The Poetics of Waste and Wastefulness: Fatih Akin Films Garbage in the Garden of Eden1

Abstract

In his 2012 documentary film Müll im Garten Eden Fatih Akin tells the story of the residents of the small village of Çamburnu and their decade-long struggle with the authorities that have turned a former copper mine into a gigantic landfill. In his documentary he engages the parameters of toxic discourse as discussed by Lawrence Buell in response to Rachel Carson’s claims about the toxic nature of chemical pollutants in her seminal book Silent Spring.2 Toxic discourse emerges in response to the destruction of the pastoral. At the same time, it speaks the language of the pastoral. Fatih Akin displaces the toxic scene into a different cultural context, thereby emphasizing the cultural dimension of toxicity and waste. Resorting to the narrative paradigm of toxic discourse allows Akin to engage the tradition of the pastoral, probing the conventions of the genre, and, at the same time, addressing a sensational and emotionally charged subject in a way that is aesthetically challenging. Müll im Garten Eden finds a cinematic language to configure the conflicted nature of toxic discourse and deal with the complexities of waste, society, and culture in a parable of modernity and the systemic patterns of environmental degradation. As Frederick Buell has argued in his essay on oil cultures, energy history and cultural history are intricately intertwined and the material features of oil have significantly shaped cultural production through the recurring motifs of exuberance and catastrophe.3 In my essay on Fatih Akin’s documentary, I discuss the societal and cultural circumstances of this film and tie its poetic practice of exuberance to the principles of production and consumption that create waste in the first place. Sublime still lifes of waste and long takes of protesting shrill voices encourage the viewer to engage critically with the issue of waste through the performance of excess as poetic practice.