Yeter’s Identity
Reply
Tag Archives: Turkish
not always easy
This particular scene is a good depiction of kinda the overall theme the film, Almanya, portrayed to its audience. This film is about how a Turkish family immigrated to Germany as a result of the father’s belief that they will have a more prosperous life. When the family first arrived in Germany the children are shown to be somewhat hostile to the new ways and foreign to simple things such as a toilet and garbage men. Over time the children become more accustomed to the “German way of life” and somewhat forget some of the more Turkish traditions. This scene is showing the result of the children learning about Christmas and how most families in Germany receive gifts and put up a Christmas tree. The children explain this tradition to their parents and beg to also partake in this custom. The mom tries her best to do so for the kids but as you can see the children were slightly disappointed in the rather small size of the tree and lack of wrapping on the gifts. This rolls back around to the theme of the film which is mostly trying to highlight how difficult it is for immigrants to balance keeping their own traditions alive while also trying to assimilate into their new community.
Am I German Enough Yet?
Max Frisch said, “We called for manpower, and what arrived was human beings.” In this scene, Hüseyin is practicing speaking German in the mirror and is having problems with adjectives, his nephew hears his practicing in the mirror and corrects it. Hüseyin’s nonchalant reaction adds humors while showing the reality. By creating the film in this way, the movie delivers some real insight how arriving in Germany and assimilating within the new culture must have felt like. Language is just one of the barriers that were faced by the guest workers in Germany. Assimilation is hard and in this film, a lot of the negative aspects of the Turks trying to fit in are seen by the viewer as fun, happy and even glamorous at times instead of the always depressive times they had to have been.
Pulled in a New Direction
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.
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.