Ich bin Anders

In Edgar Reitz’s film chronicle Heimat, episode 1 entitled “Fernweh”, the alleged Gypsy woman Apollonia, herself at the very periphery of the closely-knit community of the Schabbach village, conveys to the episode’s protagonist Paul Simon “du bis sowieso anners wie die Leut im Dorf”, to which he answers "Ich bin auch nit anners". This statement is the antitheses to Paul's joyful return to his home village at the set-out of the episode and his reply contains his desperate claim to be part of the village in spite of his increasing sense of alienation. With her statement, Apollonia aligns her own marginal position with that of Paul and the scene ends with Paul looking at her for the last time before her departure. He looks at her from the outside through the window of the train they had previously travelled on together. As he looks at her, he does not only observe Apollonia, but sees his own mirror image right beside her as reflected in the window. His gaze of her is returned only to himself while Apollonia stares into the distance.

Stylistically and in terms of  artistic intention,  Fatih Akin’s 2001 film Im Juli, could not differ more from Reitz’ film chronicle. However, it also plays with two marginal identities which are opposed to a core identity, namely that of young Germans, Turkish Germans and, again, that of Gypsies. In formal terms even, the two films resemble one another in that the crucial scene of “self” realisation of the male protagonist whose path the spectator follows is not only formally at the very centre of each film, but additionally presents options of action which both characterise the protagonists and are crucial in the subsequent denouement of the plot. The encounter with a marginalised Gypsy character is thus of central significance in both films.

It is of course no coincidence that the term “mirror” appears twice in this introduction. The linguistic mirror of the two sentences “Ich bin anders” and “Du bis anners” relates to the mirror of the self as a subject and the self as an object on the one hand, and the mirror of the self and the Other on the other hand. The mirror constitutes the fragile margin or borderline on which identities are based and demarcated against the non-identity, the other. As a border, a demarcation, it both links and separates the observation and understanding of the self as the self and the self as an object, i.e. the self as the other. Yet simultaneously, it also invites to cross this border by seeing the self in the other, or the other in the self.

Film seems to be particularly suitable for and determined by the processes present in the establishment of a sense of identity: As a visual medium, it resembles the very process Lacan described in the mirror stage of the infant. We, as the spectator, identify with the characters presented on the screen just as we identified with the image of our body as reflected in the mirror during our own mirror stage. The screen too is a mirror which allows the spectator to perceive of him/herself, repeating the confusion between the self as the perceiving subject and the self as perceived object, only separated by the frontier of the mirror. The mirror image allows the individual to perceive of itself as an entity separate and distinct from other individuals.

Identities are created as a demarcation of the self, through visual and bodily realisation, in a social setting which includes the presence of the mother, who has previously been perceived by the child as part of the self. The mother is needed to acknowledge and confirm the child’s realisation of the self as a distinct entity. The demarcation of the self as a separate entity thus necessitates also the demarcation against another entity, in the first instance the mother. The margin between the self and the other is created. The other is thus always also the marginal, in fact, the marginal is defined by its otherness in relation to the individual. It only exists in relation to a core, the central and prominent identity of the self. However, it appears that in the representations of the marginal in German film, peripheral identities are graded. We are presented with numerous marginalities but only one of them which is truly the other, namely the Gypsy. I would suggest that the presence of Gypsy characters in German films relativises the marginal nature of other peripheral identities. This paper aims to investigate how and to which effect representations of Romanies contribute to such a grading of the marginal, allowing other marginal identities to become naturalised in the film text. The films to be discussed are the already mentioned first episode of the Reitz film Heimat and Fatih Akin’s Im Juli. In a three step process, I wish to firstly establish how Romanies are presented as peripheral characters, i.e. how the marginal is constituted through specific information paradigms which invite the viewer to read the relevant character as a Gypsy and, by extension, as a marginal and essentially other entity. Secondly, I will endeavour to assess the reasons and functions for the encounter of the self with the marginal and thus the qualitative significance. Thirdly and finally, I will consider some of the consequences this representation bears for Romanies both in literary-poetological and socio-political terms.

Establishing the marginal

In order to distinguish a marginal or peripheral from a core identity, a set of information paradigms has to be offered in order for a character to be read as marginal in relation to a core identity, or, more specifically, as a Gypsy character. These information paradigms are, in cognitive terms, frames of reference developed during socialisation and therefore cultural specific and subject to convention and cultural agreement. It is not necessary to label a character explicitly as Gypsy in order for the recipient to invest the set of information offered in relation to a character with his/her preconceived knowledge and consequently assign it with the category of the ethnically or, indeed, socio-economically motivated term of Gypsy. In the two films under discussion, in spite of their obvious differences, there are similarities in the textual and cinematographic constitution of the other which can be classified into narrative, perspectivic, motivic, thematic, and structural processes of the textual establishment of the marginal.

Generating the marginal in narrative terms:

Narratology, following Genette and Nünning,[1] distinguishes between the narrator of a story and its focaliser, marked by the questions of “who speaks” and “who sees (or perceives)?” Both questions imply the existence of a subject as well as the object of the action of narrating and focalising. In the first place there is the narrating subject, the narrator, and the narrated object, the narratee. In terms of the narrative genesis of the marginal in relation to gypsy characters, the central question to be asked is who tells the story in the two films? In other words, who has the authority over the story and who governs the discourse? In the first episode of Heimat, we are presented with a narrator camera alternating between high explicitness on the one end of the scale and a conscious showing on the other hand of the scale. The camera has a superior position by having a monopoly on the information available in relation to plot and characters and by ostensibly withholding and offering information  to the viewer. The explicitness of the camera through the use of unusual angles, multiple subjectivities, a prevalence of long scenes and the frequent changes between black and white and colour provide a self reflexive comment on the narration as well as the constructed nature of the film text. The spectator is thus acutely aware of being presented with a medialised account, that the elements and relationship between them have been selected according to the principles of inclusion and exclusion by a narrator. The narrative process is therefore questioning its own process and prevents a simplistic and identificatory reading of the film text, and consequently, of the characters.

In Im Juli, the narrator camera is supplemented by the internal narrator Daniel, who is of course also the protagonist. He narrates his previous adventures to Isa, the Turkish-German car driver, who reluctantly agrees to give him a lift. Although we are thus presented with his story apparently told by its protagonist, the plot provides the spectator with information that Daniel could not possess. In fact, from the set out the camera narrator is established as distinct in perspective to Daniel. However, the narration is oriented alongside Daniel's subjectivity which in turn means that we as spectators assume his point of view.

In both films, the gypsy character themselves do not narrate. They are rather objects of a narration.

Perspective:

Otherness is further constituted by use of subjectivity, perspective and point of view. Again, it is necessary to distinguish between the subject of the perspective or point of view, namely the focaliser, and, with it, the object of the perception, the focalised (which can be an object or a character). Subjectivity refers in this context to cinematographic techniques which invite the recipient to identify with a diegetic character of the film, while perspective and point of view refer to techniques and means by which the film narrative is read to present the diegetic world from the perceptive angle of a character. The subjectivity of a character can be implied without assuming his or her perspective. “Fernweh” is characterised by a complex perspectivic structure, alongside an explicitness of the medialised nature of the film text. The process of the mediation of the narrative is problematised by implicit and explicit references and a raised awareness of the film camera, film angles and the alteration between the use of black and white on the one hand and scenes in colour on the other. This is further underlined by the use of multiple and alternating perspectives. The film camera oscillates consciously between a gesture of distanced showing, a more explicit assumption of a narrator role and the development of a character based perspective. This perspective is centred around the character of Paul Simon, however, subjectivity is assigned to a number of other characters, among them Apollinia. Therefore, the focalising subject oscillates between the narrator-camera and Paul Simon. Apollinia remains the object of focalisation, however, the focalisers and narrators of her character display diverging images. At the same time, the narrator-camera suggests repeatedly her subjectivity with the result that the spectator is invited to empathise and sympathise with her character. Identification, however, remains with Paul Simon and, to a lesser extent, Maria Wiegand.

Im Juli adheres mostly to a narrator-based perspective alongside the subjectivity of the male protagonist of Daniel. In spite of a very complex perspectivic structure and changing focalisers, the camera never assumes the perspective of the Gypsy character. The Gypsy characters are above all objects of both the narrative and the focalisation of others. This indicates the non-identity, the essential otherness of the Gypsy character. The film perspective is that of the non-Gypsy who explores the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the Gypsy character from the outside. This is equivalent with a marginal position in relation to the film. In both films, the “other” marginal identity is given the opportunity to assume the role of the focaliser. Thus, in “Fernweh”, Paul is the main focaliser when the camera steps back behind a character, while in Im Juli, too, both Isa and Melek are repeated assigned the role of focalisers (and, in the case of Isa, that of a narrator) which eventually culminates in the revision of initial stereotypical presentations of Isa as a cool macho, yet aggressive young Turkish man who may well be the murderer of the corpse in the back of his car. In the end, by means of Isa becoming both a narrator and a focaliser, it materialises that the dead body is Isa's beloved uncle who, without valid papers, died of a natural death, while the spectator feels caught on having made judgements based on xenophobic preconceptions.

Generating the marginal by association with motifs:

Both films use elaborate, albeit different, motivic structures to distinguish between the self and the other, and as such, establish the "other", the alien Gypsy character as an entity different from the self. Heimat makes use of the motifs of the window and by extension the symbolism between the inside and the outside, while Im Juli employs the opposition of the sun and the moon as well as the motif of the Bosporus Bridge as a both a link and a delimitation of two localities. Both films employ the image of the road for the symbolic construction of the peripheral and marginal. Quite literally, then, Im Juli is a road movie which, as the genre has us predict, follows the protagonist on a journey to self-realisation which finds its symbolic equivalent in the spatial road to be travelled by the self on which it encounters the foreign, strange, the unfamiliar, the other. The road, however, is also the location associated with Gypsies. At the same time, the road as such is not linked to the Gypsies. Rather, the protagonist encounters them, or rather, is encountered by them and leaves them again. The encounter is temporary and functionalised for his learning experience. On his journey, the protagonist Daniel moves away from his own familiar place and is literally displaced. He encounters increasingly strange people and places. The degree of strangeness and otherness reaches its culmination in the encounter of the gypsy woman Luna, who, in spite of her irrational depiction and utter contrast to the character of Daniel, is in fact linked to him by facilitating a journey into his subconscious with the result of an eventual self realisation that would otherwise not have taken place. Otherness is here constituted by irrational behaviour, femininity, sexuality, the entrance to an underworld of sombre figures and linked to drug induced altered mind states coupled with sexual attraction beyond volition.

In Heimat, the road is more closely associated with the character Apollonia, albeit in a more subtle way and independent from her association to her possible Gypsy descent. Her association with the road is based on her marginality in relation to the village which is established through its inhabitants and not by her own difference. Apollonia is for instance associated with the outside which becomes apparent through her frequent imaging in the open. When imaged indoors, she is ostensibly unhappy or has to fulfil manual labour that is an obvious strain on her. The second variant of the road motif in relation to Apollonia is the train journey, which takes her away from the loathed village. It provides distance, the opportunity to escape and eventual freedom: "Wenn die so vorbeifahre [die Dörfer], immer schneller, dann krieg ich wieder Luft Paul". This is mirrored by motif of the country road in relation to Paul Simon, who eventually leaves the town by the road on which he was originally imaged to return to Schabbach. For his character, the road both leads to Schabbach and offers the option of leaving it.

Otherness is also generated by the motivic opposition of the sun and the moon, which is elaborated upon considerably in Im Juli and culminates in the equation of Juli and Melek with the sun and the Gypsy woman with the moon. Her name, Luna, clearly indicates this. She is moreover linked to the moon both visually and by the clearly distinguishable lyrics of the background music “Sun I miss you, moon I kiss you”. This locates her in the traditional association of Gypsies with witchcraft, and witches as well as the female principle with the moon.

As Paul Simon finds out aspects of himself through Apollonia's judgement, Daniel's drug induced trip towards self-realisation is to be understood as an exploration into his own repressed and unknown subconscious, into which he is led by Luna. This aligns the marginal with repressed and uncanny aspects of the self, however, this interpretation is not followed through. The role of the Gypsy characters is limited to being an agent, a catalyst for this experience rather than being recognised as an integral aspect of the self.

Generating marginality thematically:

Thematically,  the marginal is established through place. In "Fernweh", this is achieved primarily through the depiction of the village of Schabbach and its ambivalence for the protagonist Paul. He feels attached to this primal locus of his childhood and yet longs to leave. The dichotomy of Heimat and Fremde are thus individualised while the individual attempts to explore their simultaneous interrelation and mutual dependency, Heimat as the self and Fremde as the other. The village of Schabbach, too, is marginal in relation to the core of Germany. It is situated in the countryside and characterised by considerable isolation and backwardness. The provincial life depicted in the film is relatively unaffected by the moves of history and politics.

In Im Juli the place of the other is occupied by the journey and its stations which leads increasingly away from the core of European identity. It is most literally a journey away from home in order to find home again, a journey from one home to another:[2] a homecoming at the very margin of Europe, the Bosporus Bridge. The bridge is both the link and demarcation between Europe and Asia.

German identity, as a form of central European, Western and normative identity, is contrasted with the “other” European identity of the East and south-east of which the Gypsy woman is a part, and, which she represents. Akin explained in this context that he intended to refer to East European cinema in this film as another form of European cinema which has not yet obtained the attention and recognition it deserves. He thus intertextually refers to the films by Emir Kusturica and makes this apparent by casting Branka Katic, a frequently cast actress in Kusturica’s films, as Luna.

Ich wollte einen europäischen Film machen und wollte zeigen, was mir näher liegt. Wenn wir heute über europäische Filme reden, meinen wir meist Italien, Frankreich, Spanien, England. Wir reden weniger über Griechenland oder die Türkei, oder wir reden weniger über Jugoslawien oder Bulgarien oder Rumänien. Und es kommen wunderbare Filme aus diesen Ländern. Und das ist ein Europa, was ein bisschen unentdeckt ist. (www.morgenwelt.de)

In both films, the Gypsy women are imaged as erotic and consequently sexually dangerous women who bewitch and control men. While this is explicit and typified in Im Juli, in "Fernweh" this association is more subtle. Here it is established by Marie-Goots vicious gossip about Apollonia as well as visually by a camera angle that underlines Apollonia's erotic attraction when the camera assumes Paul's subjectivity. She is further associated with fertility and child murder. All of these allegations are later revised yet remain active as the stereotypical model against which her actions are measured and judged. Im Juli makes no such concessions. The bewitching action is literal and drug-induced. Luna is clearly a Carmen like seductive and infatuating character. The cliché of femme fatale, liberated yet androgynous and sexually attractive woman who plays with men, as well as pickpocketing, cunningness, and magic are the ingredients of the cocktail that make this character a gypsy. Her real ethnic identity, as well as the reality of this signifying practice, i.e. the reality of the link between real Gypsies, the linguistic sign and the contents of the ideologically determined linguistic sign, is irrelevant.

The marginal in the textual structure:

In formal and structural terms, Gypsy characters assume a quantitatively marginal role in both films. Apollonia is marginal in relation to the film Heimat as a whole, as she is only a character in the first episode, and even within the first episode only in the first half. At the same time, she takes up a thematically central position in the episode "Fernweh", as far as central thematic concerns of the episode are exemplified and illustrated through her character. Quantitative marginality is thus counteracted by thematic centrality of issues associated with the marginal. In Im Juli, the Gypsy episode is set in Hungary and involves mainly yet another female Gypsy. This episode is one station of a number encountered along the journey. Again, the Gypsy occupies a quantitatively marginal role, which is counteracted by the positioning of the scene in the film and its thematic relevance for the denouement of the plot. Both in “Fernweh” and in Im Juli, the Gypsy women appear in crucial and formally central scenes, in both cases nearly exactly at the chronological centre of each film. Both scenes furthermore present the protagonist with significant insight and behavioural options that determine the further development of the plot. In “Fernweh”, Apollonia explicitly aids Paul in understanding and expressing his ambivalent feelings for the village community and presents him with the crucial options for his future. Subsequent to this self-realisation, the Gypsy character is discarded for much of the remainder of the film chronicle.

Finally, the marginal is established textually through relations of correspondence and contrast between characters. The most pronounced contrast is to be found between Daniel and Luna. His bourgeois background, as well as his psychological disposition which lacks self-confidence and control over his actions (for instance in the classroom where he fails to get respected and on the journey when it is repeatedly Juli’s initiative that gets him out of critical situations). He is driven, determined by forces outside of himself. The Gypsy woman, however, is in total control, symbolised by her firm grasp of the steering wheel. She manipulates Daniel literally like a puppet on a string, while controlling him at her whim, he is without any proper volition. Here, the Gypsy character is in marked contrast to the protagonist whose subjectivity is assumed by the narrative strategy. The marginal is thus an entity characterised through essential difference and separation from the self while it displays those characteristics in excess which the central character lacks.

In "Fernweh", Apollonia demonstrates a more complex combination of correspondence and contrast in relation to the protagonist Paul. She shares Paul's sense of alienation from the village, but is both contrastingly and correspondingly juxtaposed with Maria Wiegand. Maria is associated with domesticity, imaged mostly indoors, while she maintains the least problematic relationship to the other villagers and village life. At the same time, the two women are extremely close to one another and perceive of one another rather in terms of similarity than in terms of difference. The difference between the two women is established on the grounds of material and social background by means of the village people’s external characterisations as well as the narrating camera which images them in different angles and associates them with partly similar (window, open spaces – also both their love for Paul is portrayed in terms of similarity rather than conflict) and partly diverging (the street and the cellar in the case of Apollonia, the kitchen and the field in the case of Maria) material objects. Both the contrast and the correspondence between Apollonia and Maria places Paul at the crossroads. His decision for one of the two women also implies a decision between staying and leaving, made explicit by Apollonia on their mutual train journey. The decision to stay and to let Apollonia leave on her own entails a more apparent contrasting relationship between the two characters. Again, therefore, the gypsy is the marginal other that aids the self towards self realisation rather than being a repressed or ignored part of the self which has to be embraced.

Functions and reasons for constructing the marginal

Why, then, do we encounter the Gypsy character at the periphery, even marginal in relation to other marginal identities?

Both films are crucially concerned with notions of home and homecoming, as well as its opposite, a journey away from home and the "Fremde", the alien territory. It is the latter symbolic locus which is inhabited by the Gypsy and Fatih Akin unwittingly hints at this opposition between two different homes and the space between, the road, as the location for the strange, uncanny and alien in an interview when explicating that his film is a road movie about a homecoming: "Von zu Hause nach zu Hause. Es ist von Heimat A nach Heimat B. Und alles, was dazwischen liegt, liegt dazwischen." Departing from the strange otherness as encountered in the gypsy scene, the remainder of the trip is a sort of homecoming in the south-east, the origin of the sun. Otherness in this realm is approached understandingly, Turkish identity is comprehended and earlier interpretations of behaviour are revised. The Turkish Other becomes familiar, as does Istanbul and its Bosporus Bridge, closer to Hamburg than any of the previous stations. The Gypsies are, if otherness is to be scaled, stranger and more foreign than any other marginal identity.

At the same time, negative clichés relating to the Turkish-German identity are broken up through the narrative process and perspectivic structures. However, this is not the case for the representation of the Gypsies, The “other” Other is used to challenge the stereotype of another, marginal identity, namely the Turkish-German identity. The distant Other is established in order for the near Other to be explored in greater depth and for preconceived ideas to be challenged and overturned. This is denied to the distant Other which indicates that alterity is employed for a more secure understanding of the self, one’s own identity. While the former marginal identity is in the process of being naturalised, another marginal identity is created and pushed to the outer periphery.

Apollonia is the frequent subject of anecdotal conversation exchanges - a practice which is crucial to the construction of a moral value system in any peer group. Her character has thus significance for the characterisation of the protagonist and an exemplification of thematic concerns. As an individual character, however, she remains at the periphery and is most literally abandoned after she has fulfilled this purpose. Again, the marginal is closely linked with the concept of “Fremde” and also of “Fremder”, both a symbolic place of not being at home and a person that is alien to the person originating from the home. The episode alternates repeatedly between the two concepts of home and belonging on the one hand and the foreign, strange, estranged and alienated on the other. In fact, each concept is only invested with meaning through this continuous alternation and mutual exploration of the two concepts. As Reitz maintains in relation to the term “Heimat”:

The word is always linked to strong feeling, mostly remembrances and longing. "Heimat" always evokes in me the feeling of something lost or very far away, something which one cannot easily find or find again. (…) "Heimat" is such that if one would go closer and closer to it, one would discover that at the moment of arrival it is gone, it has dissolved into nothingness. It seems to me that one has a more precise idea of "Heimat" the further one is away from it. This for me is "Heimat," it's fiction, and one can arrive there only in poetry, and I include film in poetry. [3]

The nature of “Heimat” is therefore that it becomes least problematic in an alien environment, with the greatest possible distance to it. If the distance is minimised, if “Heimat” is approached, it becomes elusive. “Heimat” is only meaningful when observed from an alienated perspective. “Heimat” and “Fremde” are thus essentially ambivalent and define one another in a continuous play and exchange of meaning. However, in spite of this mutual dependency of these concepts, “Heima”t is criticised for failing to accommodate the alien, the strange and therefore has to remain incomplete.[4]

Consequences for the Roma

Both films portray an origin and return to the perspective of the male, Western-European protagonist with whose point-of-view we are invited to identify in the film. The marginal identity is acknowledge only from the core and in order to strengthen the problematic core identity, whether it is problematic in its relation to the core or a marginal core identity. This functionalisation of the marginal does therefore not allow for a perspective from within the marginal. The Romany characters remain the object, the other, whose otherness is not acknowledged as an intrinsic part of the self, the uncanny in Freudian terms. The consequence is a process of stereotypification which equivalents the "typical" of the other with the subjects of the "other" and does not allow for the "other" to be imaged as an individual and subjectivity carrying character in either film. Implicitly, thus, the narrative discourse of the two films retains a discursive structure which sustains and contributes to a marginalisation and objectification of Roma and Sinti in real terms.[5]

Conclusion

Both films present more than one marginal identity. These marginalities are internally graded and representations of Romanies are to be found at the very outside of the circles of ripples drifting away from the centre, maintaining the greatest possible distance to the imagined core, the central identity of the male protagonist which is explored in each of the films. The other, originally an aspect of the self that has subsequently been suppressed, needs to be recognised as the self in order to develop an holistic identity that does not constitute a threat. An ability has to be developed to view the self from a distance at the same time as the other. Elements which are regarded as other, more than just being the non-self, are essentially only Other due to having been associated by the self with aspects of the self that the individual tries to repress or discard. It is thus always also a part of the self in Kristeva’s terms.

In the Heimat-episode “Fernweh”, the sense of the potential of an individual identity at home and in communion with its origin and social context as such is problematised and explored without arriving at a permanent conclusion. In this context, the Other is given the chance to be perceived as part of the self. It remains, however, as a concept pointing back at the core identity and is not given an independent existence beyond its relevance for the characterisation of the male protagonist. The female Gypsy character thus remains marginal while the central identity increasingly realises its own marginality by aligning his experience with that of the Gypsy character.

In Im Juli, the representation of Gypsies in demonstrates that at the outer margins this embracing of the other as a repressed part of the self is not undertaken. The other is rather functionalised for an exploration of the self that excludes the other, while it achieves to embrace another, less marginal identity, namely the Turkish-German identity. This identity is thus naturalised by means of differentiating itself from an even more peripheral identity. The Gypsy, however, remains “unheimlich”, unhomely, female and ultimately excluded. It may only be utilised as a station, a testing time for the self on its journey to self-realisation. It is never made part of the self as such and thus remains the projection ground of central identities. Gypsies continue to be interpreted and read as a threat on the one hand and fascinating enigma on the other. At all times they are located outside of the self, beyond the margins of the cultural system.