Freakstars 3000 (2004)

 

Director: Christoph Schlingensief

Screenplay: Christoph Schlingensief

Cast: Werner Brecht, Susanne Bredehöft, Ilse Garzaner, Mario Garzaner, Horst Gelonneck, Kerstin Graßmann, Irm Hermann, Brigitte Kausch, Christoph Schlingensief, Helga Stöwhase and Achim von Paczensky

Ephemeral Waves

 

But first, "How does the bath tub lift work?"

After his cinematic career, Christoph Schlingensief would transition to public events and live performances in his desire to provoke the German populous. In a review of United Trash (1996), I mentioned the infamous “Please Love Austria – First Austrian Coalition Week” stunt, involving allowing members of the public to vote asylum seekers out in a Big Brother scenario, all in mind to a far right group gaining political traction in the Austrian government at the time of that stunt. Whilst not the most provocative of these, especially in mind to the one just mentioned, Freakstars 3000 on the surface is definitely a work that could become tasteless even if in itself a provocative concept.

Freakstars, originally a television series immediately sets itself up as a curious film, neither documentary nor fictional film, begin both with a tribute with one of its participants Werner Brecht but also commenting that it had actors abused and made to act as disabled. Then an animated credit sequence appear with light hearted music, and thus begins a talent competition pastiching the likes of American Idol, which would have been in their first boom in popularity, only with the participants cast with disabled people. The project from Schlingensief was clearly meant as a provocation in terms of forcing people to think of people with disabilities (mental or physical) outside an alienating comfort zone of patronisation, like Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's The Idiots (1998). There are added provocations in this film, least this compiled production I watched, which would have been deliberately targeting the German audience; one such example, which I would not be surprised Christoph Schlingensief choose on purpose, is the iconography of a clamp for people's names and in the animated title sequence, which caused me to wonder if that was a reference to eugenics and measuring skulls.

The actual project, in terms of auditions and working with people with disabilities, is carefully done and ultimately more soft hearted than that initial concept and references suggest. Schlingensief does not look down on the people involved, all the audition sequences jovial and with applause as we see the first rounds a group gathering together in a playful singing or talent competition. The challenge is the presentation - rough early digital and TV aesthetic around the taboo of physical or tangible disability, jamming it into a middle class German viewer's eye. Truthfully, Freakstars 3000 is a failure because even the production felt this was not really enough, and that the film even less than eighty minutes goes onto tangents most of the time away from the premise. Previewing its later content, you briefly wonder if that is actually Angela Merkel on one of Freakstar's spin-offs, the future chancellor of Germany from 2005 in a mock political show, looking deeply uncomfortable as a disabled older man chews on the cud of political rot. Instead they are two of the participants of the show, one of them Horst one of the MVPs as an older man, playing a figure next to Kerstin, an older woman with schizophrenia playing Merkel, reducing German politics down to shouting figures whilst Horst thankfully points out the phrase "Hitler is a Nazi pig!" is one we need to say, or shout as he does, to remind outselves of that fact more often.

The film has tangents, from political shows to parodies of those old television advertisements that used to sell CD compilations, something I gained nostalgia for, as well as amusement that Germany had these ads too and that the fictional releases here have an exaggerated amount of discs per set, Horst's getting 555 discs for his music. It is, truthfully, somewhat of a fangless production in terms of what it is meant to be getting at. Ultimately, it's nice amused air to itself is sweet, as the denizens involved with this talent competition never seem mocked and insulted, even getting into fictitious scenarios such an abrupt (and frankly pointless) hostage sequence. There is however also a sense of the project in its entirety, if this footage compiled is the best of it, never really got to something meaningful, beyond the initial provocation of forcing the viewer to view people with disabilities. There are eventually quite a few tangents, and for everyone that is amusing, such as a home shopping spin-off, where a hand cranked mixed is proved useless, by the final act it starts to dwindle. When you get to the final candidates and a band, the talent show aesthetic is dropped in favour of a fictitious narrative, including one of the members Werner Brecht having a health scare, and a final performance with them as a free jazz band which never really gets to a point.

It evoked Young@Heart (2007), a quasi-documentary of a group of singers all over seventy, which was attempting to deal with issues of mortality and has vaguely clung to me, least for enforcing a fascinating with Talking Heads with a specific cover of Road to Nowhere, but was ultimately soon-to-be-forgotten work which never really stood out, wanting to warm fuzzy feeling of pleasantness which is always nice, but dissipates like a puddle in the sun quickly without substantial meaning added to it.. The only time the work gets mean to the competitors is the rejection of those who failed to get through to the next round, taken from the likes of American Idol, and even that here is softened considerably, even in one case with one competitor playfully wrestling the director Schlingensief on the ground restaged as a confrontation.  There is nearly a nod to the point presumed for this show, a jab at reality television and talent shows' cruelty as much as tackling disability, when a gong is used in a round to start the performances, evoking the immensely popular American show The Gong Show, but that never goes anywhere. Likely, with clear emotional sweetness, Schlingensief himself likely never wanted to be cruel to anyone who participated.

And they stand out, between Horst and Mario, the scene stealer with his singing voice and a surprising talent behind the drum kit, or Andrea a the AC/DC fan unlikely to work within a free jazz band, an entire cast of real people here full of charisma and energy. There is also something, even if obvious, pointed to reducing political parties, whether nationalist and anti-Semitic, or even a figure like Angela Merkel, into shouting caricatures, and it is poignant, especially to the references to Nazis, that it is disabled people playing them, an emphasis knowing that tragically the Nazis' view of disability were inhumane. Thankfully, they became the source for said disabled people long after they are gone to be taken the piss out of.

Sadly, Freakstars 3000 eventually loses momentum, losing focus among its various tangents and the emphasis on fake drama, even if the latter is a point to jab at reality television. Speaking as someone with autism, a learning disability, I say ahead of time I cannot speak with everyone who has a disability when it comes to gauging the film, but it definitely becomes a lighter hearted work which really never goes into true provocation. Von Trier's The Idiots, for example, was a fictional black comedy of people faking disability as a band of outsiders, likely to become offensive were it not, for me, a sense of it still being entirely on the side of disabled people. That film, part of von Trier's Dogma 95 era, really hit powerful points, especially when real people with disabilities are brought in, and those in these outsiders are forced to show either their empathy or their biases, and that it was a provocation of forcing one to think of severe disability and as a subversive nature to this within "normalised" society. Contrary, if this was considered in poor taste, it says a lot to how complacent German culture was at the time that Freakstars 3000 was mad. Milder forms of transgression, whilst useful to help built conversation, can however be much more focus than this, among many of this time for the director including a parody of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. It does feel tame, which could both be a sad state of myself to react this way, or truthfully that talking of disability requires more than a warm blanket sensation that this ultimately becomes, especially as coming from United Trash (1996), this is tonally a huge softening of the image of Christoph Schlingensief but also far less ambitious in terms of production and imagination in transgression.