This Ain't California

By Carsten Riepel & Borys Zil´berman

The documentary movie “This Ain`t California shows the friendship between three young teenagers that are part of the skateboard subculture movement in the GDR in 1981 and gives excess into the fact that there has been certain niches in which for a period of time also the Californian dream, and that promise, that is carried with it, came true to a certain extent for the adolescents which were part of that Skateboard subculture. The waves of that dream even made it into the minds of the young adults despite the constant control from the authority of the cruel political system and that of the state security (Stasi), which wanted to extinguish, uproot or block every seed of otherness or movement  against the GDR. Even this very system could not withstand that golden bright shimmering Californian Dream.

A group of teenagers driving over the Alexanderplatz 1981 in Berlin, where you could not even buy a Banana or and Orange or a 501 Jeans in a common supermarket, where a skateboard was indeed something very different. This difference was the elixir to overcome this dullness and boredom the young adults were confronted with in a bleak communistic daily life. This was also a vivid and big contrast to the young adults, which joined the FDJ (Free German Youth) which were trained to strengthen the communistic GDR and fight against the imperialistic system e.g. of the BRD. Skateboarding was definitely the sensation in those days and showed that there was also something else besides communism and this had given a certain image of freedom, fascination and otherness to the teenagers. It is also important to take into consideration that this otherness, was not easy to live out under the GDR regime because of the state security. The state security had its constant supervision, over everything, which was not in line with the ideological concept of the state system, and if something did not stood in conformity with it, you were faced with severe consequences such as loosing your work or educational opportunities .

What the three could not recognize is that not everything what glitters is gold. This means that the California Dream didn´t exist for everyone, though after years of hearing about sunshine, beaches, mountains and movie stars can´t help, but inspire them at first to turn their own life into something greater than just communism, but are not able to see the other side of it, because of their imprisonment in the GDR . Californian´s were not under the rule of dictatorship., like the teenagers in our film, but like in every other country young adults are facing their problems too, especially immigrants. If we look back in history, California was the last hope for many immigrants who came there from all over the world, but for many of them their dreams were not fulfilled. If we take for example the Chinese, then we see it very clearly. Their immigration began during the Gold Rush and continued with large labor projects, such as the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad to San Francisco. Already to this point of time one can see how the Chinese were abused, though tolerated because they provided essential tax revenue, which helped to fill the fiscal gap of California, and were very cheap laborers. By 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. Many families were faced with a dilemma if they should stay in the USA alone and face discrimination or go back to China to their families. This was the breakdown of the California Dream for them. As described in the Sui Sin Far story fathers and mothers were ready to give up everything they possessed in order to bring their child back because they believed in the US government system. Lae Choo and Hom Hing believed so deeply in this system that they gave their Little One into the hands of officers thinking that he will be back tomorrow.

Another example of exclusion happened with American Japanese people who were sent to camps during the WWII after the Pearl Harbor Attack (7th December 1941) although those Japanese people lived in California already for decades. Many families  structures split up during those camp internments, which was absolute against their traditional customs and had its affect for generations to come as well. The whole situation is very well described in the book from Jeanne Wakatsuki and John D. Houston “Farewell to Manzanar”. Manzanar was one of ten camps where over 110.000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned. The prisoners lived there very poorly and many died in those camps because of the bad conditions there.

All in all, we can see that the life in California, as history shows, was, and is not that nice and wonderful and free even if one thinks of it while being far away in the GDR.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said in his famous work called “The Little Prince”: “No one is ever satisfied where he is”. This means that people in GDR wanted to seek for happiness, as in the film “This ain´t California”, because they were so maltreated by the government. The fact is that no matter where you live, you want to see other countries and experience different things because you think that there is a better life forgetting that every country has its own problems.

But the movie “This ain´t no California depicts very well how young adults escape a cruel daily communistic routine and transform their life’s into their own Californian Dream.