Frame and Preparation
Silvester-Tuntenball
Conceptual Frames and Background
- Postwar Germany
- Gay liberation
- Gay identity
- Gay community
- Gay stereotypes
- Comics
- Humor
- Sex
Introduction
Ralf König (b. 1960) has dozens of comic books and collections, so there are many to choose from covering every aspect of gay identity and life in postwar and contemporary Germany. My personal favorite is Silvester-Tuntenball, which is set in the 1980s and deals with issues of masculinity vs. femininity, identity, sexual roles, respectability politics, and gay culture.
Preparation
- The comics are very colloquial in language and the humor often relies on gay idiom and puns as well as language games, so for each except chosen you should go over with students the difficult passages or vocabulary in order to understands puns or the personalities of the characters.
- The comics are often linguistically and visually graphic, including nudity, sex scenes, erections, explicit sexual language and acts, etc. Give your students a heads-up!
- For things that may seem outlandish to students unfamiliar with the gay world (such as “exotic” sexual acts or points of contention between the characters around sex, gender, and identity), you may need to explain to students their meaning within the gay community.
Text and Discussion
- What sorts of gender presentations do the characters show the reader? What does femininity and masculinity mean for the different characters?
- What is a “Tunte” and what the norms and worth assigned to it by different parts of the gay community?
- How is “gay gender” performed by the characters, and how does it constitute their identities?
- How do the sexual roles and practices of individuals inform their identities?
- What different forms of community are in present in the comic? What is the role of community?
- What does the form of the comic do for the story and the messages of the comics? How is this different than a novel or a movie? What can the comic do that other media cannot?
- Can you identify and describe the “gay language” spoken by the characters?