Yeter’s perception and cultural identity
Reply
Tag Archives: Cultural Identity
Respecting Identity
New Passports and Bad Test Scores
In this gif scene, Grandfather Hüseyin is sitting at the kitchen table, staring in vain at his newly acquired German passport. It is evident from the previous scene in bed with his wife, that he is not excited to have gotten the passport. She tries starting a conversation about it, where he quickly flicks the lights off. On the gif itself, I felt like he was giving the same emotional response every student has felt before. His eyes rolled back in his head as he stared at the paper object that meant so much, yet so little. You could see in his eyes, the pain that had gone into getting that almost meaningless piece of paper. He had been working in Germany for so long but hadn’t been a true citizen until receiving a random piece of paper. The problem still being that it could never change the fact that he is still not accepted. No matter how hard he tries, he will always share a different cultural background and therefore be inherently different. No matter how hard he tries, or what he “gets”, he will never truly be German or Turkish anymore.
Cultural Identity
This gif is a clip from the movie where Canan and her boyfriend find out she is pregnant. The caption reading, “when your whole life just changed,” is important to the film. The idea of getting pregnant means a major change in someones life, and in the situation of the movie, being Turkish and having a baby with a British man is a giant cultural change. The movie focus’ on cultural appropriation and the concept of a blended lifestyle, and just how hard it can be. The gif captures the fear and emotions of the two as they both know the pregnancy is not good and can lead to negative consequences for the “stubborn” family not looking forward to accepting change in cultural identity.
Bureaucracy Harder! German Stereotypes
This GIF comes from Huseyin’s dream scene, in which he imagines himself about to receive his German passport. The man behind the desk is the first thing the audience sees, stamping away an obscene amount of documents with incredible speed. What the audience sees right away is one of several German stereotypes that play out in Huseyin’s dream, others including the requirements that he eat pork at least twice a week and watch Tatort religiously, his wife suddenly wearing traditional German dress, and his reflection having a mustache akin to Hitler’s. The stereotype that the GIF above uses is of course the idea that Germans are ridiculously efficient and absolutely love bureaucracy. All of these stereotypes are held by Huseyin in his mind, emerging in this dream as a sort of reflection of his fear of losing his Turkish identity. He is afraid that he will have to give up the things he considers make him a Turk and replace them with things he believes will make him a full German. Both the GIF above and the scene from which it comes does a great job of making the audience critically think, “What does it mean to be German? Are there a set of characteristics that all Germans have?” To which the answer is “einfach nein” (simply no).
We’re Germans now
Hüseyin in this GIF is having a nightmare about becoming a German with his wife, Fatma and conforming to German culture in the process of losing their Turkish heritage. This theme of adapting to culture and the fear of losing culture and cultural memory is very prevalent throughout the film and shown through this clip. For instance, in this clip Fatma is shown wearing traditional German clothing and eating a huge meat drumstick which frightens Hüseyin and further pushes him to wanting the family to return to Turkey for a vacation to see where they came from. This culture can be seen throughout three generations and how with each generation things are forgotten and each generation is more assimilated to the German culture. It brings about the larger question of what makes you what nationality you are, or rather what makes you German and what makes you Turkish. Upon receiving their passports, the two now have surrendered their Turkish citizenship but they do not identify completely as Germans but rather somewhere in between where there is no label for what you are.
Barbershop Boogie
I love this scene so much because it is such a wholesome and humorous way to address the issues of identity which are present throughout the film. This scene highlights not only what it means to be Turkish, but also what it means to be a man. This film handles the concept of identity through many fronts. There are questions of what its means to be German or Turkish, obviously, but there are also questions of what it means to be a man, a family, or when does someone become a part of or is lost from a family? This scene takes a little pause from all the questioning and gives a nice simple answer by saying: ‘being a Turk means enjoying the culture, and being a man means being yourself no matter what others might think’, which I think is beautiful.
Language and Identity
My gif comes from the beginning of the family’s immigration in Germany when the mother is trying to buy milk and bread for the family but she can not because of the language barrier. Because the story is being told in German the mother speaks German when she is actually speaking Turkish and the store clerk speaks German but it sounds like jibberish just as it would to someone who does not speak the language. At the beginning of the film the family’s inability to speak this jibberish shows that they still strongly rooted in their Turkish identities. As the movie progresses we see that the children begin to speak this jibberish thus creating the idea that their identity is no longer just Turkish but being of Turkish and German identity.