In North American universities, pop culture increasingly appears in the German Studies classroom to “spice up” the curriculum. But what is conveyed and taught and how is it inserted into the curriculum and into the US cultural context? This article explores three examples of popular culture in the German Studies classroom: representations of the Berlin Republic in Good Bye Lenin! and Das Leben der Anderen, Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand, and songs of the band Rammstein. We argue for an approach that encourages students to explore the politics of national culture in a global context and emphasizes the tensions and contingencies in the materials presented.
While gender has long been an abiding concern of Popliteratur, pop writers (in particular female authors) are often criticized for simply reflecting, if not positively endorsing, negative forms of postfeminism-an attitude that negates the accomplishments of emancipation by regressing to traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman. Some critics suggest that pop texts re-inscribe the gender binary by presenting, even glorifying, long-established gender roles. In response to such a reception, this article investigates Alexa Hennig von Lange's iconic but much criticized novel Relax (1999) in order to illustrate the reflective and critical nature of Popliteratur. I demonstrate how Hennig von Lange critically engages with images of masculinity, femininity and feminism, thereby queering (that is to say destabilizing), preconceived notions of gender and identity. Ultimately, texts such as Relax foreshadow the demands of the new popfeminists roughly a decade later.
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