Entertainment without Frontiers - Representing and Performing Other Cultures in German, French, and Spanish TV Shows of the 1960s

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dietmar Hüser, since 10/2021
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 285228642

Entertainment programming and quiz-shows enjoyed remarkable audience rates and became an established part of Western European television cultures and family rituals in the 1960s. These TV formats were following two transnational trends: 1) the staging of foreign worlds and places of longing, with this staging often relying on transnational networks and the international circulation of entertainment artists; 2) the creation of programs with a genuinely European and international dimension, mirroring the progressing economic and political European integration. The project Entertainment without Frontiers looks at the Federal Republic of Germany, at France, and at Spain, and analyzes how foreign cultures are represented and staged in the genres mentioned above. The research focus will thus be on the perception of otherness in specific national contexts as well as on transnational entanglements in European TV entertainment. The proposed study aims at an assessment of the balance between processes of Americanization and Europeanization and at discussing and understanding culture specific forms of appropriation.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2475: Transnational popular culture - Europe in the long 1960s
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Christoph Vatter, until 10/2021