“BABYLON BERLIN” AND THE “REMAKE” OF AN ERA
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ABSTRACT
The German series “Babylon Berlin” is probably the most re- nowned television production in the second decade of 21st century after “Game of Thrones”. It is a typical example of modern “complex” television storytelling and at the same time offers perfect material for studying the “remake” in a broad cultural context. The first stage of the “remake” is the adaptation of Volker Kutscher’s novels about a Berlin police in- spector. The author himself admits that he was inspired not so much by literature as by television and cinema. The main aspect in the practice of “remake”, introduced by the series, is not just the transformation of the literary plot and characters into a new medium, a completely new reproduction of the world from which they are generated and in which they are functioning. This is the twilight of the Weimar Republic, marked by social unrest, political and economic cata- clysms. At that time, Berlin is the most Americanized European metropo- lis, where heroin is sold in pharmacies, prostitution is a mass profession, 259and the underworld serves high politics.
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