Tag Archives: identity

German or Turkish, That is the Question

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Baker Garland

LTGR 270

Dr. Tovey

4/28/2020

  1. Introduction to Topic/Background Info
    1. Topic: The adaptation to German society by Turkish guest workers and their families has caused an identity crisis in their descendants.
    2. Clip of Hüseyin getting off the train in Germany-2:13-2:34
      1. Narration: In the 60s, many foreign workers came as guest workers to Germany. A large group that came were the Turks. Instead of going back home, many Turkish guest workers stayed and brought their families with them to Germany. To make their lives easier, the guest workers and their families needed to adapt to German society and culture. The shift from black and white to color symbolizes how identity goes from simplistic, only identifying with one culture-symbolized by black and white, to complex, identifying with many cultures-symbolized by the color.
    3. Wipe to clips for next slide
  2. Mimicry of German Culture and Ambivalence
    1. Christmas Clip-1:03:19-1:04:49
      1. Narration: Homi Bahabha proposed the idea that individuals that become colonized will start to mimic the new, dominant culture. This mimicry creates to a state of ambivalence, where individuals take on aspects of both cultures. Although the Turkish guest workers were not colonized by the Germans, there was intense pressure from the German government and regular Germans for the Turkish guest workers to assimilate and integrate into German society. Germans wanted the German culture to be the only culture of these guest workers. In this clip the Yilmazs start to mimic German culture when the children ask to participate in Christmas. This is a mimicry of Christmas traditions because a state of ambivalence is present. The children are speaking German, but the food they are eating is Turkish. The lighting in this scene symbolizes the ambivalence of the Yilmazs’ situation. The lighting is not too bright and not too dark. This symbolizes how the Yilmazs are not too German and not too Turkish.
    2. Cut to next clips
    3. Clip of Yilmazs back in Turkey-1:07:05-1:07:22 & 1:08:36-1:08:52
      1. Narration: These clips demonstrate how the Yilmazs have adapted to German society and taken a presence in German society and culture. When a person lives in a state of ambivalence, they take on a partial presence in both cultures and societies. Because of this, when the Yilmazs try to fully immerse themselves in Turkish society and culture once again, they find that they struggle in Turkish society, where they would not have before they came to Germany.
    4. Wipe to clips for next slide
  3. Identity Issues in Later Generations
    1. Clips of Cenk at school
      1. Classroom Scene- 4:41-5:14
      2. Soccer Team Scene- 7:44-8:00
        1. Narration: While adapting to German culture made it easier for the older generation of Turks to live in Germany, living in a state of ambivalence has created an identity crisis for the younger generation with migrations background. This is displayed through Cenk Yilmaz. Being ethnically half German and half Turkish, Cenk can connect to aspects of both cultures, for example Cenk can speak German but eats Turkish food with his family. However, growing up in a family that was forced to adapt to German culture, has prevented Cenk from fully connecting with his Turkish side. One issue that starts his identity crisis is that he cannot speak Turkish. It is because of this that he is put on the German soccer team at school. In this sense, Genk is too German to be Turkish. However, earlier when Cenk’s pin does not fit on the Europe map he is too Turkish for Germans.
      3. Turkish or German
        1. Clip of Cenk asking if they are Turkish or German-12:23-12:26
        2. Cut to clip of conversation with Canan and Cenk-12:37-12:12:45
          1. Narration: Finally Cenk asks the question that he wants the answer to. Cenk wants to know if they are Turkish or German. The answer to this question is complex because a person can be both Turkish and German as Canan tells Cenk. However, Cenk cannot accept this answer because like many young children, the ability to clearly identify himself to one group is important to him, and a crucial aspect psychologically into developing an identity. The importance of being able to categorize himself is shown when he says that a person can only play on the German or the Turkish soccer team, not both. The inability to clearly identify as either Turkish or German has caused an identity crisis in Cenk, especially because he has grown up in a family that has had to adapt to and take on aspects of German culture and society in order to survive in Germany. Because of these adaptations Cenk does not have as strong of a connection to his Turkish side that he needs to have so he can confidently categorize himself.

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I chose this still image form Fire at Sea for multiple reasons. First, from a cinematic standpoint the shot of the father talking to his son seeing his reflection creates duality in the scene. This is a common motif in the film, the doctor deals with both the lives of the refugees and the locals that live on the island. This reflection in the mirror represents that common theme. The scene also helps convey the theme of movement. For the refugees that movement is coming to Europe for a better life, for the father it is the boat, traveling around and not stopping anywhere. All the pictures that are on the boat also help with this theme because it is of people that the father met along his trip. He said he met some people from Korea specifically. The doctor’s life can be tied back into this by the movement of him going between both realities of refugees and the locals. The idea of movement and not having a home is showed via these three things. While later in the film the soccer game brings that identity back, the films focus on refugees provides evidence that it is a major theme.

Pulled in a New Direction

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In this GIF Cenk is being taken away from his Turkish grandfather, Hüysein, and the rest of his Turkish family by his German mother after Hüysein suddenly dies during their trip back to Turkey. One of the main themes of the movie is Cenk’s question of whether he is Turkish or German. Hüysein is Cenk’s greatest anchor to his Turkish heritage, so when Hüysein dies, Cenk loses his strongest anchor to his Turkish heritage and with this loss will mostly likely drift towards his German heritage. This is symbolized in this GIF by Cenk being led further and further away from Hüysein and the rest of his Turkish family members by his German mother.

 

German or Turk?

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In Almanya, there are many instances where Hüseyin’s fears about completely assimilating into German culture shine through. The GIF above is from a nightmare that he has about his wife and himself getting their German passports and then immediately looking and acting just as a stereotypical German would. In this shot, Hüseyin sees his reflection, now with a “Hitler mustache” and not his full beard. Fatma is also shown eating a gigantic drumstick, and in the shot previous to this one, she is in traditional German clothes. This shot in the GIF really highlights how afraid Hüseyin is of losing his Turkish identity. He believes that once they fully commit to being legal Germans, they will completely assimilate and have no connection to their Turkish identity. This is the main driving force behind what Hüseyin does in the framing plot; his fears of identity loss push him to take his family back to Turkey. However, this also asks the question: what makes someone of a certain nationality? Just because Hüseyin and Fatma are legally Germans, does that mean that they are no longer Turkish? Despite Hüseyin’s fears, they cannot be defined as just German or Turkish; they are something new that cannot be boxed into one nationality.

Re-identification and Namelessness: The Fate of a Refugee

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Director Christian Petzold constructs and deconstructs the identity of political refugees in his 2018 drama, Transit. This scene particularly highlights the theme of manipulated identity, as it depicts a woman with many identities, and at the same time, none. Before I engage with the scene, I would like to recall a note by Hannah Arendt in her article “We Refugees.” In discussing the fate of mid-20th century Jewish refugees, she remembers, “Our identity is changed so frequently that nobody can find out who we actually are” (Arendt 116). Here, Arendt speaks of the many names and roles native peoples thrust upon European Jews seeking refuge in other nations, and how they lost their true identities as human beings upon exodus. Petzold illustrates such an identity crisis in this scene. 

 Officially identified as the “Architect” (IMDb), the woman in this scene takes on several identities. Here, we first know her as the ‘lady with the dogs’ since this is how Georg first sees her. When he crouches beside her, the woman opens the conversation by declaring her hatred for the dogs. Her expressed distaste simultaneously dissociates and associates her with them. By speaking about the dogs as a ticket for her exit from Marseille, she identifies herself as said ‘lady with the dogs.’ However, by explaining her desire to turn them to “mincemeat,” she distances herself from them, and by extension, from her identity as ‘lady with the dogs.’ This dysphoria exemplifies the identity crises many Jews experienced during Nazi occupation and thereafter (Arendt 115). The woman next identifies herself as a Jew, a title she never relinquishes, but never again emphasizes explicitly in the film. Though an integral layer to her identity, and the one that ultimately proves fatal, her Jewish identity falls second to a third, an architect. The woman coldly comments that she designed the dog owners’ house. As an educated and accomplished professional, she resents having been knocked down the social rung to ‘lady with the dogs at the mercy of past clients.’ The woman has been stripped of her identity and has been forced to assume a new, less dignified one.  

Her situation recalls another that Arendt describes regarding a Jewish refugee “who… finally exclaimed, ‘And nobody here knows who I am!’” as he tried to construct a new life for himself in a new place (115). Like the woman in Petzold’s film, the man in Arendt’s article experiences identity dysphoria because his original identity has been taken, and no matter how hard he tries to rebuild a respectable one, the world around him simply will not allow him to do so. Petzold further drives this point home by refusing to assign the woman a name. Though she is simultaneously three people – lady with the dogs, a Jew, and an architect – she is at the same time, nameless and thereby nobody. Her identity crisis forces her to cease to be a person, and in doing so, ultimately takes her life. Truly Arendt has it right when she says, “society has discovered discrimination as the great social weapon by which one may kill men without any bloodshed” (118).