Praise and scolding (English) - Blog von v. bernard

Veronika Bernard

Praise and scolding.

What the German and Austrian response to German-Turkish film and Turkish literature and film reveals on European Self-perception

(literature: Orhan Pamuk; film: „Gegen die Wand“/ “Against the Wall”, „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“/ “Valley of Wolves – Iraq”)

Abstract

What makes a film by a director of Turkish origin and living in Germany win German and European awards? What makes a Turkish writer be awarded the „Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels“ by the German Booksellers association in 2005 and the Nobelprize for Literature in 2006? What makes parts of the German and Austrian press and politics reject a Turkish film as anti-western and anti-semitic? Which are the motivations behind those decisions? Most certainly they have to do with promoting European self-perceived identity and with European perception of Turkish culture.

When Fatih Akın’s film „Gegen die Wand“ was released some years ago it was advertised by German and Austrian media as a film on 2^nd generation Turkish migrants in Germany. When Orhan Pamuk was nominated to be awarded the „Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels“ and the Nobelprize for Literature it was pointed out that his cultural and also his political engagement as a writer was the reason for this. When the Turkish film „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“ started to be on in German and Austrian cinemas in 2006 shortly after the Muhammed caricatures affair had slightly cooled down the response it received by the press and among politicians was widely negative. Comments ran from anti-semitic and anti-western to an „I-ask-cinema-runners-to-stay-away-from-showing-the-film“ by the Bavarian federal prime minister Edmund Stoiber.

The paper will analyse the press coverage and the statements by politicians on the films and on Orhan Pamuk’s writings in an attempt to isolate those factors which led to the particular responses in a first step. In a second step the paper will analyse the films and Pamuk’s writings for its perception-in return of European Self-perception and for its Self-perception of Turkish (and Eastern) culture. In a third step the paper will contrast the findings in terms of a cultural interperception.

Veronika Bernard

Praise and scolding.

What the German and Austrian response to German-Turkish film and Turkish literature and film reveals on European Self-perception

(literature: Orhan Pamuk; film: „Gegen die Wand“/ “Against the Wall”, „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“/ “Valley of Wolves – Iraq”)

a paper to be presented at “Europe and its Others. An International Conference at the University of St. Andrews”, July 6-8, 2007

What makes Fatih Akın’s film „Gegen die Wand“ win German and European awards? What makes Orhan Pamuk be awarded the „Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels“ by the German Booksellers association in 2005 and the Nobelprize for Literature in 2006? What makes parts of the German and Austrian press reject the Turkish film „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“ as anti-American and anti-semitic when it started to be on in German and Austrian cinemas in 2006 shortly after the Muhammed caricatures affair had slightly cooled down and what makes the Bavarian federal prime minister Edmund Stoiber release an „I-ask-cinema-runners-to-stay-away-from-showing-this-film“ press statement?¹ Most certainly all this has to do with promoting European self-perceived identity and with European perception of Turkish and Eastern culture.

There is reason to argue that the comments on the films and the writer mentioned above have in common – apart from all their differences concerning contents and diction – that they evaluate their objects according to some underlying, hence, implicit understanding of what Europe stands for, or rather, is said to stand for. Actually the latter phrase is more to the point as we are talking about expressions of European self-perception – and self-perception does not reflect anything but the way you prefer to see yourself and how you prefer to present yourself to others. The standards deriving from European self-perception are neither discussed explicitly in the quotations nor in the complete articles and statements quoted from. They are as implicitly taken for granted as are the aspects of European self-perception.

Still, the keywords to be found in the pieces of press coverage and in the politicians’ statements referring to the films and the writer discussed in this paper unmistakingly hint at the issues at stake. Racist, nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-western, anti-Christian, anti-American, promoting cultural tension and conflict are the recurring terms used in the scolding put on the Turkish film “Kurtlar Vadisi – Irak”. Open-minded, presenting a self-determined female life, liberal, politically outspoken and upright, anti-nationalist, pro-minority, secular, culturally integrating and intercultural are those recurring terms to be found in the texts and statements praising the messages of the film “Gegen die Wand” and Orhan Pamuk’s writings as well as the director of the film and the writer himself.

If we look at what is provided as evidence with those descriptive terms we will find that the film “Kurtlar vadisi – Irak” is labelled racist because it is said to be anti-Kurdish – the Kurds are shown to be cooperating with the villain – and anti-Semitic, the latter mainly because the film shows a doctor, who turns out to be a Jew in the course of the film, working at the Bagdad prison of Abu Ghraib and taking kidneys from people to send those kidneys to Tel Aviv (two boxes), New York (one box), and London (one box), and because a member of the Turkish production team is known for his theory of a Jewish infiltration of Turkey². The film is said to be anti-western because the arch-villain is a U.S. American. It is said to be anti-Christian because the villain is a Christian who is shown to follow his personal agenda of being sent by god to free the people of the world. In the film the villain’s Christian belonging can be guessed from the fact that he has a reproduction of da Vinci’s “Last Supper” on the wall of his office where he also prays in a Christian manner. Evidence why exactly the film is seen as nationalist is not given explicitly. Still, it is mentioned that members of the Turkish government were officially present at the opening night ceremony, that they praised the film and that the prime minister’s wife called the film “very nice” after having been sitting next to the most prominent actor staring in the film all night². All the aspects mentioned above, however, are used to argue that the film is promoting cultural unrest and conflict between Orient and Occident which are equated with Islam and Christianity and East and West. Only single voices, most of them professional film critics and one German politician, have taken more differentiating views on the film.³

The film “Gegen die Wand” by Fatih Akın, a director of second generation Turkish origin, who lives and works in Germany, is seen as liberal and culturally integrating for its story of a young woman of second generation Turkish background living in German Hamburg who wishes to live a life of one-night-stands and who tries to provide the environment for this by making a fake-marriage with a Turkish man whom she meets at a psychiatric clinic where both of them are treated for suicide attempts. The fact that she points out to him that only getting married will put her in the position to leave her parents’ home is seen as part of the director’s critical comment on Turkish traditional family structures. In some of the comments on the film the young woman’s wish for promiscuity is equated with the wish for a self-determined life.⁴ Promiscuity is equated to sexual liberty which is seen as one of the main indicators of an open-minded German environment which the female protagonist would like to share.

With Orhan Pamuk’s writings the stories told and the Turkish, especially the Istanbul, settings presented are named as evidence for the author’s intercultural ambitions in terms of mediating between a Muslim Eastern culture and a predominantly secular Western culture. The author is praised for being politically outspoken and upright, anti-nationalist, and pro-minority for his statements on the situation of the Kurdish population in Turkey and on that of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

All in all, you are confronted with quite generalizing statements in the press coverage, whose diction nevertheless indirectly gives an idea of the qualities attributed to European self-perception.

So, let’s next have a look at how the films and Pamuk’s writings present European self-perception and how they present Turkish and Eastern culture.

As far as European self-perception is concerned, the film “Kurtlar vadisi – Irak” in fact does not give a global image of European or western culture but differentiates clearly between the very countries involved in the story of the film, as there are: the U.S., Great Britain and Israel. The characters standing for the U.S. and for Israel are split up in good ones and evil ones, as far as the U.S. is concerned, or are shown to be good and evil at the same time as is the case with the Jewish doctor. There are no characters representing any European countries though. However, the European anthem, the “Ode to Joy”, is quoted for two times at central passages of the film. The first time it is whistled by the American villain while he is watching American soldiers from his car as they are shooting and arresting the members of a wedding ceremony, and the second time after he has taken a choir of Kurdish school children hostage at the hotel restaurant to which he has been called by the Turkish hero of the film.Whereas the Kurdish children are able to sing the text the American just sings certain parts and hums the melody with the rest of the song. Obviously, Europe is seen to stand for certain values of humanity. The U.S., on the other hand, is shown to just do lip service concerning those human values. Still, Great Britain is shown to be in the club with the U.S. concerning this attitude: one box of kidneys is to be sent to London.

With Fatih Akın’s film the message of the film as a whole concerning the situation of Turkish second generation migrants to Germany can be seen as the director’s statement on European self-perception. What the female protagonist tries to adopt as a German life style leads her into a life of despair, suicide attempts, rape and finally a main-stream existence in Turkey as a mother of a child. She ends up where she never wanted to go. What the female protagonist regards to be aspects of European self-perception are fakes, so.

What you find in Orhan Pamuk’s texts “The white Castle” and, even more, in “The New life”, “Red” and the “Black Book” is an intellectual discussion of identity and of those aspects which work together in shaping both a person’s individual identity and a society’s cultural identity in general. European self-perception is perceived in this context and for a Turkish environment as a European superiority in terms of technical and social progress and in terms of a lifestyle consisting of fashion, cinema, anti-traditional ideas and a specific behaviour in public like laughing loudly or shaking one’s head to say “no”, which is shown to be highly attractive to certain parts of Turkish society.

As far as self-perception of Turkish and Eastern culture is concerned the film “Kurtlar vadisi – Irak” in the first place creates sort of a “if-there-is-trouble-call-for-the-Turkish-and-they-will-come-to-save-the-world“ attitude. Apart from this, in their way of talking and acting the Turkish characters are shown to be members of a society which gives equal chances to women and promotes multiculturalism as long as the people concerned do not try to destabilize what is regarded to be the Turkish nation. Turkish culture is shown to highly estimate traditional values like hospitality which binds both sides, the one who grants it and the one who takes it. It is shown as a culture of proud and upright people, who the U.S. is not willing to understand but instead treats according to its own cultural conventions and standards and at the same time – in an Orientalist way according to Edward W. Said’s definition – insists on having understood and being familiar with. The way in which the story of the film proceeds illustrates that bloodshed caused by cultural misunderstanding is one of the consequences of this attitude.

Muslims in Iraq are shown as a community of calm, quiet, and suffering people, who share the European human values as is to be learned from the „Ode to Joy“-sequence of the film. Still, they can become easy prey to radical political agitation due to their suffering. Yet, their non-mainstream Muslim religious leaders (the Sheik in the film strongly resembles a Mevlana Dervish), who are shown to act in a highly humanitarian and responsible way can save them and others from the consequences of such agitation. Because of this they are seen to be morally superior to the villainious U.S. American representative in the film. As a consequence, however, they will be killed together with the members of their community as the good ones, due to their humanitarian conviction, are without a chance against the evil ones, who are used to act unscrupulously.

Fatih Akın portrays Turkish self-perception in a twofold way. He differentiates between those who try to keep their traditions in migration and those who try to cut themselves off their traditions including their mothertongue after having migrated. Turkish migrants to Germany are shown to be people desperately trying to find their identities either in traditions, in macho behaviour with the young males or by trying not to be recognized as Turks anymore. All of them are shown to lose by this. The real losers, however, are those who have turned away from tradition and finally flee to Turkey out of despair, and who in sort of a back-to-the-roots attempt try to re-start their lives, although having no links to the country.

Orhan Pamuk’s writings create an image of a people being torn between cultural and religious tradition, secularism, and ideas, technology, culture, fashion and manners being imported from the U.S. and Europe. Most of Pamuk’s writings focus on that single question, explicitly asked by the Hodja in the book “The White Castle”: “Who am I, and how can I be me?” (Die weiße Festung, p. 70 ff). The Turkish are shown to be caught in fierce inner fights of defining their identities, and to be subject to severe feelings of shame in case they are not able to define their identities in one way or the other because this keeps them from being proud of themselves and their culture and gives them some discomforting feeling of inferiority instead. As soon as they have defined their identities, however, they may turn into deadly enemies of those who define their identities differently. The traditionalists may turn fiercly and uncompromisingly against those who are eager of adopting and promoting those ideas being imported from abroad, and the other way round.

Summing up it can be said, therefore, that apart from the moral criticism put on Great Britain in the film „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“ the perception of European self-perception in this film in terms of the values involved actually seems to correspond with the very items of how Europe perceives and presents itself which we have isolated from the press coverage and politicians’ statements analyzed, as there are: clinging to humanitarian values, being progressive and highly developed. The statement on European self-perception in Akın’s film, however, can be seen as rather critical. So why put scolding on the one film and praise the other?

Obviously, the presentation of European values cannot be the reason for the scolding put on „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“ just as it cannot be for praising „Gegen die Wand“. If we include the presentation of Turkish and eastern self-perception and keep European Self-perception in mind at the same time, however, the reactions will become clearer. The film „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“ which praises Turkish and Eastern culture as being morally highstanding and in line with European human values is scolded for being anti-intercultural. Akın’s film which is said to be critical of Turkish migrants clinging to cultural traditions by commentators is praised as being pro-intercultural as are Pamuk’s writings.

The conclusion which may well be drawn from this is that, obviously, the presentation of Turkish and Eastern self-perception in the film „Kurtlar vadisi – Irak“ does not correspond with the European perception of Turkish and Eastern culture whereas it does with Akın’s film and Pamuk’s writings. (German) perception and (Turkish) self-perception of Turkish and eastern culture are so far apart that the idea of Turkish and eastern culture corresponding with European values is seen as a provocation by German and Austrian press and politicians.

If we put this into the larger context of the conference topic “Europe and its Others” we may get some interesting results concerning the way the German speaking parts of Europe, in particular Germany and Austria, perceive themselves and most of the rest of the world. There is reason to argue that the aspects of how they perceive and present themselves are historically motivated and that this is also true of how they define their current Others.

Both countries have a common 20^th century history of dictatorship being rooted in the genuinly European concept of 19^th century nationalism. They have populations deeply rooted in religion and national thinking on the one hand, and widely secular elites who have been educated and brought up to anti-fascist and anti-nationalist thinking on the other hand. Yet, both perceive themselves as post-WW II, non-fascist generations and try hard to prove that they really are.

One way of doing so is projecting everything they believe to have overcome into their European concept of a non-European Other. Their concept of the Other is the ideological concept of Europe’s nationalist, dictatorial and also anti-secular history. Resulting from this, only cultures which are critical of themselves in terms of nation, religion and political culture are accepted as coming up to European standards. Those cultures who present themselves as being unreflectedly proud of themselves do not fit into this pattern of European self-perception and of Europe’s Other. The film “Kurtlar vadisi – Irak” takes that position, the film “Gegen die Wand” and Orhan Pamuk in his writings do not.

¹ For Mr Stoiber’s statement see among others Kai Strittmatter Die falsche Antwort.Warum der Westen "Tal der Wölfe" nicht zensieren sollte, Süddeutsche Zeitung online, 20.02.2006, 10:14. URL: www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/artikel/411/70341/article.html

² See ebda.

³ The politician is Ms Koch-Mehrin, a member of German FDP (the Liberals). See Netzzeitung, 21. Feb 2006 07:18, ergänzt 11:42. URL: http://www.netzeitung.de/spezial/europa/383536.html

⁴ See among others Gegen die Wand (Fatih Akın, Deutschland 2004). Filmheft von Andrea Wienen und Holger Twele. p. 4.