-
Slumming with Cindy: Class, Precarity, and Performance in Cindy aus Marzahn’s Trash Comedy
- German Studies Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 41, Number 1, February 2018
- pp. 123-142
- 10.1353/gsr.2018.0006
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
abstract:
The restructuring of unemployment and welfare benefits under Hartz IV hit former East Germans already suffering economically since unification particularly hard, forcing many into a condition of precarity for which the governing ideology held them responsible. Frustrated in her search for suitable work, Ilka Bessin adapted the self-management model advocated by the reforms to transform her story of marginalization and failure into a comedy success as Ossi trash princess Cindy aus Marzahn. Cultivated by commercial television, Bessin’s Cindy was a product, purveyor, and critic of Germany’s neoliberal economic policies, illustrating the fraught, collusive relationship between politics and popular culture.