At the end of 2018, at the theatrical release of the film “The Grinch”, Otto Waalkes (75) said in an interview about his very special brute humor, which once arose in the wake of the 1968 movement:
“Now the cultivated nonsense became socially acceptable. It was about surprising internal jokes, rich rhymes, style parodies, intonations – the final punch line was sometimes denied. That was new and unusual.”
And further: “For Germany, I developed it in cooperation with three authors from the New Frankfurt School, we wrote show programs and screenplays together. (…) It was my part to make these elitist things generally understandable. Sometimes it wasn’t that easy, but it usually worked.
The West German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR) in Cologne was once a hotbed of progressive show programs as part of the social changes brought about by the student movement. Shows like “Klimbim” (director: Michael Pfleghar) with former sex starlet Ingrid Steeger (“Schoolgirl Report”). The original sitcom “A Heart and a Soul” (with “Disgust Alfred”) or the pop format “Bananas” stood for a certain crazyness in public television.
In the meantime, the WDR is obviously embarrassed by its own tradition and that of other broadcasters such as NDR or Radio Bremen.
As is well known, the broadcaster provided the 1973 and 1974 editions of the “Otto Show” with “warning notices” in the digital playout in the media library.
It reads: “The following program is shown in its original form as part of television history. It contains passages that are now considered discriminatory.”
The “image” asked which passages are meant exactly, but received no answer. So it was speculated that it was about Otto’s “ancient Chinese love song”.
There is a (silly) punch line in it: “The piece is called Ping-Pong. The woman embodies the cosmic principle of the ping, while the man takes hold of the pong.”
A typical joke of the Otto School, which was once laughed at not only in the schoolyards of the old Federal Republic. The WDR now considers this humor to be dangerous.
When asked about this, Otto Waalkes said: “That was half a century ago. Moral concepts have changed since 1970, each era has its own taboos. There’s always something offensive about comedy because it violates everyday rules. I was a student at the time and I made jokes that particularly offended authorities.”
The eternal East Frisian comments on the changing times and tastes: “Other people laughed, around 30 or 40 million viewers. So we can’t warn enough about comedy. The ‘Otto Show’ in particular can lead to uncontrollable outbursts of laughter and sore muscles in consumers.”
His East Frisian conclusion: “As if there were no other problems than old Otto jokes.”