Where do I belong?

Introduction

In the 1980s Turkish-German cinema started to become an important impact on German national cinema. But sine the 1980s much has change in the cinematic representation of Turks, living in Germany. The former ‘mute Turk’ (Bhabha, 1990, pp. 315 - 317), the guest worker that was excluded from German society has become the multicultural second-generation immigrant that owns a German passport. Turkish-German filmmakers such as Fatih Akin, Thomas Aslan or Yüksel Yavuz deal with the topic of Turkish-German identity (Göktürk, 2002, pp. 253 – 255). Unfortunately, academics have not yet caught up with contemporary cinema: most critics still talk about the representation of immigrants as victims in western society. In Fatih Akin’s 2005 documentary Crossing The Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul he explores the music scene in Istanbul. He finds traditional arabesque music groups, but he also listens to Turkish hip-hop and modern electronic vibes. He discovers influences from the western and eastern culture, just by crossing the bridge. The image of crossing the cultures is very obvious: The Bosporus Bridge is spanning the Bosporus strait and thus connecting Europe and Asia. The bridge has become a metaphor for Turkish identity (Dönmez-Colin, 2008, p. 12), for Istanbul’s ‘in-betweenness’. Istanbul is West and East; it is Europe and Asia; it is open minded and strictly religious. Crossing the bridge from one bank to the other means going from Europe to Asia or the other way round. Turks are in-between the western and eastern culture and they are both. A stereotypical Turk from Istanbul does not exist: there are Anatolian women with headscarf just next to educated upper-class business women (Dönmez-Colin, 2008, p. 13). In Crossing The Bridge, Akin seems to celebrate Istanbul’s diversity and one wonders if contradictions can exist next to each other. Cultural extremes cause tensions. And these tensions are displayed in the Turkish-German characters of Akin’s feature films.

Fatih Akin deals with the issue of Turkish-German identity in his movies. To represent the being in-between Turkish and German culture of his characters, Akin uses the image of crossing between extremes. He crosscuts between two countries, Germany and Turkey. In Head-On (2004) the female character Sibel crosses between genders: she is a woman but acts like a man; she wears man’s clothes and behaves aggressively. The characters cross between languages: the Turkish-German protagonists speak both, Turkish and German, at the same time. Sometimes, they even switch into the other language within one sentence. This essay will analyse how Fatih Akin represents the character’s being in-between two cultures in his film Head-on and The Edge of Heaven (2007). At first, there will be a short part about Fatih Akin, then, I will give a short overview of both films, the issues and the characters. Finally, there will be an analysis of several sequences about the topics: countries, languages and gender.

In the 1960s, Western-Germany experienced the economic miracle. To serve the need of the economy, Germany signed contracts with several developing countries to allow foreign labours to come to Germany to work there. Mostly Turkish people from rural areas immigrated to Germany (Göktürk, 2002, p. 248). But what German politicians did not expect: the so-called ‘guest workers’ did not come alone and they did not go back. Instead, they brought their families and neighbours with them. Thus, they kept their values and traditions till now by founding clubs and churches to practice their own religion and culture. Today, 2.5 million Turkish people live in Germany (Burgerová, 2008, p. 97). Fatih Akin is a second-generation immigrant, born and raised in Altona, a multicultural part of Hamburg. His parents, strict Muslims, immigrated to Germany in the 1960s and worked as labours (Burgerová, 2008, p. 96). He experienced the live of a Turkish-German boy, living in the public western society of Hamburg and the private eastern culture at home. Akin is a member of Turkish diaspora in Germany. He is what Hamid Naficy calls an ‘accented filmmaker’ (Naficy, 2001, p. 4).

If the dominant cinema is considered universal and without accent, the films that diasporic and exilic subjects make are accented. ... The accent emanates not so much from the accented speech of the diegetic characters as from the displacement of the filmmakers and their artisan production models. (Naficy, 2001, p. 4)

Almost all of Akin’s feature films deal with the topic of identity. The characters search for their own identity in German and Turkish culture and society. Identity is the personal, religious, ethic or national ‘conception of the self in relation to others’ (Dönmez-Colin, 2008, p. 15). Akin’s main characters of the film discussed here are second generation Turks just as Akin himself. They are born in Germany or at least grown up there. For them, it is very hard to define their identity. They have the German citizenship, but Turkish families. Their parents are Muslims, but they get to know the Christian culture through their western friends at school, through German medias or in daily life. For Akin, his Turkish-German characters live in-between those cultures. Their identity is neither Turkish, nor German, but both.

Films

The films discussed here are Head-On and The Edge of Heaven, the first and second parts of Akin’s planned ‘love, death and devil’ trilogy (Jaafar, 2008, p. 9). Both films won several prizes at international film festivals. Head-On, his 2004 feature film that won at the Berlin film festival, is the story of two second-generation Turkish immigrants in Germany. The protagonists, Sibel and Cahit, are both German citizens with Turkish roots. The Edge of Heaven is Fatih Akin’s 2007 feature film about six people who are linked by fate. These films serve as good examples, because they expose clearly the issue of living in two different cultures: The films are shot in Germany (Hamburg, Bremen) and Turkey (Istanbul and the countryside), the protagonists are Turkish, German or Turkish-German, and they show cultural assets such as music, language, food and clothes. As I do not want to go beyond the scope of this essay, I will focus on the use of the language in the films, leaving apart other cultural specifics (music, food and clothes).

Crossing the countries

Head-On was shot in Istanbul and Hamburg. Akin introduces the cities very differently, but clichéd. The film opens and is interrupted by a traditional Turkish band playing at the Bosporus’ bank, in the background we see the famous Hagia Sofia, which served as a Christian church, a Muslim one and nowadays as a museum. The band is placed on traditional oriental carpeting and it seems that the band is going to tell us a fabulous love story in their songs (Burgerová, 2008, p. 96). This short scene is repeated throughout the whole film. It serves as a sequence that divides the film into chapters, but it also reminds the audience of the traditional Turkish part of the movie and the characters. Akin suddenly cuts to Hamburg and we see a dirty nightclub that is about to close and a guy, dressed like a derelict, collecting empty bottles. After seeing the nice traditional music group and expecting a Turkish love story, it is a shock for the audience to see this dirty part of Hamburg now. The Edge of Heaven also begins with a sequence in Turkey and again, Akin uses traditional music to bring the audience into the atmosphere of the country and its culture. Then an intertitle ‘Yeter’s death’ appears and Akin cuts to Bremen. He introduces the locations very stereotypically: In Turkey, we see empty streets and listen to arabesque music. The atmosphere is calm and relaxing. In Bremen he shows us short takes of certain places: the famous ‘Bremer Stadtmusikanten’ (music group of animals), the town landmark, typical buildings and cluttered streets. There is a demonstration and musicians walking through the streets, playing songs of German folk festivals. In Bremen, Akin cuts very fast from one shot to another; in Turkey, he uses long takes. During the Bremen street festival, Akin uses hand held cameras; in Turkey he uses static ones. In doing so, Akin creates opposed atmospheres in Germany and Turkey. Hamid Naficy calls this ‘open and closed space-time (chronotopical) representations’ (Naficy, 2001, p. 5).

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