"Learn from my former virulence. . . . . ."
********************
(THIS MOVIE IS TO CAPTURE THE
ANARCHY OF FORMER
COMMUNIST EAST BERLIN & THE FAILURE OF TOTALITARIAN
POLITICS WHEREVER
AND WHATEVER THEY MAY
BE)
Opening screen, black
A photograph appears, a young man with wild, bewildered eyes on the night that the Berlin wall fell
Voice-Over in halting German Accent: "Gutentag. My name is Ingo Hasselbach and I'm here to tell my story, a tale to heed for anyone who cares to listen. First off, let me tell you what this film is not, Kamerad. So many movies that tackle the subject of skinhead youth don't get it right. It's always pure good vs. pure evil shot MTV-style while romantic film-makers paint it as if you're not even worth speaking to unless you fall to your knees and beg forgiveness before "the enlightened". That only creates more problems than it solves. Another line of thinking goes through their pigeon-heads. . . . . if you think the capital tragedies of the world can be solved with "a magic bullet", you're sadly mistaken. Where I was raised, in Communist East Germany, the state attempted to fix things with oppressive laws and in the end only made everything worse. Isn't it said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions?"
Cut to archival footage of the Berlin Wall, East Germans hammering through
"I'm not a genius. Nor a poet or a saint. And I don't want to be "used" for anything, as proof of "the enlightened way", everyone sitting around a campfire and singing "Kumbiyah". The world simply doesn't work that way. You can't stop conflict any more than you can outlaw inequality or war. I want to tell you how wretched places can make wretched people. You in the United States flaunt nihilism as a fashion statement, but for us it was a wolf-pack way of life. We lived it because we knew of no other way. . . . ."
Cut to shot of massive block housing, ugly and soulless-- framed against the leaden gray sky
"In the beginning was the state. We knew of nothing else, except that it was bogus"
Cut to shot of secret police pacing around in helmets and trench-coats
Cut to wide shot of seven year-old's running around, kicking a soccer ball. The ball rolls up to a Statsi officer's foot, and he looks down as a kid runs over to retrieve it. He looks down and says with a grim, stern face
"Run along now, before you get into trouble"
The kid looks up, then scampers off like youth is ought
As voice-over continues, cut to various shots of stark empty streets--
"There was always tension in the atmosphere when my generation was growing up in our totalitarian society, that adults were unnaturally "on edge" and were always looking over their shoulder, as if someone might be watching. And in fact, they were watching. . . . . there were more spies and informants than you could have ever dreamed"
Cut to shot of Ingo Hasselbach dressed up in a leather jacket and parachutist boots walking around with neo-Nazi friends, as the shot pauses with the sound of a camera taking pictures as they idle against a wall and drink
"Only a true believer could take this land for a 'worker's paradise'. True believers like my father. His papa was killed in action during Hitler's war and his mother died during an Allied bomb raid. It scarred him permanently, and turned him into a lifelong Communist. A Stalin apologist, even. He was living on the wrong side of the wall and carried on his underground activities against the Germany of the West, eventually at the expense of life, employment, wife, and children. Eventually he was arrested and served time in a Federal Prison"
Cut to shot of cartoon, "The Smurfs"
"A funny thing about Germany, unlike America you should know. Europe is a lot more like a village, where the government acts like elders and banish you from the public square if you hold wrong beliefs, like the town ogre. Back then it was Communism, today it's Nazism. You can not hold down a job and corrupt others. So my father picked up everything, and went over the wall where he was greeted as a hero"
Cut to shot of piece of artwork, "Iron Flood" (1924)-- a prime example of "Soviet Realism"
"No one desired to stay here and the Communists needed all the good examples they could get. He was appointed to a job on state radio reading propaganda and telling the youth of East Germany to be true believers and 'give everything to the Fatherland'. But no one really listened as this man poured his heart out, divorced from reality. He met my mother, who worked as a journalist in the state press agency printing up bullshit no one read. You climbed up in the state by mouthing the ideology and not making anyone look bad. Sounds like your American university, no? Ha, ha, ha, ha!
Cut to shot of Young George W. Bush college Republicans and a dorky, collective voice that nassally honks: "WE AGREE TO THAT TOTALLY!"
Crossover voice of Ingo Hasselbach: "Oh, shut-up you fat assholes. You don't know the meaning of the word, 'crushing state'. At least in America you have what your Mark Twain said: 'freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom to use neither' That's what holds your masses down, sheer cowardice. You know not of pitched street battles between anarchists and fascists in the blood-stained streets. . . . ."
"Back in East Germany, there was no reason "to stay in line", and we kids ran wild in the neighborhood-- doing, what as you say? 'RAISING HELL'"
Cut to shot of kids scampering over the rooftops in wintertime. They spy a cake factory down below, run over and climb a chain-link fence over where the cakes are left to cool. One of them throws the cakes over to the rest over the fence. They chew on the cakes, decide they taste terrible, and end up pelting each other with them and laughing. A giant man in an apron who looks like a butcher comes out and hollers that "you kids are hurting the people's economy!". The kids reply that his cakes "suck shit" and run off like ragged imps
"Whatever your Ronald Reagan may say, it wasn't about ideology why we behaved as we did. We hated the state. We were against something. Nancy Reagan would have had us as special guests and we would have swiped the silverware and shat in the corner. Hardly worthy guests at that banquet table of democracy"
Cut to picture of Ronald Reagan, with his hand up to his ear as if he's having a "hard time hearing"
(End of Demo)
*******************
SORRY
KIDS,
BUT
READ
THIS
NOTICE:
© 2008 by Insufferable Industries
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