France:
the new generation
Politics yes, but of a different kind
They
may vote rarely and keep well away from political organisations, but this does not mean
that young people are not interested in community life. When they take action it tends to
be sporadic and take the form of protest.
By Florence
Raynal, journalist, France
"Young people who
vote are in a minority; if we exclude abstainers and those not registered on the electoral
roll, only a small minority of young people of voting age turn out at the polls",
observes Anne Muxel1, sociologist at the Centre d’Études de la Vie Politique
Française (Cevipof). If we add to this the fact that few young people join political
parties and trade unions, and that in France, according to the survey Valeurs en Europe2
[Values in Europe], only 38% of eighteen to twenty-nine year olds follow political news
daily on the television, radio or in a newspaper – compared to 77% of those aged 60
and over –, it would be easy to conclude that politics no longer interest young
people.
But, on the basis of
this survey, Pierre Bréchon, director of the Grenoble Institut d’Études Politiques,
points out that French young people "never have been enthusiastic about
politics" and that today they tend just "to be a little less interested in
it". But above all, he feels, they now have "a less conformist relationship to
politics, they are more critical of the political class, they are only going to vote in
elections when the issues affect them. On the other hand they are more prepared to express
their political protest directly at demonstrations about specific issues".
Indeed direct action in
the form of protest is more attractive to young people. Many more of them than twenty
years ago have signed a petition or taken part in an official demonstration. "There
is today, from the teenage years onwards," Pierre Bréchon points out, "real
socialisation towards social protest and the direct expression of dissatisfaction."
When it comes to
championing a cause, voluntary associations are the preferred form of organisation for
eighteen to twenty-eight year olds. According to the survey Les Jeunes et la citoyenneté
aujourd’hui [Young people and citizenship today], conducted in 2000 by Sofres, the
French national institute for opinion polls, 39% say that they would prefer to act within
the framework of a movement or an association, against 4% as part of a trade union and 2%
under the auspices of a political party. Nevertheless, the level of membership of
voluntary organisations among eighteen to twenty-nine year olds is almost identical to
that of the general population and has remained stable since 1990.
Furthermore, young
people seem to be particularly concerned to "leave themselves room for manoeuvre, to
take a stand but to set greater store by freedom, effectiveness and local issues".
One revealing fact is that the word "commitment" was seen as having very
positive overtones by only 37% of interviewees. Finally, Sofres stresses that, for young
people, citizenship also involves the workplace, which has to be a central player in
society.
Protesters...
but not revolutionaries
"In the main,
young French people do not seem to be particularly anti-establishment. They are in general
not very different from older generations and even seem, in some respects, to have moved
closer to them over the last twenty years. They are less critical of institutional
authority and there are signs of a growing demand for social order", is Pierre
Bréchon’s analysis. Trends also detected by Sofres are that only 13% of eighteen to
twenty-five year olds feel that society should be "changed radically" and 21%
"fundamentally reformed (...) while 66% would like to see only minor changes (...) or
even none at all."
This does not, however,
mean that young people are uncritical. They feel that our society attaches too much
importance to money, that it is not sufficiently egalitarian, is too individualistic and
does not place enough importance on them. Evaluating their trust in institutions, the
Valeurs en Europe survey shows that some central bodies, such as Parliament, also excite
considerable criticism. Nonetheless, democracy remains "for 85% of eighteen to
twenty-nine year olds, (...) the best form of government, despite its problems",
stresses Pierre Bréchon. But young people are not a homogeneous group and there is
"potential for criticism and radicalisation among young people with a relatively low
standard of education, who are more likely to be anti-establishment, not only in their
attitude to institutions, but also towards democratic values themselves."
The confinement
of a child of the century
"I am an asthmatic
of the soul. What I mean by that is that the times make it difficult for me to
breathe". Thus begins the Confessions d’un jeune homme à contretemps
[Confessions of a Young Man Out of His Time], the subtitle chosen by Camille de Toledo for
his first book, part autobiography, part essay, Archimondain Jolipunk. At the age of
twenty-five, this brilliant and cultured young man feels stifled, like the rest of his
generation, disenchanted, lost between the "bang" of the fall of the Berlin
wall, in November 1989, and the "attack" on New York’s twin towers, in
September 2001. A generation condemned to live in a vacuum since it has all happened
before: wars, revolutions, betrayals, recoveries..., racked with a feeling of
powerlessness, trapped between the five pillars of an invisible establishment structure.
"The first has blocked all possibility of History. The second has doomed any will to
resist. The third has neutralised the tactics of subversion. The fourth has absorbed any
room for manoeuvre. The fifth has dispersed economic and political power to the point that
protest has nothing to grasp hold of. This prefabricated pentagon has been for us a school
of despair, a school that has produced cynical laughter and a mass focus on appearance
over substance." But Camille de Toledo, who took part in the anti-globalisation
demonstrations and who sees himself as "a romantic with his eyes open," i.e. a
"man of the possible" has not given up. He heralds the advent of a new era ...
coloured by rebellion. F. R.
Young people,
get involved!
The Livret des
engagements [The Commitments Handbook], distributed since 2003 by the Ministry for Youth
and National Education in places where young people gather aims to encourage young people
aged eleven to twenty-eight to get involved in public life, in culture, sport, the
environment, the economy or humanitarian causes. As well as promoting their initiatives,
it suggests various projects into which they can put their energies, and gives advice on
the material, technical and human assistance necessary for their success. The initiative
also has a website and holds a "Commitment Day". F. R
(Courtesy:
Label France, magazine N° 51 – July 2003, Embassy of France, Kathmandu)
Much
Ado
Politically incorrect, provocative,
aggressive: the Volksbühne Berlin – the theatre of genuine emotions
By Till Briegleb,
Germany
The good thing about
German democracy is that it actually keeps its fiercest critics in employment, so long as
they are successful. They are then permitted to shout out "Kill Helmut Kohl!",
proclaim their lust for rampant warfare and openly declare their most outlandish ideas, or
they can label politicians and their wives as neurotic zombies in a chamber of horrors.
What condition has to be fulfilled to perform this democratic exercise? The product has to
be classified as art. At Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre, the source of these examples,
people are not too happy with this situation, because public tolerance defuses private
rebellion – and this can potentially chip away at the theatre’s carefully
nurtured image of the cultural guerrilla. But the theatre’s battle against hypocrisy,
supposed transparency and suffocating rationality is not being fought in vain. For eleven
years now the concoction of artistic freedom and self-questioning, egomania and
enlightenment, Stalin and trash has been on the boil at the former GDR playhouse on Rosa
Luxemburg Platz to produce a complex and dynamic theatre of anger that makes other stages
look like teachers’ staff rooms.
This theatre is
tailor-made for its artistic director Frank Castorf (52) who, in the days of the GDR, made
a name for himself in Anklam with riskily anti-establishment productions and, shortly
before the Wall fell, grew into a major GDR export item in terms of intrepid belligerence.
He took over the theatre in 1992 from the bankrupt cultural legacy and was charged with
the task of ending up either famous or dead in three years time. At least that was the
message contained in an experts’ report formulated by four theatre gurus who
recommended Castorf as the ideal candidate for the grey-walled stronghold.
A different
kind of theatre
Castorf is not dead.
He’s famous. With a theatre of the excessive that sees the sole route to truthfulness
through overtaxing the intellect, he soon polarized the public and the critics.
Productions that lasted for hours, where potato salad made in metal buckets was sent
flying through the air, where two-lined marriage proposals where drawn out over half an
hour or bawling slapstick comedy simply rolled around the stage: all this regularly
provoked harshly damning reviews from the pens of the established critics. Nevertheless,
his greatest talent, tracking down the structural violence of a seemingly peaceful society
and publicly presenting it in radical poetical form, appealed to a broad section of the
young generation who were no longer interested in the theatre of psychological illusion
associated with ‘old Germany.’
As the only theatre to
consistently address the theme of reunification, the Volksbühne gained its special
momentum from the conflicts in this marriage between two systems. Castorf discovered
smouldering conflicts in the loss of a difficult homeland and the encounter with
capitalist arrogance which he spotlighted in the context of freely adapted classic plays.
With works such as "The Robbers" or "The Ring of the Nibelung,"
"Clockwork Orange" or "The Lady from the Lake," Castorf transposed the
historical breaks into each of the dramatic contexts.
Alien texts were
introduced into the originals in order to gain new perspectives. The actors who, in their
eagerness to exaggerate, were just as interested in the spectacle as Castorf, shouted a
lot, demolished props and took great pleasure in slapstick and the lowest kind of corny
jokes. Commenting on this radical deconstruction of make-believe theatre Castorf said:
"It is a highly political act when we actually get in touch with our real
feelings." Empathy with role models was considered a deadly sin. On the other hand
irony, improvisation, detachment and physical attacks were seen as the language of
critical realism. As pathos plays a surprisingly positive role in this political theatre
of the emotions Castorf repeatedly integrated old rock songs played by western
broadcasters in the past, extracts from Tarantino films, posters of Stalin and other
relics of Socialism, and even the glamorous moments. Second-hand clothes and props picked
up from the environment left no doubt about the affinity of the classics to the
present-day experience.
Apart from Castorf,
only three other directors succeeded in establishing a place for themselves with works
based on carefully premeditated provocation at this theatre with its rooftop sign
demonstratively proclaiming the word OST, i.e. east. The Swiss director Christoph
Marthaler, the second formative figure of the nineties, started work here with a
grippingly absurd GDR-homeland show entitled "Murx den Europäer! Murx ihn! Murx ihn!
Murx ihn! Murx ihn ab!" ("Do away with the European! Do away with him! Do away
with him! Do away with him! Do him in!"), and then proceeded with his slow-paced
humorous musical productions of Shakespeare, Chekhov and Offenbach. In contrast, Johann
Kresnik from Austria stylized historical figures such as Rosa Luxemburg and Ernst Jünger
to create bizarre icons. And Christoph Schlingensief from western Germany battled against
the Volksbühne’s arch enemy, "mediocre realism," with extremely aggressive
projects focusing on contemporary political figures such as Rudi Dutschke, Helmut Kohl or
Gerhard Schröder. With utmost diligence he employed his outlandish arsenal, including
superficial show techniques and permanent intervention, disabled actors and the founding
of a political party, to breach the borders between theatre and reality.
It was in this theatre with its intentionally preserved quaint GDR aura evoking bygone
socialist aspirations of renewal, antediluvian heating system and shabby furnishings that
the most upbeat productions of the new republic emerged. Castorf and Marthaler collected
one prize after another for their work, Schlingensief turned into a popular media star
with his brilliant art of permanent provocation, and some of the ensemble’s key
figures, such as Martin Wuttke, Henry Hübchen or Sophie Rois set the national standards
in self-possessed acting proficiency.
But the crises that
develop when angry attacks fizzle out in friendly embraces finally seized the whole
theatre in the late nineties. While the east-west divide began to vanish Castorf’s
remark, "I need a strict base in order to generate my opposition – democracy
depresses me," led him to themes of sexual obsession that ended up in din-and-mess
mannerism.
Meanwhile the
Volksbühne has returned to the firm foundation of meaning – but it has become even
more of a Castorf theatre. He found his way back to his role as oppositional marathon man
by taking Dostoyevsky’s novels "Demons," "The Insulted and
Injured" and "The Idiot" and turning them – with his accustomed
intelligent excessiveness – into long-length crisis cultivation plays. His work will
have to prove whether Castorf’s exceptional position justifies the theatre’s
private temple status. Time and again, he definitely manages to succeed in fulfilling the
condition that dramatist Heiner Müller once formulated on the justification of the
existence of dramatic art: "Theatres that are no longer able to provoke the question
WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN definitely deserve to be closed." So, let the
curtain rise for the next provocation.
Theatre
Telegram
The theatre landscape:
180 publicly owned theatres (municipal theatres, state theatres, orchestra halls and
theatres belonging to the federal states), 190 privately owned theatres, over 30 festival
theatres, and countless free groups and amateur theatres.
Audiences: 35.5 million
in the season 2000/2001 (half a million more than in the previous year).
Productions: for 2001
the German Theatre Association recorded around 4,400 new productions and just under 63,000
events
(Courtesy:
Deutschland Magazine,, Embassy of Germany, Kathmandu) |
