German Narratives in International Television Format Adaptations: Comparing Du und Ich (ZDF 2002) with Un Gars, Une Fille (Quebec 1997-2002)

This article cross-culturally compares the German remake of the Quebec sketch comedy/sitcom series Un Gars, Une Fille ("A Guy and a Girl") the the original version by correlating quantitative data derived from the Adobe Premiere Pro annotation function on the duration of narrative segments and incorporating these data into a an interpretation of family conflict management strategies, gender roles and conflicts between the mother-in-law and the the young 30-something couple as protagonists. The article examines a scene in which the daughter confronts her mother's trauma-inducing behavior on her as a young girl, and the boyfriend confronts the mother-in-law's animosity toward him. The article delves into the background for the transactional, belligerent, and obligational thinking behind the family relationship of the German couple compared to the more affectionate and conciliatory relationship in all other versions. The investigation postulates that the family relationships in the German context must be seen within the context of the Inability to Mourn, a major psychological study by Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich in the 1960s of politically salient post World War 2 trauma among a large variety of social groups in West (and East) Germany. The emotional repression as a result of various forms of guilt, which never explicitly surfaced in the confrontations, was passed down from generation to generation, while this same, or similar social psychological contexts was seemingly not a factor in other countries, many of which had also experienced repressive dictatorships during World War 2 and afterwards, in which adaptations of these series were produced. Further collaborative investigations would be required to uncover the reasons for this discrepancy.