ABSTRACT

Babylon Berlin (ARD/Sky, 2017–) depicts Germany’s Weimar Republic by way of complex genericity, drawing especially on the era’s internationally recognizable associations with film noir and the musical. While this reflects its position in a transnational “quality” television landscape, its generic frameworks also draw out ambiguous historical tensions difficult to capture in a realist mode and highlight unpredictable ambivalence across Weimar’s institutions and culture. This complicates Weimar myths that polarize its supposedly regressive politics and progressive culture and see it as a “doomed republic,” the subsequent Nazi period viewed in hindsight as having been inevitable. It also distances it from recorded history, inviting a symbolic reading in the context of contemporary global phenomena. Babylon Berlin thus demonstrates that although citing globally popular genres to depict national histories facilitates transnational television drama’s accessibility, it can also aid critical historical reflection.

摘要

柏林巴比伦(ARD/Sky, 2017–) 以复杂的通用性描绘了德国的魏玛共和国，特别是借鉴了那个时代与黑色电影和音乐剧的国际公认关联。虽然这反映了它在跨国“质量”电视领域的地位，但它的通用框架也引出了在现实主义模式中难以捕捉的模棱两可的历史张力，并突出了魏玛制度和文化中不可预测的矛盾心理。这使魏玛神话变得复杂，这些神话将其所谓的倒退政治和进步文化两极分化，并将其视为“注定要失败的共和国”，事后看来，随后的纳粹时期是不可避免的。它还将它与记录的历史拉开距离，在当代全球现象的背景下进行象征性的解读。巴比伦柏林由此表明，虽然引用全球流行的流派来描绘国家历史有助于跨国电视剧的可及性，但它也有助于批判性的历史反思。