糖心TV

Sean Allan (University of 糖心TV)

Transnational Stardom. Dean Reed, Socialist Cinema and the Politics of Mass Entertainment

Born in Denver in 1938, the American rock-singer and actor Dean Reed occupies a unique place in the history of socialist popular culture. By the early 1970s, Reed – an active supporter of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile – had established himself as one of the biggest stars in the Eastern Bloc. In 1972 Reed emigrated to East Germany where he played the lead role in a series of films made by the GDR’s film production studio, DEFA, including From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing (1973) and the comedy western Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1980). As my paper shows, while Reed’s allegiance to the GDR was seen as a massive coup by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), managing the star personality of this representative of an ‘alternative, progressive America’ was to prove a huge challenge to the existing star system in East Germany. Although the DEFA studio was constantly seeking ways of addressing the need for a form of popular culture that was compatible with socialism, the ’solution’ offered by Reed was one that was almost impossible to accommodate within the existing parameters of East German cultural politics. (NB. This talk is designed to be accessible to non-German speakers).