Page - 66 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

66 siting futurity Planet Ottakring By contrast, Planet Ottakring, which saw its Austrian cinematic release on August 14, 2015, tackles not only the Balkan presence in the city but also the German one, and offers a pedagogically savvy introduction into the workings of local economies worthy of its Ottakring setting.8 Described in the screenplay as a “so- zialromantische Gaunerkomödie” [“a socially aware romantic comedy about small-time criminals”], Planet Ottakring opens in the Ottakring cemetery with the burial of the district’s god- father, Disko. Not only does this enable “Disko ist tot” [“Disko is dead”] graffiti,9 it also hearkens back to “likely the largest and most impressive mass demonstration Vienna had ever known” (Maderthaner and Musner 2008, 125): the funeral on February 16, 1913 of Franz Schuhmeier. Schuhmeier was the most popular Viennese Social Democrat at the turn of the century, a mass politician of a new style, talented both as a populist agitator and as persuasive public speaker, a child of the suburb who had risen from the poorest conditions to the highest political functions. He had succeeded like no one before him in leading the politically and socially deprived of the suburbs from their isolation into an organized and politi- cally conscious mass movement that gave them a new iden- tity. (ibid., 127) Setting the scene by reminding viewers of a key event in the making of Viennese proletarian suburban culture, the film thus issues a clarion call to think of how Ottakring had once served as both site of and “screen for the display of a political counter- culture” that, after the First World War, with the achievement of suffrage, resulted in Red Vienna (ibid.). 8 The same is also true of the TV series CopStories, and particularly the “Schmähstad” episode directed by Riebl and shown on ORF1 on August 28, 2018. 9 One notes that the film’s playful postmodern approach to comedy further differentiates it from the culture-clash comedies.