Curious concealment methods on television – media

With the ability to have people on TV came the need to blur people on TV—the investigative reporter who should be no more well-known than her research; or all the petty criminals who only tell their stories under certain conditions. There are long-established ways of alienation in fictional and non-fictional television. But ZDF surprised this week with the use of strange rubber masks.

The art project

The theater director Susanne Kennedy has been very successful for years with the same idea: she puts actors in conservative outfits and hides them under wigs and custom-made rubber masks. They are embarrassed and depressed faces, motionless, listless, really without any joy. The voices also come from the tape, the real thing doesn’t stand a chance. With Kennedy, this is the method of showing man as trapped in man. ZDF is now showing itself to be similarly artistically ambitious. In the documentary Lidl: The insiders. Sales tricks at the discount giant reveal, well, insiders, how Lidl works. To make them anonymous, the four former employees have been laboriously transformed into soulless zombies with wigs and rigid rubber faces, and they now sneak through the aisles of a supermarket, aimlessly pushing shopping trolleys and touching bananas. Scary dolls on Valium just before the attack. “I know how Lidl ticks,” whispers one, of course via voiceover, and actually he says: “I know what you did last summer”. Christian Lutz

The Shadow Wall

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The shadow wall has often been used on television, but so humiliated as in the no-reality show hosted by Alida Kurras The confession – today I say everything! she never became again. Certain guests of the show had to sit behind the wall at first even if they didn’t think it was necessary – only to reveal themselves later and also obligatory, which in turn made all previous shadowy existence obsolete. “Recommended” is particularly important in this context the consequence veiled love, in which Khaled sits behind the wall of shadows, while his girlfriend, who, according to Pro Sieben, is “actually full of life” Yvonne, appears in front of it in a chador that is partly anonymous. Then Yvonne and Khaled argue. And it comes out: K. has a lover who is surprisingly pregnant, while Y. is only faking her pregnancy… – goodness gracious. Madness perhaps only had more methods when Hape Kerkeling disguised himself as Horst Brehm, a fake woman thugto mix up Peter Imhof’s talk on “I’m the biggest puke”. Incidentally, he also stepped out from behind the shadow wall – but mainly to pee on a bookshelf in front of everyone in the studio set. Cornelius Pollmer

The costume

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A glued-on nose, a fake mustache, a wig and a hidden camera in the buttonhole – bang, done – anonymous, investigative reporter. The idea: disguise to unmask. In Germany, Günter Wallraff carried this type of anonymization both to the most solemn heights and to its grave. When he disguised himself as “Hans Esser” in the 1970s, let’s call it: the editorial practices of the picture researched, it was revolutionary. A lot has happened since then, for some undercover research slipped Wallraff into other roles, for example in that of a ready-made roll baker who supplies a discounter. Unfortunately also in that of a Somali refugee, black facing included. Perhaps there are now more up-to-date disguises than the 79-year-old German, who, even without doing something bad, is no longer quite able to keep up with the discourse-moral ideas of the mid-twenties. But others, such as the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen with his fictional character Borat, have long since proven that the disguised and anonymous reporter still has enormous research power. Most recently, he (not) appeared as a lockdown roommate for QAnon followers. Very nice. John Korsche

The hoodie

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Hackers, whistleblowers and other people who know secrets or at least act secretive and often have something to do with the internet are preferably hidden in hoodies on television. The cotton hood is pulled down over the face, so far down that no face can be seen, only blackness. The hoodie is a modern cloak, anyone who puts it on can unpack – sometimes with a creepily distorted robot voice, always in a sterile, because anonymous room. The light in it is shadowy at best, bluish. The furnishings at most a leather couch or a sparse office chair. Those who wear hoods in German television documentaries have dark things to say. “The sport is totally hypocritical,” says a hoodie-covered athlete in the ARD documentary Secret matter doping – ice-cold fraud another voice saying in his undisclosed name. It’s getting freezing cold on the screen and you’re happy to have a cozy, warm hoodie in your closet at home. Aurelie von Blazekovic

The file folder

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Suppose someone had tricked others out of their money so creatively that even television wanted to report on the associated criminal case. What can help the accused against the many cameras is – even before the lawyer! – a despicable briefcase. As on Captain America’s shield, shame and disgrace, at least for the time being, shatter on the file folder held high. In court, a real folder is stylish and “appropriate for the occasion”, but you don’t always have one at hand, so you have to improvise and better improvise well. A baggy shopping bag works in an emergency, a shirt pulled over your nose will do, too. The combination of an infection protection mask and sunglasses could finally establish itself as the casual method of choice in the future. When in doubt, reaching for the defender’s toupee also helps. Sometimes he even offers his jacket spread out. But not every so circumspect lawyer later turns out to be Batman. Tim Feldman