Talking "Turk": On Narrative Strategies and Cultural Stereotypes

Abstract

Before we read even a word of text, our image of and relationship to the are subtly guided by title and book cover. Max von der Grtin's Leben im gelobten Land: Gastarbeiterportrdts [Life in the Promised Land: Guest Worker Portraits] (1975) displays a photograph of a Turkish man sitting on a suitcase, holding a cigarette in his fingers and a jug in his hands. The man looks to be in his forties; he is dressed simply, in a white shirt and dark pants; he is thin, and his face is deeply lined; his thick curly hair, dark brows, deep-set eyes, and moustache offer the typical portrait of a Turk. Two other Turkish men behind him stand or sit next to their own pieces of luggage. In the background is what might be the entrance to a modern subway station, in brick, chrome, and neon the promised land. Three dark, moustached men, with suitcases and without families, and clearly out of place. All are looking at the camera. Their expressions suggest that we have caught them by surprise; they do not know what we want, or what the picture is for. Ali stares again into the camera ten years later on the now famous cover of Giinter Wallraffs Ganz [At the Bottom] (1985). In torn clothing and a construction hat from Thyssen, the figure of the Turk presents his familiar face the hair, the eyes, that moustache. Over his shoulder in the not-too-distant background the fumes from an industrial smokestack form a huge cloud that hangs in the air. This time the gaze into the camera lens, at us, is posed, deliberate, accusatory we are confronted and challenged, perhaps threatened, by the stark image of life ganz unten in the Federal Republic. We no longer stand safely behind a candid camera, but are directly and actively confronted