“Nicht so schnell!”: Female Sexuality and Socialism in DEFA Youth Films

Faye Stewart

Female sexuality in DEFA youth films comprises the two distinct yet intertwined paradigms of purity and promiscuity. In this article, I examine these two archetypes in conjunction in order to reveal their ideological significance within wider national and transnational discourses during the Cold War. My study uncovers the persistence and interdependence of the young female prude and slut in five popular DEFA youth films produced between the 1960s and the late 1980s: Joachim Hasler’s Heißer Sommer (1967); Bernhard Stephan’s Für die Liebe noch zu mager? (1973); and Herrmann Zschoche’s Sieben Sommersprossen (1978), Und nächstes Jahr am Balaton (1980), and Grüne Hochzeit (1988). In these films, the virginity and purity of young female characters are consistently aligned with socialist values and collectivism, while permissiveness or sexual experience suggest bourgeois influences and individualism.

21

2021

en