Kim Petras, Brutalism and “Paul and Paula”: Why Buildings, Identity and Loss Sometimes Tell the Same Story.
During Corona I moved into the small apartment where I am now sitting and writing this. Most things were closed back then, including universities of course. Not far from my apartment is a university building that I used to sneak around because it was beautiful. It’s big, expansive and colorful, the colors fit together perfectly, I like the shapes, as well as the angles and perspectives and stuff. As I found out later, not everyone thinks so; many completely idiotic people even claim that the building is ugly. In any case, I shuffled my hooves until I was finally allowed to enter the brutalist super building and it turned out that the inside is also really cool and since then I’ve been there more often and taken photos for what it’s worth.
However, the visits become more melancholic every time, because they want to tear it down, have even started to do so, and when I see the part with the construction site, I quickly look away.
Well, luckily there is a song for every situation and my favorite pop star Kim Petras went through something similar and recently released this banger here.
The text is probably cringeworthy:
There was a building there and it was brutalist
And it was beautiful, it was my favorite
But it’s not there anymore, because they tore it down
They really ruined it
Howl. However, there is something else hidden between other lines that is not really sad at all, and that is about Petra’s transition, which she sings so clearly about here for the first time. The grief she has for the building is similar in words to what people say to her about the changes she has had made to her body.
In the song she also sings:
My dad’s an architect, he used to show me it
When he would drive me to the psychiatry
Again and again, a man didn’t come back
I guess I ruined it
In an interview with The Fader, she explains that her father showed her the building when he drove her to Hamburg for her hormone therapy. The two loved it and when it was torn down they said it ruined the whole town. And she puts it in the context of her transition: “I have people saying I ruined my body and I ruined my life. They don’t know me at all. They don’t know my history, that I went to so many psychologists and so many doctors […]. It saved my life and then there’s people who are like, ‘This saved your life, but you ruined everything’.”
And further: “I felt like my dad and I was guilty [of that with the apartment]. There’s people living in this modern apartment building now probably like, ‘We love it here,’ and we’re like, ‘Nah, it’s basic and y’all ruined it.’ I thought it was interesting to compare the two.”
Yes, it should always be about people’s needs and what they want. The body you live in, the building you live in. Of course it doesn’t take away the pain of the end of MY building, because in its place there will just be an ugly, modern, prison-like building, with white and gray and too much glass, you know it. Maybe we could just have all the buildings we want that different people find beautiful if we had more space, for example if we could get rid of, say, those stupid cars. But Hamburg and Cologne will certainly not lead the way in this regard.
So off to the East!
Coincidentally, the 1973 film “The Legend of Paul and Paula” takes place exactly there, in (East) Berlin. Ruined buildings also play a big role there – “they tore it down”. On camera!
Between the ruins of old houses, everyday work life and lurking Stasi people, single parent Paula (Angelica Domröse, who unfortunately passed away three weeks ago) is looking for true love and of course only meets stupid idiots. Paul (Winfried Glatzeder, the East German Adam Driver) isn’t any better, but Paula still wants to love him badly. She wants kitsch, romance, love and life and it’s all very sweet. When I looked again (currently in the ARD media library) I thought that the buildings could perhaps also represent the people depicted, in the Petrasian sense.
Paula is the cheerful but broken Berlin. Of course it’s not really broken, or it shouldn’t be, but that’s how it’s seen. Our gaze creates people and buildings and sometimes even decides about them. Paula lives in an old building, Paula should have a husband, Paula should finally pull herself together, Paula feels obliged to her ancestors, whom she sees again and again, Paula longs for all sorts of things, Paula is not fit enough to have another child, her doctor explicitly warns her, Paula should stop dreaming. Paul is new building, Paul is briefcase, Paul is right, Paul has arrived, Paul is taking care of his child, Paul is not leaving his wife who doesn’t love him, Paul is neat, Paul is probably with the Stasi, Paul can’t be relaxed. In the end (SPOILER) Paula is no more, but Paul takes over Paula’s life – he is with the children, he lives in her apartment, he suddenly seems soft. They ruined it, they tore it downbut maybe not.
We make buildings. We are buildings.
Yesterday another message came in that kept me on the topic and I don’t really know how much Catholicism actually is in pop culture (a connection might be: Religious fanatics demonize trans people, brutalism and the atheistic East, but it’s a stretch…)
“COLOGUE CATHEDRAL COSTS 12 EURO ENTRY FROM JULY”.
I was there recently and it didn’t go unnoticed that it was written there several times that all people are allowed to go to church and be accepted there and all that stuff. Charity is the unique selling point of these people, I thought. The trademark. The claim to fame. The signature move. But above all they probably want to keep money and poor people away, just like the operators of train stations, S-Bahn trains and other public places that should actually belong to everyone. Of course the cathedral doesn’t belong to us anyway. Unless we occupy him. Or do we tear him down? So many design options!