In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Ghetto Voices in Contemporary German Culture: Textscapes, Filmscapes. Soundscapes by Stehle, Maria
  • Bill Fech
Ghetto Voices in Contemporary German Culture: Textscapes, Filmscapes. Soundscapes. Stehle, Maria. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012. 205 pages.

Since German reunification, scholars have looked long and hard at contemporary German art and media to construe the country’s emerging identity. Ghetto Voices in Contemporary German Culture: Textscapes, Filmscapes, Soundscapes, by Maria Stehle, focuses on representations of the ghetto trope in literature, film, and rap music. Stehle sees the ghetto as an important site for determining cultural tensions within New Germany’s multiethnic society; the ghetto “acts as the stage for social and political transformation, change, and innovation as well as looming danger, social uproar, and chaos” (2). This approach allows Stehle to weave in relevant discussions about race, gender, and class in order to listen to voices that are excluded or stereotyped in the mainstream mediascape. More precisely, her guiding research question is: to what extent do ghetto narratives cement or challenge the Eurocentric perspectives of the Other that dominate New Germany’s media discourse? Scholars interested in contemporary Germany, space and power in representation, and urban studies, especially, will find the book a rewarding read.

After surveying historical variations of ghettos and the context of German transformation in the last two decades, Stehle unfurls her study in three chapters. The first involves two texts of the 1990s by Turkish-born author Feridun Zaimoglu: Kanak Sprak (1995) and Koppstoff (1998). These collections of essays feature several protagonists from inner-city ghettos speaking of their lives and positions in society. As in her other chapters, Stehle covers a wide swath of representational issues, such as how the protagonists “explicitly address issues of spatial belonging in and on the borders of the urban ghettos, their [End Page 70] response to the appropriations of the Other, and their use of language and rebellious speech” (32). According to Stehle, Zaimoglu’s characters, “Kanaken” (a derogatory slang term for Turks in Germany), take defiant postures against the racist urban environment around them, but are unable ultimately to alter the borders of their confinement; characters voice their frustrations, but “the imagined global city” (57) they envision as an alternative remains vaguely drawn.

This muddled negotiation of the ghetto also defines Stehle’s second chapter, which examines six ghettocentric films: Dealer (Thomas Arslan, 1999), Kanak Attack (Lars Becker, 2000), Ghettokids (Christian Wagner, 2002), Knallhart (Detlev Buck, 2006), Kurz und Schmerzlos (Fatih Akin, 1998), and Chiko (Özgür Yildirim, 2008). Stehle claims these films are easy to dismiss as stereotypical depictions of ghetto life, but she offers a second look. The most interesting discussions here involve how each film creates “ghetto space” and to what extent they employ transnational cinematic references to (sometimes) subvert the ghetto trope. For example, Stehle argues that Kurz und Schmerzlos employs a number of pop culture references (Taxi Driver and Scarface both get nods) to “question cliché depictions of the ghetto as a dismal, racialized space for the social underclass” (113). Yet while the film performs ghetto life consciously, it is not, Stehle posits, necessarily transformative—the ghetto still exists as a confining reality despite the film’s playful, self-conscious nature. All of the films discussed present a range of representations of the ghetto space and possibilities for transgressing it, but in Stehle’s final analysis, their abilities to produce alternative spaces for the Other remains questionable.

Hip-hop and rap fall under the lens in Stehle’s “Soundscapes” chapter. The most interesting section, it examines artists who draw upon inner-city and ethnic tropes in their songs and music videos. Stehle wants to know if or how artists carve out spaces in the popular discourse for alternative representations of power and place in the German urban setting: “A comparative analysis of musical depictions of ghettos exposes a series of tensions: the relationship between national and translocal frames of reference; between hip-hop’s provocative gender politics and sexism; and between the claim of realness and performativity” (130). Stehle devotes attention, for example, to Turkish-German female rapper Lady Bitch Ray, whose provocative lyrics consciously attack male rappers’ machismo (she pokes fun at penis size), while...

pdf

Share