Teddie

J. Hoberman reviews Siegfried Kracauer’s American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture (eds. Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson):

American Writings includes the endearing “Talk With Teddie,” Kracauer’s notes following a 1960 visit with Theodor Adorno and his wife Gretel. According to Friedel (as Kracauer’s German friends called him), he jousted with Adorno over the logic of “Utopian thought” and, invoking Benjamin, told his friend that his vaunted dialectic was like a film consisting “exclusively of close-ups.” (Would that be Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc?) 

“You cannot upset Teddie,” Kracauer writes. “He grabs everything he is told, digests it and its consequences and then takes over in a spirit of superiority.” Still, he concludes, “in spite of its emptiness, Teddie’s output appears to be concrete and substantial. This semblance of fullness probably results from his aesthetic sensitivity.” Would it be unkind to make the same observation regarding Kracauer? 

 Oh, gosh. What are the chances I could get the Disney Channel to greenlight a series called Frankfurt Babies (or, duh, The Frankfurt Preschool), in which a bediapered and bebinkied Teddie and Friedel, together with their pals Wally B, Herbie, Horkie, and Habie, get themselves into (and out of) all modes of scrapes?