Images

V. Bernard, S, Oksay (Eds.) | V.Akman, M. Akser (Co-Eds.) IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter The IMAGES 2011 Project PublicationVeronika Bernard, Serhan Oksay (Eds.) Vedat Akman, Murat Akser (Co-Eds.) IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter The 2011 IMAGES Project Publication A CenT— Cultural Encounters and Transfers and Kik — Cultures in Contact Publication Innsbruck 2011‘This publication has been printed and produced with the contribution of CENT ~ Cultural Encounters and Transfers x kes CENT ~ Cultural Encounters and Transfers (hitp:/hvww uibk.acaticent) is a Humanities research platform based at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) The articles included in this publi for publication as sepurate redacted print work. jon are subject to the terms of the author copyright agreement ‘The original versions of the articles have been published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh as the online Special Issue 1 (2011) of CINES Cinema Journal at hup://eing}.pitt.edu, CINEJ Cinema Journal is a peer-reviewed semiannually published intemational Cinema Journal published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh and cosponsored by the Uni- versity of Pittsburgh Press. ‘Translations into Turkish: Nazli Ergin Cover design: Veronika Bemard Cover photos © Theresa Leitner, Karoline Atzi Print and production: digitaldruck at Druck- und Handelsgesellschaft m.b.H., 2544 Leobersdarf, ARED Strasse 7 © 2011 Veronika Bemard, Serhan Oksay ISBN 978-3-200-02462-5Table of Contents Editors’ Note Veronika BERNARD, Serhan OKSAY: The IMAGES Project and the IMAGES Project 2011 Publication IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters Veronika BERNARD; Introduction, Articles on Cinematic Language and Aesthetics of Conveying Cultural Encounters Veronika BERNARD: The Wing Beat of the Butterfly. The Causality of Asymmetric Cultural Encounters and Escalation in Babel (2006) and Valley of Wolves ~ Iraq/ Kertlar Vadisi — Irak (2006) David RYAN: Sedimentations: Some Thoughts on Schoenberg's Mu- sical Accompaniment to a Cinematographie Scene Paul HARTLEY: The ‘Return to Home’; The Musical Construction ofa Common Trope ia New Turkish Cinema Thematical Articles Frank F, SCHERER: Ufa Orientalism. The ‘Orient’ in Early German Film: Lubitsch and May Qijun (Cynthia) HAN: Across Cultural and National Borders: Diasporie Chinese Family in Pushing Hands Akshaya KUMAR: Changing Landscape of Moral Registers and Ur- ban Pathology in ‘Bombay’ Cinema: Decline of Biological Family and Birth of the Individual through Awara (1951), Deewar (1975) and Satya (1998) Judith MICHELMANN: Re-Organizing Cultural Values: Vers /e Sud by Laurent Cantet Vlad DIMA: Strangers No More: The Initial Hitchcock Murder 33 49 65 7 79 a1 103 17 Table of Contents IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters‘The Editors Table of Contents CINEJ Cinema Journal Online Special Issue 1 Q0i1) Table of Contents CINEJ Cinema Journel Volume | 133 Table of Contents 6 IMAGES « Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterEditors’ Note IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter includes articles based on papers proposed for the IMAGES project 2011 conference IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter (Istanbul, Kadir Has University, 1-4 June 2011), which unfortunately had to be cancelled short term due to unexpected occurrences, The happier we are to be able to offer registered participants to the conference the opportunity to publish their articles in the online Special Issue 1 (2011) of CINEJ Cinema Journal, the international refereed online cinema journal published by the University of Pittsburgh (htip/eine}.pitLedu), and in addition to this in print in the book IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter, which on the terms of a redacted works publication includes a selection of articles originally published in the C/NEJ Cinema Journal online Special Issue ¢ (2011). Veronika Bernard Serhan Oksay Vedat Akman, Murat Akser Editors" Note IMAGES ~ Fils as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 7The IMAGES Project (www.images-1.over-blog.org) and the IMAGES Project 2011 Publication IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter Veronika Bernard University of hmsbruck, veronika bernardouibi.ac.at Serhan Oksay Kadir Has University, serhano@khas.edu.tr, serhano@serhanoksay.com The project IMAGES (www.images-|over-blog.org) has been planned and scheduled as a series of conferences, publications, exhibitions and online photo contests for the years 2011-2014. It has been initiated by the rescarch focus Cultures in Contact, which is part of the Humanities research platform CEnT (Cultural Encounters and Transfers) based at Leopold-Franzens-University in Innsbruck Austria. The senior project partner is Kadir Has University in Istanbul/ Turkey. The idea for the project has been developed by Assoc. Prof. (Privatdozent) Dr. Veronika Berard (University of Innsbruck) and Assoc. Prof. Dr, Serhan Oksay (Kadir Has University). IMAGES is an interdisciplinary project, and it strongly relies on the cooperation with intemational academic and non-academic partners. IMAGES deals with the discourse of cultural encounters within the context of social coexistence. The project defines “discourse of cultural encounters” as the discourse inside the context of cultural encounters and as the discourse on cultural encounters. Within this scope, the project deals with both verbal and non-verbal communication and focuses on the topical fields of cultural encounter, poverty, and migration. IMAGES adapts a cultural studies definition of the term “culture”. Cultural studies, bas cally, define culture by the concept of the group, seeing culture as the sum of all the fe tures aud ways of behaviour people show and adapt deliberately in order to become stinet from others and to form their specific idcatities. IMAGES further embraces perspectives on cultural phenomena taken by communication studies. The project starts from the idea that the images you form (of you and of others) essentially shape relations and communication between both individuals and communities, and at the same time are their results. Contemporary communication studies inteo- duce images (as the images an individual holds of his or her own self, and the images others form of you) to a communicative system formed of values, evaluation and selec- ‘The IMAGES Project IMAGES ~live perception, No matter which our values are, as a whole they build that very system by which we evaluate and judge the ways others act, look and speak in order to find out whether they fit in with our values, In case they do, there is the realistic chance of a positive and fruitful communicational process; in case they do not, communication will go wrong and end soon ~ in a comparatively unspectacular way by cutting communicational ties or in a rather dramatic way by leading into conflict. Intercultural communication studies analyse these mechanisms with individuals from different cultures, From an intercultural perspective (intercultural) communication means that you open your own culture to ideas rooting in the other’s culture by dropping own cultural ideas and including ideas rooting in the communication pariner’s culture, This is possible only, however, if cultures have a minimum mumber of ideas in common. In- tercultural communication aims at increasing the number of ideas cultures have in common; increasing their number makes the difference between successful and not successful (intercultural) communication, In case there are no ideas in common, intercultural communication will be impossible and the cultures involved will not be able to reach a better mutual understanding. Considering the communicative mechanism of selective perception, IMAGES under- stands cultural encounters and the possible ways they take as circular paiterns, and it sees itself as part of these circular patterns: the academic discourse on cultural eneounters, poverty and migration, which will be dealt with in the conference and publication series, will be contrasted to the results originating from the online photo contests and being presented to the public in the exhibition series, which document the non-verbal everyday- life discourse. In this way IMAGES adds to the critical discussion on the definitions of cultural encounters. The IMAGES project publication series opens with the CINEJ Cinema Journal online Special Issue 1 (2011) IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter and the print publication IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter, which on the terms of a redacted works publication includes a selection of articles originally published in the CINE] Cinema Journal online Special Issue 1 (2011). The volume includes papers proposed for the IMAGES project conference [MAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural En- counter (Istanbul, Kadir Has University, 1-4 June 2011). The conference was designed as a public 4-cays international und interdiseiplinary English language conference, co-organized by the University of Innsbruck based research platform CEnT ~ Cultural Encoun- ters and Transfer and Kadir Has University (Istanbul) in cooperation with CINEJ Cinema Journal, the international refereed online cinema journal published by the University of Pittsburgh (hitp:/cine).pitt.edu). It intended to bring together senior scholars with PhD students, and postdoctoral academics, without following the classical keynote speaker pattern but rather inviting all speakers to present their research findings in 30 minute paper presentations (including 10 minutes for discussion) in plenary sessions. The conferen- ‘Veronika BERNARD, Serhau OKSAY 10 IMAGES — Ims as Spaces of Cultural Encounterce concept also reserved room for presentations of creative works focussing on the conference topic. Having applied the IMAGES project context on the conference topic, both the CINEJ Ci- nema Journal Special Issue | (2011) IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter and the print publication JMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter include articles analysing films as spaces of cultural encounters from a cultural studies perspective in general, as well as from inter-cultural, multi-cultural, trans-cultural, semiotic, comma- nication centred, historical, political, and all related perspectives. Innsbruck and Isteusbul Veronika Bernard and Serhan Oksay (IMAGES project directors) ‘The IMAGES Project ‘lms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter uIntroduction Veronika Bernard University of Innsbruck, veronika bernard@uibk,aeat IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter, The 2011 IMAGES Project Publica- tion together with the CINEJ Cinema Journal online Special Issue 1 (2011) IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter opens the MAGES project publication series. While the CINEJ Cinema Journal online Special Issue | (2011) IMAGES - Films as Spa- ces of Cultural Encounter inchudes all accepted articles based on papers proposed for the IMAGES project conference IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter (Istanbul, Kadir Has University, 1-4 June 2011), /MAGES ~ Fitms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter, The 2011 IMAGES Project Publication on the terms of a redacted works publication includes a selection of these articles, As the conference was designed to bring together senior scholars with PhD students and postdoctoral academics also the publication tries to present a well-balanced mix of articles written by senior scholars, PhD students and postdoctoral academics. Having applied the IMAGES project context on the conference topic, both the CINE Ci- nema Journal online Special Issue t (2011) (MAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural £1 coumer and the print publication JMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter. the 2011 IMAGES Project Publication include articles analysing films as spaces of cultural encounters from a cultural studies perspective in general, as well as from inter-cultural, trans-cultural, semiotic, historical, political, and all related perspectives. Within this scope IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter. The 2011 IMAGES Project Publication opens with three articles focusing on cinematic language and aesthetics of conveying cultural encounters and being written by Veronika Bernard, David Ryan and Pau Hartley; it continues with a group of five articles discussing films according to several thematical aspects and being written by Frank F. Scherer, Qijun (Cynthia) Han, Akshaya Kumar, Judith Michelman and Vied Dima Inher atticle “The Wing Beat of the Butterfly. The Causality of Asymmetric Cultural En- counters and Escalation in Babel (2006) and Valley of Wolves ~ Irag/ Kurtlar Vadisi ~ Irak (2006)" Veronika Bernard discusses the major cinematic tools applied in visualizing the causality of asymmetric cultural encounters and escalation in the 2006 movies Babel and Valley of Wolves ~ Iraq stating that cultural encounters can also be of asymmetric Introduetion lms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 13quality, as for instance in situations of provoked or accidental (inter)oultural misunderstandings, hierarchical situations and in cases of emergency. David Ryan's article “Sedimentations: Some Thoughts on Schoenberg’s Musical Accom- paniment to a Cinematographic Scene” and Paul Hartley’s article “The ‘Return to Ho- me’: The Musical Construction of a Common Trope in New Turkish Cinema” both focus on the use of music in films from the perspective of cultural encounters. Ryan discusses Ammold Schoenberg's Begletimusik zu einer Lichtspielszene of 1930 in his article focussing on the fact that this soundtrack was actually created with no film in mind and that it clearly documents Schoenberg’s anticipation of the times to come. He further includes a discussion of Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet’s ,utilization of the score from 1973%, also from the perspective that he has received permission to erente anew film for this piece. Harley examines scenes from four films in order to “explore the musical component of a common trope in the films of the New Turkish Cinema® paying special attention to how the musical scores tend to undo the nostalgia of sentimental moments by constructing presentations that are paradoxical and to how this affects the importance of such mo- meats in Turkish social life. ‘The group of thematical articles includes articles dealing with cultural encounters represented in Orientalism, in the approach to the social institution of the family, and in sexual hegemony and violence, Frank F, Scherer’s article “Ufa Orientalism. The ‘Orient’ in Early German Film: Lubitsch and May” discusses from a psychoanalytical perspective how the exotic constructions of “Oriental” scenes in many Weimar Germany films may refer to the concealment and supposed healing of post-1918 Germany's national narcissistic wounds by underlining a Eurocentric representation of the Orient. Qijun (Cynthia) Han analyses family melodrama in transnational Chinese cinema from the interdisciplinary perspective of media and culture studies in her article “Across Cul- tural and National Borders: Diasporic Chinese Family in Pushing Hands within the context of a theoretical discussion of the historical emergence of melodrama, aiming at “[eomplicating) our perceptions of generic dislocation or displacement, transcuttural entanglements and globalization in light of contemporary cultural practices™ by this discussion, ‘Akshaya Kumar’s article “Changing Landscape of Moral Registers and Urban Pathology in ‘Bombay’ Cinema: Decline of Biological Family and Birth of the Individual through Awara (1951), Deewar (1975) and Satya (1998)” takes the family theme to the Indian context of a coflective moral imagination and the construction of a national self-pro- jection in Bombay Cinema. Veronika BERNARD 14 ims as Spaces of Cultural EncounterJudith Michelmann’s article “Re-Organizing Cultural Values: Vers le Sud by Laurent Cantet” discusses how Cantet's movie explores female sex tourism, political and social violence. and the relation of power and money without being moralizing but by indirectly inviting people to judge the protagonists concluding that, finally, “having a look at the cultural values that produce the disgust, we see that they are all open to question”. Viad Dima, finally, fully concentrates on the theme of violence and sadism in his article “Strangers No More: The Initial Hitchcock Murder”, in which he analyses “the various levels of violence and graphic detail in the initial Hitchcock murder scenes” as documen- ted in scenes fiom Blackmail. Strangers on a Train, and Frenzy. ‘This volume thus offers the reader a cross-section of current research on films as spaces of cultural encounter from a wide variety of perspectives: the authors being from the United States of America, Canada, the UK, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and India; and writing from highly disparate cultural, ideological, and scientific perspectives, and from a plethora of academic backgrounds. The editors hope that by considering the arguments presented in these articles the reader will be encouraged to recognize film as a major medium of intellectual and artistic discussion of cultural encounter. Introdueti IMAGES -- Films as Spaces of Cultural Eneaunter IsArticles on Cinematic Language and Aesthetics of Conveying Cultural EncountersThe Wing Beat of the Butterfly. The Causality of Asymmetric Cultural Encounters and Escalation in Babel (2006) and Valley of Wolves — Iraq/ Kurtlar Vadisi ~ Irak (2006)! Veronika Bernard University of Innsbruck, veronika,bernard@yibk.acat Abstract ‘The term ‘asyrnmet 5 a warlike situation in which the opponents involved do not have equal access to decisive logistic resources. The author of this article states that cultural encounters can also be of asymmetric quality: in situatfons of provoked or accidental (inter)cultural misunderstandings, in hierarchical situations and in cases of emergency. She further states that the movies Babel (2006) and Valter of Wolves ~ frag (2006) can be seen as cinematic adaptations of such cases putting the focus on the causality of asymmetric cultural encounters and escalation. The article deals with the major cinematic tools applied in visualizing this causality in the two films. Der Begriff asymunetric conflict beschreibt cine kriegsgleiche Situation, in der die Gegner unglei- chen Zugang zu logistischen Ressourcen besitzen. Dic Autorin des vorliegenden Artikels behauptet, dass kulturelle Kontakte im Falle von bewusstem kulturellem Miss-verstehen, hierarchisehen Situationen und Notfaltsituationen von asymmetrischer Qualitit sein kémnen, Sic behauptet aubicr- dem, dass di me Babel (2006) und Tal der Wélfe ~ Irak (2006) solche Situationen darstclien und sich dabei auf die Kausalitit von asymmetrischer Kulturbegegnung und Eskalation konzentric- ren. Der Artikel analysiert dic filmische Umsetzung dicser Kausalititt in den beiden Filmen, Asimetrik gatisma terimi taraflarin teknoloji ve silah gibi belirleyici lojistik kaynaklara esit erigimi- nin olmadigt savas benzeri durumlan anlate, Bu makalenin yazart duruma karisan taraflarin kislar= tulma veya kazara kittie (arasi) yanks anlastlma, hiyerarsik durumlar ve acil durumlar gibi olay- tani akigint etkilemede esit pozisyonlarda olmadiktarind kiiltirel kesigmelerin de asimetrikalite- si olabilecegini belirtcktedir. Ayrica Babel (2006) ve Valley of Wolves ~ Iraq! Kurtlar Vadisi — Jrak (2006) filmlerinin bu gibi durumtann, asimetrik koltttel kesisimlerin ve gerginlik artigint odak hoktasi yaparak sinemaya uyarkeomasi olarak gérlebilecezini de vurgulamaktadsr. Bu makale, bu iki filmdeki nedenselligi canlandirmada Kullanulan ana sinematik araglan ele almaktadr. IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 19Introduction ~ Babel and Valley of Wolves: Two Political Films of 2006 Although being received by the public very differently®, Mexican born director Alejandro Gonzalez. Iitérritu’s film Babel and Turkish director Scrdar Akar’s production Valley of Wolves — Iraq have at least two aspects in common: They can be seen as political films, and they take the perspective of those being or feeting dis-priviteged and vietimized by situations of asymmetric cultural encounters. Babel catches the post-9/1| political climate dominated by the US war against terrorism in telling five days in the lives of four families living at opposite ends of the world. When a shot fired fo test a newly bought gun in the Morocean mountains accidently hits a US American woman (Susan [Jones]; starring Cate Blanchett) this incident snowballs. Du- ring the following five days it not only sends the machinery of international media and US diplomacy to action it also decisively influences the lives of those whose stories are told by the film: a US couple, whose male spouse ( Richard [Jones]; starring Brad Pitt) is trying to mend their marriage on a journey to Morocco, and whose female spouse is the one being hit by the shot on the second last day of their journey; the couple’s (illegal) starring Adriana Barraza) and her nephew (Lu Esquivel); a Japanese widowed businessman (Yasujiro; starring Koji Yakusho), who gave the gun used in the incident to his Moroccan hunting guide years ago, and his deaf teenage daughter (Chicko; Rinko Kikuchi), who blames her father for her mother’s suicide; and a Moroccan peasant family, whose younger son (Ahmed; starring Said Tarchani) is the one who fires the shot while tending the family goats on a hillside and by chance hits the US American woman travelling with her husband in a tourist bus just passing by. This situation severely affects the US couple’s Mexican maid Amelia back home in the US. During the couple’s absence she has been in charge of the couple’s infant children Mike and Debbie (starring Nathan Gamble and Elle Fanning), As the couple docs not return home in time for her to go and sce her family in Mexico for her son’s wedding she is caught in a dilemma and finally takes the children to Mexico. When her nephew Santiago (starring Gael Garcia Bernal) takes them back to the US by car in the night after the wedding although he is drunk they are held up by US border control because they are lacking written allowance for the trip by the children’s parents, When Santiago panics and drives off they are chased by police.’ Afler being dropped together with Mike and Debbie in the nightly desert by Santiago who drives off alone,® Amelia and the children end up walking the desert in burning sunlight and close to fatal dehydration the following day before they are finally rescued by US border patrol people.° The Japanese father’s and daughter's story focuses on Chieko’s personal problems after her mother’s suicide, which she tries to drown in consumerism, alcohol, drugs, by provoking people and by testing her sexual attraction on men just to be rejected by each of them and feeling even more inferior and humiliated afterwards.” Towards the end of the film it is suggested that the mother's sui~ Veronika BERNARD 20 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encountercide has been committed with the very gun the Japanese had given to his Moroccan guide afterwards.* This context given, the film ends in taking a pessimistic and disillusioning perspective by sending the (materially and socially) privileged back to their (originally) good and privileged lives of love and harmony; by showing the (materially and socially) dis-privileged being even more victimized than before: and by showing those having caused the escalation getting away with it: Susan Jones is taken to a Casablanca hospital by a NATO/ Red-Cross helicopter after having re-united with her husband and finally is released from there five days later under massive international press coverage;? the Japanese father and daughter find together again afler a long time of inner separation.” Amelia is being expelled from the US for being an illegal immigrant and is shown sitting on a Mexican street side with the rest of her belongings waiting to be picked up by her son while her nephew has managed to escape arrest by US border patrol;"" and the Moroccan family’s elder son Yussuf (starring Boubker Ail El Caid) is shot by police while his younger brother Ahmed who also caused this further escalation by shooting a policeman on their flight to the mountains lives and is shown destroying the gun as the source of all evil in desperate anger and handing himself in to the police." Valley of Wolves ~ iraq takes an authentic political incident for a starting point of its cinematic adapiation of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq: [ts pre-titles sequence shows a Tur kish military officer referring to the Turkish-US Stilemaniye hood affair of 2003" in a Ictier to a friend before committing a suicide for having failed in protecting his comrades in this inident and seeing them like his superior and himself being arrested.'* This political message is supported by the ideologically inverted east-west foe-and-hero pattern, which the narrative of the film relics on and which borrows its hero from a popular week ly Turkish TV serial titled Kurtlar Vadisi,!° and by integrating semi-authentic material to the film, like the cinematic adaptations of the US torture photos shot at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, The hero of the film is Polat Alemdar (starring Necati $asmaz), a Turkish undercover secret agent acting in the grey zone between legality and illegality. He is the military of- fiver’s friend to whom the letter is addressed and who is asked to fight for his and the of ficer's honour, i, e. to find the person to be held responsible for the disgrace the officer has suffered and to seek satisfaction for his suicide. This person is a US American named Sam William Marshall (starring Billy Zane),who by status is a civilian seeing himself as a member of the US forces, though, and understanding his presence in Iraq as kind of a personal mission to free the land of his forefathers." The two men’s atiempts to kill each other form one strand of the narrative. The other strand tells Leyla’s story: Leyla {starring ‘Bergiizar Korel) is the Iraqi heroine of the film and a peaceful Sheik’s (Abdurrahman Ha- lis Kerkuki; starring Chassan Massoud) adopted daughter, who is shown losing her husband on their wedding night due to a US provoked attack on the wedding ordered by ‘The Wing Beat of the Butterfly IMAGES ~ Fims as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 21Marshall" and who is secking to revenge on Marshall for this loss. In the course of the film she joins forces with the Turkish hero before she is shot by Marshall in the finale. ‘The ending of Valley of Wolves ~ lraq sends a mixed message to audiences similar to that of Babel: Leyla’s father, the integrative Sheik, is dead after he has been missiled by Marshall in his mosque during the morning-prayer;'* Alemdar is shown desperately mourning over the dying Leyla he has not been able to protect." In contrast to Babel, though, the ones causing the escalation have not been able lo get away: Marshall and his unscrupulous assistant Dante (statring Diego Serrano) are both dead; Marshall is stabbed by Alemdar using Leyla’s dagger.” giving her and his dead friend satisfaction by this; and Dante is stabbed by Leyla." However, the Turkish hero and his mates have only fulfilled and survived their mission because they have fought their opponent using his own means, i. ¢. using violence and killing others, The Subject of the Article - The Visualization of the Causality of Asymmetric Cultural Encounters and Escalation In structuring and visualizing these narratives both, Babel and Valley of Wolves - Iraq, exploit the principle of chaos theory”: The causalities created all start at single incidents of a-symmetric cultural encounters whose consequences are not to be foreseen and which result in a series of other incidents producing further unforcscen incidents. Although using the same structural pattern of causality the two films, nevertheless, take essentially different ways in linking the featured stream of escalation to the sparking situations of asymmetric cultural encounters. While Babel integrates such situations in the flow of the individual narrative strands which have been initiated by a past (and just tell-told) situation of a-symmetric cultural encounter to visualize the dramatic and ironic development of the escalating process, Valley of Wolves ~ Iraq strategically visualizes them as the starting points of escalation. By focusing on selected theme setting scenes of the two films the article explores in how far the narrative structure of the films and the character drawing are part of these essentially different ways of visualizing the causalities created. The Narrative Structures of Babel and Valley of Wolves and their Visualization As far as the narrative structure of Babel is concemed the title of the film can be seen as the first key to understanding, The name “Babel” alludes to the Biblical image of the ancient megacity characterized not by its fruitful variety of tongues but by @ contra-pro- ductive and destructive confusion of tongues: People communicate in their individual Veroniks BERNARD 22 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultur: Encountertongues and within their individual communities but the communities lack the ability of mutual communication, The imagery of the finale of the film can be seen as the second key: When the Japanese father returns home on the night of the very day when Susan Jo- nes is released from the Moroccan hospital he finds his daughter Chieko naked on the balcony of his 31" floor Tokyo penthouse flat looking over the illuminated city. Fear, sur- prise, and astonishment showing on his face he walks over to his daughter who moves her face, takes his hand and starts crying. When he takes her in his arms to calm her and when she allows him to do so the camera slowly starts moving backwards, and doing so for the following 50 seconds first shrinks the two people on the balcony, next the building and finally the city to invisible spots in a nightly black universe; indicating their existence to be known but buman physical capacities of perception not being able (o tell their exact position; while at second 40 of the finale the dedication by the director saying “To my children Maria Bladia and Elisio.... the brightest lights in the darkest night” appears in the upper right hand corner.” In line with these conceptual statements Babel creates a world of parallel actions from the very beginning, which are linked by a past accidental incident of a-symmetric cultural encounter but whose protagonists never directly meet within the period of time shown by the film; the parallel quality of actions being visualized by exploiting the jump cut technique at its very best. By literally forcing audiences to “jump” from the Japanese strand of the narrative into the Morocean and Mexican one without a warning the film confronts viewers with presumably independent scenes, dialogues and images. It is not uniil the end of the film that audiences have learned scenc by scene, dialogue by dialogue and image by image in which way the several scenes, dialogues and images are linked and are to be seen as individual perspectives taken on the sequences of a narrative whole. So, at the beginning of the film audiences lear the phone conversation between a man called “Sir* (Richard Jones) and a Mexican woman named Amelia (the Jones’ maid) from Amelia’s end and from Mr. Jones’ son’s end without knowing when exactly this phone call is taking place. You just hear a vague voice in the far telling “Amelia” that she can go and that someone will come to take care of the children in the evening and that his, wife has to be operated on;”! you do not even know that this voice belongs to Richard Jo- nes. The finale of the film then shows him making the very phone call from the hospital in Casablanca on his wife’s delivery there and while waiting for his wile to be operated on.” Audiences see this while they already have knowledge of Amelia’s expulsion from the US to Mexico and of the incidents feading to this. In this way audiences see the causalities of events unfold from their ends; the film stressing the inevitability of events and underlining people's powerlessness and impotence in influencing the escalating processes by this: Although being affected by the events people are not (actively) part of them. The narrative structure of Valley of Wolves ~ Iraq relies on a pattern of confrontation, which sends characters into face-to-face encounters both with the several theme setting ‘The Wing Beat of the Butterfly IMAGES ~ Filtas us Spaces of Cultural Encounter 23scenes and as far as the two narrative strands of the film (Alemdar’s mission and Leyla’s story) as a whole are concerned. The narrative strand dealing with Alemdar’s mission is initiated by the theme setting flashback pre-titles sequence showing the first (inter)cultural misunderstanding of the film lead into lethal escalation: Visualizing the sentences the Turkish military officer is just writing in his farewell letter addressed to Alemdar and opening “Sevgili Kardesim" (My deat/ beloved brother) audiences see Marshall intrade on the Turkish Siilemaniye post in the cinematically adapted Stilemaniye hood affair scene and commit an (un- friendly) violation of the laws of hospitality by this as he “has been drinking tea” with the Turkish before. Afier meeting the Turkish military officer in charge face-to-face he or ders the Turkish soldiers to be arrested and be fed to the US van with sacks pulled over their heads so their faces cannot be seen and identified by others.” This decision made by Marshall to protect the soldiers” honour and dignity is understood just to the opposite by the soldiers affected and by this starts the escalating process to come: Having to wear the sacks over their heads makes the soldiers lose their faces twice at a time ~ literally because the sacks are hiding their faces and figuratively because being led off with their faces hidden is seen as a disgrace. The narrative strand dealing with Leyla’s story starts when viewers see her father, the Sheik, prepare her and her husband-to-be for the wedding,” and it first escalates in the theme setting scene showing the US intrusion on this wedding being “legitimized” by another (intercultural) misunderstanding; this ime a provoked one, however: While the wedding festivity is starting audiences see two of Marshall’s men watching the building, chewing gum and chatting; the one of them telling the other that the people at the wedding will soon start firing their guns and that this will be the moment for attack” ~ the ee- lebration shots fired by the wedding guests being deliberately scen as aggressive acts aiming at the US forces. As soon as the wo narrative strands meet in the scene when Leyla offers Alemdar and his mates hiding in her aunt’s house on their flight from Marshall’s men,” and in the following fuse into one narrative strand, the narrative develops towards its climax and finale, In contrast to Babel, the viewers sec escalation come with this suspense building technique. The jump cut technique, which in Babel is used to visualize the separation of lives affected and the multitude of incidents caused by the initial incident, with Valley of Wolves — Iraq serves (wo purposes: the purpose of supporting the creation of suspense and visualizing escalation; and the purpose of creating continuity between the fictionalized cinematic world and reality. The scene showing the US intrusion on the wedding illustrates the first purpose: A jump cut separates the scene showing Marshall’s men waiting ouside the building from the next one showing them check IDs inside the building. The next Veronika BERNARD 24 IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounterjump cut appears after a little boy has walked towards one of them and has put a litile stick, which he has taken from one of the masie instruments, into the mouth of the soldi- crs gun pointing his direction: You sec the boy lying on the ground shot and a wild shooting going on leaving several people dead ~ the jump cut leaving exactly this part of the scene open to the viewers’ imagination which would provide clarity if the shot killing the boy was an accident caused by the little stick (the flower) or a shot fired on purpose by the US American.” The second purpose shows whenever semi-authentic material is inserted to the narrative strands of the film; integrating Leyla’s, Alemdar's and Marshall's fictitious stories into the historicat reality of the US war in Iraq. The Character Drawing in Babel and Valley of Wolves — Irag and its Relevance for the Visualization of the Asymmetric Cultural Encounters and Escalation In line with this basic structural difference, Babel concentrates on the characters’ communication habits as the cential aspects of their personalities in illustrating the irony of events in its relation to a-symmetric cultural encounters; while Vallep of Wolves - Iraq focuses on dress codes, attitudes towards honour, duty, violence, and the opposite sex with character drawing in supporting the visualization of asymmetric cultural encounters lea ding into escalation. Babel, following its narrative structure of parallel actions, creates characters whose in- dividuat communicative and cultural habits make them representatives of worlds which are suggested to be separated by invisible walls of communicational and (intercultural in-competencies. The most significant scene illustrating this general pattern of character drawing is the one showing the tourist bus carrying the hit Susan Jones and the rest of the multi-national tourist group into the nearest village; the camera catching the situation both from the perspective of the tourists sitting inside the bus and starring through the glass of the bus windows at the villagers outside, who for their parts are following the bus and slarring at its passengers through the same bus window glass; the glass functioning as a transparent, i. €. a visible and at the same time invisible, wall between their cultures (resembling a vertical version of a glass-ceiling), and the perspective taken from inside the bus suggesting a feeling of uncomfortable insecurity and of being trapped in a situati~ on of incalculable risk shared by the passengers and Susan Jones in particular. Even when she is carried out of the bus and through the village into one of the huts this virtual wall is slill there, being indicated by her panicking reluctance to be taken to the hut, put on the ground thete, and finally by pulting up a fierce resistance against allowing a veterinarian from nearby as the only doctor available to close the wound on her shoulder with an ordi- “The Wing Beat of the ‘ims as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 25nary thread and a needle sterilized over open fire to avoid further loss of blood and in- flammation.” Suggesting that the escalation visualized in the film roots exactly in this (invisible) separation of cultural positions, and this being the underlying irony of events the narrative of the film is conveying, the central characters are designed to form culturally significant groups. There is the group of the angry young people represented by Chicko, who lives a life of time-killing activities covering her (personal and cultural) uprooting; and by Luis, who likes provoking and also shocking people, and is full of anger against US Americans for their discrimination of Mexicans and immigrants in general, which he articulates in sarcastic joking; besides he makes a slightly irresponsible impression which he shares with Ahmed, the younger son of the Moroccan peasant family; this one, in addition, showing suggested traits of moral inferiority, precocity, and irresponsibility when pec- ping on his naked sister,” masturbating while tending the goats” and choosing vehicles passing by on a road for targets to test a gun”, Another group is formed by the characters suggested to be morally integer; with this one you find the Moroccan peasants’ elder son Yussuf who shows moral superiority when scolding Ahmed for his behaviour against their sister, and Amelia who willingly accepts hierarchies as naturally given, takes re- sponsibilitics, and tries to improve her living conditions by hard and honest work, Stil another group is formed by the characters who are introduced as the representatives of cultural hegemony; as there is the Japanese businessman adopting traditional 19" century colonial customs when going on a hunting trip to a far off place and giving his gun to his guide for a present; and there is Susan Jones, who is introduced as the (stereo)typical We- stemer affaid of anything not belonging to her/his familiar cultural community and seeing dangers everywhere; in a lack of hygiene in places like Morocco and in Mexican people; the significant theme setting scene with this being the one when she is sitting at some rural Moroccan street restaurant where the tourist group has stopped for lunch, or- dering a diet coke, reluctantly and nerved accepting a normal coke when there is no diet coke available, next barking at the guy at her table (her husband Richard as audiences Jearn later) to throw away the ice in his glass as soon as the drinks are served because she is suspicious of the water quality, and, finally, furiously taking his glass away from him throwing the ice on the ground when he does not worry and is reluctant to do so, inten- ding to use the ice to cool his drink instead.™ Finally, there is the group formed by the characters communicating with all cultural groups they get into contact with. As part of this group you find Richard Jones, who just manages the situation of emergency by as- king people very openly for help and accepting their help,” even though also he is shown not 10 be fully able to leave his cultural context when he offers the guide money for his help in the end;** apart from him also the tour guide and the old Moroccan peasant woman, who both simply help, are part of this group. Veronika BERNARD 26 IMAGES Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterThese character drawings ate integrated in the underlying concept of irony, escalation and victimizing: The irony being that the morally integer ones are shown to be the ones who are victimized, as is suggested by Amelia’s and Yussuf’s stories; the morally du- bious “angry young men”, who feel victimized, being the ones victimizing others by their escalating actions; and the central character Susan Jones, whose hegemonic attitude has been introduced as rooting in deep fear of the other, being shown to become the one forced into a situation of emergency and into a position of being dependent on the help and support of exactly those ones she is fearing so badly and is looking down upon so much for their supposed cultural inferiority: Tf she wants to survive she has to accept the Mo- roccan villagers’ help and the supposedly unhygienic surroundings — and the opium pipe which the old Moroccan woman had in her mouth to start it and next offers her to calm her down and send her to an at least shortly relaxing sleep.” In this way the character drawing helps further specify the suggested context of escalating asymmetric cultural encounters: The cultural groups involved are not shown to be identical with cultures in a traditional understanding of the term, like nation cultures. It is the individuals sharing certain patterns of behaviour and coming from different nations, speaking different languages and belonging to different religious communities who form the cultural groups relevant in the escalating processes shown in the film; the relevant pattems of behaviour being linked to certain (universal) social contexts and indicating them to be of both universal and individual quality instead. Valley of Wolves ~ Irag creates two central (male) characters representing opposing cultural hemispheres: the Turkish hero Alemdar and his US opponent Marshall. Alemdar’s character drawing together with that of the other Turkish and Iraqi characters shapes an (Easter) world in which a man’s honour and his duty are central values, Marshall is presented as the representative of a morally inferior world in which people of Marshall's kind are aiming at establishing and increasing power by money, technological superiority and by exclusively devoting man’s intellectual potential to scheming, plotting and cheating at the disadvantage of others: individuals, states and cultural communities. The surface indicator of the two hemisphero’s incompatible codes of values is the central characters’ dress codes. As professionals both are shown to wear suits on the job, Ma- sshall’s choice of suit, however, makes him appear over-dressed for the occasion and by this suggests moral decadence: He either wears a casual beige or an clegant white suit, no matter if he comes to arrest the Turkish soldiers in the pre-titles sequence of the film or watches US soldiers violently intrude on an Iraqi wedding ceremony from his ear while on his way fo some Kurdish ceremony honouring him.” Besides, the film shows Mar- shall not changing for his free time activities: He is wearing the very suit at his apartment when playing the piano. This suggests him to be constantly on his mission, Alemdar changes from job to private: When the job with jts sometimes dirty work is done, he turns into the private person he is by changing, This change of clothes also indicates the Tur- tke Wing Beat of the Butterfly IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 27kish hero as taking a time-out on his mission and it suggests that it would be unfair for Marshall to attack now; the hero will be stilt alert but not properly armed. The finale of the film exploits exactly this suggestive message of the dress codes to ultimately high- ight Marshall's moral decadence: When Alemdar goes to the mosque al the time of the morning-prayer to leave the Sheik’s daughter Leyla there he is wearing a T-shirt under a windcheater.” When the US forces attack the mosque at that very moment they catch him off-guard while Marshall is wearing his beige suit when he enters the scene.*’ The lines between both hemispheres are clearly drawn by this: Judging from the character's clothes you can tell the moral quality of his action-to-come. The individual character traits are designed to further differentiate what the dress codes have set for a general context. So, the Turkish hero is presented as a man who has a hard cover but is soft and cating inside. He is shown to be serious and emotionally honest; being suggested to be the perfect protector and provider, both on the job and as a person. This is most significantly illustrated by the finale of the film. Although Alemdar shows a poker face for most of the film, which only mirrors the burden he shoulders on his job, he shares his anger, despair, and mourning with the outside world in this scene. Crouching on the ground he is holding the dying and the finally dead Leyla in his arms for about two and a half minutes, stroking her hair, clenching his fist in angry despair, erying badly and finally taking the golden blood-stained ring off Leyla’s nose: She received this ring fiom her father, the Sheik, on her wedding day and was told by him not to take it off before she really felt free."* Now Alemdar is doing this last service for the woman who has risked her life 10 save his life as death has “freed” her; whereas his US opponent Marshall has not hesitated to demonstrate his dis-respect for her and for women in general by shooting her into the heart twice at short distance.** Within this context the Turkish hero's actions are legitimated by cases of violated honour: A man’s honour can be violated because he feels to have failed in fulfilling his duty and responsibility in protecting others as is shown in the pre-titles sequence of the film. Resulting from this the moral concept shaping Alemdar is based on professional cool- ness: Alemdar sces his duty in answering his opponent’s provocations by successfully pursuing the job he has been asked for. When Marshall tries to provoke him by pointing out how inferior the Turkish are compared to the Americans, he answers sharply in words but calmly in behaviour.“ The fact that he only rushes (o violent fighting when this does not work out makes him the (moral) mastermind over his opponent's world. In line with this Alemdar and his mates are presented as men of ideological integrity and as men bound by moral loyalties: the killings committed by them being suggested to be inevitable steps of selfdefence, and being provoked by the opponent's attacks and wrong-doing; whereas the killings committed by Marshall and his men are seen as mur- ders. Marshall is designed as a character who does not know (moral) loyalties: He counts on cooperation based on supposed win-win situations, payrolls, strict requirement to be of Vero 28 IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter a BERNARDtise and on absolute subordination (o orders: for instance, using humanitarian aid and logistic support to lure allies in an attempt to cule over Irag.”* From his perspective loyalties, fair play and honesty are weak spots in a real man’s life and, therefore, obstacles in pursuing a mission, So, for instance, he does not hesitate to bring children into the hotel restaurant, which Alemdar has mined to put pressure on him. He knows Alemdar will not blow up a room with children in it, and he suggests that it is coward-like behaviour not to do so.” Similar to Babel, the character drawing in Falley of Wolves — Iraq in this way conveys the general message of the film, i. e. that the real victims of the escalation caused by si- uations of a-symmetric cultural encounters are the integer, the peaceful and the scrupu- Jous ones; in contrast to Babel. though, Valley of Wolves ~ frag generalizes this message from a context of individual behaviour to one of whole societies and cultures. Conclusion In visualizing the causality of asymmetric cultural encounters and escalation created by the natrative of the film Babel relies on a narrative structure of parallel narrative strands illustrating the idea of cultural and communicative separation. The focus with character drawing is pul on the characters’ cultucal and communicative in-competencies and on the situational context of the asymmetric cultural encounter in which they get involved and from which the escalation derives; the in-competencies being scen as rooting in the characters” individual backgrounds, and not in traditional ideas of cultural belonging. Valley of Wolves ~ Iraq supports its narrative structure of face-to-face confrontations, which are arranged in an ideologically inverted East-West foe-and-hero pattern, by a detailed character drawing highlighting the conteal characters’ incompatible codes of values and elevating the incompatibility of values to a level of universal relevance within a system of opposing cultural hemispheres in visualizing the causality of asymmetric cultural encounters and escalation. Both films use the jump cut technique in supporting their narrative structures. Babel docs 50 to support the visualization of the idea of cultural and communicative separation; Fal- ley of Wolves ~ Iraq does so to intensify the effect of escatation processes and to integrate the fictitious characters® stories in historical reality Beat of the Butterfly IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural 29nal version of this article was published by the University Library System, University of Pitisburgh at hitp:/cine) pitt edu/ois/index. php/cine//article/view/37/112, DOI 10.5195/einej.2011.37 * For a definition of the term sce hitp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare, For the reception of Valley of Wolves — frag (TR, 2006) with the European public see V. Bernard: ‘Mutual Perceptions ~ A Look at the 2000-2010 State of East-West Discourse in Germany and Austria, In V. Bernard, S. Oksay, E. Sensenig-Dabbous (Eds.): Breaking the Stereotype. From Orient and Occident to a Mutual Understanding of Images. nnsbruck: [UP 2011. pp. 21-46. For the reception of Babel (USA, 2006) see http://www. film-rezensionen.de/2009/ | 0/babel/, http:l/de.wikipedia.ore/wiki/Babel_(Film). httpy/vww. filmstarts.de/kcritiken/41034- Babel. html, htty://www.kinokai.de/babel, 150.22704.php, hup:favww.moviepilot.de/movies/babel-film/comments, btip//www.amazon.de/Babel- Deluxe-Steelbook-DVDs/dp/BOQONIM26S, http://www. film. 2eit.de/Film/17415/BABEL /Kritik/, http://www .metacritic.com/moyie/babel, hup/éwww.imdb.com/itle/u0449467/, hrtp://www. rottentomatoes.com/m/babel/, hwwnw.christiananswers.net/spotti /2006/babel2006.himn hittp://movies.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/movies/27oabe.html, hutp://en wikipedia ore/wiki/Babel_ (film), http//www.ofdb.de/review/101287.454583.Babel, hittp://movies. yahoo.com/movie/1808746699/info. * Babel (DVD). Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez litirritu; screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga; produced by Alejandro Gonziilez Iiidrritu; Brad Pitt (Richard), Cate Blanchett (Susan), Said ‘Tarchani (Ahmet), Gael Garcia Bernal (Santiago), Adriana Batraza (Amelia). An ANONYMOUS CONTENT, a ZETA FILM, a CENTRAL FILMS produetion copyright 2006, edited by Tobis Home Entertainment, 01:19:23-01:23:47. * Wid, 01:24-01:26. Sid, 01:41-01:48:49. 7 tbid, 00:19:12-00:26:29; 00:43-00:44:23; 01 :04-04:12; 01:36-01:39; 01:53-01:54. “tid, 02:03:56-02:06:42, ° Ibid, 02:07. ' tid, 02:09-02:11. " tid, 0: ' Whid, 0 "9 In this in 6:31-01:17; 01:39:07-01:40. fent twelve Turkish soldiers were held for 36 hours by US forces and had to wear sacks over their heads for all of this time. For more see: Ittp://en. wikipedia org/wiki/Hood_event. Kurtlar Vadisi ~ Irak/ Valley of Wolves — lrag/ KVI (DVD) Directed by Serdar Akar. Necati ‘Sasmaz (Polat Alemdar), Billy Zane (Sam William Marshall), Bergiizar Korel (Leyla), Giickan Uygur (Memati), Kenan Coban {Abdilhey), Erhan Ufak (Erhan), Chassan Massoud Veronika BERNARD 30 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter(Abdurrahman Halis Kerkuki), Diego Serrano (Dante). A Pana Film Production copyright 2006, edited by Koch Media, 00:00:17-00-08:08. © For further details on the TV series see http://de.wikipedia org/wiki/Tal_der_ W9%C3%B6lfe. 1 KT, 01:1434-01:16:17. tid,00:15:23-00:17:52; 00:20:26. ™ [bid, 01:39:59.01:40:03. " Bid, 01:49:49-1:52:20. Wid, 1:48:41-1:49:05; Leyla got this dagger from her husband on her wedding night to protect her honour (cf. KV/: 00:12:46-00:13:09). * id, 01:47:20-01:47:28. ® Fora definition of chaos theory see hltp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory, ® Babel, 02:09-02:11. ™ Bid, 00:09-00:10:18. * tid, 02:02:24.02:03. *° KV1, 00:05:53-00:07:12. )5-01:11352, 2" Tid 00:20-00:20:26,00:21-00:21:30. *' Babel, 00:36:54-00:38. * Ibid, 00:38-00:42:46, * thid, 00:04:25-00:04:45, * tid, 0 * tid, 0 . * Ibid, 00:14:16-00:16:00. * Ibid, 00:39:40. 5 Tid, 01:58-02:00. Tid, 01:00-01-02:54, “° KVI, 00:02:09; 00:20:27. *Mibid, 01:34:03, © iid, 01:38; 1:40:58. * Tid, 01:40:29, * Tid, 01:49:49-1:52:20. * Thid, 0 I Thid, 01:47:35. Ibid, 00:34:26-00:35:42, bid, 0 S-O117:34. Wid, 00:36:52-00:38:26. at of the Butterfly IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 31Veronika Bernard (PhD) is an Associate Professor (Privatdozentin) with the Depart- ment of German language and literature at the University of Innsbruck and a member of the research platform CenT (Cultural Encounters and Transfer), She is one of the two directors of the IMAGES project (conferences, publications, exhibitions, online contests; yeww.images-Lover-blog.org) and has been the director of the project Breaking the Stereotype. Oriental and Occidental Stereotypes in the Course of Time (www.breaking- the-stereotype2009-2010.over-blog.org). Veronika Bernard is a member of the advisory board of CINES Cinema Journal, the international refereed online cinema journal published by the University of Pittsburgh (htip://cinej pitt.edu). She has earned her postdoctoral qualification (Habilitation) in German literature. Her doctoral thesis is on the Orient in 19" century Austrian travel writings. Her research interests are: cultural encounters in movies; migrant literature (German-Tur- ish authors); European views and stereotyping of the Orient; the city in literature. She is the editor (with Serhan Oksay and Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous) of the book Brea- hing the Stereotype. From Orient and Qccident to a Mutual Understanding of Images (ansbruck: iup 2014). For further publications sce www.v-b-publikationen.over-blog.de, e-mail: yeronil ard @uibk.ac.at ‘Veronika BERNARD 32 IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterSedimentations: Some Thoughts on Schoenberg’s Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene! David Ryan Anglia Ruskin Unive David Rvant@englia.ae.uk Abstract This article examines Arnold Schoenberg"s Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene of 1930. Th a soundtrack in search of a film (no film was actually created with it in mind), and clearly speaks of Schoenberg's bleak premonitions of the coming decade with its cue titles of “threatening fear’ ~ “danger” — and ‘catastrophe’. The article further explores Schoenberg's music in relation to the mu- sicalf cinematic practices of his day, This leads to a discussion of Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Uuillet’s utilization of the score from 1973 which uses film as a self-reflexive device to explore the personal, cultural and the political. Having received permission to create a new film for this piece the author of this article hopes to explore how the cities of Vienna and Berlin might form a visual hinge through which to view the tumultuous exile of the composer from Vienna to Berlin snd on to the USA after the tise of National Socialism in 1933, Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht Arnold Schinbergs Beglettmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene von 1930, die komponiert, oline fitr einen bestimmten Film gedacht zu sein, in ihren Titeln ,.bedrohliche Angst” ~ ,,Gefahe* ~ und ,Katastrophe” Schénbergs Vorwegnahme des kommenden Jahrzebnts verkdrpert. Er stellt sic in den musikalischen und filmischen Kontext der Zeit. Dies fithrt zu einer Diskussion von Jean-Marie Straubs and Danielle Huitlets das Perséntiche, Kuluturelle und Politi- sche betonenden Herangchensweise des Jahres 1973. Der Autor, dem die Erlaubnis zur Produktion eines Films zur bestchenden Musik erteilt wurde, erkundet, wie die Stidte Wien and Berlin eine bildliche Annaherung an das Exils des Komponisten bilden kénnen, das ihn von Wien iiber Berlin in die USA fahrte. Bu makale, Arnold Schénberg"in 1930 yapum Begleitmusik 2u einer Lichispielszene filmini incelemektedir. Bu, esasinda, film araytgindaki (aslinda bu akilda tutularak herhangi bir (ilm gekilmemig- tir) bir film mizigidir: ve ‘tehdit edici korku' —tehlike’ — ‘felaket” gibi replikleriyle agikga Schon- berg’in gelecek on yila dair kasvetli Gnsezilerinden bahsetmektedir, Bu makale Jean-Marie Straub ve Danielle Huillet’in 1973 yilinda kisileri kultGrel ve siyasi yonden arastinmak igin kullandekstart kigisel yansima metodu ile ilgili yaptikiar galisma sonucundaki bulgular ile tartigma yaratmak- tadir. Bu parga (su anda planlanan) igin yeni bir film gokme iznini alarak, bu makalenin yazart 1933"te ulusal sosyalizmin yaikscliginin ardindan bestecinin Viyana‘dan Berlin ve daha sonra Amerika’ya olan galkantil siirgdntint| gézlemleme aracthgryla Viyana ve Berlin sehiclerinin nasil bir gérsel destek olusturabildigini kegfetmeyi amaglamaktadir. IMAGES ~ Fits os Spaces of Catal Encounter 33Prologue Having been intrigued by Arnold Schoenberg's Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene (1929-30), transtated as ‘Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene’, and re~ ceiving permission from Lawrence Schoenberg, the composer's son, to produce a video piece for this extraordinary piece of music, it seemed natural to use this as a pivot around which to address filmic cultural encounter, My initial response to this video project was to conceive filming the two great cites that formed a backdrop to Schoenberg's early life and work: Berlin and Vienna, with the music operating as a kind of hinge between the filmed cityscapes. Why this might be a first response to the music is an interesting question, but it is one has remained and still informs my approach to the possibility of realizing this project in the future. This is addressed toward the end of the essay and what precedes it is a sort of responsive cartography of obliquely related ideas and issues: firstly, Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Sequence is addressed in the context of Schoenberg's music and the cinema of its day. In examining this piece it is necessary to allempt to reconstruct Schoenberg's intentions, and, indeed, ask what can be done with such music in realizing a filmic response. Secondly, and to this end, I intend to focus on the Jean-Marie Straub (1933) and Daniele Huillet (1936-2008) realization of the film (1973) because of the sheer dedication with which these author/directors have attempted to think through, with, and even agains/ Schoenberg in their various investigations of his music. Finally, the more personal question may well be asked of why Vienna and Berlin? This is related to, albeit at the periphery, the questions around cultural encounter and the cinematic cityscape that will be touched on at the end. Schoenberg and Music for the Films Schoenberg's relationship with cinematic art might best be described as oblique. And yet one of the most persistent accusations of Schoenberg’s music by a first-time listener is that it ‘sounds like film music’, There are various reasons for this response. Firstly, the rather trivial one that movie music is the most ‘known’ reservoir of vaguely modern classically sounding music; secondly, the ‘visionary’ quality of Schoenberg’s music and its seemingly heightened emotional intensity appears so vivid. Schoenberg's early music takes us from the Vienna of the 1890s in his Wagnerian songs and famously lush Romantic Verkldirte Nacht (1899) to a response to symbolism, in particular Stefan Ge- orge’s poems, with his phase of so-called “free” atonal composition lasting from 1907 up to the violent interruption of the Fitst World War. Within this period Schoenberg is perhaps at his most revolutionary in demanding, literally, new sound worlds and new con- ceptions of both pure music and drama, particularly with the Five Orchestral Pieces (1909), Ewartung (1909) and Peirrot Lunaire (1912) amongst many other pieces. Apart David RYAN 34 ns as Spaees of Cultural Encounterform the Five Orchestral Pieces (although descriptive titles for these were added at the request of the publisher, and much to Schoenberg's chagrin) text remains a key spark during this period, bringing into being an almost hallucinogenic intensity to musical word painting. No doubt symbolist poetry of the 1890s is partially responsible for opening up this world with its over-ripe sensuality and decadent connotations of correspondences between the senses, The British composer Constant Lambert, a critic of the Schoenberg school in the 1930s, saw this whole phase of atonality as a period when composers were simply realizing the technical and emotional means to catch up with the literature of a previous generation: ‘The complete break up of the traditional Teutonic technique released a new world of sound and a new world of sensation. Like a repressed character who, having at last lost his inhibitions, ings himself into debauch with a hardiness and gusto that would astonish the accustomed pagan, so the composer, suddenly conscious of his nerves, almost lost consciousness of any other faculties and con- centraied in one single generation the neurasthenia of fifty years of literature.” This emphasis on sensation, apparent in the Five Orchesiral Pieces and Ewarting in particular, had a delayed reaction in relation to film music. it was only by the late 1940s that any direct application of atonalism started to creep in. Accompaniments to film music contemporary to Schoenberg's 1909 scores generally operated as a potpourri of quotation from standard repertoire such as Tchaikovsky or Gounod. Before the standardization of orchestras for silent film it was often a pianist, or- ganist or an ad hoc group who accompanied screenings. William Alwyn, a distinguished British film composer of his day, would recall an early foray into the cinema pit aged ele- ven in 1916 articulating the provincial conditions of the silent film music of the time: In front of me on the music stand was a thick stack of music; Poer and the Pea- sant and Zampa were in the better class [...] it was a mixed bag of sentimental favourites and an album of specially composed film musie designed to meet any known situation, Also on the desk was a piece marked Thente which | was told by my mentor to keep separate from the rest and at a given signal from the leader (two raps on the desk?) to abandon whatever 1 was playing and dive abruptly into the theme [...] The essential link in the performance was the pianist who bound this hotch-potch of music together with his rapid modulations and improvised chords.? This essentially improvised, or roughly hewn, tapestry of quotations of known standard or popular repertoire works served as both mnemonic and emotional ballast to the visuals. As Rick Altman has pointed out, the development of silent cinema and sound cannot be totally subsumed under the iron law of Wagnerian leitmotif (as it often is) constituting any homogenously consistent approach, though it was certainly one strong influence, ‘lms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 35from the period of 1900 through to the 1920s, It was in fact much more organic: tra- versing music hall styles, light music, orchestral repertoire, specific improvisations deter- mined by cue sheets, to fully-fledged composed orchestral scores. Within these genres, though in different forms, the sheme and its transformation for particular scenes remained a key issue. Recognizable songs later became an important commercial adage and prefi- gured their usage in sound films in the 40s, 50s and 60s, but made an early appearance accompanying film reels, Altman suggests that, within early film the use of, for example, Stephen Foster’s songs worked so well, Because they were the repositories of a cultural memory that exhibitors knew well they could bank on, In the same way, the classical pieces most often used in used by early twentieth century piano teachers were pressed into service in thea ters in the early 1910s. Rubinstein’s “Melody in F”, Schumann’s “Tréumerei” and Massenet’s “Elegy” were chosen not just because the musicians knew them but because they were weil known to audiences, who took pleasure in discove- ring their favourites.* In this context we can only imagine the shudder that went through the concert audience present at the first performance of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces at the Promenade concerts in London in 1912 under the baton of Henry Wood. It is said a third of the audience booed, a third nervously laughed, and the rest couldn't decide whether to laugh or boo. But that shudder, that feeling of non-recognition or incomprehension, was then translated into a sign for ‘the unknown’ and hence this music became the stock source for later third-rate horror movie composers. It was the only way of making sense of that strangeness of the music, to use it to illustrate such strangeness, fear or the uncanny — which the intense neurasthenia of the music, as Constant Lambert pointed out, was aptly suited, ‘That the raw sensations opened up by this music took decades to break into the mould of film scoring is somewhat surprising. If' we look more closely at Schoenberg’s activities in Vienna and Berlin we find the composer involved in the kinds of ad hoc groupings of early cinema with his involvement in a Berlin based cabaret in 1901-2 (these vaudeville contexts and popular café events were sometimes the home of early cinema projections). Schoenberg's early dramatic works are closely tied with melodrama, though far more “fleshed out” than their early cinematic counterparts but none-the-less related. Erwartung uses a stream-of-consciousness approach not uninfluenced by his contemporary Freud, utilising an impressive athematicism, as Schoenberg’s pupil Anton Webern noted, “In it, all traditional form is broken with; something new always follows according to the rapid change of expression. The same is true of the instrumentation: an uninterrupted succession of sounds never before heard. There is no bar which fails to show a completely new sound picture.”® If we take Altman’s previous comments above, such music would have frightened the life out of early cinemagoers. As has been clearly researched, David RYAN 36 IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounterthe early silent cinema (when it was without music, which it rarely was) appeared to the audience as a ghostly apparition, hallucination, or something uncanny proposing a ‘lack’. It was the comfort of the popular tunes and classics or the recognizable themes derived from them, the opposite of Schoenberg’s music at the time that filled and domesticated this void. But, the melodrama in Schoenberg. as a form, points to his interest in the extra-musical, in the interplay between gesture, word, and music that allows subtle shading of expression, Even in Pierrot Lunaire, the actress who commissioned the piece, Albetine Zehme, was known for her spoken melodramatic monologues with musical accompaniment, which, in its most basic terms, Pierror is. Zehme often used traditional classical music as an accompaniment to her melodrama recitals, such as Chopin and others. Yet, on October 16 1912, however. in the Berlin Choralien-saal, dressed as Columbine, she delivered the Pierrot recitation alone on stage with Schoenberg conducting the musicians behind a sereen. In another melodramaslike work, the opera Die Gluckticke Hand (1909-13), Schoenberg develops this interplay of gesture as spoken, sung, musical and adding here a strong visual element. In this piece Schoenberg created intricate relationship between light and colour with detailed sketches outlining shifts and co-ordinations of passages of both music and colour. Although it was completed in 1913 it had to wait until 1924 for its premiere. Four years later he delivered a lecture at Breslau on the piece detailing his concem with what might be seen as an expanded gestural approach as follows, [...] The most decisive thing is that an emotional incident, definitely originating in the plot, is expressed not only by gestures, movement and music, but also by colours and light, and it must be evident that gestures, colours and light are treated here similarly to the way tones are usually treated ~ that music is made with them; that figures and shapes, so to speak, are formed from individual light va- jues and shades of colour, which resemble the forms, figures and motives of music®, This strong emphasis on the visual component is hardly surprising at this point in Schoenberg's cateer, due to his own experiments with painting (c1907-1912), which accompanied the intense atonal period, and also his friendships with painters such as Koko- schka and Kandinsky. In a fascinating missed opportunity, Schoenberg’s correspondence unearths a project in 1913 to film Die Ghickliche Hand complete with bis thoughts on the filmic and musical processes to be explored, This would bave been the first filmed contemporary opera/experimental film, and Schoenberg expresses his wish to involve Kan- dinsky or Kokoschka with the hand tinting of the intense coloration of various passages. We also see that Schoenberg was abreast of early editing techniques but also demanding a new role for film beyond the burgeoning ‘reality principle” being untolded by fledgling film grammar: Sedimentati IMAGES - Films as Spnoos of Cultural Encounter 37My foremost wish is therefore for something the opposite of what the cinema generally aspires to, | want: The utmost unreality! The whole thing should have the effect (not of a dream) but of chords. Of music. [¢ must never suggest symbols, or meaning, or thoughts, but simply the play of colours and forms. Just as music never drags a meaning around with it, at least not in the form which it [music] manifests itself, even though meaning is inherent in its nature, so too this should simply be like sounds for the eye, and so far | am concerned everyone is free to think or feel something similar to what he thinks or feels while hearing music.” Here, Schoenberg predicts the origin of the completely abstract film, not realised until Hans Richter’s and Walter Ruttmann’s experiments in the early 1920s, While Die Ghuck- liche Hand was initially described by Schoenberg as ‘making music with the media of the stage’ the possibility of film offered a far more complete realization of this piece which was immediately grasped by the composer: “And there are a thousand things [...] that can] be done in this medium, whereas the stage’s resources are very limited.” Schoen- berg’s vision of the musical ‘accompaniment’ also reflects the contemporary practices, despite his idiosyncratic and typical demands of total control and unlimited rehearsal time. Astonishingly, he even considered acranging the orchestral part for theatre organ, “Fur- ther, in large cities”, he stated, “It must always be an orchestra. When and under what conditions an organ may be used cannot be said at this stage. For that, after all, depends what these organs are like. If they satisfy me J shall make no difficulties.”® Unfortunately this 1913 cinematic realization, to be completely supervised by Schoenberg came to nothing, But even from the fragmented correspondence concerning this project we can see that Schoenberg was interested in the management of the whole possibility of cinema: editing, scenography, colouration and, of course, the integration of music. That it was an atonal opera that comected with film at this point is also significant in that the evolution of sound within silent film was often seen as having its origins in popular opera ~ with cinema itself seen as @ kind of mutant operatic form. Schoenberg saw this reciprocal relation with opera necessitating a response from the then still silent cinema and vice versa: “The future of the opera depends on the future of the drama, and both have new ways forced on. them by the fact of the cinema, which can offer all the theatre offers except speech.” It was over 15 years later that the music publishers Heinrichshofen Verlag, who speci sed in music for the sifent cinema, contacted Schoenberg with the possibility for writing a musical accompaniment for film. The publishers, with Schoenberg's difficult personality in mind, knew that to secure the commission they should forego contracting the composer to a particular film, hence the generic title, ‘Musical Accompaniment to a Cinema- tographic Scene’, No film, therefore, was produced for Schoenberg’s music, leading to the suggestion that the film in question was purely imaginary. Alban Berg, for one, was not quite satisfied by this: “E can’t get over the fact that you have written a score to a film sce» ne. Was it composed for a particular film? Or is it something for general use (in the sense, David RYAN 38 IMAGES. ms as Spaces of Cultural Encountersay, of a comedy overture)? [...] OF course it is a complete work of art even without film; but wouldn't it be wonderful if it could be heard synchronically (or whatever it’s called!) with a film created by you. LU you were interested, it would surely be feasible in Berlin!" But when asked by Heinrich Strobel about the ‘application’ of the music in 1931 in a radio broadcast which preceded a performance of the piece, Schoenberg responded tartly: “Am | to conform to a fad, like American movies, which have managed to overexploit and ruin a good thing in just two decades? [...] When 1 think of motion pictures, 'm thinking about those of the future, which will necessarily be more artistic. And it's those that my music will fit!” This has caused no end of problems with the piece, which has been mainly used as a concert work without film with some referring to the above as evidence of Schoenberg's intentions. Occasionally, through the decades, the score has been realized with scenes from classics of the silent cinema, usually of the horror variety. Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari being obvious choices to reflect the three sections or ‘cues’ of Schoenberg’s music: “threatening danger’, ‘fear’, ‘catastrophe’. Needless to say, this does not do justice to the piece, and with such film choices these cues become mere illustration, but also rather than mobilizing a cinema of ‘the future’ it forees this music into an anachronistic position. it also reduces it to a one-dimensional cliché, echoing that of atonal music being an ‘abnormality’, a music capable of a narrow emotional range: that of the frisson and horror only. While the Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene’s possible ‘program’, if we can call it such, might look back to the nightmarish neurasthenia of the earlier pre-war Ewarting ot Herzgewasche, Schoenberg's method had changed radically in the intervening years, the system of ‘composing with twelve tones’ had been developed by him in the early 1920s after a silence from any composing activity. Its musical challenge was to replace the tonal system with an alternative method of organisation while remaining *pantonal’ (Schoenberg thought the term ‘atonal’ a nonsense). This meant in many ways a more classical basis, a concern with ‘pure music’ rather than being text driven, and also the development and construction of larger scale pieces. The film music comes hard on the heels of the Variations for Orchestra (1928), Schoenberg’s mature twelve-tone orchestral masterpiece, which flexes its structural musical imagination exclusively through the new method. Both scores share something of the same atmosphere, except the film score is smaller in scale and orchestral forces (bespoke, in fact, for cinema orchestras at the time) and seems to reflect a more musical restlessness. In moving from quiet ominous usilings to fragmented waltz or dance-like propulsions, cach are in turn smothered by hu- ge hammer blow crescendos, and here Schoenberg may have had in mind a kind of aural editing, Musical Aecompanimeni to a Cinematographic Scene occupies an ambiguous space in what has proved to be a tumultuous and transitional phase in music for cinema. Already, by 1929, sound film had arrived two years earlier and sounded the death knell for the kind of cinematic performing traditions that Schoenberg had written for. While he 39was writing for the ‘film of the future’, the means of production had moved on. Conside- ring the score as film music it is hard not to agree with Berg's regret that Schoenberg had not supervised or created a film, as in 1913, to go with this score, Berg himself, perhaps in response to Schoenberg, was to outline in detail the direction of a silent film to be inserted as the central pivotal point of his opera Lil (1935). At the posthumous Zurich premiere of the incomplete Luh in 1937 the film interlude was generally criticized as simply being in the manner of the ‘pre-war silent melodramas’. Although since then, the film interlude of this opera (which is filmed with the specific cast for each production) is seen as crucial to the editing and telescoping of time within the musical architecture and plot, as well as being prophetic (as in Schoenberg's predictions) of an opera intertwined with the cinema- tio, Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene deserves more than being simply an accompaniment to stock horror, even if they are drawn from classics of the modernist cinema, Whether the cue titles should be taken literally is a moot point. It has to be said that even in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music which is, generally, more classical than the eatlier period, there remains an ‘angst’, one perhaps rooted in Schoenberg's own history, but remaining none-the-less even in those later works which, according to Adorno, eschew ‘animal warmth’. Adorno goes on elsewhere: We are not dealing with arbitrary behaviour or the preferences of a subjective, unfettered artist, the way people once tried to label him as an ‘Expressionist," for example; nor, equally, are we dealing with the work of a blind craftsman who follows after his material with a calculator, no longer intervening in it spontaneously,!? For Adorno, this fissure between subject and object results in an absorption of history, its critical reflection together with the potential formulation of the new, enabling the artwork to act as a critical foil to the real. In this way, catastrophe in Schoenberg, which Adorno suggested, could be felt in every phrase of the composer's music, was neither personal nor objective but literally historically sedimented within the work: an absorbed shock that becomes aesthetically sublated. There is no doubt that the historical moment of his experiences of the Vienna and Berlin of his time are locked within the formation of his output, and yet there is far more than this localised experience there. This is the challenge facing the filmmaker wanting to work with this piece; Adomo’s geological metaphor of sedimented layers is apt, but one of the pressing questions in addressing a visual context for the film is: how do we tap into this without any vestige of nostalgia? David RYAN 40 ms as Spaces of Cultural EncounterIntroduction to an Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene (1973) One of the attractions of the Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene is. no doubt, a film score by one of the great modern composers ~ but herein also lies its problem — what do you do with it? Schoenberg's twelve-note method strives for inner musical coherence, but the film score, as Michel Chion has suggested, must remain open and porous if it isto create a meaningful counterpoint with visuals. If Schoenberg's music has its own coherent dramatic shape how does a filmmaker deal with this? Do we think back to his directions to Die Glucklicke Hand, with its parallel ‘music for the eye"? Or try and somehow go against it and do something else? Here we can see that the choice of the filmmaker to the conceived soundtrack is a situation of ‘counterpoint’ (as classic directors from Eisenstein to Hitchcock have demanded of the sound/film relationship) rather than accompaniment as in silent cinema, or rather, the dichotomy between differentiation and complementarity. Do we complement the film scene’s visuals or go agai them? Or both? Jean-Marie Straub and Danie! Huillet have produced a collaborative body of work note- worthy for their probing of both aesthetic and political viewpoints within cinema from the late fifties to 2008 when terminated by Huillet’s death. As French artists they have commented on Enropean culture within their creative output, examining specific German or Italian cultural concerns through a highly objective and deconstructive fens. Their work responds to the premises of both Brecht and Adomo, without being overly theoretical filmmakers (although, as with Schoenberg himself, that is a common accusation of their work) they have raised issues about the filmmaking process as a politics of looking, listening and participating, Introduction to a Musical Accompaniment to a Cinema- tographic Scene (1973) reflects a long interest in Schoenberg and not just as a composer but also as a broader cultural signifier of modernism with all of its complexities and paradoxes. Their wish to film Schoenberg’s Moses and Aron {1930-33 - Schoenberg's spelling) goes back to 1959, finally realized in 1975 in a production featuring the remarkable landscape of the ancient theater of Alba Fucense in the Abruzzi. Asa prelude to this, the short /ntroduction to a Musical Accompaniment to a Cinema- Jographie Sequence was produced for the German Siid-West-Funk television station as part of a series on composers. In many ways it acts as a commentary both to their realize tion of the opera, and on the Accompaniment music, and taking on very different form to both, Montage and contrast replaces the massive continuity of the opera realization. Straub/Huillet develop a mode of exposition that attempts to fan out from particulars to cultural generalities. it is, in effect a series of observations on the context of the music: its background, its social environment and its polemical position, without ‘representing’ or “illustrating? it. The film begins with a shot of a fountain with the sound of the running water, which relates (0 the end of a previous film History Lessons. it then cuts to Straub 4llighting a cigarette on a balcony against a backdrop of Rome, and then talking to the screen about Schoenberg’s usual meticulous production directions in contrast to the rather bald cue titles, as Barton Byg points out in his book on StraubyHuillet’s German films: ‘The main argument of Straub's speech is against the proposition that the “Accompaniment” can be dramatized, Straub quotes the reasons for Schoenberg's detailed stage directions in all his dramatic works, the desire “to leave as little as possible to the new rulers of the theatrical art, the producers.” The fact that the Begleitmusik has no such directions, other than the heading “Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe,’ proves that the work is not meant to depict directly the events described or foreseen in [Schoenberg's] letters, The work has only an abstract relation to reality. Hence Straub's last assertion, before more neutral biographical narration continues in shot 3, “Otherwise unrepresentable, the cinematographic scene consists only of the so-called accompaniment.”*? In ‘Composing for the Films’ written with Hanns Eisler in 1946, Adorno comments that the dissonances of Schoenberg's radical period “far surpasses the measure of fear con- ceivable to the average middle class individual; it is historical fear; a sense of impending doom.” It is this trans-subjective historical tide that also embroils the individual that Straub/Huillet then looks to. Straub's address then picks up on Schoenberg's own situation in the 1920s after showing images of the composer's paintings, mainly the self-portraits, Several incidents developed Schoenberg's insecurity as a European Jew in Austria, perhaps not the first but the most stinging occasion being a vacation at Mattsee near Salzburg in 1922 where Schoenberg was expelled from the resort for being Jewish. In a now infamous 1923 exchange Schoenberg declined Kandinsky’s offer to join the faculty at the Bauhaus, as Music Director because he has heard (from exactly where is unclear, but for a while at least he suspected Kandinsky himself) of anti-semitic remarks being made by staff there, and his suspicion, In this impassioned letter to Kandinsky, Schoenberg shows an acute reading of where these anti-semitic tendencies are leading. In many ways these writings are truly prophetic, and full of the threatening danger that may well inform the Accompaniment music. In his 1923 response to Kandinsky’s rather tame reply of ‘some of my best friends are... he scathingly writes: I have not yet said that for instance when I walk along the street and each person looks at me to see whether I'm a Jew or Christian, I can’t very well tell each of ‘them that I’m the one that Kandinsky and some others make an exception of, although of course that man Hitler is not of their opinion [...] bat what is anti-se- miticism to lead to if not to acts of violence? Is it so difficult to imagine that? David RYAN 42 ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterYou are perhaps satisfied with depriving Jews of their civil rights. Then certainly Einstein, Mahler and 1 and many others, will have to be gotten rid of. 4 Gunther Peter Straschek, a film director colleague of Straub/Huillet, takes up the reading of Schoenberg’s letter in a studio at the SWDR Studios in Germany. While this is taking place Schoenberg's Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene begins and then continues throughout. We then switch to Danielle Huillet stroking a cat (a switch from formal to informal setting — from institutional address to the everyday domestic setting) — here Huillet reads from Brecht. We could say this is in opposition to Schoenberg, the anticommunist (who was livid at all Jews being labelled Bolshevik), who adopted a ‘rejection of politics” and who stated in the same letter to Kandinsky: Trotsky and Lenin spilt rivers of blood (which by the way, no revolution in the history of the world could ever avoid doing) in order to turn a theory ~ false it ‘goes without saying (out which like those of the philanthropists who brought about previous revolutions, was well meant) ~ into reality. It is a thing to be cur- sed and a thing {o be punished for he who sets his hands to such things must not make mistakes!”® ‘The Brecht reading is taken over by another formal ‘lecture’ in a studio room, this time by Gerhard Nestler, another director, displaying the recording process itself. Before this, we see still images of the dead bodies of the murdered participants of the Paris commune photographed in their coffins, The reading continues a dialectical opposition to Schoenberg with its foregrounding of Marxist politics in relation to capital, property and the general economic situation leading to Fascism. The next few sequences show the production of napalm bombs being loaded into B52 bombers and docamentary footage of a bomber dropping these onto Vietnamese rice fields. The threatening danger traverses the political landscape from the 1870s, to the 1920s politics and become a foil to (then) contemporary catastrophes. The film ends with newspaper cuttings reporting that the archi- tects of the gas chambers and concentration camps have been proven not guilty. Described so baldly, this might be seen as a proto-didaetic piece of political propaganda, but the film remains much more subtle than this. Straub/ Huillet’s film brilliandy develops a cool, calm counterpoint to the ‘heat’ of this music. It features blocks of material that dialectically relate. Taking Schoenberg at his word, the music is an accompaniment of sotts ~ it is spoken over, it is pushed to the background at times, or it becomes a document amongst other documents. But true to Straub’s monologue in the film, it is not dramatized. It avoids any illustration of the music, it avoids the magnetic attraction of ‘added value’ ~ where sound and image merge, what Michel Chion has called ‘Syacresis” of sound and image — which is a mix of synchronicity and synthesis, What Straub and Huillet_ provide us with is a ‘non-syneresis’ in the extreme. What it develops is Schoenberg's notion of ‘Unreality’ on another level — by the utmost realism being trans- Sedimentations lms a8 Spaces of Cultural 43posed through the extremities of the cinematic act; developing an almost complete still- ness of the shots: 35 of them in total that relate to the opus number of Schoenberg’s piece. As Byg has pointed out, the film mirrors certain formal aspects of the twelve-tone technique (though it bas to be said that the results are a world apart) in the sense of hete- rogeneity and contrast (Adomo’s reading of Schoenberg's method), And Straub Huillet’s Introduction is essentially a montage, dialectically connected with a strong emphasis on the materially of both film and its address. We might be reminded of Schoenberg’s idea of not dragging meaning around: A parallel to Straub/ Huillet and Brecht emerges here. There is no ‘resolution’ in their work, according to the hierarchical rales of traditional organization of mea- ing, but the relation of the organization of its materials to these traditional forms implies a resolution outside the work itself [...] The subject of this ‘resolution’ is outside the work of art but implied by it - [this] is its utopian aspect.'® Epilogue Straub/ Huillet ask serious questions about Schoenberg’s intention of ‘unrepresentabi- lity’, and how images and text can be intertwined to undo any easy notion of how particular representations may be formed. In their realization of a film that denies, in one sense, its presence as a film, any dramatization of the Accompaniment piece would be, for Straub/ Huillet, a travesty. But, the question remains, if such self-cancellation is the last word for this film. Schoenberg himself suggested his faith that the film of the future would be more artistic (than Hollywood at least) — although this remains vague. Straub/ Huillet’s carefully framed disruptions, as | mentioned, lead from a kind of realism to an abstraction. Yet Adomo’s late writing on film stresses the inescapability of representation within film (which may well bring him in agreement with somebody like Stanley Cavell): ‘The photographic process of film, primarily representational, places a higher in- trinsic significance on the object, as foreign to subjectivity, than aesthetically au- tonomous techniques; this is the retarding aspect of film in the historical processes of art. Even where film dissolves and modifies its objects as much as i can, the disintegration is never complete. Consequently, it does not permit absolute construction; its elements however abstract, always retains something representational; they are never purely aesthetic values. [...] By virtue of this relationship to the object, the aesthetics of film is thus inherently concerned with sooiety."7 In one sense, Straub/ Huillet’s Brechtianisms both distance and then reconnect with this cinematic ground of the object and the social. David RYAN 44 IMAGES ~- Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterSo would a film that attempts to investigate the cityseapes of Vienna and Berlin betray the essential completeness of Schoenberg’s music? Apart from the integrated biographical importance for Schoenberg, another simple answer might be that Modernism, film and the city are, of course, intimately bound up with each other; it would also be an inter- rogation of these relationships, as well as the whole tradition of what Stephen Barber calls the ‘film city’'®, Urban experience scars the aesthetic propositions of modernity, which in turn is seen as the direct progeny of the city. This is one reason to re-investigate such images as a critical project. [t is the specific experiences of the city that moulds the modernist artwork into being according to writers such as Walter Benjamin, Georg Sim- mel, and Raymond Williams. In his Aesthetic Theory (1969), Adorno, as suggested earlier, sees the form of the artwork as a kind of sedimentation of content; this is an absorbing of history, which is sublated by aesthetic demands, an important possibly redemptive moment for Adorno. Likewise, the city can also be seen as possessing its own kind of sedimentation, bearing its historical scars and harbouring its own ghosts, And in various traditions from Dziga Vertov, Walter Ruttman through to Patrick Kieler and Terence Davies there are ways of reading the city, from archival, mnemonic, historical, fictional, biographical and autobiographical modes of address. Adorno’s geological layers are, in fact, materially palpable within the contemporary cityscape. But questions remain regarding this project: How to avoid nostalgia, dramatization (the lessons of Straub/ Huiflet) and the monumentalization of the trace? This is bound up with the problems of the approach to the project in itself. Vienna and Berlin woulg, in Maeve Connolly's term, become ‘event- ites’ — and possibly explore the idea of Schoenberg through both relevant biographical sites as well as non-sites (in the sense of the city explored in and for itself apart from any connection with the composer), as Connolly suggests: [.-.] The prevalence of the material trace, exemplified by the monument, signals a shift from true memory to history. The boundary between memory and history is not entirely fixed, however, and the site of memory is itself characterized by its hybrid form, emerging at the intersection of the material, the functional and the symbolic [...] Artists” cinema certainly encompasses an engagement with the concrete and the spatial, typically responding to or incorporating the traces of architecture or infrastructure. ® In this present context, we can alse add the temporal and spatial events of sound ~ from the recorded sound of the city, to Schoenberg's musical Accompaniment; each of these constituting an encounter with the present and the past, of the contemporary ‘digital city’ corporately hovering simultaneously with its sedimentations of past materiality as well as the ghosts of its own filmic self-image. IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Culloral Encounter 45' The original version of this article was published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh at hitp://cine},pitt edwois/index.php/cine//article/view/1 1/99, DOE 10,5195/cinej.2011.11 ? Lambert, C. (1934), Music Ho! London: Penguin, p.41. > Huntley, J. and Manvell, R. (1957) The Technique of Film Music, New York, London: Focal press, p.19. * Altman, R. (2007) ‘Early Film Themes’ in Beyond the Soundirack. Berkeley: University of California, p. 217. * Webem, A. (1912) ‘Schonberg’s Musik” in Reich, W. ed, (1975) Arnold Schoenberg ~ The Path to New Music, London: Universal Edition, p44, © Schoenberg, A. (1928), ‘Breslau Lecture’ in Hahl-Koch, Jelena, and Crawford, John, eds (1984) Amold Schoenberg, Wassily: Kandinsky, Letters, pictures and Documents. Boston, London: Faber and Faber, p. 106, 7 Schoenberg, A. (c1913) *On the Projected Film’, Ibid.. p.100. * Ibid.. p.100, ° Schoenberg, A. (1927) “The Future of Opera’, Style and Idea, Black, L ed, (1984) Berkeley: University of California, p.336. “ Brand, J.. Hailey Chr., and Harris, 8. (Eds.) (1987), The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence. London: Macmillan, pp. 400 — 402. * Schoenberg's relationship to film does not end here. In the 1930s he was in discussion MGM for a soundtrack for the 1937 sound film, The Good Earth and actually began sketches. Schoenberg’s demand for complete artistic control of the soundtrack apparently was the cause of his departure from the production. In Hollywood Schoenberg also provided a sketch for a *School for Soundmen’ at UCLA, which confirms his continuing interes ' Adomo, Th. “The Dialectical Composer” (1934) in Adorno: Essays on Miu ed (2002), Berkeley: University of California, p. 204-205. " Bye, B. (1995), Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Straub/Huillet, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 162. "8 Habl-Koch, J.. and Crawford, J. (Eds.) (1984) Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Leiters, picneres and Documents, p.78. "* Ibid..p. 81. © Byg, B. (1995), Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Siraub/Huillet, p. 137. ' Adomo Th. (1966), ‘Transparencies on Film’ trans Levin,T.Y. in New German Critique no. 24/25 (Autumn 1981), p.202. "7 see Barber, St. (2002), Projected Cities, Cinema and Urban Space, London: Reaktion Books, “ Connolly, M. (2009), The Place of Artists’ Cinema, University of Chicago: Intellect Books, p.liS-L16. in scoring for film, ic, Leppert, Richard, David RYAN 46 IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterDavid Ryan (PHD) is a visual artist and writer based in London, who is also actively involved in contermporaty music, He is currently Reader in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin Uni- versity, Cambridge and received his PhD by publication based on his extensive writing on art and music, He took part in a day of music and film at the BFl London entitled Sonic Hhuminations, presenting three of his films in 2008. He has also collaborated with Malian composer Nicola Sani including AchaB presented at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (a 3 screen video) in 2008. Ryan has been the recipient numerous awards for his projects including Arts Council of England, Britten-Pears; Holst and Hinrichsen Foundati- ons; an American Government Grant, and a Japan Foundation award, as well as other grants. He has also recently worked on the films Knots and Fields: New Music at Darm- stadt (2010) with director Andrew Chesher, screened in Darmstadt and New York, and Via di San Teodoro 8 (2010) which has been screened in Rome, Berlin, Stockholm, Seoul and the UK. Sedimentations IMAGES - Films 47The ‘Return to Home’: The Musical Construction of a Common Trope in New Turkish Cinema’ Paul Hartley University of Minois at Urbana-Champaign, phurtle2@ilinois.edu Abstract ‘This article explores the musical component of a trope common in the films of the New Turkish Ci- nema, Examining scenes from four films, it outlines the dialectical struggle between the competing foci of identity enacted through the juxtaposition of urban and rural spaces, Eastern and Western socio-cultural signs, and the reclamation of a lost past. Of central importance is the treatment of how the musical scores tends to construct presentations that are paradoxical and often undo the nostalgia of these moments and how this affects the import of these moments in Turkish social life. Der vorlicgende Artikel untersucht die musikalische Komponente einer hiufiges Trope des titrki- schen Films. Indem er Szenen aus vier Filmen betrachtet, isoliert er den dialektischen Kampf wi derstreitender Identititen: Stade ys, Land, Ost vs, West und der Ruf nach einer verlorenen Vergan- genheit. Zentral ist dabei der Blick darauf, wie die Musik zum Paradox neigi und dadurch die No- stalgie dieser Momente aufhebt und wie dies die Bedeutung solcher Momente in der tlirkischen Ge- sellschaft beeinflusst. Bu makale, genellikle Yeni Tirk Sinemasinduki filmlerde yer alan kinayelerin mitzikal birlesimle- tini incetemektedir, Dért ayn filmden sabneler incelenerek, kentsel ve karsal kesimter, Dogu ve Ba- tt sosyokiiltirel imgeleri, ve kayip gegmisin iyilestiilmesinin birbisine yakm olmast yoluyla yusal- lastinlins kimligin mitcadele eden odak noktalari arasmdaki diyalektik miicadeleyi ana hatlarryla belirtmektedir. Mizikal skorlarm nasil paradoksal stnumtar olusturmaya egilimli olduga ve genel- Tikle bu anlarin nostaljilerine zarar verdigi, ve bunun Tork sosyal yasamunda yer bulugunu nasil et- kilediginin iyilestivilmesi onemli bir yore sahiptir. “Retum to Home” ‘ilms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 49Dervis Zaim’s 2006 film Cenneri Beklerken (Waiting for Heaven) ends with these words: Eflatun (Grasping the shoulders of his assistant) To retum to the past means embarking on a new joumey. We'll paint new Euro- pean pictures. Sometimes we will use the style of miniatures. And sometimes we'll merge the two styles. Then perhaps | can start drawing miniatures again. We'll make mistakes. Like you, I hope to retum to the very beginning. We"ll look forward to recovering. Here Eflatunis assuring his assistant that they will return to their work as miniature artists and painters, but he is aiso using the metaphor of synthesis to describe how the two will be able to continue their lives after the experiences and losses they suffered throughout the course of the film. In doing so, Eflatua, and through him Zaim, is making a connection between adesire to remain connected to the past, or even return to a time before trauma, and the need to push into a new future built by combining the past with the ‘Western influences. While the Ottoman past and Western culture may seem to be uncon- nected, they are two elements within an important contemporary debate about what it is to be Turkish, and what Turkey's place is within the current socio-cultural and political landscape. Directly (and anachronistically) referencing Turkey's recent political, social, and cultural traumas and struggles, Eftalun's comments are the final statement of a film deliberately constructed by Zaim to stand as a statement regarding the Turkish peoples* difficulty with national and personal identity. * In an interview with Dénmez-Co- Jin, Zaim says he is concerned about Turks’ inability to openly discuss the implications of identity politics and the hardening of the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in the Tur- kish public sphere. We see this fear expressed in Eflatun’s words and throughout the film. We are to understand this sentiment as Zaim's solution to transcend this difficult issue and avoid the necessary divisions that accompany the antagonism between ‘us’, and ‘them’. He clearly sees the synthesis of the two through a non-judgmental process to be the best solution for Turkey’s future. Dénmez-Colin notes Zaim “stresses that the film does not oppose different cultures to show them as the ‘other,’ bat instead tries to show how different cultures mutually entich each other,” The combination proposed by Efla- tun is clearly the expression of that ideal. But this sentiment is not entirely new. It can be interpreted as an articulation of the ideals of the very process of social and cultural engineering in Turkey that created many of the problems Zaim is trying to address. In fact, the desire to incorporate Western practices into Turkish culture has been the expressed wish of reform minded intellectuals and politicians since the 19" century.* Zaim’s vision shares this goal, but offers a different method and purpose. Zaim*s comments demonstrate he sees his film as a space in which this critical commentary can take place, And yet, much of what Zaim set out to do within this film, as a deliberate action, is already ongoing within the larger body of works that are loosely Paul HARTLEY 50 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounteridentified as the new Turkish cinema. Many Turkish films over the last fifteen years, including others by Zaim have dealt with the tensions imberent in Turkey's discourse over identity and Turkey’s place in the world, Indeed, it could be argued mast films from this period deal with this issue directly or obliquely. A broad analysis of films of all genres shows the interaction between East and West, and the mechanisms of socio-cultural synthesis are routinely discussed, critiqued, and ceformulated by filmmakers of all kinds. What separates these treatments from Zaim’s Cenmeti Beklerken is the degree of empha- More often, the presentation of this discourse regarding identity is tangential, subtly hidden, or even perhaps accidental ~ the result of a nearly unconscious desire to work through these problems. Nevertheless, these issues are pervasive, and the methods of dealing with them are common enough that they appear as banal cinematic tropes which are repeated in a large number of films spread across generic boundaries. My larger purpose here is to highlight a common the cinematic treatment of Turkey's debate regarding cultural hybridity as a ground or fixed point upon which to begin process of identification.’ Of particular importance is how these moments speak to the ideals of cultural hybridity and evoke a sometimes paradoxical nostalgia where they generate a niced to return to a past that never existed or a space that has no real connection to the past. Most of all, I will show how the formal construction of these moments, with an emphasis placed on the musical cues, shows how the score for this common trope is an important locus for the discussion about ‘Turkishness*. The reason for this special attention on the music is a simple one: the musical scores ate the most overlooked and can bring a host of unproblematized associations to the audience. Often this music is more meaningful outside the reach of the narrative than the visual or narrative features of these momenis. Sometimes the music destroys the meaning of the moment by creating a paradox that cannot be reconciled. What is certain is that the score itself is an important voice in how these moments are interpreted, and an analysis will identify how these moments speak to audiences. The cinema trope 1 am calling the ‘return to home’ is perhaps the most obvious and most common treatment of the identity politics and mechanisms of personal identification. It involves a combination of narrative, visual, end musical constructions that set the contemporary, urban, cosmopotitan Turkey against a nostalgic, romanticized presentation of rural Anatolia, In its typical form it begins by locating a character in his or her home in a city where they are put in a position where they must leave. Usually this involves placing them in some sort of conflict or danger. In order to alleviate the immediate difficulties of their circumstance, they escape to the countryside. The city, then, gives way to the interstitial space of the road, and we see them travel from the city into the interior or to the coastal villages. Most typically, they return to their parent’s home, or to the village they left behind. This ‘return to home’ is always an emotional moment and created to be a passage from danger into safety. The Return 0 ‘lms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 51‘The basic construction of this trope involves making a set of important distinctions between the urban and the rural space, with the distinction standing as the framework around which the other oppositions are organized, The emphasis is on making the most of relationships existing between them ~ although most often this means how they differ and what the disjuncture implies. First of all, the urban space (usually Istanbul) is always marked by the signs of modernity, cosmopolitanism, and Western influences. It is these very markers that are often enlisted to explain the trouble or the alienation that forces the characters to leave. The passage from the city to the rural space is always some sequence showing travel. In most films, the camera focuses on the road and the movement of a lone car moving from the urban spaces to the open landscape of Anatolia. The colours begin to change ~ usually from the greys and blacks of the city to the browns and greens of the village — and the intrusion of yellow- or orange-hued natural light accompanies a change in cinematographic approach, i. e. longer shots, lingering establishing shots, crane/ helicopter shots etc. Finally, the character's family home becomes the center of the action, In this way, the ‘return to home’ is usually a literal return to home, and the troubles of the city are replaced by the relative safety of the family. Thus, the return to home is a restora~ five act, where the characters can reclaim something they have lost in the city and the chaos of the moder world. While this trope appears most clearly in plot devices and visual presentations, it is with the addition of the musical score, or rather the accompanying cues, that these moments reach their most affective and persuasive potential. This is in part because contemporary Turkish musical practice is itself the product of a long, and often divisive, process of “modernization” — which in this case means Westernization.‘ Interestingly the combinatorial or dialectical nature of the musician the scores is ignored or overlooked. There are several possible reasons for this. The first is that audiences simply are no longer actively aware ar interested in the history of the Westernization of Turkish music.’ This means Turkish scores display some interpretation of Eflatun’s synthetic process in each film. ‘That the scores often reinterpret, undercut, or underscore the narrative or visual presentations of the discourse surrounding the East/West dichotomy then also passes unnoticed. In her book The Future of Nostalgia Svetlana Boym sets nostalgia within a framework of loss and impossibility when she says “nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy.” It is therefore a consequence of the absence of something tangible or fictional. Later, she changes her tack and demonstrates it is not simply @ symptom of loss but of an act of destruction, “the nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space. . ..’ This last comment holds much wisdom because it captures not only the desire to defy the passage of time by turning what once was info what will always be, but also the tendency to conflate time and space while building this mythos. Thus, the past and the ‘original’ home are always one and the same ~ often one can stand for both, We see this Paul HARTLEY 52 IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounterwhen past and present, or past and future (and all of the various permutations, e.g. modern/ traditional), become interchangeable with urban and rural or home and not-home. Our tendency to commit this sleight of hand loads these binaries with a great deal of import beyond their immediate boundaries. Lf past, present, and fature can be recast as landscapes to be inhabited, then actual landscapes can capture and hold the past. The ‘re~ turn to homie’ trope depends on the validity of this conflation. It produces a binary which sels the modem against the pastoral. Boym, amongst others, sees the pain of nostalgia caused by the loss of home as a ground for common bonds, but the return to home as the basis for division.'” The loss brings people together, but by affecting a return to what was lost establishes the old divisions of ‘us’ and ‘them, It seems, however, this effect is only true for actual returns, A cinematic presentation of nostalgia fosters only the unifying power of this sentiment, The divisive effects of the reclamation of what was lost are lost in the cinematic presentation of common myth. Because nothing was actually regained, the presentation evokes the nostalgia without its aftereffects. This has many implications when considering what the ubiquity of the ‘return to home* trope in Turkish cinema means. First of all, it implies a mythos of migrancy and loss broad enough to apply to all Turks. It holds contemporary ‘Turks are separated from their ‘origins,’ whether they be imagined or literal. ‘They are joined by a common memory which began with movement ftom the interior, where the ‘origins’ lie, to the cosmopolitan, urban periphery (despite the fact this orientation is back to front for many Turks). It forces acknowledgement of a Turkish “origin,” like the one described by the nineteenth-century intelligentsia and Kemalist reformers, notably Ziya Gokalp, where “Turkishness’ is rooted in Folk culture.'' In short, Turkish cinema presents audiences with a form of quiet, soft-nationalismn like that described by Michael Billig.’ Unlike the statist nostalgia described by Esra Ozytirek, the ‘return to home’ is a unifying sign speaking of the truth of Turkish unity without commenting on the validity of the states assertion of socio-cultural unity being @ ground for sovereignty and governance."* ‘That it is largely unquestioned demonstrates how this nationalist myth has become a banal sign of socio-cultural unity. it speaks ofa lost innocence or childhood which stands as a universalization of the experience of separation and loss. Asuman Suner identifies the parent-child component as being extremely important in the genre she calls nostalgia film."* But this trope is not limited to nostalgic melodramas. Rather is a common strategy for most filmmakers to speak quietly of a Turkish ‘heim,’ closely connected to family, which ofters safe haven and brings individuals back to the beginning to allow them to re- cover, as Eflatun suggests it will. The combinatorial and often idiosyncratic nature of the trope demonstrates that while the details may change, the banality of this truth endures and allows this message fo pass unquestioned, Cagan irmak's 2005 film Babam ve Oglum (My Father, My Son) provides a perfect point to begin a closer examination of the ‘return to home’ trope because it makes heavy The ‘Retum to Hom = Films as Spaces of Culloral Encousler 33use of dichotomies asserting the inherent differences between rural/ urban, traditional/ modern, and origins/conteroporary Turkey pairings in its relatively orthodox presentation of this trope. Although this film was an emotional melodrama — an entertainment genre not known for its treatment of controversy — it was set within the context of social and political upheaval arising in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup. The film's opening sequence shows the leftist journalist Sadik’s (Fikret Kuskan) and his pregnant wife desperately looking for medical assistance as the military occupies the city. She dies giving birth to their son, Sadik is arrested and suffers torture at the hands of the new government during the titles sequence, Following this opening, the film focuses on Sadik’s return to his family home afier years of working in Istanbul. He is dying from the health problems caused by the torture and is returning home to bring his son Deniz, (Ege Tanman), now seven years old, to meet his estranged family. As we learn later, Sadik detied his father’s wishes to pursue his career in the city. He chose to leave the rural, traditional life of his parents behind. His return is therefore not a happy one. This aside, the sequence depicting his return to the family’s rural home can serve as an archetype for the trope, particularly in the complicated way it connects the urban/ rural and modern/ traditional dichotomies to the individual/ family pairing. The ‘return to home? sequence begins with Sadik and Deniz (father and son) in their small apartment in the city. Their life appears happy enough, but clearly something, is wrong. Sadik is brooding and preoccupied. Eventually he tells Deniz they are going to meet his grandfather over a particularly grim breakfast. The moment is made all the more unfortunate because of the washed out blue-grey and white tones of the apartment. Follo- wing a jump cut, we follow them onto a train where they begin the move from the city f0 the countryside. They spend some pleasant time together on the train before finally arri- ving in the unnamed Aegean village where Sadik grew up. The interstitial space provided by the train compartment serves as a separator between the urban and rural spaces. Then, a jump cat replaces the train's interior with a wide establishing shot of fields, groves of trees, and a house in the distance. The colours are immediately brighter and the green crops in the fields make a stark contrast with the mise-en-scene of the city, With the cut from train to the rural landscape surrounding the family home, a cue of melodic music, unmistakably “Turkish,” because of its instrumentation, surface stylistic features, and monophonic construction, breaks the silence and deepens the visual richness of the moment. Before this point in the film, the music has had an orchestral setting consisting of short cues which would not be out of place in any ‘Western’ film following a Hollywood or European model. This polyphonic, orchestral score has set the tone of the film until this point. Against this sonic background, this new cue is the first one with an unmistakable “Turkish” sound, and its introduction marks a change in the sonic realm of the film. The music is called “Trip Around the Aegean” and written by Evanthia Reboutsika, a Greek JARTLEY 54 IMAGES — Filins as Spaces of Cultural Encountermusician and composer who won a ‘World Soundtrack Award’ for the score in 2006." Newly composed for the film, the cue is performed by a typical variant of a nightclub ensemble, of an urban Roma fast!, an urban genre of music closely related to the more patrician light classical Ottoman musical practice but with a slightly different repertoire and socio-cultural connotations. Today this ensemble is typical for anything from historical performances to the light-pop music that more closely adheres to the Turkish musical traditions. The cue features a typical ensemble of violins, ud, kanun (a plucked trapezoidal harp played flat on the lap) a goblet-shaped drum called the darabuka, a large frame drum called a def; The sound of this ensemble is unmistakable and easily understood by a Turkish audience, and the change in instrumentation alone is a sufficient reason to examine the cue at this point. The melody is in buselik makam a mode which has a piteh content functionally identical to a natural minor scale. Consequently the melody can convincingly be set in a stylistically “Turkish” idiom and also be malleable enough that it can be reset in a western idiom ~ which it is later on in the film. It is a significant ‘moment, both in terms of the narrative and because the cue is the first to be coded “Tur kish,” through its stylistic components: i, e, melodie content, instrumentation, performance practice. The placement of the cue immediately makes a connection to the rural space. The simultaneous disjuncture in the score and in the visual presentation cements the relationship, Musically, the moment is made all the more significant because it is the first statement ofa theme which becomes a leitmotif that permeates the rest of the film. This music continues to play as Sadik and Deniz walk down the dirt, tree-lined road leading to Sadik’s family home. Sadik is clearly apprehensive about returning home and he walks down the path with fear clearly marking his fice. The music is the only sound we hear until Deniz comptains his father is squeezing his hand too hard. Close-up shots show the trepidation on Sadik’s face as the theme repeats with a thicker setting intensified by increasing the instrumental forces. Sadik himself now embodies the move from the rural interior to the cities. Thus, the dismcture between the urban and rural spaces introduced in the musical and visual construction is mirrored in Sadik’s obvious alienation from his rural origins. The pathos of the music is clearly designed to emphasize the heavy emotion of the moment. and the score tells the audience more about the moment than any other field of the film. ‘The narrative thrust of this moment plays out the trope where characters return to their home or their origins. All fields of the film, narrative, visual, and musical work together to establish the validity of the connection and the impact of this return. However, they also speak outside the diagetic world of the film in that these cinematic truths impact how viewers consider the actual distinction between the urban and rural spaces. Outside the film, audiences already associate urban spaces and rural spaces with similar musical signs. The ‘normality’ of this cinematic moment is possible exactly because it is also true in daily life. What is vital here is the use of a cue which has an internal paradox which ‘The “Return to Home" IMAGES ~ Fiims as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 35damages the authenticity of the past. It is an, perhaps accidental, expression of the eare- fully created musical history envisioned by nationalist thinkers, in that it establishes an “origin” that urbanized Turks can rely on, and even literally retumn to. Here, Irmak and Reboutsika construct the most typical version of the ‘return home’, and | can therefore outline the musical features of the trope. The cue is set apart in the score as it is the first music not set in a Western symphonic arrangement, and this retum is, thus, cast sonically as a move from the modemized and Westernized conventions of the urban space to the traditional Turkish roots of Anatolia. This connection allows for a nostalgic conflation of the notion of one’s origins, or past and the family within the rural space. The music that scores these scenes must bear easily identifiable sonic signs of either a real of an artificial folk culture. The artificial folk culture can be the product of govern- mental reforms or cinematic constructions. In either case, the musical content relies on understandable sonic signs that evoke unreconstructed Turkish life in rural Anatolia. Be- cause these signs are most often not more deeply-rooted musical features, such as pitch content, rhythmic structure, or large-scale song forms, this music usually involves more superficial signals. Specific instruments, such as the zurna, davul, and the suzare already established signs of this rural cultural sphere and are consequently most commonly en- fisted to evoke the correct interpretation. Because the conflation of the past and rural sphere has now very deep penetration, even instruments like the ney, an instrument once associated with the urbane and cosmopolitan Mevievi dervishes, can serve to score homecomings to a rural home. That this is now true suggests the repetition of this trope is actually a site where the validity of these connections is created and cemented. Remboustika’s music does not itself participate in the larger dialogue about Turkish identity identified by Zaim above, While her cue bares stylistic markers clearly identifying it as ‘Turkish music’ it does not engage in this debate directly or try to synthesize the Wes tern and Turkish idioms along the lines articulated by Eflatun. However, other musical cues used in different variants of the ‘retum to home’ trope attempt to forge a synthetic music from formal elements signifying each side of the modern/ traditional, rural/ urban dichotomies. They are themselves strategies to realize Eflatun’s ideal. One such example can be found in Ulas Ak’s film Dan Gece Bir Riya Gordiim, or “Last Night 1 Saw an Angel” (2006). It is a romantic-drama about the upstanding and somewhat naive Deniz (Emre Kinay) and the troubles that beset him when he falls hopelessly in love with Lale (Pelin Batu), a troubled woman involved in a world of gangsters and drugs. The film follows the wo through the beginnings of their troubled love affair, and focuses on his attempts to redeem her, There ate two homecomings in the film. The first comes when De- niz takes Lale {o his family home in rural Anatolia to try to get her away from the danger of the city. The second happens when Lale seeks refuge by returning to her father's apartment in the city. Each of these moments is scored with music distinct from the rest of the score that evokes a nostalgia for the past and the myth of ‘origin’. The two homecomings Paul HARTLEY 56 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Culturalare set apart musically because one makes use of a contemporary setting of a simple melody evoking Turkish musical practice (but not entirely), whereas the other sets an Ame- rican song. ‘The first statement of this trope follows the same format of the carlier example in Bahan: ve Oglum. Feeling the need to take Lale to a safe place after she has been threatened by some gangsters, Deniz takes her to his family home in the village where he grew up. Like the other example, this return to home begins in the city, follows the two as they travel between the city and the rural space, and ends as they arrive in a clearly rural landscape. They leave the city at night, This trip is shot with a static camera looking out over their shoulders from the backseat of his carinto the darkness ahead of them. We see the road and the street signs as Deniz drives along the highways and out of the light cast from the city. The darkness of the cityscape disappears with the dawn, and the urban highway literally dissolves into the rural lane and trees in the country. A musical cue begins as the drive and continues until their journey, set in montage, has ended. It is a simple melody supported by a sparsely scored rhythm section. ‘The framing of the shot in the car showing Deniz in the driver’s seat, Lale in the passenger seat, and the road outside of the windshield suggests the musi might be on the radio, But when the road dissolves and the city with it, the track continues without break, establishing it as non-diagetic. Strangely, the instruments are difficult to place. The harmonic and rhythmic support of the rhythm section is provided by a synthesized drum track, The melody, set in a simple style not unlike a folksong, is performed on an instrument of indeterminate origin, It might be a synthesized ney, mey, or clarinet, or at the very least might be a heavily processed live performance. In either case, the sound of the music yields few timbral details as to how the audience is to classify and understand it. Here the monophonic setting ~ melody and simple percussive accompaniment ~ evokes the suggestion of non-Western music. The sound of the instrument is altered by a lo-fi radio effect to the point that its crackly: its timbre recalls a lost past by sounding as if it comes from a seratchy record. Together these sonic elements parallel the narrative and visual ‘return to home. * A second example from Diin Gecebir Riiya Gérdiim demonstrates how the ‘return to home’ trope changes and yet remains the same when scored with a selection of aranjman, a genre of Western music adapted by Turkish musicians. In this scene, Lale has returns to the relative safety of her father’s apartment somewhere in the city and has a few calm moments to herself. She sits in her childhood bedroom sorting through objects from her past, She finds items that belonged to her mother, and we see she is still grieving over the loss ofa person who has died long ago. As she is sorting through these items, pining for her lost mother, a simple melody plays to emphasize her grief. The setting of this melody features a synthesized cello and what is most likely a ney, the end-blown cane flute most commonly associated with the Mevievi dervishes and Ottoman musical forms. However, The ‘Retum to Home’ IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 37the melody is not Turkish at all. Rather it ig the American folk song “You Are My Sun- shine,” first recorded in the Southern United States in 1939. ‘The sweet and somewhat plaintive quality of the arrangement speaks to how the loss af fects Lale, and perhaps explains many of her troubles. The poignancy of the song and its setting are entirely appropriate for the emotional moment, and would fulfill the symbolic and aesthetic expectations of international film audiences, That the director Ula Ak and composers and music directors Bora Ebeoglu and Cengiz Onural would choose to use this particular song at this moment suggests they intend to bring the text’s meaning to the scene, which would assume some degree of recognition on the part of the audience. ‘The nostalgia of the moment, part of the trope of retuming to home, is deepened by the implications of the song’s lines, “you are my sunshine/ my only sunshine’ you make me happy! when skies are grey.” It is a moment that follows the form of the earlier homecomings but employs a different strategy to enlist a folk melody to evoke the emotion of the homecoming, Although this is an American folk song, it is part of Turkish musical verna- cular because it an example of the aranjman genre, and recognizable as such. However, the filmmaker's use of it to complete a ‘return to home” sequence, demonstrates flexibili- ty in the formal construction of this trope. The music adds to the poignancy of the parent- child relationship, which Suner identifies as a definitional feature of many nostalgia films, and indeed new Turkish cinema in general,'’ Here we see the aesthetics of Yesil- gam and post-Yesileam era (roughly 1952-1990) melodrannas are still largely guiding the formal constructions of Turkish cinema as a whole." Importantly, the combinatorial project that joined the new formalized Turkish folk eul- ture, urbanized pop culture, and poached Westem cultural influences created an aesthetic of combination, or apparent synthesis. Savag Arstan calls the process of borrowing “Tur- kification”, rather than simply “Westernization”.' The difference lies in that “Turkifi- cation” is not a top-down regime of change, but a chaotic process of adapting and poa- ching elements of Western films for a wide range of competing reasons. The aranjman genre, like arabesk is itselfa product of this time and tendency, the former adapting Wes- tem influences while the latter introduced Arab cultural products into Turkish cinematic and musical life.” The music we hear when Lale is home with her mother’s belongings is part of a process of this adaptation, and the synthetic nature of the music is less about “Westemnizing’ the film score, than it is about using music that is meaningfial to audiences. Its ‘Western’ qualities have attained such a degree of unquestioned banality that they can be overcome by the relatively superficial ‘Turkish’ timbres and performative details, i. e. the sounds of Turkish instraments and monophonic settings alone. This process is never complete however. As Arslan states, “Turkification may be thought of as a process of coexistence between the West and the East, with various failures, novelties, and aggressions.”” The two idioms must exist together in a perpetual dialectical opposition for the aesthetic to be fulfilled. Like parody, where the original and the Paul HARTLEY, 58 IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural Encountercomical version must be apparent simultaneously for the joke to work, ‘West’ and ‘Bast can never be truly synthesized. Their traces in the music be present and available to the car at all times ~ whether they are attended to consciously or not. The musical moments accompanying the ‘return to home’ tropes have all bore the truth of this fact. The incon- gruences of their presentation present different strategies of maintaining this uneasy pairing, In fact, the music is often the locus of this process. It brings the alternative readings or the contemporary struggles to moments constructed to solve the tension between the relationship, The ‘return to home? trope can be found in all types of film, including action dramas. However, its presence does signal the influence of a melodramatic aesthetic or the use of narrative devices borrowed from melodramas. One example is the recent film New York ‘ta Bes Minare {Five Minarets in New York, 2010) by actor, writer, director Mahsun Kirmuagill (score by Yildiray Giirgen and Kurmuzigiil), Ostensibly an action film dealing with issues surrounding the international pursuit of fundamentalist terrorists, this film is a troubled attempt to treat these issues, expound Kirmizigiil’s philosophies about fstam and the United States, and focus on a Turkish-centrie storyline. The story follows Turkish police officers Furat (Mahsun Kirmuzigill) and Acar (Mustafa Sandal) as they chase a po- werful terrorist leader called ‘Dajjal’ to New York. There they arrest an import shop owner and mystic Haci Gumus (Haluk Bilginer) believing he is the terrorist they were sent to find, After many difficultios, they succeed in repatriating Haci to face ‘Turkish justice, only to realize he is innocent, This story are takes up three quarters of the film and adheres closely to the usual formal characteristics of an action film: quick cutting, a number of visual effects, gratuitous violence, and few moments of dialogue. The last quarter, however, begins with the revelation that Firat was decieving the authorities to get close to Ha- ci, We leamFirat, believing Haci murdered his father, fabricated stories about Haci to bring him back to Bitlis, their hometown, to exact revenge. ‘The title Five Minarets in New York actually refers to the five minarets at the Gokmeydan mosque in Bitlis, a well-known village in eastern Turkey. Within the context of the this title suggests that events in the past, even in Bitlis, can have a profound eftect even as far away as New York. This essentially explains how the film, while mostly apro- cedural police action-drama about international terrorism, is actually a melodrama dealing with the aftermath of a family feud that led to a cold-blooded murder. The importance of the events in Bitlis ~ the intrusion of the past and Anatolian time-space — affects even the events in New York. Everything within this film pushes to the final moment where Haci is murdered by Firat’s grandfather in retribution for his part in the revenge killing actually perpetrated by his older brother. The entire arc of the film is in aid of an emotional return to the home he escaped and the permanence of one’s connection to the past. IMAGES --Filins as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 59Haci’s ‘return to home begins’ once the charges against him have been dropped. He de- cides to go home to visit his estranged mother and face the memories of Bitlis. The turning point of the film comes when Firat, Acar, Haci and Haci’s wife leave Atattirk airport after seeing off Marcus, his faithful American friend and advisor. The oversaturated shot of the white and steel interior of Atattirk airport’s lobby is interrupted by a long-shot of their SUV on a road in the country. Firat and Acar are taking them through the Anatolian interior, and the camera cathes them as they drive along a road with the coast of a lake, presumably lake Van, on one side and the scrubby rural-landscape on the other. To emphasize the pastoral nature of the scene a herd of goats obsttucts their passage and forces them to get out of the car. Standing at the water’s edge, they examine the horizon and discuss the emotions and meaning of the moment. The music for the sequence follows the format of the trope exactly. It is a synchretic sat- ting (in Chion’s sense) with clear intent to be so; the musical score is there to mirror the shift form the city to the countryside, A piano and string orchestra figure begins daring Marcus* departure from Istanbul and lingers over the jump cut. It is consequently drawn into the travel sequence, suturing the two spaces and softening the disjucture. At the very moment of the cut, the cue thickens with the addition of a def and darabuka accompaniment, This continues as their SUV rounds the bend and encounters the goals, at which point a mey and instrument strongly associated with Eastern Turkey and Kurdish southeastern Turkey plays a non-committal phrase, By this, 1 mean that this musical moment is a collection of indistinct motives too insubstantial to constitute a melody or phrase, Instead, like the framing of the road itself, they are evocative without denoting anything, Visually this moment could be referring to any part of Turkey where there is water and a rural landscape ~ even the Aegean coast. Musically, the cue is relying on the connotations of the sounds of the instruments to refer to a rural space and a return to the past. Giirgen’s insubstantial scoring persists as they arrive in Bitlis. It is only when Haci walks up the steps to his mother’s home, a ruin of astone house that the cues solidify. With every step. a new layer of music consisting of short indistinct snatches of folk songs (cach seemingly coming directly from an archive of ethnographic recordings) overcomes the earlier music. Each new addition obscures more and more of the music’s clarity, and the heavily accented voices compete with each other for dominance. The songs are reduced to snatches of surface elements, timbre, the singer’s accent, and short motives, because coherent melodies and rhythmic structure are destroyed in the mix. This cacophony of Anatolia's musical past subsides as a single female voice wins out singing “Gecelet ya- rim oldu/ Anne aglamak karim oldu,” the first line of the well-known sarki. The setting is in the style of a contemporary térhit performance: a single voice singing in an unmetered 1izim hava with an improvised saz accompaniment. The singer is crying out to anne (mother), which instantly betrays the intent behind the cue. But despite being a rather heavy handed treatment, this cue captures the very essence of the ‘return to home.’ The rural fa- Papl HARTLEY 60 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encountermily home, the loss suffered by leaving for the urban and modem world, and the painful baggage of the past are all combined in a single moment. These musical connections are not coincidental. Giirgen and Kirmrzigiil, who had a career as a pop singer, score these moments to match the passage from the modem world, through the intermediary space of the road, and into the rural past. As Haci moves along this path, the score slowly sheds its dualistic features where it openly bears the makrs of the urban/ rural or present/past pairing. ‘The piano and strings give way to connotations of the rnral/ past conflation, and finally yield to an old song which is afforded a great deal of emotional import and ends the sequence. Musically, the sequence is unique in the film. Haci’s first step across the threshold of his mother's home is musically the most intense, and the most deliberatly scored moment in the film. His return to his roots is significant, and marked as suck. However, itis not this music that returns when he finally reveals his identity to his mother, who is now blind and unable to recognize her son. Rather the pattern of devolution established during their travels reverses. The cue as he reveals his identity is an indistinct set of short phrases played on the saz with string orchestra accompaniment, Immediately after this, Haci is shot and dies. Although interrupted by the gun shot, the final minutes of the score are retucn to the blended idiom of the initial ‘return to home’ cue ~ strings supporting a few short motives performed on a low ney (possibly synthesized). Haci’s final moments are scored with a full orchestra, choir, and eventually harp, in a functional setting that continues until the end titles. Ultimately, his story is set toa conventional film score which excises any deliberately ‘Turkish’ features. This final statement obscures the logic of the ‘return to home,” but demonstrates how the musical settings for these moments speak to a larger discourse about the markers of identity. Mu- sic can build an emphatic statment of Turkish identity built upon the past and the rural roots of the audience, but it can also undercut this assertion and assert a dualistic, or mul- tiplicitous reading of the same indentity construction. The music in these settings, like the other statements of the ‘return to home’ both construct an ideal past and subtly undo i Ultimately, the nostalgia is always set in the idiom of the present and refereneces a fictional past, ‘The musical settings for these moments speak to this truth very strongly. Conclusion In the same way that a photograph showing only part of a scene or an object for sale suggests a more romantic whole, the incompleteness of these musical moments leave much to the imagination. The musical contribution to the ‘return to home’ trope is insubstantial yet powerfully evocative, in that it requires the individuals in the audience to fill in what is missing. {t connotes a past and its traditions while denoting almost nothing ~ neither East nor West. Consequently, the stylistic features of the music take on the most import, while the mefodic construction, harmonic practices, and orchestration remain hidden, lest ‘The ‘Return to Home" IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural 61they betray the fiction of the moment. Motives, or short incomplete phrases, stand for melodies. Harmonic forms are interrupted and left incomplete, Songs only manage to finish a single line of text. Often, because only the sounds of the instruments are available to the audience, they become meaningful simply because of their presence. A cue can be an index for “Turkish’ simply by presenting a Turkish instrument. The unconsummated nature of the sign (in Langer’s sense) facilitates the co-presence of an unresolved dialectical pairing bringing East and West, modern and past, urban and rural together simultaneously.”* Opposed by their continued juxtaposition, the stylistic elements denoting “Turkishness’ or “Western” are not synthesized in the musical presentation, but rather oc- cupy the same space unable to overcome one another. This reflects the result of the struggles identified by Zaim and spoken through his character Eflatun. The meaning of the ‘return to home’ — based in a constructed nostalgia or shared memory of loss ~ does not end with a clean synthesis, but allows this unresolved dialectical pair to stand. The past and the present, the urban and rural are experienced together. The process of identification exemplified in these cinematic moments arises from the dual (at least) nature of self which transcends this stalemate. The paradoxes, contradictions, and strategies that produce the different iterations of the ‘return to home’ demonstrate the complex nature of this process of identification and the impossibility of any singular resolution. Here Boym’s distinction between restorative and reflective nostalgia where the first “puts emphasis on sostos and proposes to rebuild the lost home and patch up memory gaps and the latter “dwells in algia, longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance” becomes blurred and problematic.* The efficacy of the ‘return to home” tums on its appeal to a general sense of loss while actively presenting the restoration of home. Thus, loss and restoration appear together at the same time. However, neither the loss nor the home that is regained are part of a history shared by all Turks. This means neither is a sufficient condition for identity formation. ‘The music sutures the disparate segments together and universalizes the moment. With its aid ‘return to home’ is able join the emotional power of both loss and restoration (0 create a single common myth capable of speaking to all audiences. The music is the marker and generator of this connection and through it the discursive process of identity formation is given a voice. It is the score that fulfills Eftatun’s promise. ' The original version of this article was published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh at bttp2/cinej.pitt_edw/ojs/index.php/cinej/article/view/22/100, DOE 10. $195/einej, 2011.22 2G, Dénmez-Colin (2008), Turkish Cinema: Ideatily, Distance, and Belonging, London: Reaction Books, p. 189. * Tid. Paul HARTLEY 62 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter* ©, Tekelioglu (2996), The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music, Middle Eastern Studies 32(2): pp. 194-215. ° This may seem to be a rather wordy way to say this, but | want to focus on ‘processes of identification’ rather than talk about ‘identity’ because of our tendency, when using the latter, to objecti and rei something which has no solidity or objective reality. The notion that ‘identity’ as an object is simply an impossibility. Instead we should sce it as a resultant syimp- tom of a social discourse interacting with a nearly infinite set of individualistic (and entirely idiosyncratic) processes of sclf-(re) formation. * CE KI Signell (1976), The Modernization Process in Two Oriental Music Cultures: Turkish and Japanese, Asian Music 7 no. 2, pp. 72-102; M. Stokes (1992), Islam, the Turkish State and Arabesk, Popular Music 11, pp. 213-227; M. Stokes (1992), The Arabesk Debate, Oxford: ‘Oxford University Press; M. Stokes (1992), The Media and Reform, The Saz and Electrosaz.in Urban Turkish Folk Music, British Journal of Ethnomusicology 1, pp. 89-102; J. M. ‘O°Connell (2000), Fine Art, Fine Music: Controlling Turkish Taste at the Fine Arts Academy in 1926, Yearbook for Traditional Music 32, pp. 117-142; Tekelioglu (1996), 7 This scems to be the case with at least some audience members. in the course of several interviews | have conducted between 2007 and 2010, many casual viewers (those who are not specialists in film or music) were unaware that polyphonic practice or orchestral ensembles were anything other than normative, and therefore, Turkish music. * 8. Boym (2001), The Futu'e of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books, p. xiii. ° Boym (2001), p. xv. ' Boym (2001), p. xv-xvi. "2, Gokalp (1959), Turkish Nationalism: and Western Civilization, trans, Niyazi Berkes, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ig (1995), Banal Nationalism, London: Sage Publications. ' B, Ozylirek (2006), Nostalgia for the Moderr ' A, Suner (2010), Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Ideutity, and Memory, London and New York: 1 B. Tauris. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 8 My purpose in using this example is to give a relatively simple case of the trope that is common in a sufficient number of Turkish filins and television programs to constitute @ true trope with a host of significant meanings and interpretations. It is never possible to find a ‘pure’ example = which is part of my larger point—and so thi orthodox presentation of this cine-musical sign complex and is recognized ax such by the Turks [ have worked with. However, because part of my argument involves themes found in films coded as “Turkish’ it is certainly worth discussing the origin and nationality of the composer Evanthin Reboutsika, She is not a Turk. She is Greek and was educated as a ‘musician and composer at home and in Paris, In this she has a background similar to many ‘Turkish composers who write for films, television, and commercials, Many of those working in the Turkish film indusiry were also educated in Western classical techniques and attended ‘one was chosen because it is « relatively ‘The "Return to Home" IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 63foreign institutions, particularly in Germany and the U, 8. Furthermore, the origin of the composer is not entirely applicable here because of the collaborative nature of filmmaking. Her contributions had to be performed by musicians, adapted by the musical supervisor, edited by the editor, and mastered by the sound engineers, al of whom have a great deal of impact on the final musical product. Ultimately, it is also usually the director that has final say over the location, use, applicability, and meaning of any particular musical moment. Because of these reasons, the fact she is not a Turk is largely beside the point. “© The Pine Ridge Boys (1939), You Are My Sunshine, Bluebird Records. Recorded August 22, 1939, 7 Sumer (2010), p. 35. 'S Suner (2010), *°'S. Arslan (2010), Cinema in Turkey: A New Critical History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stokes (1992); M. Stokes (1989), Anthropological Perspectives an Music in Turkey (Ph. D. Diss. Oxford University); M. Ergin (2000), Arabesk: Music, Culture and Politics in Turkey (master’s thesis, University of Minnesota). ® Arslan (2010), p. 18. ® 'S. Langer (1957), Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3 ed, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ® Boym (2001), p. 41. Paul Hartley is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology-Ethnomusicology al the University of Mlinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently in Turkey as a IIE-Fulbright scholar conducting research for bis dissertation on the production, reception, and socio-cultural implications of film music in contemporary Turkish cinema. He is especially interested in examining mass-mediated music's role as a vector of socio-cultural detail and its place as an iroportant point of social interaction between large populations. Consequently, he works across many disciplines, including musicology, philosophy, sociology, anthropolo- gy, cinema studies, communications, music informatics, digital humanities, and cultural studies. In addition to being a musicologist, he is also a clarinetist. Paul HARTLEY 64 IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cuttural EncounterThematical Articles 65Ufa Orientalism. The ‘Orient’ in Early German Film: Lubitsch and May! Frank F, Scherer York University, ficherer@vorkn.ca Abstract Fantastic images of the exotic pervade many early German films which resort fo constructions of “Oriental” scenes. Stereotypical representations of China, India, Babylon, and Egypt dominate the Kino-sereens of Weimar Germany. These films were produced in the UFA studios outside Berlin by directors such as Emst Lubitsch (Sumurum/ One Arabian Night, 1920: Das Weib des Pharaos! The Love of Pharaoas, 1922) and John May (Das Indische Grabmal/ The Indian Tomb, 1921). Yet. ‘where recent observers resist the use of a posteolonial perspective it bcvomes diflicult to assess the cinematographic exoticism of post-WWI Germany. This essay, therefore, offers both a discussion ‘of Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’and a psychoanalytica! thesis on the concealment and supposed healing of post-1918 Germany's national narcissistic wounds by emphasizing Eurocentric difference in its filmic representations of the Orient. Fantastische Bilder des Exotischen durchzichen vicle frtthe dentsche Filme, die anf die Konstruk- tion von 0 rende Darstellungen Chinas, In- diens, Babytons und Agyptens dominieren die Kinoleinwiinde der Weimarer Republik. Diese Filme warden in den UFA Studios bei Berlin von Regisseuren wie Emst Lubitsch (Sumurum, 1920; Das ¥eib des Pharaos, 1922) und John May (Das Indisehe Grabmat, 1921) produziert. Der vorliegende Artikel yerbindet cine Diskussion von Edward Saids Orientalismus mit ciner pschychoanalytischen ‘These zur Verdrlingung und vermuteten Heilung der narzistischen, nationalen Wunden im Deutsch- talischen" Schauplitzen zurtickgreifen, Stereotypi land der Ara nach 1918 durch die fitmische Betonung ciner curozentristischen Sicht des Orient. Yabancim fanstastik imgeleri “Dogu” sahneleri ne hokimadic, olusumuna bagvuran birgok eski Alnan filmi- , Hindistan, Babil, ve Mist’ ait tipik simgeler Weimar Almanyasinn sinema per- delerine yén vermektedir. Bu filmler, Ernst Lubitsch: (Sumurunv One Arabian Night, 1920; Da Weib des Pharuos/ The Love of Pharaoas 1922) ve John May (Das Indische Grabmal/ The Indian ‘Tomb, 1921) gibi yonetmenter tarafindan Berlin dismmdaki UIA stiidyolarinda gekilmistir, Ancak, son zamantardaki gOzlemeiler somilrge sonras) perspektif kullanmaya karst gokinea Birinei Diinya Savagy sonrast Almanya’nm alistimamis sincmacihigins degerlendinmek zorlasmaktadir, Bu makale hem Edward Said"in Orientalisin'ine bir tartigma hem de Dogu’aun filmsel temsifindeki Avros trik fark: vorgulayarak 1918 sonrast Almanya’nin ufusal narsisizm yaralaetwnn sOzde tedavisi ve Or- tOlmesi dzerine psikanalitik bir tez sunar. ne UFA Orientalism IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 67Introduction: German Orientalism and Weimar Cinema Fantastic images of Oriental exoticism pervade much of early German film after World War I and into the 1920s, the period commonly known as the Weimar Republic. Be it Emst Lubitsch’s Swnurwn/ One Arabian Night (1920), his superlative Das Weib des Pharaos/ The Loves of Pharaoh (1922); or Jobn May's colossal Das indische Grabmal/ The Indian Tomb (1921); these early German films resort more or less obsessively to constructions of “Oriental” scenes. Largely based on stereotypical representations of India, Babylon, or Egypt and produced in the UFA (Universum Film AG) studios near Berlin, these images dominated the Kino-screens of Weimar Germany. While this filmic German “Orientalism” has been acknowledged by recent commentators such as Richard MeCor- mick,? Christian Rogowski, and Sabine Hake," unfortunately, these writers did little more than labeling and nowhere in the literature, old or new, do we find an engaged discussion, let alone an in-depth treatment, of what I will call “UFA Orientalism”. My e: will, therefore, explore this recognized ~ if uncharted — Orientalist terrain in the landscape of early German film and provide the missing postcolonial perspective which, in interdisciplinary mode, will be further strengthened by deconstructionist theory and psychoanalytical insight. Resisting Orientalism Even though the Orientalist leanings of early German film have been noticed by several recent commentators, none has gone beyond mere labeling practices shunning — and thereby resisting — a substantial treatment of the Orientalist characteristics of their object of study. Here 1 want to offer three brief examples, (1) Following Graham Petrie,’ Richard W. McCormick divides Lubitsch’s costume films into two categories, on the one hand there are the “historical films like Maclane Dubarry Passion” and, on the other, the “Ori- ental fantasies like Stmmurun/ One Arabian Night.” (2) Then there is Sabine Hake's overview of German feature films 1918-1922 which includes a fleeting remark regarding Lu- bitsch's “mixture of Jugendstil and orientalism in films like the Mountain Cat and The Love of Pharaoh.”” (3) Finally, we have Christian Rogowski’s article, where the author points out that Joe May’s “audience-oriented” fantasy films, and especially Das Indische Grabmal/ The Indian Tomb, were “set in the Oriental world of the Middie East. If these writers duly acknowledge the Orientalism involved in early German filmmaking, they all resist an in-depth discussion, that is, a sustained reflection of Edward Said’s foundational contribution, and thereby a serious consideration of postcolonial theory. Their resistance can perhaps be understood in the context of the theoretical strains of Said’s Orientalism? At this point, I want to propose a twofold strategy and discuss a) the lack of an informed postcolonial critique of early German film and b) the advantages of an interdisciplinary, Frank F, SCHERER 68 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural ounterand in particular psychoanalytical, interpretative take of essentialist cinematographic re~ presentations of the Orient during the Weimar period. By and large, Edward W. Said’s Orientalism stands out as a seminal work that, although confronted with harsh criticism, has nonetheless managed for more than three decades to maintain much of its paradigmatic stance. While we can appreciate the significance of its political and intellectual positioning, it has not succeeded in dispelling an array of ontological, epistemological, and methodological short-comings. Orientalism has been perceived both as “forbidding” and “enabling”. Forbidding for the monolithic “Occi- dentalism” that emerges in its pages and enabling for the enormous critical potential his view of “Orientalism” has produced. This enablement is one of the reasons why this book: was, and stifl is, so enthusiastically received by scholars in the social sciences and humanities, And yet, the popular and academic usages that are sometimes made in the name of Said’s Orientalism seem uncritical and little aware of a number of contradictions which seriously undermine the authority of this founding contribution to the development of postcolonial theory. While Said’s flexible theoretical positioning maybe confounding to some, to others it is precisely this double-sidedness that constitutes the strength of his re- thinking the concept and practice of Orientalism. However, it is not Said’s unfortunate failure to do away with essentialisms of the Oc- cidental and Oriental kinds, but rather his reinforcement of those categories by entrenching them further into his own scheme and, most significantly, his complete oblivion and unveflective erasure of those concerned, the “Orientals”, that is at issue here. A closer look at Orientalism and, more precisely, at Said’s definitions thereof, will help to explain why the ambiguous and contradictory positioning of his work is of so much importance. Wis within the first pages that Said offers no less than four definitions of Orientalism: corporate, academic, stylistic and historical: a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient ig not only adjacent to Euro- pe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.” ‘The Orient is an integral part of Europe an material civilization and culture, Ori- entalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial style." Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.”"? FA Orientalism IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 69‘Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orien- talism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient - dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, by settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalisma as a Wester style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” As identified by Ahmad,'* we are facing not just pressing ontological as well as epistemological problems, but, moreover, we have an important issue of periodization on our hands. If there is an “uninterrupted” discursive history — as Said, notwithstanding his own arguments, claims on the same pages — that can be traced from Aeschylus to Dante to Marx to Lewis, then the post-Enlightenment eighteenth century can hardly figure as that “roughly defined starting point” of Orientalist discourse. Leaving aside the historical relevance of these questions, they indicate a typical quality of Said’s Orientalism which re- sides in its hybrid positioning. The theoretical and methodological influences apparent in Said’s opus magnum are twofold. On the one hand we have his “humanist” claims and, on the other, his use of Foucauldian discourse theory. Having acquired strong formational background in comparative European literatures, Said appears deeply inspired by German comparativists such as Auerbach, Curtius, and Spitzer who were keen on creating an aura of “High Humanism” around their academic endeavors.'® The humanist stance reappears in Said’s Orientalism in the form of a totalized European history tracing its beginnings — and its Orientalisms — back to Greek classics. This idea was countered in highly eritical fashion by the Subaltern Studies Group and several postcolonial thinkers (see Spivak"; Bhabha"; and Prakash'*). There is, then, the difficulty to reconcile traditional notions of “High Humanism” with post-structural readings of “Nietzschean anti-humanism” as proposed in Foucault’s philosophico-historical writings. If James Clifford points to this conceptual weakness, he nonetheless affirms the foundational status of Orienialism by stating that “Said’s humanist perspectives do not harmonize with his use of methods derived from Foucault, who is of course a radical critic of humanism. But however wary and in- consistent it’s appeals, Orientalism is a pioneering attempt to use Foucault systematically in an extended cultural analysis." Another problem is found in the relationship that exists between Orientalism and colonialism. Prioritizing textuality, Said argues that Orientalism “produced” the Orient,” meaning that colonialism is a product of Orientalism itself. Ahmad opposes this view by arguing that this “narrative of convergence between colonial knowledges and colonial powers simply cannot be assembled within cultural studies itself, because histories of economic exploitation, political coercion, and military conquest play the far more constituti- ve part; those other histories are the ones which provide the enabling conditions for the so-called Orientalist discourse as such.””' It is of little help to the theoretical architecture of Orientalism when Said introduces (shortly after corroborating his indebtedness to Fou- Frank F. SCHERER 70 IMAGES ~ ms as Spaces of Cultural Encountercauldian discourse theory) Gramsci’s notion of “hegemony”, which pertains to the larger body of Marxist theory. Said thus depends for his conceptual strategy on a highly flexible positionality, constantly vacillating between humanist and anti-humanist paradigms. Still, the point being made here consists not merely in the paradoxical accomplishment of Said’s entrenching essentialist distinctions made between the “Occident” and the “Ori- ent”, but also in his complete neglect, and thus his erasure, of the subaltern voice. As Ai- Jaz Ahmad remarks: A notable feature of Orientalism is that it examines the history of Western textu- alities about the non-West quite in isolation from how these textuatities might have been received, accepted, modified, challenged, overthrown, or reproduced by the intelligentsias of the colonized countries; not as an undifferentiated mass but as situated social agents impetled by our own conilicts, contradictions, distinct social and political locations, of class, gender, region, religious affiliation, and so on ~ hence a peculiar disjuncture in the architecture of the book.” We have not only theoretical and methodological contradictions accompanied by hybrid strategies, but also a fateful obliteration in the silence around those involved ~ the “Ori- entals” — which has confronted Said’s Orientalism with the devastating charge of “Oc- cidentalism”, In other words, Said essentializes Europe and the West, the *Occident”, as self-identical, fixed being which has always had an essence and a will, an imagination and a project, and the “Orient” as no more than its silenced object. Accordingly, “Said’s discourse analysis does itself not escape the all-inclusive ‘Oceidentalism’ he specifically rejects as an alternative to Orientalism.” It is this (reversed) charge of “Occidentalism” which has motivated other writers to go beyond Orientalism and to find alternatives to conceptualize, in the place of silence and neglect, a dialectics involving those concerned, How can we think of Orientalism as an expandable concept, one that takes into account the ways in which it is received, accepted, modified, rejected, or otherwise challenged by the subaltem? Furthermore, how can we conceptualize a critique of Orientatism that in- chides the subaltern voice? To reach beyond Orientalism means to employ its critical propensities in strategic ways, tapping into its enabling potential which must include the acknowledgment of a plurality of Orientalisms (*proper”, “in-reverse”, etc.), as well as the conceptual possibilities of an Orientalist dialectics. A number of authors have worked towards a differentiation of Orientalisms, not just in the sense of national histories and conditions, but also in terms of moving away from a one-sided discourse to one of multi- plicity and multi-vocality. This is of great significance as such a move makes space for the subaltern voice by opening new terrains of struggle and contestation. This writer fully concurs therefore with Markus Schmitz’ conclusion that “the genesis and reception of a critique of Said is of immediate relevance for the question of the im/possible conditions of cultural de-centering in the tense environment of competing positionalities and une~ qual representational powers” (my translation). In returning to filmic texts and the appa- UFA Orientatism ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 7rent resistance of recent commentators to Edward Said’s Orientalism, it seems indispensi- ble to measure out the strengths and strains of such an influential work if we are to use postcolonial theory in our exploration of Orientalist representation in Weimar cinema. Orientalism as Différance and Narcissism Ernst Lubitsch’s Sumurun/ One Arabian Night (1920) clearly exhibits some of the most stereotypical features of western Orientalist representations of historic Babylon such as the Oriental despot, his 1001-like barbarism and especially his cruel mistreatment of women which is accompanied ~ in classic Freudian key — by the patriarchical/ aedipal struggle that ensues between him and his son over the latest addition to his harem. The silent binary that is entrenched here re-proposes the supposed civilizedness of the west as grounded in its liberal democratic superiority. In much the same vein, Joe May's Das In- dische Grab The Indian Tontb (1922) feeds extensively on images of Hindu religion and mysticism, typically projecting Oriental irrationality and timelessness. ‘The other side of the filmic coin once again underlines the secular rationality and progressive modemity of the German viewer. If the Weimar audience may haye lost a few rituals and traditions on their forced march into modemity, this Orientalist imagery ideologically reinforces the al- Jeged superiority of an advanced industrialized German Gesellschaft. The basic Orientalist binary opposition of Occident versus Orient or west/east evokes a series of other rigid and supposedly stable binary contrasts such as, for example, modern/ traditional, civilized/ primitive, advanced/ backward, rational/ irrational, self other, male/ female, active/passive, colonizer/colonized, and so forth, In structural terms, binary constructs are seen as fundamental organizing elements in human philosophy, language, and cultute.”* In post-structuralism it is argued that binary oppositions are characteristic of western thought and that, typically, one of the opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other, The critique of binary oppositions has an important place in post-feminist, post-colonial, as well as critical race theory. The post-structural critique of binary constructs consists, however, not simply in a reversal but in their deconstruction. In postcolonial theory this is accomplished by means of introducing a “third term” and, thereby, to undo their apparent stability (see Spivak; Bhabha”). At the same time, the prob- Jematic effectiveness of binary oppositions reaches deeper than may be linguistically apparent. This problem has been discussed by Jacques Derrida in his Différance”™ which proposes an insightful reading, He uses the spelling of the French term différance with an a instead of the ¢ as an example/concept and speaks of it as an “infraction in silence”, something that is written and read but that cannot be heard. He maintains that it [the a] cannot be exposed, while indicating “an operation that implies an economical calculation, a detour, Frank F, SCHERER np IMAGES — Fils as Spaces of Cultural Encounteradelay, a relay, a reserve, a representation”. Its meaning is, therefore, constituted through an act of repression and its sign stands as a “deferred presence” which it aims to re- appropriate. He makes two further points. One rests with the fact that différance with an a is no longer part of the representation of a presence, and secondly, as a result, he questions the very authority of such presence and of its opposite, that is, of lack, or absence, Différance, in Dertida’s writing, “maintains our relationship with that which we necessarily misconstrue, and which exceeds the alternative of presence and absence.”” The complicated performance of oppositions remains of great importance for a differentiated understanding of so complex a procedure of signification. In this context, Derrida reminds us how “essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of differences.” Although Dertida’s discussion pursues its object still further by probing into the discourses of vatious influential philosophical precedents it may suffice here to restate that each present clement is “related to something other than itself”, white being related simultaneously to past and future dimensions, thus “constituting the present by means of this very relat is not”! Each Orientalist binary is, thus, a radical displacement, which — within its play of differences ~ remains intimately tied to its opposite, and beyond, to a history of western (Orientalist) representations. nto what Already the pioneering German film theorist Siegfried Kracauer had unveiled the essentialist exoticism of Weimar cinema as little more than compensatory gestures by a “cut off", “entrapped” nation after World War | and the Treaty of Versailles.” His early interdisciplinary perspective shows much awareness of the psychoanalytical implications of such filmie displacement into the exotic stopping short of discussing the complexities of collective castration, Similarly, Germany's post-WWI cinematographic Orientalism can be understood in the context of its national/narcissistic wound, In the attempt to brid- ge psychoanalytical thought and post-colonial theory, which is outlined in more detail ef- sewhere,”* | proposed three doubled conceptual tools: (1) Orientalism Proper or The Nar- cissism of Eurocentric Difference; (2) Oriemtalist Binaries or West-Eastern Splitting in the Process of Defense; and (3) Self-Orientalization or Identification with the Imperial Aggressor. Here I will consider mainly the first, that is, German filmic Orientalism of the Weimar period as concealing and supposedly healing a narcissistic wound by way of its emphasis on Eurocentric difference. The notion “Orientalism proper” is bortowed from John MacKenzie’s discussion of Ori- entalism in history, theory, and the arts“ and stands diametrically opposed to Sadik al- Azm’s concept of “Orientalism-in-Reverse.””* If the former corresponds to the orientalization of the Other, the latter implies the orientalization of the Self. It follows Edward Said’s original definitions of academic, corporate, and stylistic practices in the process of which the “Orient” and “Oriental” othemess ate produced. This process is fundamentally based on Eurocentric views of racial and cuftural difference conceived in terms of Occi- 7Bdental superiority and Oriental inferiority. In Said’s formulation: “Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient ~ and this applies whether the person is an anthro- pologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist — either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism.” Psycho-analysis allows us to translate Said’s foundational postcolonial concept into what Freud, in bis Civilization and His Discontents, coined “the narcissism of minor differences”” meaning the tendency to signal aggression in the encounter with the other. Freud speaks here not only of “Spani- ards” and “Portuguese” engaged in constant feuds or simply ridiculing each other. In the context of “Jewish people” he unambiguously reminds us of “all the massacres of Jews” as well as “the dream of a Germanic world-dominion” calling for “antisemitism as its complement.” If the formula “narcissism of minor differences” does not do much to ex~ plain it. turning to Freud’s work will sharpen the focus. According to Emest Jones, Freud used the term “nareissism' for the first time at a Vienna convention in 1909, declaring it to be “a necessary intermediate stage between au- toerotisin and object-love.”™ In Freud’s writings the concept first appears in a footnote added to the second edition of the Three Essavs on the Theory of Sexuality® and, a few years later, in his essay on Leonardo da Vinci." In both instances the term is used to account for object-choice in homosexuals. Freud's seminal essay “On Narcissism: An Intro- duction,” [Zur Einfiihrung des Narzissmus"}* brings together several strands of earlier research introducing at same time new concepts with great significance for the development of psychoanalytic theory. In this sense, Freud begins by reiterating Naicke’s definition of narcissism as “perversion” and Sadger’s note on narcissistic traits in “homosexuals,” but, more importantly, by restating Ranke’s understanding of narcissism as patt of normal or “regular” uman sexual development. This last contribution is considerable in that it opens the way to point, away from perversion, to narcissism as “the libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of seli-preservation, a measure of which may justifi- ably be attributed to every living creature.” Narcissism is thus brought to the discussion in libidinal terms being thought of as complement to the ego-instinct and as part of a continuum that reaches from pathology (“neurotics”) to normalcy (“every living creature"), These considerations eventually prepared the stage for Freud's “extension of the libido theory.” Earlier work with neurotic patients had shown that narcissistic attitudes translate into “limits to their susceptibility to influence,” and thus into limits of the psychoanalytic method at large, This finding led Freud to deepen his understanding of narcissism and schi- zophrenia in the light of libido theory. He continues, therefore, by indicating that schi- zophrenics display (wo fundamental characteristics: a) megalomania, which comes into being at the expense of object-libido and b) their marked diversion of interest from the outside world, a process in which “the libido that has been withdrawn from the external world has been directed fo the ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called Frank F. SCHERER 74 MAGES Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounternarcissism," If in the case of schizophrenic patients the libido has truly been withdrawn from the object, in neurotics the process appears to follow a different course. Freud explains that even though the neurotic may have “given up his relation to reality.” in contrast to the schizophrenic, “he has by no means broken off his erotic relation to people and things” — he replaces them with others in fantasy. Eventually, Freud is led to “look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of object-cathexes as a secon dary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism that is obscured by a number of different influences.” Freud’s innovative distinction between primary and secondary narcis- sismi(s) has been praised as “ground-breaking”. Paul Ricoeur, for one, conceives of “se condary narcissism” as “a new intelligibility that crowns the attainment of the topo-graphic-economie point of view", foreshadowing “the re-organization of the topograplty according to the new sequence of ego, id, and superego." To return to “the narcissism of minor differences” and the disposition of aggression toward the other, the withdrawal of libidinal energy from the object onto the ego remains essential to an understanding of the process, So does any insight into Eurocentric views of Occidental self and Oriental other. ‘The concealing and hoped for healing of Germany's national/narcissistic wound in the aftermath of World War | is thus partly accomplished by recourse to an emphasis on Eu- rocentric difference in the form of cinematographic Orientalism as exemplified in the films of Lubitsch, May and others. In particular Franz Osten’s near-anthropological Die Leuchte Asiens/ The Light of Asia (1925) or his Der Warf des Schicksals/ The Throw of Dice (1927) would merit extended analysis. However, Osten’s films are not discussed here as they demand separate treatment having been initiated by Indian producers, financed by Indian investors, and shoot on location in India (see Ascdrate*’), Another aspect of importance in the production of early German Orientalist films which cannot be treated here is found in the involvement of both Lubitsch and May with Hollywood and the US- financed, German-based film company EFA (see Horak’” and Drissier™), Conclusion: Narcissism, Eurocentrism, and Orientalism ‘This article has discussed the recurrent Orientalist imagery in early German film of the Weimar period by considering two contexts. On the one hand, we noted the lack of an informed posteolonial critique among recent writers and have, therefore, provided a sustai~ ned analysis of Edward Said’s foundational text. On the other hand, in view of the ontological, etymotogicat, and methodological shortcomings of Said’s Orientalism we have offeted an interdisciplinary ~ and in particular psychoanalytical — interpretation of Ger- many’s national/narcissistic wound in the aftermath of WWI as being concealed and supposedly healed by way of emphasis on Eurocentric difference (read superiority) in its essentialist representations of the Orient. UFA Orientalism IMAGES lms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 75' The original version of this article was published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh at hutp://cinej.pitt.cdwojs/index.phip/cine//article/view/24/111, DOL 10.519S/cine}.2011.24 2K, McCormick, “Sex, History and Upward Mobility: Emst Lubitsch's Madame Dubarry/Passian™ in German Studies Review, Vol. 33, Nr. 5, October 2010, pp. 603-617. 3 C, Rogowski, “Movies, Money, and Mystigue: Joe May's Barly Blockbuster, The Ineian Tomb (1921)" in N. Isenberg (ed.), Weimar Cinema. The Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. * 8. Hake, Passions and Deceptions. The Early Films of Ernst Lubitsch, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. * G. Petrie, Hollywood Destinies: European Directors in Hollywood. 1922-1931. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. ©R. MeCormick, 2010, p, 604, 7'§, Hake, 1992, p. 37. “©. Rogowski, 2009, p. 62. °E, Said, Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books/A Division of Random House, 1979. 'E, Said, 1979, p. 1 "B, Said, 1979, p.1-2. E, Said, 1979, p. 2. ‘SB. Said, 1979, p. 3. "4. Ahmad, dn Theory. Classes, Nations, Literatures. London and New York: Verso, 1994, p. 180. 'S A, Ahmad, 1994, p. 162. "6 GC. Spivak, “Subaltern Studies. Deconstructing Historiography” in D. Landry and G. Maclean (eds.), The Spivak Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. "ELK. Bhabha, The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. 'S G, Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 32. 1990, p. 2. |. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, & Avt, ‘Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 264. * E, Said, 1979, p. 3. 7 A, Ahmad, 1994, p. 164, 2 4. Alimad, 1994, p. 172. ° 4, Clifford, 1988, p. 271. 4M. Schmitz, Kulturkritik olme Zentrum. Edward W. Said und die Kontrapunkte kritischer Dekolonisation, Bielefeld: transcript verlag, 2008, p. 363. % S$. Hall, (ed.) Representation. Cultural Represemations and Signifving Practices. London, Thousand Oaks, New Dehli: Sage Publications, 1997, pp. 234-238. °° GC. Spivak, 1996. Frank F, SCHERER 76 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter* ELK, Bhabha, 1994, * J, Derrida, *Diffirance” in Margins of Philosophy. Transtated with notes by A. Bass. Chicago: ‘The University of Chicago Press, 1982. % J, Derrida, 1982, p. 20. » J, Derrida, 1982, p. 11. 3! J, Derrida, 1982, p. 13. * S. Kracauer, Fron Caligary to Hitler. A Psychological History of German Film. Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1947, p. 23, swherer, Freud's Orient, Early Psychoanalysis, “Anti-Semitic Challenge”, and the Vicissitides of Orienalist Discourse. Unpublished Dissertation, York University. Toronto, 2010. MUM, MacKenzie, Orientalism. History, theory and the arts, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995, p.26. °° §.]. al*Azm, “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse” in Khamsin Nr. 8, (1981), p. 5. 2". Said, 1979, p. * §, Freud, “Civilization and its Discontents” in Standard Kadlition Vol, XI. Translated from the German by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1981 [1930], pp. 114-115. °*§. Freud, 1981 [1930], p. 116. 5, Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. New York: Basic Books, 1981, p.304, 'S, Preud, “Throe Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” in Standard Edition VII, Translated from the German by James Strachey, London: The Hogarth Press, 1981 [1905]. * S. Freud, “Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood” in Stancdurd Edition XI. ‘Translated from the German by James Strachey. London; The Hogarth Press, 198! [1910]. 8, Froud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction” in Standard Edition Vol. XIV. Translated from the German by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1981 [1914]. *'S, Proud, 1981 [1914], p. 74. “S. Froud, 1981 [1914], p. 75. * P. Ricoeur, Freud ane Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 127. “ Ry, Ascdrate, “Cinematic Enlightenment: Franz Osten’s Die Leuchte Asiens (1925)" in Quarterty Review of Film and Video, Vol. 25, pp. 357-367, 2008, “7 4..C, Horak, “Rin-Tin-Tin in Berlin or American cinema in Weimar” in Film History, Vol. 5, pp. 49-62, 1993, “S. Drassler, “Emst Lubitsch and EFA” in Film History, Vol. 21, Nr. 1, pp. 208-228, 2009, aa 77Frank F, SCHERER (PHD) teaches Social Science in the Department of Human Rights and Equity Studies at York University, Toronto/ Canada, He is author of “Freuds Mor- genland. OrientalisTick und die Entstehung der Psychoanalyse” in Riidiger Gomer and Nima Mina (Hrsg.) “Wenn die Rosenhimmel tanzen ...” Oriental Motifs in 19" and 20" Century German Literature, Miinchen: ludicium Verlag (2006); “Oriental(ist) Scenes. Orientalism of Psychoana-analysis/Psychoanalysis of Orientalism” in S. Movahedi, M. Tamgidi, J. Capetillo-Ponce, G. Jacobs (eds.) The Discourse of Sociological Practice, Vol. 7, Issues 1&2, Spring/Fall (2005); “Sanfancén: Orientalism, Self-Orientalization, and ‘Chinese Religion’ in Cuba” in Patrick Taylor (ed.), Nation Dance: Religion, Identity and Cultural Difference in the Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2001. Frank F. BB IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Cultural EncounterAcross Cultural and National Borders: Diasporic Chinese Family in Pushing Hands! Qijun Han Uwecht University, O.Han(@uant Abstract Being embedded in the interdiseiplinary area of media and culture studies, this articiel explores the family melodrama in transnational Chinese cinema drawing upon theoretical discussions with re- gard to the historical emergence of melodrama in correspondence to “periods of intense social and is erving as a reflection on the tension between tradition and modernity ideological crisis™, Whil displayed in the domestic domain, Ang Lee’s Chinese-characterized fumily melodrama also illustrates the differences between Chinese and Hollywood family melodrama, Linked to the ongoing debate about “melodrama as 2 cross-culturat form”, in the process of analyzing the film text, our perceptions of generic distocation or displacement, transcultural entanglements and globalization in light of contemporary cultural practices will be furthermore complicated Angesiedelt im interdiszipliniren Bereich der Medien- und Kulturwissenschafien, erkundet der vor- iegende Artikel das Familien-Melodrama im transnationalen cl hen Kino unter hung theoretischer Diskussionen zur historischen Entstehung des Melodramas. Ang Lees chine sisch ausgerichtetes Familicn-Melodrama bietct die Reflexion der Spannungen zwischen Tradition und Modernitit im hiuslichen Bereich und illustriert den Unterschied zwischen chinesischem Fa- milicn-Melodrama und Hollywood-Kino. Die Analyse des Films strebt die Problematisierung der Wahrnchmung von Globatisicrang, Vertreibung und transkutturefler Verbindung an, bezie~ Medya ve Kiltire! gahgmatarin disiplinlerarast alaninda gémilii olarak, bu makale, yogun sosyal ve idoolojik kriz. dénemlerine kargihik metodramin tarihsel olusumuna iiskin uluslaragiti Cin sinema- sindaki aile melodramm incelemektedir, Bir yandan ig alanda gelenekc ve moderulik arasmda bir yansima olarak hizmet ederken, Ang Lee'nin Cin karakterli aile metodram aynt zamanda Cin ve Hollywood aile melodramast arasindaki farklibklan gstermektedir, Film metinini ¢OzGmleme st- recinde “kilttiler aryst bir form olarak melodram” hakkinda siirmekte okin tartigmayla baglanttlt olarak, jenerik kaydirma veya yer degistirme, kiltUrler arasi karigikllk ve ga rm igiginda kiresellesmne algilarimiz aynica anlasilmast zor olacaktir. ag kiiltdirel galigmal- Across Cultural and Natlonal Borders, IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural 719“A family is like your own personal anti- matter. Your family is the void you emerge fiom and the place you return to when you die and that's the paradox - the closer you're drawn back in, the deeper into the void you go." ~ Paul Hood, Lee Storur (Ang Lee, 1997) Introduction As one of Ang Lee's favorite themes, family has been present in most of his works. In an overview of his oeuvre, starting from Pushing Hands (1992) ~ his first feature film, to his more recent film Taking Woodstock (2009), from Sense and Sensibility (1995), to The lee Storm (1997), Lee has proven himself to be the master of bittersweet family melodramas to capture the melodramatic conflicts in both Chinese and non-Chinese families. Including Ang Lee, numerous Chinese and diasporie Chinese filmmakers have utilized the cinematic form of family melodrama to reflect the complexity of family domain, where different types of conflicts among gender, cultures, generations, class, and nations, are more often than not displayed. The family thus can be seen as a representation of a cultural crisis. However, the link between melodrama as a concept largely developed in Europe and North America, and its function in transnational Chinese cinema’, is rarely touched upon. This paper, therefore, will initiate an attempt to embark on an exploration of the complexity of melodrama as well as family melodrama in the Chinese context, The essay will be divided into two interrelated parts. in the first part, 1 shall engage in discussion on the concept of melodrama and family melodrama and how it can aid us understanding a typical Chinese family-melodrama film. In the second part, 1 will analyze the film text within the frame of the first part. In so doing, the discourse of family me- Jodrama will be problematized and complicated by nationally-, ethnically- and culturally- specific Chinese family melodrama. Revisiting Melodrama Before investigating the concept of family melodrama, we shall first start with clarifying the meaning of melodrama, since there have been abundant research that addresses melodrama’s ideological complexity. In a sirict sense, “melodrama” originally refers to dramas combined with music. As a popular and hybrid cultural form, melodrama often seeks to address the widest possible audience. Containing “elements of interiorization and per- sonalization of what are primarily ideological conflicts”,* much of the melodramatic con- 80flicts center on generation and gender relationships. Melodrama thus is often linked to woman’s film and family melodrama, A great deal of discussions has been devoted to revitalize melodrama as a fixed genre, despite the fact that melodrama is rather fluid and unfixed and that it is also transnational and transcultural. [ however, share more in line with Linda Williams that melodrama can be seen as a mode encompassing many different genres, Melodrama is the fundamental mode of popular American moving pictures. It is not a specific genre like the western or horror film; it is not a ‘deviation’ of the classical realist narrative; it cannot be located primarily in woman's films, ‘wee- pies’, or family melodramas - though it includes them. Rather, melodrama is a peculiarly democratic and American form that seeks dramatic revelation or mo- rat and emotional truths though a dialectic of pathos and action.”° As a dramatic and literary form, melodrama was already very popular as early as in the late 18th century. Because of its function as a site of ideological struggle, silent movies drew on theatrical melodrama and developed a form of cinematic melodrama, By me- diating the spiritual realm of freedom and the empirical realm of bondage, metodrama has manifested its ability of allowing film directors to tackle ‘taboo? issues, desives and demands barred by thresholds raised in social and political code, However, melodrama has long been despised by film historian and erities, both in China and in the West. Being recognizably emotional and sentimental, melodrama is often reduced to low-brow form and is discarded for its main association with woman and low class. Melodrama, a “mode of excess”,” was dismissed as trivial for requiring no skill at all. Bat this is far from the truth, for respectable masters of melodrama such as Griffith, Vidor, Minnelli, Sirk, have been looked upon by many close followers. In the early 1970s, melodrama finally became recognized as well as promoted by film scholars such as Peter Brooks, Tho- mas Elsaesser, and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. The term entailed quite another meaning during and after the 1970s than before, though, since the debates on melodrama have taken points of view largely from Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism. With the popularity of television melodrama, especially Korean soap operas in China in the past decade, melodrama’s “myth-making function” has attracted attention from some media scholars. They have studied its ability of revealing social aspirations as well as gender and class paradoxes, yet the lack of research in Chinese-language melodrama films is still striking. The danger of engaging in such a study lies in the difficulty of applying a western discourse in the Chinese context, Linked to the rejection of melodrama in China is the association of melodrama with political decolonization and de-westernization, an on-going process that went through the second half of the 20" century and continues in the 21“ century. 81Inspired by Edward Said (1978), Michel Foucault (1980), Fredric Jameson (1986) and other postcolonial scholars such as Homi Bhabha (1983) and Gayatri Spivak (1988, 1990), cross-cultural reading politics has arisen as a hot debate in film studies in the late 1980s. Central to the concems is who is doing cultural analysis and for what purpose. In light of these thoughts, Chinese comparative literartist Zhang Longxi (1992) has reminded us to be aware of the different national and local conditions on applying Western framework. Following similar lines, many Chinese film critics propose to abandon generic division, and replace it with the concept of mode, since generie categorization in film studies is mostly developed in Europe and North America, To address the specificity of C nese cinema, melodrama has been substituted with following modes: Zheng Zhenggiu mode (family melodrama), Cai Chusheng mode (social melodrama) and Xie Jin mode (political melodrama).” Film scholars, such as Professor Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, and Cai Guorong, the scriptwriter for Crouching Tiger, hidden Dragon, have suggested us to re~ place the term melodrama with wenyipian (2H) or literature-art-films,"” which seemingly more specific to Chinese cinema’ s critical and production contexts. While I share their concern that the concept of western melodrama may not be sufficient enough to explain Chinese-language cinemas, and to a certain extent it can bring the- oreticat baggage, { argue that the hybrid nature of melodrama as a particular form allow us to depart from categorization and to see the cultural dynamic from a global perspective, Even if it is tempting and convenient to draw a neat and binary division between East and West, it, as we will see, fails to account for some exceptional cases, for instance, Hong Kong cinema, a cultural sphere where the East mingles with the West. The same g0¢s for the Diaspora Chinese cinema, as the overseas Chinese are still influenced by their Chinese cultural heritage, not to mention that the film production and reception in an increasingly globalized and transnational world are becoming much more complex than they used to be. By using a transnational label such as melodrama, the specificity of Chinese culture and history can be incorporated in the process of globalization and Chi- nese-characterized films become accessible for the global audiences. Among many other cases, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, arguably the most recognized Chinese filmmakers, have used melodrama to market some of theit works to the west, including Rec Sorghum (Zhang, 1987), To Live (Zhang, 1990), Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang, 1991), Farewell My Concubine (Chen, 1993), to name just a few. In the context of Chinese film production, family melodrama plays a central role. After all, as Ma Ning concludes, “The family, rather than the individual or the state, was the most significant social unit in traditional China.”'' The emergence of cinema and modem melodramatic techniques and formulas in China, as part of China's modernization process, is an import from the West via Japan. We may ask then; what exactly is family melodrama? Family melodrama is identified as a subgenre that exposes the tensions and contradictions in the post-war suburban Ame- Qijun HAN 82 IMAGES — Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounterrican life, drawing inspirations mainly from Sirk’s films made in the 1940s and 1950s. For Elsaesser, family melodrama, as a particular genre, “more often records the failure of the protagonist to act in a way that could shape the events and influence the emotional environment, let alone change the stifling social milieu. The world is closed, and the characters are acted upon. Melodrama confers on them a negative identity through suffering, and the progressive self-immolation and disillusionment generally end in re- signation: they emerge lesser human beings for having become wise and acquiescent in the ways of the world,” Pushing Hands ~ A Transnational Family Melodrama ‘Then, how does Ang Lee tailor ideological conflicts into family situation in Pushing Hands by using the form of family melodrama? And in what ways does Lee’s family melodrama serve to illustrate the Chinese characterized family melodrama ~ a simple juxtaposition of similarities and differences between Chinese and western family melodrama becomes clear in film itself? The plot of the film mainly revolves around exploring the conflicts between generations and culture. In response to “Destroy the Four Olds” (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits) campaign throughout the Cultural Revolution, considered as embodiment of superstition and old-fashioned religion, Taiji was once banned in China, As a consequence, Mr Chu - the father, a taiji teacher, was forced fo send his son to the United States for protections. Many years later, the family is reunited in America ~ the father, his son Alex, his American daughter-in-law Martha, and his grandson Jeremy. Since the family is unprepared for the unexpected, the drama has started at the moment of the father’s arrival. As [ have already pointed out before, while clearly influenced by western melodrama, Chinese family melodrama follows its own trajectory. Elsaesser observes that the family melodrama is “where Freud Jef his Marx on the family home”."* E. Ann Kaplan also establishes a strong link between family romance and family melodrama. What partly defines melodrama as a form is “its concern explicitly with Oedipal issues ~ illicit love relationships, mother-child relationships, husband-wife relationships, father-son relationships". She also notes that Oedipal trajectories can be clearly traced in family melodrama.!* Lee's representational family, however, is certainly different from the bourgeois nuclear family that is usually present in the melodramatic plot of Hollywood films — as much about the extended family depicted in the film, as it is about an unconventional type of non-Oedipal conflict. Although Ang Lee had his educational training in the United States, his films carry strong Chinese elements. Pushing Hands is a Chinese family melodrama, Across Cultural and IMAGES — Filnis as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 83but the family in the film is more than a typical Chinese family, since it bas been dis- placed abroad. Pushing Hands thus serves as a reflection on the cultural displacements of Chinese/ Chinese American family relations. Chris Berry concludes a particular type of Taiwanese family melodrama ~ characterized by healthy realism, which reshapes a Confucian tradition into a hybrid Confucian ethic and a spirit of capitalism.'* Although his conclusion is drawn from his observation on ‘Taiwanese family melodrama, a melancholy towards vanishing tradition, or moral and ethical dilemmas that are raised in era of changes, has been quite often expressed in non- Taiwanese family melodrama, such as Ann Hui’s Summer Snow (also known as Wonran, Forty, 1995) in which a story about a middle-aged woman trying to cope with the uphea- vals in her family when encountered by obstacles is told. 1 will, therefore, argue that, while the western family in film studies has often been closely linked to the psychoanalytical concept of the oedipal family, the cinematic Chinese family, on the other hand, excessively plays with Confucian family ethics. Although the tendency towards nostalgia and melancholy can be clearly traced in abundance of film works, many filmmakers, rather than being trapped in conventional thinking, in fact in- vite the audiences to reflect upon the changes by means of displaying conflicts without taking up a particular moral stance. Melodrama often embodies morality polarized by the notions of good and evil, which clicits excessive emotion from the viewers, but it is not the case for Pushing Hands, the movie under discussion. The absence of moral polarization in Hollywood films has been explicitly explained by Ben Singer. In Melodrama and Modernity, he points out the evolution of melodrama that eschews conventional melodramatic devices developed at the theatre, Hollywood melodramas of the studio-system era generally involved just two of the basic elements: pathos and emotional intensification. In fact, many Holly- wood melodrama hinged on the absence of the element most accentuated in classic stage melodrama — i. e., moral polarization between good and evil. Holly- wood melodramas focused not on the battle between good and evil characters, but rather on the pathos of situations of moral antinomy in which two of more morally good characters find that their interests are fundamentally incompa- tile." Pushing Hands sets nexus between father and daughter-in-law as the dramatic pivot of this particular melodrama, The clash between Mr Chu and Martha - respectively repre~ senting the traditional Chinese patriarch and modem virtue of individualism, by no means defines Martha - the modern American woman writer who feels intruded upon by her father-in-law's visit ~ a villain, Neither is Lee's intention to judge Martha’s behaviour according to Confucian moral philosophy that requires duty, obligation, respect, devotion Qijan HAN 84 IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cutural Encounterand self-sacrifice to parents. ‘The film thus can be read as a departure from many other similar films containing intercultural communication theme, in a sense that it does not prove America-centric or China-centtic. Chinese family relation is characterized by the well-knowa filial piety. In Chinese culture where the extended family is still valued, less than before, though, it is commonly to see three generations ~ father, son, and grandson, living under the same roof, in extended families, the daughter-in-law is in general regarded as a workhorse in her household and she is restricted to the role of taking care of her parents-in-law, husband, as well her children. However, in an intercultural context, family is no longer subject to its traditional definition, Rather, families become the subject of their making. The meaning of family is thus attached by interpersonal relations. In this way, a domestic melodrama like Pushing Hands has vety effectively demonstrated how interpersonal relations/conflicts within the family can redefine family. Certainly the film is packed with all sorts of conflicts. Lee, together with his ever-present camera, captures several melodramatic scenes, in which the characters externalize their internal conflict, A central concern in Pushing Hands is the ideological implication - to which extent this particular Chinese family melodrama has inscribed the representation of family conflict and the resolution, f will thus approach the film text from two perspectives ~ representation of melodramatic conflict displayed in the domestic sphere as well as a possible conflict resohution. As such, the traits of Chinese family melodrama will be highlighted. Given the important role that food plays in Chinese culture, it is not surprising to see Chinese restaurant, food or dining scene become recognizably one of the most frequent scenes on screen. Anne Bower, in Reel food: essays on food and film, addresses the ian- portance of food symbolism in films, “movie viewers respond so readily to food imagery because of food” primacy in our lives; it is a primacy that precedes literacy but then becomes part of our symbol-making, symbol-decoding capacity.”"” Lee skillfully made use of food symbolism dining scene to subtly throw into the problems of intercultural communication between father and his daughter-in-law, as evidenced by four separate scenes, which will be explored in the following paragraphs, ‘The first conflict is effectively demonstrated by cooking scene, where Mr. Clu and Mar- tha have their first face-to-face encounter in the Kitchen, Chu’s food is prepared and cooked in traditional Chinese ways, whereas Martha usually prepares herself a quick and simple lunch. As Lee explains, the setting is out of the consideration that both characters aim to “fight for their rights to the kitchen in a kind of territorial war.”"* This silent fight has already posed a challenge to Chu’s concept of family defined by Confucian philoso- phers ~ family consciousness is constructed through a carefully built hierarchy which requires the family members to perform their fixed roles. The assumption by the father Across Cultural and Nat IMAGES - Films as Spaces of Coltral Encounter 85plays differently with Martha, who is driven by American individualism. Lee does not stop here; instead, he moves the conflict from the kitchen to the dining table, Once the cooking is done separately, Chu spontaneously sits down in front of Martha to join her for lunch. For him, sharing a meal at the same table symbolizes the construction of fami ly. His good intention is not appreciated by Martha, though, since she has to fight to resist, tempting food to keep her diet on track. The second movie segment that sheds light on the conflict occurs at the dinner table, where three generations eat dinner together. Mr Chu and Martha, neither speaks the other’s language, but both are eager to express their frustration to the third side ~ Alex, Chu’s som and Martha’s husband. This “fight for attention” scene can yet be interpreted as another territorial war, caused by lack of mutual understanding, on the basis of shared language and culture. Caught up in the middle, Alex is hesitant to take the role of transla- tor during conversation. His intention of limiting the fight in fact amplifies the existing frustration. ‘The conflict in the family intensifies at a faster, and the conflict reaches its peak in two fighting sequences, which feature Mr Chu playing taiji to defeat his opponents. The melodramatic effect is in general achieved through a dialectical relationship between pathos and action."” Here pathos combines different types of emotions such as feat, anger, re- sentment, anxiety, sadness, and so on. Consequently, pathos will drive the characters to take action. It is, therefore, not surprising to see Mr Chu discharge emotions into action, leaving aside the question of whether the behavior is intentional or non-intentional Interestingly enough, both fighting scenes were shot in food-related location ~ one in cooking school and another in Chinese restaurant. When Mr. Chu starts to teach taiji to Chinese students in a training school at the Chinese community centre, he meets Mrs. Chen, who migrates from Taiwan to America and shares a similar feeling with Mr. Chu. Because of renovation, Mrs. Chen switches the teaching location to the classroom where Mr. Chu teaches Taiji. The camera captures the scene of a fat guy pushed ten meters away by Mr, Chu in the practice process and the well-made dumplings all thrown on the ground. | shall point out that the representation seemingly carries double implications. Careful audiences might have already sensed the attraction between two characters, On the one hand, il thus shows Mr. Chu’s desire to impress Mrs. Chen by showing his mas- culine strength, The second interpretation is more related to the symbolic meaning of dumplings. Round dumplings in fact symbolize family reunion in Chinese traditional culture. By arranging this scene, Lee subtly throws into his doubt of “family reunion”, which is answered by the final shot. Mr. Chu finally moves out of the house into Chinatown, and he leaves a note with bitter melodrama, The note says that rich life in America does not bring as much happiness to the family, as very few material things in China once did Oijun HAN lms as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 86 IMAGES —If the first fighting scene were more or less a practice, then the second one shows clearly how Lee creates the action for Mr, Chu as a means of breaking free from his repression. After leaving home, Chu ends up being a dishwasher in the Chinese restaurant. But be soon gets fired because of working (oo slowly. in confronting the owner of the restaurant, Chit is inevitably involved into the trouble. The hilarious fight is set in the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant. ‘The resolution for family-based melodramatic conflicts, for audiences who are familiar with Hollywood family melodrama, is usually achieved by castrating father, who fails his role as the authority figure. Lee however, provides a typical Chinese resolution for the family in Pushing Hands, Lee effectively applies the technique of pushing hands as a solution to the family problem, as the film title suggests. Similar to the utilization of melodrama in Chinese cinema that indicates mediation and negotiation across national and cultural borders, Pushing Hands also carries a symbolic meaning that suggests mediation between Chinese and American culture. Pushing hands, known as a type of internal Chinese martial arts, trains people to initiate positive contact with an opponent, rather than to im= mediately fight back or run away, when pushed by external forces, such as stress, problems or conflicts. The film thus serves to reflect the liberating spirit that in order to keep a balanced life in a new culture, the ability to respond positively to challenges plays an important role. On several levels, the fictional father experiences being at home and not being at home at the same time, On the one hand, it is a family ina real sense, with three generations living under the same roof, which is supposed fo enable family members to feel a strong sense of belonging, On the other hand, however, Chu’s conventional definition of family violates Marsha's American way of thinking. The father in this film experiences twice uprooting. While the first time he willingly uproots himself from China 10 come to the United States for a joyful family reunion, the second time is more like a forced exile for the father. He chooses to leave home to minimize the irreconcilable conflicts within the family. A possible feminist’s reading would interpret the father’s second uprooting as a symbol of loss of power and authority, which is linked to castration. However, breaking up of the extended, and patriarchal family hierarchy in Pushing Hands can aid us in understanding Lee’s reflection on the tension between tradition and modernity as well as his attempt to find a solution within the frame of traditional Chinese culture. Unity and harmony are equally important in traditional Chinese family values, but there are moments when one has to choose between two options, While employing the melodramatic form to offer a more accurate representation of the Chinese family, Lee is committed by his dual heritage ~ Chinese and American, which enables him to successfully transform “a Confit- cian tradition” into “a hybrid Confucian ethic and a spirit of capitalism” IMAGES ~ Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounter 87Conclusion So, with the complexity of diaspora experience central to his own identity, Ang Lee breaks up the boundary between realism and melodrama. ‘This is particularly the case with postmodern dramatic forms, in which realism and melodrama, the highbrow culture and the popular culture, are often interwoven. in this way, Chinese-charucterized films become accessible to global audiences. Ang Lee’s reinvention of melodramatic aesthetics, combining western generic conventions and Chinese characteristics, plays an important role in global cultural polities today, in which the flows of goods, people, and concepts are increasing, and the borders of cultures are more often than not emphasized but also blurred. 'The original version of this atticle was published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh at hitp://cinej pitt. edu/ojs/index,php/cinejéarticle/view!12/104, DOI 10.5195/cinej.2011.12. Pushitig Hands (1992) is the first feature film made by Chinese American filmmaker Ang Lee. ? Th, Elsaesser (1987), Tales of Sound and Fury, in Home fs Where The Heart Is, Christine Gled- hill: British Film Institute, pp. 45. * Ihid., p. 1. # The term “transnational Chinese na” used here is to encompass film-making activities that are located in various geographical regions but sharing cultural traits of “Chineseness”. § Th, Elsasser (1995), Tales of Sound and Fury, in B, K. Grant (Kd.): Filin Genre Reader, Austin: University of Texas Press, p. 353. “1. Wiltiams (2002), Playing the race card: melodramas of Black and white from Uncle Tom to 0.4. Simpson, Princeton University Press, p. 13. 7 P. Brooks (1976), The Melodramatic Imagination, Balzac, Henry James, and the Mode of Excess, New Haven: Yale University Press. 51, Ang (1985), Watching Dallas: Soup Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, Routledge, p. 64, ° Zheng Zhenggin (BIER), Cai Chusheng AE 4EAE), and Xie Jin (HH ) are recognizably famous filmmakers in Chinese movie history. More details in terms of substitative modes can be found in <
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