A New Kind of Creative Energy: Yadé Kara's Selam Berlin and Fatih Akin's Kurz und Schmerzlos and Gegen die Wand

ABSTRACT

This article argues that recent Turkish-German writing and film reflect a new self-understanding and present a new perspective on things Turkish within mainstream German society. A comparative/contrastive analysis of Akif Pirinçci's Tränen sind immer das Ende (1980), the first Turkish-German novel by a second-generation writer, and Yadé Kara's Selam Berlin (2003) demonstrates how the Turkish-German self-representation has changed over the last two decades. In Selam Berlin the portrayal of the young Turkish-German male's identity crisis not only takes on a different shape – while Pirinçci's Akif remains entrenched in the Turkish/German divide, Kara's Hasan is not burdened by his dual cultural heritage – but the novel also participates in a new literary discourse that is closely associated with the rise of the Berlin Republic. Like Selam Berlin, Fatih Akin's films Kurz und schmerzlos (1997) and Gegen die Wand (2004) are imbued with a new energy that manifests itself in a new Turkish-German self-definition. The article shows how Akin rewrites the strategies and objectives of the New German Cinema, particularly those of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, by playfully undermining persisting stereotypes of Turks as well as of what 'ethnic' filmmaking is supposed to be about, by reversing character roles, using space subversively, and undercutting audience expectations and genre conventions. Ultimately, both Kara and Akin offer a complex representation of things Turkish in Germany by demonstrating that there are more than two different value systems, one Turkish and one German, set against each other.