Abstract
This study explores the elements of Orientalism in German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's films Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007). Utilizing Homi Bhabha's theory of “third spaces,” which immigrants often inhabit, and Edward Said's lens of the postcolonial gaze, I analyze the degree to which the bodies of immigrants willingly embody the mysterious “oriental,” and how and when it is projected upon male and female characters in these two films. Akin's characters dwell between a perceived and imaginary Occident and Orient, while living and traveling in the soil of both Germany and Turkey.
TopOverall Approach
This study explores the elements of Orientalism in German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s films Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007). Utilizing Homi Bhabha’s theory of “third spaces,” which immigrants often inhabit, and Edward Said’s lens of the postcolonial gaze, I will analyze the degree to which the bodies of immigrants willingly embody the mysterious “oriental,” and how it is projected upon male and female characters in these two films.
Unlike his predecessor, Kutlug Ataman, whose transgender characters in Lola and Bilidikid (1997), perform dual identities—on stage, they are oriental femme dancers who cater to the desires of Western fantasies of gazing upon the harem girl and off stage they tackle life head-on as hetero-homosexual Turkish and Kurdish males in Kreuzberg, Berlin—Akin dances with Orientalism, yet with a borrowed Occidental gaze (Baer, 2008; Hillman, 2006). While Ataman’s film is self-aware of both the gap and the mingling of the Oriental and Occidental gaze and seeks to critique it, Akin’s films instead utilize Orientalism to lure the viewer, whose Occidental perceptions towards the Orient have already been conditioned by the colonial gaze from previous centuries.
In his landmark book, Orientalism, Edward Said (1979) laid out how the East was/is denied the telling of its own narrative. In his introduction, Said quotes Karl Marx, who stated, “they cannot represent themselves; they must be represented,” referring to the peasants and the proletariat (as cited in1979, p. 8). So was the attitude of the West toward the East. Said contends the West defines itself as the superior civilization against the “Orient,” a cultural concept that was created out of the Western imagination and one that came to stand as “truth” about the cultures and peoples spanning from Turkey to Japan. Said also pays homage to Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime minister who stated that the “[t]he East is a career,” (1979, p. 13). This statement is taken to mean that the officers, foreign legion soldiers, artists, diplomats, and archeologists alike helped create a mythical third place in the lands of the East where Westerners are in charge, and as such, they project, impose, and downright force upon the aspirations and desires of the West on the East. Said calls this Western approach to the East, particularly that of the Europeans, an “Orientation,” or an imaginary place created by the West at the expense of the peoples of the “Orient.” Here, men and barbaric and women are voiceless. Critiquing Flaubert’s popular representation of women in particular Said states that:
Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was “typically Oriental.” My argument is that Flaubert’s situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an isolated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled (1979, p. 14).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Orientalism: The way the Occident imagines Asia, especially the Middle East, in a mysterious but ultimately inferior to the West. This attitude is rooted in the colonialist era and continues to shape the West’s socio-cultural and economic policies toward the non-Western continents, one that often exploits their natural and human resources.
Active/Male, Passive/Female: Refers to how traditional films present men as active, whose gaze and story the camera follows and presents women as the passive secondary characters who are there to aid the male hero in his journey.
Accented Cinema: Refers to the films from the Third World as well the works of migrants, refugees, exilic and other displaced people who cross multiple borders and speak multiple languages with accents; often from margins to the center.
Madonna Whore Complex: Refers to the ongoing dichotomy in viewing women as good, as in virtuous mother, Madonna’s as in Virgin Marry, and bad as in sexually active, seductive femme prostitutes. The split reflects inner conflict the patriarchal men experience in relating to women who could be both virtuous and have sexual desires.
Transnational Cinema: Studies influence of globalization on the filmmaking process and promotes cross cultural and international filmmaking process, one that goes beyond nationals and embraces Third World Cinema, Accented Cinema as well as commercial Cinema.
Third Space: An abstract, in-between place, in which the migrants, refugees and exilic people who have uprooted themselves from their native lands and struggles to put roots in his/her host country, exist. Bhabha who coined the term states that third space: “gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.”
Colonial Gaze: The way in which the West controls and exploits natural and human resources through a dehumanizing narrative of non-Western lands and people by creating and maintaining an imaginary division between the colonizers/civilized, and Other, colonized/savage.
Melodramatic Formula: Is when a female character temporarily assumes the main active role and gains agency in a film due to the absence of a male character whose masculinity is in crises. The classic active male, passive female nexus is temporarily abandoned until the male hero returns to assume his patriarchal active role, restoring patriarchal power dynamic between genders and society.