the world of Martin is the world in East Berlin. Martin is happy with this world, as we see in the first picnic scene its a world where family relations are genuinely good.

What upsets this equilibrium is:
The West upsets the equilibrium, Martin entering the West upsets the normal world that Martin was living in.

This is quite strange, how the world begins with putting us in the East. Most subversive thing in the show, we would think we're on the right side; western world. That tells us something about ideologies. There is no clear good side and bad side, that is maybe what this equilibrium shows us while putting us, a western audience into an uncomfortable position. 

Binary Oppositions:
  • East / West
  • Male / Female
  • Communism / Capitalism
  • Young / Old
  • Military / Civilian
All of the drama is coming from clashes between these two sides. 
Linking to Levi-Strauss

What are these Binary Oppositions telling us?

It's about subjective experience; Martin's experience in the East is good, that's where his job/family and girlfriend are. When he goes to the West he becomes seduced, there's no good and bad. This challenges Levi-Strauss there's no good versus bad, like in Stranger Things it challenges that.

Genre:

Spy-Thriller - this genre is a new genre that's linked to the 20th century and historical context of Deutschland 83, Cold War.

 For example: Atomic Blonde, Bond, Mission Impossible

A protagonist who is a spy, in terms of TV Shows Homeland, The Spy etc.

Young people aren't really the target audience for this type of drama.

Codes & Conventions:

Codes:

  • Typewriter text + sound effect = iconic of Spy Thrillers
  • Text we see + Text we hear 
  • The ringing sound that's slightly unsettling and unnerving, again iconic of Spy Thriller
  • People watching politics - Clashes of these two nations that establish it.
  • The woman making a phone call - brief, very serious and not the real world that we normally live. Tone of voice tells us we're in this world
Conventions:
  • Martin becomes a spy
  • Uses of violence to persuade people into doing things
  • Secret documents being passed between people.
Hybridity & Subversion?

Stranger Things is part horror/teen/drama/thriller. Deutschland 83 is not really a hybrid, there are other genre elements in there but it abides to the genre of Spy Thriller, there are tiny elements of romance but the main one is Spy Thriller.

The codes & conventions are subverted, Martin is spying for the East against the West but the first subversion is that we don't genuinely start with the 'bad' side, here we do. This is a main subversion, starting with a Spy for the wrong side.

Postmodernism:

Stranger Things more about texts from the 1980s rather than the 1980s. D83 also set in the 80s, its looking back but its not doing it in a nostalgic way. It's set in a historical reality, it's set in a real 80s not the fake 80s of the 1980s.


Implosion - Collapses between high culture and low culture, collapses between gender and identity.
We don't really see that in Deutschland 83, the distinctions are very clear.

Hyperreal - We could make some argument that there is some sort of a hyper reality in some scenes of the west,  Sweet Dreams song.

The one way we can view the text as to being postmodern is through this term of Bricolage

Bricolage - Any work of art/fiction that puts different elements together in a way that could confuse.

What Does It Mashup?
  • Different ideologies - East and West
  • Mashes up reality & fiction
  • Takes historic events and gives it a fictional narrative; we see president reagan on tv at the start of the show - this is real its not an actor playing him.
  •  However the rest of the narrative is fiction
  • We see documentary news footage of historical events taking place
  • Postmodern approach , Bricolage - putting two things together to create something new.
Stranger things does not do this

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