Discursive practice of Combat Girls: the construction of social reality in contemporary German film

Abstract

Based on Foucault’s discourse theory, this article deals with the construction of social reality through contemporary German cinema. More precisely, the case study explores the discursive formations of Combat Girls (2012), a film about the teenager milieu in the rural area of East Germany where two girls are moving into and out of a neo-Nazi group. This movie stands for the film production culture in Germany, which largely depends on sponsorships by state promotion bodies and public television, and consequently must be interpreted as the result of power relations and as the outcome of a struggle for legitimate meaning. Combining the Foucauldian discourse analysis with film content analysis tools, the study shows that the text-image relationships of Combat Girls contain three dominant discourses, which push forward the perspectives of ‘self-fulfillment’, ‘re-integration in society’, and ‘identification with the democratic system’. These findings indicate that the filmic construction of social reality in Germany has a clear political purpose. Simultaneously, they give insight into the knowledge regime of contemporary German film and what is possible to be said and shown on national screens – especially when it comes to a socially and politically sensitive topic.