Origins, commodification, and significance of Berlin's Love Parade

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Cultural Studies - European Studies, grade: 1 (A), University of Leeds (Cultural Studies department), course: Carnival, language: English, abstract: Carnival, as an ideal type identified by Cohen, 'is a season of festive popular events that are characterized by revelry, playfulness, and overindulgence in eating, drinking and sex, culminating in one or two days of massive street processions by masqued individuals and groups, playing or dancing ecstatically to the accompaniment of loud and cheerful music. Also, every carnival is a place in which 'hegemonous and opposition political formations [...], alliance and enmity, consensus and conflict are expressed like a grand joking relationship'. In the light of this it is worthwhile to examine contemporary carnivals as movements of cultural production and places of cultural policy and contestation. In this case study the author focusses on a very recent offspring of carnival culture, which has in a short period of time outnumbered the traditional carnivals in London's Notting Hill district and Trinidad, and has at one time been the biggest street dance event and youth meeting in the world. The Love Parade in Berlin, initially held as a birthday party for a Berlin DJ, Dr Motte (Mathias Roeingh) in 1989, has developed from an underground electronic dance music event (or better demonstration) and the voice of the (German) techno and rave scene, often referred to as 'Generation X', to a mass event with 1.5 million visitors in 1999. Today, the parade, has been turned into a 'global brand' with offshoot events held in Vienna, Mexico City, Leeds, Tel Aviv and plans for parades in Cape Town and Hong Kong. In the following the origins, the increasing commodification and the cultural as well as political significance of the Love Parade are being examined.