Have I mentioned that Germans lack something called political correctness? Case in point. This definition is straight out of my Pons, one of the standard reference books in Germany, published in 1995. Remember that whole "Get over it - it's the nineties" thing? Apparently they didn't do the nineties in Germany. And I think they missed out on some key civil rights issues of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as well.
This fearless political incorrectness is not restricted to dusty books - I had the experience of seeing it come to life last weekend at the annual Cannstatter Volksfest parade. Stuttgart's version of Oktoberfest, the Volksfest draws its psychic inspiration from a big bronze vat, the city Can of the aforementioned Cannstatt, which is escorted to the fairgrounds by the mayor, about a hundred marching bands, an Iggy Pop lookalike and an extremely bored Duke of Württemberg (understandably seeing as I doubt he has any duties other than appearing in floats at parades, and possibly no property other than said float). Each float gave out candy to the watching kids, or in the case of the agricultural groups, offered samples of their wares. There was a lot of free beer for a Sunday morning. There was local wine. There was sauerkraut. There were dirndls and lederhosen and even a moustache appreciation club.
Present among the many cultural groups who also feted the famed Can was a Retro Americana club, complete with a General Lafayette, an Edgar J. Hoover, twenty southern belles, gas station attendants, a few cowboys carrying a Confederate flag, and a small group of furred and feathered men and women who were clearly going for Native American but ended up, for obvious reasons, bearing more of a resemblance to extras at Medieval Times. To be fair, Germans seem to have no problem with thousands of Americans not to mention American celebrities showing up at Oktoberfest in the stripper-friendly version of Bavarian traditional dress, so maybe what seems like cultural appropriation is only a little friendly tit for tat.
And it's not the Germans alone who are taking the kind of liberties that would get some major frowns in North America. I picked up a similarly offending copy of French Elle in Frankfurt (What kind of cosmopolitan multi-lingual Eden is this, a mere two hours from the conservative all-German, all-the-time pretzel-fest that is Stuttgart? Now I know why the train was standing room only.) Published every week, yet still managing to weigh in at 296 pages (how much can any one person really read about how polka dots are trending right now?), French Elle wants its readers to know that clogs are only to be worn in the presence of other females for fear of ruining the feminine mystique, that for several good-looking French philosophers, being television moderators is an extension of their research rather than a mad grab at fame, and that too many feathers combined in a single outfit can make you look like a "Peau-Rouge." Heaven forbid.
Hermes ad via French Elle
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