Oldal 414 [414]
412
Christoph Lorke
cooperation between the Ministries of the Interior, the judiciary, and media profes¬
sionals could be observed. Ihe result was an increasing amount of legal propaganda:
in daily newspapers, 3,000 to 4,000 law reports were published per year. Audio broad¬
casts and television detective shows completed those efforts (Helwig 1985: 144).
‘The role of the media was to establish and transmit a consistent image of un¬
worthy, lazy, and uncultivated antisocial individuals. The perpetrators presented in
the media possessed only limited verbal skills, and they had certain job profiles that
situated the characters at the lowest rung of the social structure. Backgrounds and
motivations that could lead to juvenile delinquency were outlined frequenty: bro¬
ken families, bad role models, and an ethos and morality of “non-socialist origin”.
Moreover, the overconsumption of alcohol played a key role in the construction of
social otherness. The pub as a meeting point or bacchanalian house parties symbol¬
ized undisciplined, unrestrained behaviour (Korzilius 2005; Lindenberger 2008;
for social dissent in GDR detective series, see Lorke 2017).
The presence of social “parasites” has also been a very important feature of
the Soviet and Bulgarian media landscape since the 1960s. In press articles, social
and juridical documentaries, or crime movies, hooligans Auliganstvo (hooligan¬
ism’), tunejadstwo (‘social scroungers’) or other forms of “antisocial” behaviour pat¬
terns allegorized ex negativo socially undesired and inacceptable conduct (Ustinov
& Gledov 1973; Hofmann 2016; Miteva & Giurova 1987). While the textual
descriptions of these forms of social otherness were strikingly similar, the “other
side” was visually almost absent. Thus, it can be stated that certain “filthy rites”
(Greenblatt 1990: 59-79) were, on the one hand, the permanent presence of the
“social outsider”, who represented individual violations of the “socialist norm” and,
on the other hand, were to be kept more or less hidden from the public sphere.
Presumably, this contrast was intended to illustrate and subsequently mobilize the
audience to believe that crime and social problems are societal atavisms, exceptions,
and absolutely “foreign” to socialist nature.
Conclusion
Even in the “advanced socialist societies”, noteworthy forms of marginalized groups
tended to survive. They were closely associated with their work and with the rung
(and the possibility to take part) in the process of social production and reproduc¬
tion. In addition to the entertainment aspect of mass media, they also contained
meaningful symbolic material. From the perspective of the state and party lead¬
ers they had to fulfil a “social mission” by communicating shared socialist values,
norms, and habits. Based on the aforementioned observations, the constant circula¬
tion of certain social images in mass media was as a “transmission belt” and thus
could be regarded as a microcosm of the production and reproduction of social
inequality. Identity-forming images like those described in this chapter symbol¬
ized the “ideal” and politically desired social order. Mass media communicated the
preferred patterns of individual behaviour and functioned as socially authoritative