The Limitation of Urban Space in Thomas Arslan`s

The Limitation of Urban Space in Thomas Arslan`s

The Limitation of Urban Space in Thomas Arslan's Berlin Trilogy
Gallagher, Jessica.
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, Volume 42, Number
3, September 2006, pp. 337-352 (Article)
Published by University of Toronto Press
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/smr/summary/v042/42.3gallagher.html
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The Limitation of Urban Space in
Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy
JESSICA GALLAGHER
University of Queensland
German immigrant cinema of the 1970s and 1980s is often characterized by critics
as the Gastarbeiterkino (e.g. Bühler 16; Dehn 3). The Gastarbeiterkino explored
the lives of immigrants from a number of different national backgrounds, but a
significant proportion of these films concentrated on the Turkish foreign workers
who came to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. They were originally considered a
temporary workforce that would eventually go home, but, as the Turkish-German
poet and social commentator Zafer Şenocak remarks, “[w]hat at first appeared to
be a harmless economic phenomenon soon developed into a momentous social
phenomenon. The so-called guest workers violated the rules of hospitality, settled
down, improved their economic status and became immigrants” (87). The TurkishGerman Gastarbeiter films presented minority characters, in accordance with
popular (mis)conceptions, as victims of incompatible “Turkish” and “German”
ways of life. In many instances, this view was expressed by a concentration on
the first generation and by spatial confinement – particularly of women, as seen
in Tevfik Baser’s 40m² Deutschland (1986). In this film, a young Turkish woman
called Turna (Özay Fecht) is brought to Germany after an arranged marriage and
promptly imprisoned by her husband Dursun (Yaman Okay) in their apartment.
She has little opportunity for experiencing, much less integrating into, mainstream
German society, and even when she escapes the confines of the apartment in the final
scene, after Dursun dies, it is clear that she will remain in a marginalized position,
owing to her status as an immigrant in Germany and her inability to communicate
in this alien country. The few films that focussed on second-generation Turkish
immigrants, for example Hark Bohm’s Yasemin (1988), intimated that integration
into “mainstream” German society was possible only if the younger characters
removed themselves completely from their parents’ (the first generation’s) culture
and traditional beliefs. In the film, Yasemin (Ayse Romey), a second-generation
immigrant, is initially positioned as an independent young woman who appears to
navigate successfully between her positions both in mainstream German society
and in the Turkish community. However, her hybrid identity is revealed as a fragile
construct when tensions erupt in the family after her sister’s wedding and as her
involvement with her German boyfriend Jan (Uwe Bohm) increases and Yasemin
seminar 42:3 (September 2006)
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is forced to choose between her family’s more traditional (and patriarchal) beliefs
and her desire for a “modern” German existence. Eventually, she flees with Jan, but
in doing so she does not achieve any greater liberation or integration; rather, she
moves from one authority (her father) to another (her boyfriend).
Although the bulk of immigrant characters in these earlier Turkish-German
productions experienced severe spatial constraints, in recent years a number of
Turkish-German films by a new generation of filmmakers have attempted to cast off
the victim images common in earlier films by focussing more closely on the second
generation and on outwardly more integrated characters. The leading characters in
these newer productions, such as Fatih Akin’s Kurz und Schmerzlos (1998), Yüksel
Yavuz’s Aprilkinder (1998), and Kutlug Ataman’s Lola und Bilidikid (1999), are
young and mobile and have made their way outside to more open spaces such as
the street, the disco, and the park. Three productions that have also been conceived
and analyzed in these terms are the films that constitute Thomas Arslan’s Berlin
Trilogy – Geschwister-Kardesler (1996), Dealer (1998), and Der schöne Tag
(2000). With these films, Arslan professes to have dissociated his characters from
previous cinematic portrayals of Turkish immigrants in Germany. When asked
about the inspiration behind Geschwister, he stated he was “unzufrieden damit, wie
Türken bisher in deutschen Filmen dargestellt werden. Das war einer der Gründe,
diesen Film zu machen” (qtd. in Basrawi and Mentrup 2). Similarly, in relation to
Dealer, Arslan has commented on his desire to challenge the negative discourse
surrounding Turkish immigrants in Germany and suggested that, although it may
not be possible to circumvent clichés completely, still:
[M]an kann vielleicht versuchen, durch sie hindurchzugehen, das heißt, von
ihnen auszugehen, sie zu benutzen, um sie dann nach und nach aufzulösen, so
daß anderes sichtbar werden kann. (qtd. in Dehn 2)
In Der schöne Tag, Arslan believes he has distanced his characters once and for
all from the popular social discourses and previous cinematic images that imagine
second-generation Turkish immigrants as being trapped between two cultures. He
maintains the main character,
hat noch etwas anderes zu tun, als sich ständig mit ihrer Identität zu beschäftigen.
Mir war es wichtig, sie nicht im Hinblick darauf zu definieren, was vermeintlich
“fremd” an ihr ist. Die vielbeschworene Zerrissenheit zwischen zwei Kulturen
entspricht nicht ihrer Lebenserfahrung. (qtd. in Seidel 5)
Critics have identified shifts in the use of space in this new generation of films,
including Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy, as paralleling shifts in the theoretical understanding of immigrant experience. For example, Deniz Göktürk sees the relocation
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 339
of characters to exterior urban spaces and their increased mobility as signifying
liberation and as corresponding with recent trends in theory that appreciate the
immigrant as “no longer dwelling worlds apart,” but rather as “the modern metropolitan figure” who moves right at the centre of modernity (65). However, this
article contends that the protagonists in at least the first two films of Arslan’s trilogy
continue to struggle with the same or similar problems as their predecessors in the
Gastarbeiterkino, in terms of the spaces available to them. Drawing on the writings
of Michel de Certeau and Gilles Deleuze, this article examines the spaces assigned
to individual characters and the significance of their movements in Geschwister
and Dealer. It will also argue that, although Der schöne Tag presents a superficially
more positive portrayal of the second-generation immigrant experience, the main
character continues to struggle with her position in the urban exterior and is not as
at ease with the city space as some critics have suggested.
Geschwister follows the movements of three siblings, Erol (Tamer Yigit), Ahmed
(Savas Yuderi), and Leyla (Serpil Turhan) and focusses on the differing ways in
which each character tackles the subject of his or her cultural identity. The siblings
live with their German-born mother (Hildegard Kuhlenberg) and Turkish-born father
(Fazli Yurderi) in an apartment that subtle references in the mise en scène show to
be in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The exterior space of Kreuzberg is central to the film and
arguably a much different kind of space from that previously available to characters
in the Turkish-German Gastarbeiter productions. Whereas in 40m² Deutschland
and Yasemin minority “Turkish” and mainstream “German” spaces were presented
as disconnected and kept largely separate, the urban space in Geschwister is depicted as being as much “non-German” as it is “German,” with Arslan continually
highlighting the influence of the Turkish presence and culture on the contemporary
Berlin cityscape. The siblings spend a great deal of time on the streets, and the film,
as Barbara Mennel notes, “employs Kreuzberg as a locus marked by subway stations
and city streets. The film consists primarily of protracted walks through this part
of town” (143). Göktürk sees the film as signalling “a new mode of depicting immigrants and their hybrid offspring by following their diverging pathways through
the neighbourhood, letting them drift along and casually observing their encounters
in various ‘contact zones,’” and (as mentioned previously) she sees the shifts in the
characters’ movements as agreeing with recent shifts in theory (65).
While the fact that both male and female characters now more freely traverse the
film’s urban space is undeniably a notable difference from earlier Turkish-German
productions, not all theorists would necessarily agree that these exterior spaces
automatically embody liberation from the constraints seen in the previous interior/
confined spaces. For de Certeau, walking involves a constant tension between selfdefinition and alienation: “To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of
being absent and in search of a proper. The moving about that the city multiplies
and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a
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place” (103). Far from being liberating, urban space can in fact be a potential and
actual site of conflict, where the ethnic suburbs prove just as restrictive as, and in
many ways represent merely an extension of, the claustrophobic and controlling
domestic spaces of the past. And this is certainly the case in Geschwister, in which
the streets are as much, if not more, metaphors of confinement and control as they
are of increased mobility or liberation.
The urban space in Geschwister poses specific challenges for each of the siblings.
Erol, the eldest, who has retained his Turkish citizenship and is far more involved
in the Turkish community in Berlin than either of his siblings, is unemployed and
has become involved in petty crime. Motivated by feelings of exclusion in both
cultural and socio-economic terms from the dominant German societal norm, he is
considering leaving Berlin and doing his compulsory military service in Turkey, a
suggestion that is received with pride by his father but draws strong reservations from
his mother and brother. With no job and no money, Erol spends the bulk of his time
wandering through the streets of the suburb, often without any obvious purpose. The
external street-space of Kreuzberg is the centre of his existence, and he possesses an
intimate knowledge of the urban system, as is illustrated on a number of occasions
when he ducks into alleyways and takes shortcuts to avoid visibility or evade people
to whom he owes money. Thus he is now able to navigate what de Certeau describes
as the urban “ensemble of interdictions” (walls, fences, etc.), which restrict freedom
of movement, and the “ensemble of possibilities” (sidewalks, alleyways, etc.), which
he actualizes in individualistic, and at times somewhat unconventional, ways (98).
While Erol’s knowledge of the streetscape may be an attempt by Arslan to illustrate
second-generation immigrants’ ability to maximize and appropriate the “possibilities”
of the urban topography, the fact remains that Erol’s navigation of these “ensembles”
is primarily about avoiding and protecting himself from the problems of the existence
he has chosen, the worst of which is the danger of physical harm. Therefore, the
street space seems primarily to be an expression of Erol’s exclusion from the space
represented by mainstream German society. He is on the streets because he is not
involved in work/training or education like his siblings, and his aimless wandering
signifies his lack of place. He walks the streets because he feels he has nowhere to
go, nowhere he belongs. Erol expresses these feelings of isolation and displacement
in several conversations with Ahmed, most forcefully when Ahmed questions his
thoughts of returning to Turkey, wondering: “Was willst du denn da?” and Erol asks
three times: “Was soll ich denn hier?”
Erol’s wheeling and dealing street existence condemns him to continual visibility and exposes him to danger not only from other criminals but also from
racists, and he must therefore remain on the lookout for “lignes de fuite” (lines
of flight) and “autonomous zones” (Deleuze and Guattari 204–05). The notion of
“autonomous zones” was first elucidated by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand
Plateaus where, as Adrian Fielder remarks,
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 341
they describe such zones as pockets of activity toward which individual “bodiesin-becoming” gravitate in order to escape (however fleetingly) those “apparatuses
of capture” aimed at regulating the forces contained within a given social (or
molecular) field. (276)
These “autonomous zones,” where Erol is able, at least temporarily, to avoid being
located visually, appear in the form of the gym and the pool hall where he and his
friends gather. However, as the film progresses, the mainstream’s rejection follows
him into the “autonomous zones,” this time in the form of police surveillance,
and he is forced back out onto the streets. In one scene, police enter a pool hall
where Erol and his friends are socializing and, for no apparent reason apart from
the characters’ ethnicity, demand IDs and search the youths. This confrontation,
though for the most part non-violent, nevertheless results in the group returning
to the streets and shortly thereafter becoming involved in an altercation with two
Germans in camouflage trousers, presumably members of a neo-Nazi style gang.
At the same time, the streets themselves prove more difficult for Erol to negotiate,
as becomes evident when some of his creditors follow him into an alleyway and
threaten him with violence if he does not pay back the money he owes them. Thus
his “ensemble of possibilities” (de Certeau 98) for escape within the urban exterior
has become significantly reduced. At the end of the film, it becomes clear that Erol
has little choice but to leave Berlin in order to escape his creditors. The last the
viewers see of him is at the airport, departing via the passport control. The actual
journey to Turkey or what he encounters there is not shown.
Ultimately, Erol is excluded from the exterior Turkish-German spaces, which
scholars have identified as liberating, and from the mainstream German space
through his departure for Turkey. The streets no longer provide sanctuary from
his feelings of isolation and displacement. Erol seems to fit the description of de
Certeau’s walkers: “Wandersmänner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of
the urban text they write without being able to read it” (93).
In contrast to Erol, Ahmed has German citizenship and is working towards his
Abitur. He has distanced himself somewhat from his Turkish background, as is
evident in a number of scenes in which he expresses his preference for Germany
and the German language and struggles to understand Erol’s decision to return to
Turkey. Ahmed, though arguably the most integrated of the siblings in terms of
educational opportunities and even physical appearance, is nevertheless not immune to Kreuzberg’s conflicts. He experiences the exterior urban spaces as sites of
racist threat in general and of Erol’s Turkish-German conflicts in particular, and,
while he repeatedly tries to avoid confrontations on the streets, he is generally
unable to elude them. Thus when he attempts to stay out of the fight with the two
Germans in camouflage trousers, Erol accuses him of being a coward and initiates
an altercation with him. Similarly, when Erol becomes enraged by a pedestrian
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who inadvertently bumps into him, Ahmed has to step in and break up the fight and
face Erol’s aggression. Like Erol, Ahmed too seeks the sanctuary of “autonomous
zones” such as the pool hall and disco, but (again like Erol) he finds that these
places offer only limited refuge from the disputes on the streets as he is forced
back out into them. As a result, Ahmed attempts to avoid conflict by staying off
the streets, preferring instead his girlfriend’s apartment (another “autonomous
zone”) or the suspended animation of the U-Bahn, which he uses as an alternative
means of navigating the city. Erol criticizes Ahmed’s pacific attitude, stating: “Du
versuchst dich aus allem raus zu halten, aber damit kommst du nicht durch,” and
he advises Ahmed to take up martial arts because violence on the streets is unavoidable. Ultimately, Ahmed would rather be at home reading a book, and his
interest in his studies may indicate a desire to find a way out of his marginalized
suburb and an understanding that education could well be the best way. In his final
scene, Ahmed withdraws from the exterior space completely and retreats into the
domestic space of the family’s apartment, where he sits reading, well away from
the window, which overlooks the street below. This withdrawal from the exterior
spaces may prefigure integration into the mainstream space through education.
For Leyla, the youngest child, who, as a young woman, is perhaps the nearest
successor to the main characters in films like 40m² Deutschland and Yasemin, the
streets represent a temporary escape from her claustrophobic interior spaces – the
family’s apartment and her workplace in a clothing factory. She remarks about
the confrontational nature of the family’s home to her friend Sevim (Mariam El
Awad): “Bei uns gibt es immer irgendeine Streiterei. Entweder streiten sich meine
Brüder, oder mein Vater macht voll den Stress.” The comment highlights two
issues central to the construction of Leyla’s character and identity and provides
insight into the possible limitations on her accessing certain spaces – her brothers
are fighting because of their negative attitudes towards their cultural affiliations
and their negative experiences with the urban space of Kreuzberg, and her father
is continually trying to impose his patriarchal traditions and outlook on her. She
wants to move out and talks with Sevim about finding an apartment together.
Until such time, Leyla and Sevim take to the streets and move through the film’s
urban space with confidence. Göktürk describes one of their scenes as: “Two girls
walk[ing] along a street, facing the camera, smiling at each other [...]. The place
is Berlin-Kreuzberg, and the two girls in motion seem very much in place on this
street” (64). However, Leyla’s movements are restricted to the filmic space of
Kreuzberg, and the full extent of her liberation remains unclear. This is brought to
the viewers’ attention when she asks her father for permission to go to Hamburg
for the weekend. Her request is immediately dismissed, with her father stating:
“Kommt gar nicht in Frage,” with the aim of safeguarding her sexual modesty.
When Leyla attempts to protest and demand a degree of autonomy (“Mit dir kann
man gar nicht reden”), her father slaps her twice, and the audience witnesses his
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 343
regression into the kind of aggressive patriarch who was characteristic of earlier
Turkish-German productions, such as Yasemin. While Leyla may appear to have
greater freedom of movement, the fact remains that when she attempts to leave the
streets of the “ethnic” suburb she suffers the same restrictions as her predecessors
in the Gastarbeiterkino. Thus for Leyla the urban exterior of Kreuzberg represents
an extension of the domestic space, from which she repeatedly tries, and will continue to have to try, to escape. As the film concludes with a final image of Leyla
walking the streets, it appears likely, as Mennel notes, that though “Erol has left
for Turkey and [...] Ahmed will have the potential to leave Kreuzberg with a high
school degree [...], Leyla will remain in Kreuzberg as a seamstress” (146).
There is no doubt that the depiction of Berlin in Geschwister as an increasingly
multiethnic if not multicultural metropolis constitutes a positive modification of the
enclosed and hostile cinematic space reserved for immigrant characters in the past.
Arslan continually highlights the impact and influence of immigration, particularly
of Turkish immigrants, on the contemporary Berlin cityscape. Examples in the
mise en scène are numerous. As Ahmed boards the underground train at Cottbusser
Tor, lively Turkish voices can be heard in the background. When he gets off the
train and stops at a newsstand, the camera shows a large selection of Turkishlanguage newspapers and magazines; no German titles are visible. On Berlin’s
busy streets, Erol and Ahmed pass by a number of Turkish fast-food locales and
bars from which Turkish music is clearly emanating. Later in the film, as Ahmed
makes his way home through the hustle and bustle of the city, the camera focusses
for a long time on the signs “Lezzel Grill” and “Baghdad 2,” which are attached
to an overpass. These images articulate the process of the cultural evolution and
reterritorialisation of Germany’s urban spaces through the Turkish culture and
Germany’s other ethnic communities and are perhaps an attempt by the director
to emphasize the increasingly multiethnic nature of Germany’s capital. Evidence
of this intent is also provided during a conversation between Erol and two of his
friends, when, in trying to determine the nationality of two men whom the trio
encounter briefly on the street and assume are migrants, they list off a number of
possibilities, including Greek, Italian, Albanian, Yugoslav, as well as Turkish. Thus
the conversation alludes to the complicated mix of nationalities and ethnicities that
now make up the social landscape of Germany’s capital.
However, if the characters are largely restricted to the “ethnic” suburbs of the
city, where the streets are staged as sites of imminent conflict circumscribed by
mechanisms of territorial control, the question arises as to whether the spatial offerings in the film are as liberating as some have suggested. The final images of the
film appear to support the conclusion that the “ethnic” suburb presents in many
ways a contemporary extension of the regressive and violent interior spaces seen in
earlier Turkish-German films. Erol believes his only option is to return to Turkey, as
the streets appear to have closed in around him, placing him under escalating sur-
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veillance and threat, and no other place in German society seems available to him.
Similarly, the final scene depicts Ahmed as seeking shelter inside, with Leyla once
again walking the streets of the suburb she is simply not permitted to leave. Drawing
on the writings of de Certeau, Fielder describes the city as “a zone of cultural conflict
whose individual citizens inhabit a textual system of which they themselves are not
the authors” (272). This premise seems particularly relevant when considering the
filmic space assigned to the second-generation characters of Geschwister. Though
their movements may display an attempt to reappropriate the German urban exterior,
these movements are consistently subject to regulation and constraint by others.
Arslan’s next film, Dealer, pursues one possible outcome resulting from the
identity types depicted in Geschwister. The film is not a direct continuation of
the narrative and characters constructed in Geschwister but, as the director has
remarked, “ein Weiterarbeiten an einem verwandten thematischen Feld” (qtd. in
Seeßlen 4). The film revolves primarily around a young Turkish-German man
called Can. Can is similar to Erol because he is based in Kreuzberg (and perhaps
also because he is played by the same actor, Tamer Yigit). Also, he is an extension
of Erol because, as a low-level drug runner openly involved in serious criminality,
he is distanced even further from mainstream society. The film takes up a number
of issues raised in Geschwister, such as the cinematic representation of space and
the construction of individual identity, and develops them through the experiences
of a new character.
Dealer was generally well received by both domestic and international audiences and critics, winning a FIPRESCI (International Film Critics Association)
prize at the forty-ninth Berlin Film Festival, and the majority of reviewers have
praised the film as a positive departure from other Turkish-German productions,
both past and present. For example, Sophia Matenaar suggests that “angesichts [...]
deutschtürkischer Jungfilmer,” one is grateful in Dealer
vor allem für all das [...], was nicht vorkommt. Kein Ghettotourismus. Keine
Kulturkonfliktfolklore. Keine Taxifahrer, keine Popmüzik, keine Hochzeitsschalmeien, kein Bildergewakkel, keine falsch untertitelten türkischen Flüche.
According to Moritz Dehn, the film differs not only from other recent TurkishGerman films but also from the Gastarbeiterkino of the 1970s and 1980s, which
presented “düstere, traurige Blicke auf die fremde Kultur” with Turkish characters
who live “weitgehend in ihrer geschlossenen Gesellschaft, tyrannisieren ihre Frauen,
verteidigen ihre männliche Ehre und bleiben archaischen Ritualen verhaftet” (2). In
contrast, he suggests that with this film Arslan “versucht [...] weitgehend auf folklorische Details und die Problematisierung von ‘Fremdartigkeit’ zu verzichten. Der
türkische Dönerverkäufer, der Straßenkehrer fehlen ebenso wie die Darstellung
von Generations-, und Traditionskonflikten” (2).
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 345
However, a closer analysis of Dealer challenges this positive reception, suggesting that the film continues to position Turkish-German characters on the
margins of society, where they have limited freedom of movement and are under
continual surveillance. A comparative analysis with Geschwister indicates that the
space that Dealer assigns to individual characters is even more limited than in
the previous film and that this space provides great insight into the success of the
identities or clichés lived by the individual characters and, by extension, into the
characters’ probable success within German society.
In Dealer, Arslan’s characters are restricted to a limited number of disconnected
and largely featureless urban locations, such as the run-down industrial site and the
dark entryway of an old and crumbling building where the viewers are introduced
to the bulk of the second-generation immigrant youth in an early scene and where
the majority of these characters are positioned for the entire film. The process of
walking about the city with at least the possibility of negotiating and appropriating
the topographical system, which viewers may have witnessed in Geschwister, is no
longer evident in Dealer. Whereas Arslan’s siblings were constantly on the move,
Can is for the most part static, restricted to the kind of “any-spaces-whatever” that
Deleuze identified as typical of European cities after 1945, as
spaces which we no longer know how to describe [...], deserted but inhabited,
disused warehouses, waste ground, cities in the course of demolition or reconstruction. And in these any-spaces-whatever a new race of characters was stirring,
kind of mutant: they saw rather than acted, they were seers. (xi)
Drawing on Deleuze’s writings, Laura Marks argues that “‘the new race [...]
kind of mutant’ to which Deleuze refers [...] describes the very real conditions of
migration, diaspora, and hybridity that characterize the new populations of Europe
and North America” (27). Thus, these “any-spaces-whatever” are not only useful
in describing postmodern urban spaces, but are also symptomatic of the impact of
migration on many Western metropolises.
In postunification and postmodern Berlin, a city in which demolition and reconstruction are perpetual and which is home to the largest immigrant communities in
Germany, Dealer narrows its scope to a small number of emptied or abandoned
“any-spaces-whatever,” which appear in the form of littered streets and the vacant
courtyards and alleyways between residential blocks where Can and his associates
are, to borrow a term from Kevin Robins, the “‘have-nots’ in the abandoned zones
of the city” (323). Thus, the capital is reduced essentially to a small number of
marginalized sites of socio-economic exclusion. With nowhere else to go, Can
finds his movements limited to detached spaces, and even in these he is repeatedly
positioned with his back to wire fences and cement walls, presenting a continual
reminder of his ongoing exclusion. In one of the opening scenes, for example, the
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viewers’ attention is drawn to a wired-up, opaque window through which the silhouettes of two people can be seen. After what appears to be a brief discussion, the
two move momentarily inside the doorway of a residential block to conduct their
business. Here, it becomes evident that the dealer is the protagonist, Can. After the
exchange, he returns immediately to the street, where he is subsequently shown
standing silently with his back to a cement wall, slightly away from the other
dealers. The camera remains at a distance, as if to reinforce detachment from the
characters presented on screen. The seemingly impermeable barriers against which
Can is continually framed not only articulate the restriction of his movements to a
limited number of “any-spaces-whatever,” but also present clear visual indications
of both his constant confinement and his impending actual imprisonment.
As in Geschwister, the protagonist’s mobility and experience of urban space in
Dealer provide insight into his motivations and affiliations and his position in and
relationship to the postmodern urban hierarchy. However, the image and spatial
negotiation of Berlin in Dealer are significantly different from those presented in
the previous film. If the street is staged as a site of conflict in Geschwister, then
it is reduced effectively to a prison in Dealer. As Merten Worthmann notes: “Can
ist ein Gefangener, lange bevor er im Gefängnis steckt” (“Der Weg” 18). Can’s
movements are monitored constantly by police, his criminal boss Hakan (Hussi
Kutlucan), other dealers and addicts, and any attempt to flee the watchful eye of
the city’s surveillance is reprimanded. This is illustrated when he tries to spend
some time alone with his daughter, and Hakan berates him for not being locatable
at all times, remarking: “Der verlorene Sohn ist wieder da. Wo hast du gesteckt?
Ich habe zweimal versucht, dich anzurufen.” Later, Hakan, on the basis of reports
he has received from some of the other dealers, accuses him of working with the
police. Unlike Geschwister, there is no longer the option of seeking refuge in
“autonomous zones.” Whenever Can attempts to leave the streets he is expelled
almost immediately and forced back into the urban exterior. Thus, when he enters
a disco looking for possible clients, he is promptly spotted by police and taken
outside into the streets, where he is roughly searched and then arrested. Although
his exclusion from this particular interior space is perhaps hardly surprising – he
is, after all, a dealer, and as such his exclusion from public or mainstream spaces
such as the disco is to be expected – he is also and unexpectedly excluded from
more marginalized spaces. Early in the film, when, in order to conduct business,
Can moves inside a residential building in what appears to be an “ethnic” suburb,
he is pushed back outside by a female resident who first curses him in Turkish
and then threatens: “Wenn ich dich nochmals hier sehe, rufe ich die Polizei.”
Moreover, his own domestic space provides little relief and is presented as
stifling and confrontational, as his relationship with his girlfriend Jale (Idil Üner)
deteriorates. The two quarrel constantly about his occupation; in fact, there are
very few scenes shared by the two when they are not arguing about Can’s inability
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 347
or refusal to seek alternative, legitimate employment. As a result, he tends to avoid
his home, opting instead for the streets. Ultimately, he is excluded from all spaces
– mainstream and marginal, surveilled and unsurveilled.
Towards the end of the film, Can’s experience of the urban space seems to
shift from exclusion to containment. He is kept under continual surveillance and
prevented from leaving the urban exterior. He himself refers to the impossibility
of leaving Berlin after Hakan is murdered. Realizing that Hakan’s promise of advancement by managing a bar has died along with him, Can makes a futile attempt
to get off the streets for good by accepting a job as a kitchen hand for a Turkish
restaurateur. His work in the restaurant indicates that he is not as far removed from
the clichéd Turkish Dönerverkäufer as some have suggested. However, the interior
space proves claustrophobic, and, as Georg Seeßlen comments, “die Tätigkeit als
Küchenhilfe erscheint ihm so entwürdigend, dass er sehr schnell wieder da ist, wo
er nicht mehr hinwollte: auf der Straße” (4). Having not seen him for a while, one
of the other young Turkish-German dealers comments: “Ich dachte, du wärst nicht
mehr in der Stadt.” Can replies: “Warum soll ich nicht in der Stadt sein, wo soll
ich hin, du Idiot,” in a remark strongly reminiscent of Erol’s: “Was soll ich denn
hier,” which underlined that character’s feelings of social exclusion and isolation.
Confined to the peripheral spaces of the urban landscape, Can remains largely
static and watches the city that watches him. He becomes one of Deleuze’s “seers,”
ever observing but unable to act. For in the “any-spaces-whatever” from which
Can cannot escape,
situations no longer extend into action or reaction [...]. These are pure optical and
sound situations, in which the character does not know how to respond, abandoned
spaces in which he ceases to experience [...], vaguely indifferent to what happens
to him, undecided as to what must be done. (Deleuze 272)
He watches as Hakan is murdered, watches as some of the other dealers beat up
an addict with whom he has established a tenuous relationship, and at night he
watches silently as the traffic with its bright lights drives off into the distance,
leaving him behind. Though he expresses a desire to change his life – “Ich wollte
mein Leben ändern, aber wusste nicht wie” – it is clear that he will remain a
prisoner of the city, of the banal emptied spaces. As Helga Fitzner remarks: “Die
Kraftlosigkeit und Unentschlossenheit, sich aus dem Dealer-Milieu zu befreien,
gleicht in diesem Sinne [...] doch dem inneren Gefängnis [...], und Can endet
folglich in einem realen Gefängnis, einer Justizvollzugsanstalt” (2). At the end of
the film, after Can has been arrested and sits alone in prison, in his final comment
as intermittent narrator he remarks: “Seltsam, wie sich alles ändert.” This remark
is significant for a number of reasons. When Can originally speaks of finding
change, his words suggest that he still has some control over that change and the
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JESSICA GALLAGHER
events of his life, but now his comment indicates that the changes have occurred
independently of him. The irony of this final remark is also amplified as images
of the disconnected everyday spaces lived in by Can are displayed one by one,
as if reunited, and eventually blend into a black surface on the screen before the
final credits begin to roll. The park, the doorway, the abandoned industrial site, the
kitchen, and the crowded residential blocks – all held Can prisoner long before the
state institution did. In reality nothing has changed for Can. The barred window in
his cell is not unlike the window against which he was framed in one of the initial
scenes. The institutional prison where he now finds himself is not vastly different
from the urban prison where he has been trapped throughout the film and probably
for his entire life.
Can’s girlfriend, Jale, who has received almost no critical or scholarly
attention, fares little better than Can in terms of the space accessible to her.
Despite being portrayed as a relatively liberated young woman, having partly
escaped the kind of familial pressures experienced by Leyla in Geschwister, Jale
nevertheless continues, like her predecessors from the 1970s and 1980s, to be restricted to interior/enclosed spaces. In the majority of her scenes, she is depicted
at home with her daughter. Though she is employed, the viewers are not privy
to her movements to and from work. Instead, she is simply pictured at work,
standing behind a small counter with her back to a wall and a descending escalator.
Similarly, in the only scene where Jale is shown outdoors, she is framed front on,
in close-up, standing with her back to a brick wall watching her daughter ride her
bike among building rubble. The limited urban space available to Jale suggests
that her own “any-spaces-whatever” are not so far removed from the restrictive
and claustrophobic spaces experienced by earlier female characters in the TurkishGerman Gastarbeiterkino.
In Geschwister, though the streets prove at times hazardous, Arslan’s siblings are
nevertheless able to manoeuvre around various exterior and interior spaces. Their
wanderings present different ways of viewing the German capital and express, although not always entirely successfully or auspiciously, at least the possibility of
appropriating or reterritorializing the “ethnic” suburb and by extension the wider
urban topography. In Dealer, the “ethnic” suburb is bare, with little evidence of the
impact or acceptance of Turkish culture in German society or any real indication
of mutual cultural exchange. There is none of the signposting seen in the previous
film, such as the Turkish newspapers, signs, music, and voices that emphasize
the presence of residents of Turkish origin in the city. Instead, the urban imagery
is limited to empty, dehumanizing places where characters are trapped, unable to
respond, unsure of how to leave. The protagonist, like the bulk of the TurkishGerman characters in the film, frequents only the forgotten, superfluous spaces of
the city along with the addicts and prostitutes. They are confined within Berlin’s
“any-spaces-whatever,” with very little chance of escaping marginality.
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 349
The final film in the Berlin Trilogy, Der schöne Tag, focusses on the movements
and relationships of a young Turkish-German actress, Deniz (Serpil Turhan). The
film depicts a day in her life, accompanying her as she makes her way around
Berlin. Arslan has highlighted the film’s shift to the female perspective, after his
concentration largely on young male characters earlier in the trilogy, stating:
Nach Geschwister und Dealer, die eher von männlichen Protagonisten dominiert
waren, hat es mich diesmal mehr interessiert, die Geschichte einer weiblichen
Figur zu erzählen. Einer jungen Frau, die einen Beruf hat und die sich Fragen
über ihr Leben stellt. (qtd. in Seidel 3)
Like Dealer, Der schöne Tag represents an extension of an earlier film by exploring a particular identity type offered in Geschwister. Deniz is positioned as a
more matured and integrated version of Leyla and to some extent of Jale. She lives
alone, works as an actress, and is pondering the direction of her life in terms of her
relationships and career. The connection between the trilogy’s female characters
is emphasized through the shared ambitions and desired lifestyle choices of the
three women as well as through the casting of Serpil Turhan (who played Leyla in
Geschwister) as Deniz.
Like Arslan, Simon Rothöhler contends that the film extends the discussion on
second-generation Turkish youth in Berlin previously established in Geschwister
and Dealer:
Die ersten beiden Teile [...] spielten beinahe ausschließlich in Kreuzberg und
waren auf männliche Figuren konzentriert. Dieser Rahmen wird in Der schöne
Tag erweitert, geografisch und perspektivisch, und komplettiert Arslans Angebot
an Beschreibungen dieser Lebenswelt. (1)
The fact that Deniz has middle-class employment, lives in her own apartment,
and more freely traverses the urban topography of Berlin might invite critics
and viewers to conclude that she has dissociated herself from Arslan’s earlier
characters. However, while the film may have extended its geographical setting
and lifestyle choices on offer to Deniz, there is considerable evidence that she is
disengaged and dissatisfied and thus shares a number of similarities with the main
protagonists from the trilogy’s first two films.
After presenting Berlin largely from the standpoint of one of its “ethnic”
suburbs in Geschwister and then reducing the city even further to a small number
of anonymous, abandoned sites in Dealer, Arslan offers a different view of the
city in Der schöne Tag. The spatial possibilities have been broadened for Deniz,
as is evident from the film’s initial scene, when the first images displayed are the
wide, blue sky followed by an open door and window. Almost immediately after
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JESSICA GALLAGHER
viewers are introduced to Deniz, she is on the move, exiting the interior, domestic
space of her boyfriend’s apartment for the street. Much of the film’s trajectory is
based around Deniz’s travels through the city, as she goes to work or visits her
mother or meets with her sister. As Worthmann aptly notes: “Deniz fährt S- und UBahn, Taxi, und immer wieder geht sie zu Fuß durch die Stadt, durchquert Parks,
wartet auf Bahnsteigen, läuft Straßen entlang und auf einen See zu” (“Immer” 1).
Whereas Leyla’s movements were controlled largely by her father and Jale was
framed almost entirely in interior, domestic spaces, Deniz is constantly out and
about and is able to move freely amongst a number of different zones in the city.
Through her travels, Berlin is depicted as more fluid and connected than in the
previous two films and much less a site of overt conflict or confrontation.
However, when Deniz walks through the city, she does so with a kind of apprehensive determination and intensity, often without an obvious destination, and
rarely with an obvious purpose. Her wanderings appear to reflect an inner unrest
and a search for something undefined. Worthmann likens Deniz’s movements
through Berlin to flânerie, but he simultaneously acknowledges that “[s]ie wirkt
weich, ein wenig schlafwandlerisch” (“Immer” 1). He then goes on to state that
Deniz “bewegt sich [...] wie eine Bresson-Figur von Station zu Station, leicht
abwesend als ein Mensch, dessen Wege kaum vom eigenen Willen abhängen”
(“Immer” 2). Kerstin Decker’s view may in fact be more apposite: “Alles in ihr
ist Aufbruch, doch bleibt sie seltsam ziellos” (15). This premise is supported by
Deniz’s sister’s comment: “Du bist ständig auf der Suche. [...] Versuch mal zur
Ruhe zu kommen.”
Deniz is continually present in the urban exterior, and yet in many ways she
appears to try to disengage herself. The fact that she is asking questions about her
life, as Arslan himself has indicated, may indicate that she is not only discontented
but that she is also unsure of where to turn and what she is looking for, as is reflected in her sister’s comment and critics’ observations. Whereas the siblings in
Geschwister were inextricably caught up in the tension, confusion, and conflict of
the city, Deniz remains detached, preferring instead quiet contemplation, perhaps
as a means of avoiding the urban turmoil and her inner unrest. She is withdrawn
from the city that surrounds her and continually seeks places of solitude, such as
the lake and the Tiergarten. Despite this preference for more open natural spaces,
Deniz is reluctant, if not unable, to leave the city, in much the same way as Can
and the siblings. She alludes to this apprehension about leaving the city during a
conversation with Diego (Bilge Bingul), a young man whom she encounters on
various occasions throughout the day: “Ich weiß, dass es sich blöd anhört, aber ich
verreise nicht gern [...]. Ich fühle mich nicht wohl an Orten, die ich nicht kenne.
Ich vermisse sehr schnell meine Freunde, und außerdem habe ich schreckliche
Angst vorm Fliegen.”
Urban Space in Thomas Arslan’s Berlin Trilogy 351
While the majority of recent Turkish-German films have shifted their focus to
the second generation, it appears that, in many instances, this new generation of
characters continues to struggle with the same kinds of spatial limitations as their
predecessors. Rather than finding liberation through greater mobility and access
to external spaces, the youth in Thomas Arslan’s Geschwister and Dealer continue
to suffer from constant regulation and surveillance not only by mechanisms
of German society, but also by familial and cultural controls. The urban space
available to characters in the two films is depicted as a potential and actual site of
conflict, with the streets presented more as metaphors of confinement and control
than they are of any increased mobility or liberation. In Der schöne Tag, Deniz is
able to traverse a number of zones of the city and appears to enjoy a mobility that
seemed previously impossible for Turkish-German youth, particularly the young
women. However, her travels are often without purpose and she is disturbingly
reminiscent of Erol, whose movements through Kreuzberg were a reflection of
his isolation and feelings of alienation. Deniz’s wanderings seem primarily to
emphasize her detachment and indecision and perhaps to indicate a fear of what
might happen should she stop.
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