"Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq" Is the liberal company on the sample of your own tolerance
The most interesting thing about the Turkish movie "Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq", in the original "Kurtlar Vadisi Irak", Is the reaction to him. Behind the dispute over the film is an unusual problem of open society. Barely two weeks after the "Caricature" Provokes the start of this Turkish action driver on the Iraq war, which is to Horen, that he should be very successful in his home country, the western democratic majority society. The German Republic reacts hysterical. What could be an occasion, tolerance and roughness, to prove the strong of a liberal pluralistic society, becomes its debacle.
Why turken do not make bad movies? And since when are stupidity and bad taste in Germany forbidden? In any case, prohibition requirements are to horns, since Serdar Akars Turkish film "Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq", started a week ago in German cinemas. The self-confident answer of an open society, or the overreaction of an anxious?
If the political editors begin to write film reviews in the Feuilletons of the daily newspapers, it will be dangerable. Then once again "debate" announced, the fight of opinions, and then a movie becomes a weapon in the social moral fight. The Turkish movie "Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq" is not so bad and as stupid, as some self-proclaimed film experts of the German population now want to make wife, but it offers a reduced reading as an Emergency-of-packed ideological pamphlet also little resistance. Especially in Germany, where you had historical reason enough to be careful with the like, the requests to ban the film, especially loud. While these prohibition requests come from the usual suspicious, especially from the side, which was always against the inclusion of Turkey in the European Union, but many "Left alternative" Voice makes leaving aid.
The Bavarian Minister Prosident Edmund Stoiber demanded the German cinema operators, the, the same, "Racist and anti-west hate movie" immediately. The Baden-Wurttembergische Interior Minister Heribert Rech (CDU) from the Legal Conservative Filbinger Base of the Schwabische Union, in the middle of the state election campaign, joined the most: "The movie Schurt anti-Semitic and anti-American resentment." Also the CDU-MEP Elmar Brok demanded the alleged "Dissemination of enemy images" to end. And the new cultural and media policy speakers of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, Wolfgang Bornsen, said: "Films that hate Saen, call for revenge for revenge, make against belief communities uniformed front, reduce the values of other cultures and preach bare violence, have lost nothing in the cinema." As if his definition is not somehow at about half of all US productions just as well. The North Rhine-Westfalian Tagiary Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) concluded the movie concluded youth hazard and "socially disorienting". And Stoibbers Man Fur – Grobe, CSU General Secretar Markus Sodder, pulled expectable connection lines and threatened with "Consequences" For the EU accession of Turkey.
"In all freedom…" – Wickers with censorship
So flanked was hardly surprisingly and in campaign times in its stroke direction slightly to more transparent alerts but also by voices from other camps: the rapporteur of a Frankfurt newspaper fell after his cinema visit in the lackable untriably Berlin new collector cinema the idea of a "Bloodtrache at the west" and surprisingly wonderfully, that at a Turkish film in a Turkish district in a Turkish cinema suddenly the visitors are mainly turbuses. His colleague of the Hamburg "Time" saw the "Expression of a new Turkish anti-Semitism that is no longer only in the half-dark" – as if not exactly the Turkey, the first country with Muslim population, which Israel has recognized, traditionally remarkably tolerant and friendly against Jews goods.
Charlotte Knobloch from the Central Council of the Jews in Germany criticized above all the anti-Semitism awoven in the plot of the film – an Israeli doctor removes in the US-Tortal Camp Abu Ghraib prisoners and sends them to "London", "new York" and "Tel Aviv", where you like the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jew as a unscrupulous business show. That’s right "Style of the Nazi doctor DR. Mengel" to recognize, and "Anti-Semitic Hetz Legends in wide-scale wall format" To conclude (SPIEGEL ONLINE), however, requires a certain bias.
By contrast, however, it remains consistent that this doctor is also trying in the film to brake the boses Americans in their bloodrust. At the latest there was also for "the" Turken experts left from the right center, the green europe deputy Cem Ozdemir, the hour came to report: "This film once more complicates more all those work, for which the word ‘dialog’ is no cheap good-to-russels – and these days it is obvious fashion, intentionally or unintentionally to make work more difficult." Soon after that his party feet Reinhard Butikofer jumped, and became clearer against the "Obviously Hetzerische Film": "In all freedom, one should appeal to those who are conditional deserves your money differently." Of the "Film expert" The FDP, Hans-Joachim Otto, said, although the art freedom also applied for anti-American films. However, with these filmmakers, as well as cartoonists with the press and freedom of expression, to deal responsibly – nothing else, as a wink with the censorship threat.
"Criticize is one, the other is forbid"
Instead of contradicting or at least open to debating at least, the majority company with Grotesk is sufficient obedience: The chain of Cinemaxx cinemas took the film in spite of good cash outcomes from the program – which supposedly not to do with the politician demands. A spokesman emphasized, the decision was made before demands for a ban, but gave to, after purely economic criteria you could show the movie further. But Stoiber’s Media Minister Eberhard Sinner Froenchen "The deduction of this hate film by the large German cinema is an important signal of social responsibility."
Comparatively few voices contradict the prohibition claim. Only the "Federal Association Director" (BVR): The controversial film KONNE "not considered to be popular", explained the association:
According to the film, it can be determined at best that the film contains passages that are quite a discussion in the opposite discussion of the cultures. On the other hand, the film contains even peace-found elements. Otherwise, the film is a typical operation of the action genres, with the difference that this time the hero of fiction does not come from the West and the Bose from the East, but vice versa.
In the Union, only the Saarland Minister Prosident Peter Muller reported against prohibitions:
Racist films are criticized, no matter who the racism is directed. Criticize is one, the other is forbid. I think we have a clear border, which is achieved when the racial hatred is split up. Whether this is the goal of this movie, I do not know. In any case, the film has been admitted by the Prufstelle, and therefore I ame that this is a well-founded decision.
The FDP MEP Silvana Koch-Mehrin pladated for debates instead of prohibitions:
The current dispute and the demands for the dismissal of the film show how necessary a dialogue on both sides.
As a result, she criticized Stoiber: "I find that Mr. Stoiber and the others behave as well as the regimes in the Arab countries that attack the European expression and freedom of freedom", Stoiber trap "those in the jerking, which defend western values against Islamist fundamentalism and thus also makes advertising for the movie." The greats were only Christian Strobele, who contradicted his chairman:
That may be an unpleasant movie. But for any measures I see no occasion at all.
Having luckily it is not so easy to ban something in Germany.
Authority reflexes
In fact, behind the whole excitement, but a deeper conflict is: "Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq" meets the heart of a western society in which the fear governs, and illustrates a frightening uncertainty. During the movie already in the Netherlands, Danemark and Austria – Weib God no Lander, which is currently characterized by special tolerance against oriental populations -, in Belgium, England and Switzerland, without driving to protests and excited newspaper debates, Germany reacts with hysteria. As if one had been waiting for it, grateful to the first reason to add its own anti-liberal reflexes. Again, the autoritaren reflexes grab, and the reconciled new burialness shows their border pages.
Anyone who wanted to watch the movie on the weekend, for example, in Berlin’s Zoopalast, offered a strange spectacle. In addition to a turkish action game film in the original catch inspirable target group – many boys, their appearance after turkish manner with leather jackets, a few probably also German-Turkish young women, a few of them with headscarf – and a few young people with colorful punk hairstyles, you saw that Cinema almost half-toed with old couples. Many of them wore loden coat, some a scarf of Hermes or Chanel. If you look more closely, also recognized the editor of a public politary magazine and the former editor of a weekly magazine.
So quite rightly they did not fit here, and some forehead was written worried before the start. And spat, as the same people then discussed after the film with even more concerned mines and certain key vocabulary of the contemporary discourse – "integration", "feigned", "to forbid", "Banlieu" – Through the room, it was clear: "Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq" Was arrived in German education burger. It had finally found a movie to scare himself properly again and to be added to his own emport about the bad turks. More than half of the Germans have been afraid of a Muslim threat according to the latest surveys. But where the fear rules, there is liberalism in the defensive.
A debate within the Muslim world
With the movie, which rests on a television series of the TV series, all this has nothing to do. The plot is paid quickly: According to the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, a three-headed Turkish special commander fights by one, if one wants: Turkish James Bond, against the excesses of the city’s forecast of US coatings. This, played by the well-known actor Billy Zane ("Titanic"), is a film vogue, as he is in the book: arrogant, unscrupulous and overseas brutal. It belongs to the well-known stereotypes that this villain is particularly bad because he is soft, Dandyesk, with a preference for beige and piano music. That his favorite stuck beethoven "Anthem to the joy" is, was not allowed to be a coincidence: the song is just as EU hymn and declaration manifest in one.
The Americans are almost consistent with bad things: a wedding company in Northern Iraq is reduced by US soldiers, without random to decency and morality. At the end, the Turken bring a combination of Bosen Ami, who is Uberthies Sam Marshall, "Uncle Sam" and the primer of the Marshall Plan merchandise, the route. Moral: The Turks show the Americans.
So it can not be a doubt: The movie is one-sided, it shows an anti-American rod, one may designate him stylistically as a UBLES Machwerk. Everything is dominated by the stereotypes of the action movie: explosions, sliding. And in it that is supposedly anti-American manifest then a very American movie, which ames the good-bose scheme Hollywood and in "Rambo"-Manner continues. Only these stylistic funds are turned against the Americans. This is legitimate, because these funds do not believe the USA.
Also "Valley of the Wolves" Much more complex when you accept at first glance: A bitter study on friendship and savory, which oscillates between pathos and naked cynicism, which is represented by provocation and doubt. Finally, here, even if this is not a case of the art cinos, which is normally showing, incredibly much talked and declamed, just a major character of the film is a priest and Sufi master, which reprints a completely different peaceful Islam, the message of the Films resisted, weathered against suicide wastes, against holy wars ("Whoever has an innocent dead, who has killed all humanity.") And for payroll.
The real controversy that the film uses as a foil is therefore a debate within the Muslim world: the between Sakular Turkish nationalism, the old ideas of the Ottoman Empire, the peaceful, universal Islam and its fundamentalist panislamist radicalization.
Abu Ghraib is not a pervert director of a penetrated filmmaker
What "Valley of the Wolfe – Iraq" About the reflection of some wisdoms from the Turkische Stammtisch now to a special, and in his kind seeking movie makes, however, however, how he spews his B-Movie action with motifs from the contemporary history: already the beginning refers to an authentic incident 2003, when 11 Turkish soldiers, then US-associated, arrested by US troops and taken as hostages. The massacre of the wedding party has given it as well as the occurrences of Abu Ghraib, which clearly shows the film, but without voyeurism.
That Americans, in the incorporation the traditional bonds of the Turken, can be shown, the sequence of Bush and his politics. Abu Ghraib is not a perverted director of a penetrated nationalist filmmaker. It could and was able to become clear in such pictures, which the US policy of recent years has not only admitted to the pictorial contest in the Orient and not only the long-term US radiation policy, but above all the self-perception of the population.
That makes "Valley of the Wolves" so uncomfortable. Who now emport themselves after the cinema visit in the audience and gross eyes "Violent pictures" makes, should ask yourself which pictures he actually means? The provocation of this film is mainly in those moments in which he presents the TV messages.
Anyone who reacts with prohibition claims capitulated in front of his anti-libren reflections. You want to extinguish the unbearable, unbearable, the own shame touching. And who reduces the movie only on anti-American, Christian, semitical and / or deserved hits, constructs above all even anti-Islamic or anti-turkish heta legends. The case "Valley of the Wolves" illustrates a frightening uncertainty and fear of German democracy. The liberalism tanges itself in its own prejudice. Hardly does something that do not fit, and you’re already swinging with the censorship. What is not quelled, you want to ban. That may be explained by the mood, which is currently in Europe. But so little we are entitled to ban cartoons that do not fit some, so much we have to endure such a film.
Behind the prohibition claims the authoritar character of the demanding. Rather, the handling of "Valley of the Wolves" A nail sample on the tolerance of society. Tolerance is not easy to have. Tolerance is nothing nice, stroke, nothing, what warm. But something that you have to attribute by yourself. There is a right to stupidity, there is a right to bad taste. Art is free, and must stay. And the cinema, why do you just have to emphasize that again and again, is not a moral institution.