1. The Lipsi
Chapter 12
Stasiland

2. The Lipsi dance Symbol of GDR oppression Cultural manufacturing
“Now out of nowhere and overnight
This new beat is here to stay” p.127
the ‘beat’ could symbolise the Wall

3. Control of youth Fear of the influence of the West
“The East’s answer to Elvis and decadent foreign rock n roll”
“A dance invented by a committee, a bizarre and hipless camel of a thing” p.127

4. West and East 1964 Go Go dancing - The West
The Lipsi - East Germany

5. Fact and Fiction
The Lipsi can be seen as allegorical – representative of the ‘fiction’ of socialism
“huge fixed smiles as if they needn’t give a single thought to what their feet are doing” p.126
The dancers, just like East Germans, are pretending (fixed smiles).
Any suggestion of spontaneity is undermined by following the rules of the dance.

6. Author Intent
Funder uses allegory to make a wider statement about the oppression in the GDR
The propaganda has infiltrated popular culture in an attempt to brainwash GDR youth
The Lipsi becomes emblematic of the propaganda used to control East Germans.

7. How could you use this in an essay? In a ‘what else’ paragraph?
Funder works hard to make the reader sympathetic to those who supported the regime. Was this your reading of Stasiland?

8. Adventures in Stasiland
Compare pages to the text below
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
youtube clip

9. A ‘What else?’ paragraph:
Through her description of The Lipsi she uncovers the way that the propaganda was designed by the Stasi as a manipulative piece of cultural infiltration. Her assessment of the dance as “a bizarre hipless camel of a thing” is allegorical. She could be describing the “sexless moves” of the Stasi themselves. Her caricature of GDR culture makes a mockery of both the dance and the mechanical Stasi machine, overshadowing any sense of sympathy the reader may feel with the need to laugh. It is true that the reader would find it difficult to sympathise with those who subscribed to GDR ideology; however, the cartoonish qualities she evokes throughout the text turn the regime into something comic. Indeed, it’s not just the Lipsi that makes us laugh. The way Funder ridicules ‘The Cardigans’ who sit behind a counter at the GDR TV archive uncovers the two men as the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of Funder’s “Adventures in Stasiland”. The absurdity and surrealism of the scene is also likened to a play written by Beckett. It simply doesn’t seem real. As readers we are completely discouraged from taking those who subscribed to Stasi ideology seriously.

10. What else could you build into this paragraph?

11. The links between Alice in Wonderland and Stasiland are significant and well worth writing about.
How could you include an extension on my paragraph that incorporates this?
It must connect with the prompt.