“Do you want to marry me?” Those are the first words Sibel speaks to Cahit in the German movie Head-On (Gegen die Wand, 2004) when they meet at a mental institution. They’ve both landed there after trying to commit suicide: Cahit drove a car into a brick wall, and Sibel slit her wrists, probably not for the first time.
Although they grew up in Hamburg, they are constantly reminded of their Turkish background. Cahit has drastically broken loose from the traditions and conventions of his family and lives a free yet lonely life, trying to numb his pain with alcohol and drugs. Sibel is still searching for freedom, and after her failed suicide attempt there is only one way left to escape her strict family: marrying a Turkish man.
What starts as a marriage of convenience becomes more complicated as love suddenly intervenes. And in this movie, love not only hurts and bleeds, but eventually kills.
Religion is a very powerful force behind the violence in the movie. Today, Islam and especially the Muslim woman is a common subject in Western movies and books: she is often portrayed as a victim of male brutality, suffering under the repressive authority of the father or husband. This depiction of Muslim women automatically results in a negative stereotype of Muslim men.
During the Who’s in town lecture after the movie screening on
Monday March 21st, anthropologist Katherine Pratt Ewing (University of Wisconsin-Madison) discussed how German Muslims are displayed in this movie. Her recent book, Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin, also includes an analysis of Head-On. She offered an interesting view on cultural identities: even acts of resistance against a certain culture leads to new cultural behavior. In the movie Sibel’s friend asks her why she married Cahit, while she could also have gone to university and lead her own life. Sibel answers that she just wanted to escape her mother. By choosing for a life independent from her family, she also chooses to give up some of her freedom and lead the life of a married woman. But still, this choice proves to be not enough to escape her strict mother: After her parents discover that there is a negative article about Sibel and her husband in the newspaper, they decide to abandon her. This is an example of “honor violence”, which is a punishment of a person by its family members because they believe that this person has brought dishonor upon the family. Katherine Pratt Ewing tried to explain the reasons for this honor violence. Not always that directly connected to women’s sexuality anymore, she said that honor violence can also be a way some groups of immigrants to protect their families. The first generation of Turks in Germany, for example, faced very difficult circumstances when they moved to their new country. This may not legitimize the violence within some of these immigrant families, but everyone would agree that it certainly affects one’s sense of identity. Also Sibel and Cahit struggle with their identities until the end. And after the lecture we can conclude that this is, unfortunately, the fate of many others with an immigrant background.
By: Sophie van Dam
