Contemporary Turkish-German Multiculturalism in Text and Film

Multicultural literature produced in the mid-20th century has been criticized for reducing its protagonists to stereotypes, portraying the migrant as victim, and focusing excessively on conflict of an intercultural or intra-cultural nature. The works of many Turkish-German authors, such as Dilek G??ng??r and Aras ??ren, have revised the immigrant narrative by not foregrounding the conflicts of alterity. These contemporary narratives focus on a more universal, more everyday experience where first-generation immigrants and their German-born children struggle with their unique circumstances. Young Turkish-Germans seek out paths of their own design, while mainstream German society and traditional Turks look askance at their audacity. This new perspective reveals life within, as well as between, the two cultures to be much more varied, fluid and less confrontational than political rhetoric would have us believe.\ud Countering claims of German intolerance and insular Moslem immigrants, contemporary Turkish-German authors and film-makers are evidence of underlying currents of\ud functional co-existence and cultural exchange. Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of a younger generation of Turkish directors intent on breaking away from this ???cinema of the affected.??? This emergent vein of cosmopolitanism is reflected in the work of female Turkish-Austrian director Feo Aladag, as well as celebrated Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, whose films go beyond attempts by earlier filmmakers associated with the New German Cinema to represent accurately the realities of living within two cultures. These contemporary directors have moved on to explore the various paths open to those of mixed ethnicity, to those living within but not wholly part of German society, to those who have severed their ties to tradition completely: crime, adaptation or return, or the search for self-determination.Yuan, Yua