Comrades in Arms

‘Do “spornosexuals” really merit a whole, new hideous-sounding term?’ asks Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post. The answer, according to Tom Smith, is most definitely yes. The 2014 journalistic amalgam of sport + porn + metrosexual helps to frame his book’s argument. Smith zealously anchors his study in the present, tying it to our culture’s peculiar preoccupations, even if this means adopting jargon like ‘body-reflexive practices’ or dropping jarring, millennial pop-cultural references into his text. The allusion to spornosexuals is just an amuse-bouche for the real meat: a celebration of the 2015 television series Deutschland 83. Lovingly recreating the atmosphere of both Germanies at the height of the ‘new’ cold war, the series stood out through its nostalgic (but sardonic and mordant) blending of popular history, fashion and music. For Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, television came close to Wagner’s vision of a total, all-encompassing art work. In

Art · Art history · Character (mathematics · German · Literature · Popular culture · Sociology · European history and politics · German History and Society · German legal, social, and political studies · History