Taking Back the Stereotype: Critical Engagements with Ethnicity in German Comedy

Comedic cinema has not traditionally been regarded as critically reflective in Germany. Horkheimer and Adorno criticized such cinema of belonging to the "culture industry" in the 1940s, which has left an impression on German film reception. Critics lauded the postwar New German Cinema filmmakers for continuing the anti-culture industry legacy by producing critical art films that countered mainstream commercial cinema. Some of their films included images of the Other which were circulating in Germany as a result of postwar migration. The later influx of German comedies in the 1980s and 1990s was labelled a "cinema of consensus," an extension of the culture industry, featuring almost exclusively German faces. In the 2000s, the Berlin School auteurs, began making "counter-cinema," but their films, too, largely lack the Other. The "Turkish Turn" in German cinema with the visibility of Turkish characters in ethnic comedies from directors Bora Dagtekin, Fatih Akın, Detlev Buck and others from the late 1990s onward, however, represents a counter to the counter. By critically engaging with ethnic stereotypes, comedy is utilized for critical purposes, instilling the Other with a newfound sense of power and showing that commercial films made from within the studio system intelligently engage in political discourse.