Berlin Wall Impact

 The paper is for  German film class. It is a research paper on a german film. Chose to write about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the film, Good Bye Lenin. The paper must incorporate film terms.Paper Proposal At almost thirty years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the economic rift between the East and West sectors is still evident. There is a vast amount of literature and scholarly work that centers around the economic differentiation between the two Germanies. However, there was another neglected yet not less evident gap––that of the socio-cultural dynamics in both sectors. The paper aims to bridge this gap and present an argument for the positive and negative impacts the fall of the Berlin Wall had on East Berlin citizens. Use the film Good Bye Lenin!, directed by Wolfgang Becker, to analyze how the fall of the Berlin wall changed the lives of East Berlin residents. The analysis will principally focus on how this event affected the lives of the Kerner family and the difficulty in trying to replicate East Berlin life after the reunification of Germany. Themes to be explored in regards to the fall of the Berlin Wall include: the economic impact, the perspectives of older vs. younger East Berlin citizens, socialism vs. democracy, the individual vs. society, and the importance of family. The research will rely heavily on previous scholarly work with a focus on key concepts such as family relations, cultural life, and politics under the context of early 1990s Germany. The methodology will consist on analyzing key scenes in the film Good Bye Lenin to find out how reunification impacted East Berlin. Plan to test the central ideas by researching the experiences of actual East Berlin citizens to support my claims and finding various primary sources that complement each other. The first scene to be used to analyze the economic impact is the scene when Alex is searching the supermarkets for the spreewald pickles his mother asked him to buy. Talk about how he found nothing of what he was looking for, and how in a short period of time all the products that were sold changed due to availability and Western money. The second scene you will analyze is when Alex and Ariane attempt to exchange the East German currency to West German currency. Then, the third scene to be analyzed is When Alex ends up in the dumpster searching for old cans and Mr. Ganske says “So they’ve driven us to this rooting around in the garbage” and that he is currently unemployed. This particular scene will also be used to support my theme of “older vs. younger East Berlin citizens” and how it has affected them economically. The older citizens are under the impression that all they believed in has ceased to exist, and that they are left with nothing so most of them are either retired or unemployed. In order to elaborate on this  also use scenes regarding Christiane’s friends and colleagues. Then, to contrast  talk about the the youth’s perspective of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Analyze the scene when Alex and Ariane decide to change the furniture of the house to western furniture, scenes of when Alex is working at Burger King, and scenes regarding the Coca-Cola advertisements. In addition,  use the books: “Behind the Wall” and “The Reunification of Germany,” to support what is seen throughout the film.  examine the “separation of families” when the wall was built and how families were reunited after the fall of the wall. Key scenes to be analyzed are when Alex and Ariane see their father for the first time after years and the scene where Alex pictures him being fat and eating a cheeseburger outside a huge house. Use “The Reunification of Germany book” to talk about the immigration to West Germany and how it seperated many families. The “change of lifestyle” after the fall of the Wall of Berlin greatly changes in East Berlin. In the film there is a particular scene that stood out to me which was the scene where Alex is on the motorcycle on his way to take his mother spreewald pickles that he finally had found after months of searching. Alex says that life after the fall of the wall has a fast pace. Middle-aged and Older East Berliners had a hard time keeping up with so many changes. In order to support my claims I will use a study conducted by Gerben J. Westerhof and Corey L. M. Keyes that studies the consequences the fall of the wall had on middle-aged and older East and West Germans. Also use Coulter’s article“Territorial Appeals in Post-Wall German Filmmaking: The Case of Good Bye, Lenin!” in order to address the different perspectives of the East Germans and the accuracy of the film.