German New Year's Television Tradition
Jude Stewart in Slate describes how an obscure British skit is broadcast every year on New Year's Eve in Germany. This reminds me of the Russians watching the comedy "Ironiia sud'by (The Irony of Fate)" on New Year's Eve.
Stewart describes the possible reasons for the development of this televisual tradition:
But the biggest reason for Dinner for One's popularity, I suspect, is the magic of repetition. The skit is mildly funny, sure, but much more important is that it has the mysterious quality of something that could get very funny after years of drunken viewing. The script itself, so laden with repetition, lodges in the brain and accretes in-jokes easily. (Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Showgirls, which have achieved bad-is-good popularity through repetition, Dinner for One has a bad little kernel of a story and a crass creepiness.) And in a modern Germany many feel is teetering into economic free fall, a comfortable old-time ritual has an almost religious attraction.
Link
Stewart describes the possible reasons for the development of this televisual tradition:
But the biggest reason for Dinner for One's popularity, I suspect, is the magic of repetition. The skit is mildly funny, sure, but much more important is that it has the mysterious quality of something that could get very funny after years of drunken viewing. The script itself, so laden with repetition, lodges in the brain and accretes in-jokes easily. (Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Showgirls, which have achieved bad-is-good popularity through repetition, Dinner for One has a bad little kernel of a story and a crass creepiness.) And in a modern Germany many feel is teetering into economic free fall, a comfortable old-time ritual has an almost religious attraction.
Link
posted by Christopher Franz | 8:05 AM
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