Television – Stefan Raab: Exposure as a ratings hit

The humor of the 90s was cruel. Bully Herbig’s show “Bullyparade” had great success with sketches that presented the characters from the Winnetou films and the Starship Enterprise as stereotypical gay joke characters. And Bastian Pastewka also had great success as the stupid gay parody Brisko Schneider in the “Wochenshow”.

Comedians like Erkan and Stefan found it funny to portray young people of Turkish origin as stupid idiots and to imitate their slang. Christian Ulmen attacked unsuspecting people in German pedestrian zones and at festivals for “MTV-Alarm” in order to fool them. And in his show, Harald Schmidt threw outrageous things at his guests’ ears, making it so clattering. So trampling on minorities, surprised show guests or just passers-by was the order of the day.

Expose was a ratings hit. The 70s were in, perhaps also because the somewhat outdated sex films of this decade were yodeling out of lederhosen for the first time on the new private television at night. The Tübingen singer Dieter Thomas Kuhn tried – ironically, of course – to revive the German hit, but only produced zombie party versions of the originals. Nineties humor, on the other hand, was a great liberation. Finally everything could be said! Absolutely everything that mom, dad and Bavarian Radio had previously banned. And that’s exactly why it worked so well.

But it was also an unleashing of what could be said. At first under the guise of it being fun. But when there was the first protest by the Political Correctness Movement (PC) in the 1990s, fun quickly turned serious: “You’ll probably still be allowed to say that!” was the slogan of the hour. The cruel humor of the 90s worked so well primarily because it said things that, fortunately, could only be said at the war veterans’ regular table. What came across as young, fresh and new freedom was, at its core, a deeply conservative humor that defended an old-fashioned normality in a fun and therefore all the more effective way. And it is this normality that is being seriously defended against “wokeness” today.

And then of course there was Stefan Raab, who summarized all the atrocities listed in his shows “Vivasion”, “TV Total” and “Schlag den Raab”. A smug, permanent grinning guy whose humor was a mixture of arrogance, overwhelmingness and unconditional self-promotion at the expense of weaker people.

Sometime in the 90s, the rather washed-up pop singer Rex Gildo sat next to Stefan Raab on his show “Vivasion” on music television at the time. Like all guests at “Vivasion,” he had to sit on a small stool from which Raab could look down on him. Towards the end of the show, Raab pulled out the CD of Rex Gildo’s new album, stood up, stuck the CD in the front of his pants, swung his hips and groaned. Gildo remarked in passing that there was a lot of space for the CD up front, perhaps to get back at Raab for some of his mean comments. As soon as the remark was uttered, Raab’s permanent smug grin faded and gave way to genuine annoyance for a moment. Someone had questioned his heterosexual machismo!

He stared at Gildo and a devastating blow was imminent. “If I had put the CD where it belonged,” he snapped, “this would have been pretty disgusting.” Rex Gildo was speechless at this blatant contempt. It wasn’t a scandal back then. It was just fun. Gildo didn’t care about the irony of the 90s, he took his art seriously. But taking Schlager seriously had become almost impossible in the Dieter Thomas Kuhn climate. He also carefully tried to hide his homosexuality. He died in 1999. Lonely and alone.

By the way, Stefan Raab’s homophobia is legendary. For “Raab in Danger,” he visited a gay and lesbian soccer tournament to “make jokes” about it. He came out with one homophobic “banger” after another. Among other things, he asked two paramedics standing on the sidelines whether the players had suffered a “rosette strain.”

Unfortunately, Raab is now back with his RTL+ show “You don’t get the million here”. A souped-up copy of his old shows. But the 90s humor is no longer well received. Viewer numbers are falling. Raab’s second mainstay should now be a return to the Eurovision Song Contest. Raab’s commitment to the ESC began in the 90s with his penetrating bullying of the then omnipresent ESC composer Ralph Siegel.

Siegel had written songs for numerous ESC artists, including Nicole’s winning title “A Little Peace” from 1982. But in the 90s, nothing really worked for this pop hero anymore. In 1998, Raab produced and composed the song “Guildo has you love” for the hit oddity Guildo Horn. It was enough for 7th place. In 2000, Raab took part himself. His song was called “Wadde hadde dudde da?”, and somehow he hit the nerve of the times with this nonsense. He came in 5th place. And in 2010, Raab’s creature Lena Meyer-Landrut won with the Stampf song “Satellite”.

Together with ARD and his house station RTL, he wants to build on these glorious times. But the ESC is no longer what it was in 2010. The Norwegian participant Alexander Rybak described the ESC as the “largest gay pride parade in the world” back in 2009. In 1998, a trans person, the Israeli Dana International, won and Raab, Guildo Horn, was relegated to second place. The Austrian Conchita Wurst won in 2014 and the singer Netta in 2018. And the non-binary Swiss Nemo won the last competition. In addition, the ESC is becoming increasingly politicized, even though that should not be the case according to its statutes. The ESC 2024 in Malmö reflected the torn European and global attitude to the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Boss Matter ESC 2025 – Who Sings for Germany?” is the narcissistic title of the show with which ARD, RTL and Stefan Raab are looking for a participant. You can guess three times who is meant by “boss”. “The aim of the collaboration is to give the German ESC preliminary decision more power again,” says the ESC’s official statement. Whether Raab is this force remains to be seen. Maybe he’s also the new Ralph Siegel, who, like Raab now and back then, just didn’t want to stop, even though his songs were simply out of date.