Music Banter - Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things

I've read or listened to a bunch of biographies of 20th century dictators and it appears that every one of them loved Hollywood movies. Stalin and Nasser certainly were anti-US and anti-Western but they loved Hollywood movies much more than local productions.

Edit: if I had to guess one country where the leadership was too Stalinist to enjoy non-communist movies I'd say East Germany.

Further edit: yep ChatGPT says I'm right

Quote:

The evidence about **Walter Ulbricht’s personal film tastes** is fragmentary, but memoirs, DEFA archives, and accounts by East German cultural officials allow a reasonably clear picture of the *kind* of films he approved of—and, just as importantly, those he distrusted.

### 1. Socialist-realist and pedagogical films

Ulbricht favored films that were:

* **Didactic and ideologically transparent**
* Clearly aligned with **Marxism–Leninism**
* Focused on **workers, party discipline, and historical progress**

Typical examples were:

* Soviet socialist-realist classics
* East German DEFA films portraying heroic workers, engineers, or antifascist resistance
* Films emphasizing *collective* action rather than individual psychology

Ambiguity, irony, or moral complexity were viewed with suspicion.

### 2. Antifascist war films

Ulbricht strongly supported:

* **Antifascist narratives**, especially those portraying Communists as the authentic resistance to Nazism
* WWII films legitimizing the GDR as the “better Germany”

These films served a double purpose: historical pedagogy and political legitimation.

### 3. Soviet cinema over Western cinema

Ulbricht consistently privileged:

* **Soviet films** (especially Stalin-era productions)
* Films emphasizing historical inevitability, class struggle, and discipline

By contrast, he disliked:

* Western films, especially American ones
* Genres associated with **individualism**, romance, existential doubt, or stylistic experimentation

Hollywood cinema was condemned as *ideological diversion* rather than art.

### 4. Hostility to modernism and psychological ambiguity

Ulbricht was notoriously hostile to:

* Formal experimentation
* Psychological realism not anchored in class analysis
* Films influenced by modernist or existentialist aesthetics

This hostility culminated in the **1965 Eleventh Plenum**, when many DEFA films were banned for being “pessimistic,” “nihilistic,” or insufficiently socialist—even when made by loyal communists.

### 5. Entertainment tolerated but tightly controlled

Ulbricht did allow limited popular genres:

* Musical comedies
* Light romances
* Family films

—but only if they:

* Reinforced socialist morals
* Avoided irony about the Party
* Contained no social skepticism

Entertainment was acceptable *only* as morale management, not as autonomous culture.

### 6. What Ulbricht emphatically did *not* like

Based on repeated interventions:

* Ambivalent heroes
* Satire aimed at socialist bureaucracy
* Tragic or open-ended narratives
* Films suggesting alienation or disillusionment within socialism

Even loyal filmmakers like **Konrad Wolf** periodically fell under suspicion.

### Bottom line

Ulbricht did not approach cinema as an art form but as a **political instrument**. The films he “liked” were those that:

* Confirmed Party doctrine
* Educated rather than questioned
* Presented history as linear, rational, and controllable

In this sense, Ulbricht’s taste was less personal than *structural*: cinema was valuable only insofar as it stabilized ideological certainty.

If you want, I can:

* Compare Ulbricht’s tastes to **Honecker’s** (who was more permissive)
* Trace how Ulbricht’s film policy differed from **Polish or Czech socialism**
* Map specific banned DEFA films and Ulbricht’s objections to them