Young Americans do Berlin

3rd September. Yup, everyone who thinks they are unique, gifted and rebellious wants to be a Berliner for a bit but few desire Berlin as much as the USA youth. A suffocating parent-offspring relationship this USA-Europe rivalry, each trying to insert their pimped-up ego into the other’s fantasies.Berlin gives the American so much more than European capital credentials – it reflects back on her the golden, righteous light saviours and victors bask in. Shamed, guilty Berlin reminds the world in lurid sycophantic tones that America has freed Germany, Europe and the cosmos of tyranny. At least twice. This infantile version of modern history is enough to fill the heart of any patriotic American with pride but on top of it, in Berlin she can find an American art museum, a JFK museum, a wall museum, the wall itself, and an interminable scattering of commemorative plaques, statues, coats of arms, bars, street names and baby names (probably) praising the greatness of the USA. The young Americans are thus in a privileged position to swallow up Berlin into their fantasies and gyrate around the locations where JFK had a Pilsner enema, Iggy Pop the hiccups and Warhol a currywurst. Berlin is more than up for it. The – unintentional - brilliance of “Lost in Translation” is that it documents the protagonist’ efforts to ‘Americanize’ Tokyo. His difficulty is not in understanding Japan, he is utterly uninterested in that and understanding is dangerous for a rudimentary subject like him. His difficulty is that most of the time Tokyo resists being made consumable. Despite his efforts, this hero cannot become the curator, judge and the star of that place; he is used as a stage prop by the place rather than the either way around, as is habitual. He keeps on trying though, in increasingly pathetic outbursts. Unfortunately, the film is usually misrepresented as yet another proof of how utterly and irreducibly ‘different’ and ‘incomprehensible’ Japan is, a tactic used by the Westerner whenever rejected by her object of desire.

Now, if you're not from the USA don't smile smugly! Consuming people and places is a colonial tactic perfected and systematically used by all travelling Westerners, from backpackers to holiday-packers. As any decent colonial tactic must, it allows over-consumption without risk of indigestion. Did you ever notice how we describe our travels using a term that also signifies sexual possession: "I 'did' South America"?