Watching The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: Surveillance, Audiences, and the Moral Vacuum of the Media Spectacle in 1970s West Germany Anonymous College

Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message” (McLuhan)and this is true of films as well as any other forms of media. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, is a film that uses the medium of film to comment on media in general. That is, it utilizes its story about the media frenzy surrounding a woman’s fall from grace, as well as its format as an example of film to comment on the relationship between media and human beings in 1970s Germany. Specifically, the film seems to argue that media spectacle in 1970s West Germany and the surveillance society that exists there are dehumanizing and distracting phenomenon, ones that keep people’s attention away from real social problems such as the way the media shapes politics and influences personal choice. This essay uses two scenes from the film, as well as manifold secondary sources, to examine how the surveillance society contributes to dehumanization by creating distance between human beings. Reminders of cameras and people watching each other in private moments in the film represent a critique of the media and surveillance society; particularly useful are formal scene analyses to ultimately argue that the film’s style,...