Essay questions

GE438 Professor Cosgrove: Boredom in the Literature and Film of the Berlin Republic
Essay questions (provisional: subject to approval by External Examiner)
Terezia Mora: Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent
Discuss the relationship between work and boredom in Der einzige Mann auf dem
Kontinent, paying special attention to the working lives of Darius Kopp and his wife Flora.
Discuss the ways in which Terezia Mora connects the phenomena of insatiable appetite and
constant consumption to existential boredom in Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent.
Julia Schoch: Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers
Discuss the ways in which boredom arises as a consequence of a major historical event in
Julia Schoch’s Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers. In your essay please consider the
extent to which the problems of the ‘chronological imagination’ (Peter Fritzsche) in the
post-1989 period have contributed to this sense of boredom.
Discuss the ways in which Julia Schoch suggests that boredom is a temporal and a spatial
phenomenon in Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers, taking into consideration landscape
and bodily descriptions, and also narrative perspective.
Wilhelm Genazino:Wenn wir Tiere wären
Discuss the habits which the narrator of Wilhelm Genazino’s Wenn wir Tiere wären
develops in order to counteract the boredom of existence in late capitalist society. In your
essay, please consider whether he is successful in his endeavours, and also what his
particular motivations might be.
Discuss the narrator’s depiction of animal existence in Wilhelm Genazino’s Wenn wir Tiere
wären, considering whether he idealises animal life as an escape from the boredom of
contemporary human life.
Iris Hanika, Das Eigentliche (2010)
Discuss the ways in which Iris Hanika in Das Eigentliche presents fatigue and boredom as
consequences of the memory industry of “Vergangenheitsbewirtschaftung” which has
developed in relation to commemoration of the German past in the Berlin Republic today.
GE438 Professor Cosgrove: Boredom in the Literature and Film of the Berlin Republic
Discuss the ways in which Iris Hanika presents the main protagonist of Das Eigentliche,
Hans Frambach, as a modern-day fallen monk who suffers from the condition of acedia.
Christian Petzold: Yella
Discuss Christian Petzold’s representation in his film Yella of life in the capitalist context
of supermodernity, taking into consideration how he addresses both the monotony and the
appeal of this existence.
Christoph Hochhäusler: Unter dir die Stadt
In Non-Places Marc Augé suggests that the non-place does not contain any organic society
(90). Discuss the ways in which this statement applies to Christoph Hochhäusler’s film,
Unter dir die Stadt, paying special attention to the depiction of the city, architecture and
the individual human body within these spaces.
Comparative questions
Compare and contrast the gendered experience of boredom in any two works on the
course.
Compare and contrast the relationship between work and boredom in any two works on
the course.