Moving on the Globe Issues of Mobility and Migration in a Globalized World As Depicted in Films of the 21St Century

Home , Black and White in Color, Camp de Thiaroye, Costas Ferris, Dheepan, Duncan Tucker, Eden Is West

Moving On the Globe Issues of Mobility and Migration in a Globalized World as Depicted in Films of the 21st Century

by Kynthia Arvanitidi

A dissertation submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Thessaloniki 2017

Moving On the Globe Issues of Mobility and Migration in a Globalized World as Depicted in Films of the 21st Century

by Kynthia Arvanitidi

Has been approved May 2017

Supervising Committee: Yiorgos Kalogeras (Professor, School of English) Gregory Paschalidis (Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communications) Christina Adamou (Assistant Professor, School of Film Studies)

Department Chairperson Michalis Milapides

To my parents and to those who travel

In This World Eden Is West

Promised Land Babel

Code Unknown The Missing Star

The Terminal My Sweet Home

The World i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... iv Abstract ...... vi Introduction ...... 1 i. The Thesis’ Aims and Contents ...... 1 ii. Globalization ...... 9 ii. 1. The Beginning of Globalization ...... 9 ii. 2. Globalization’s Early Vision ...... 10 ii. 3. Approaching Globalization ...... 11 ii. 4. The Global/Local Dichotomy and the “Glocal” ...... 12 ii. 5. The global city as a process of flow and juxtapositions ...... 14 ii. 6. Theories of flows ...... 16 ii. 7. The Rich/Poor Division Remains despite the Flows ...... 18 ii. 8. The Function of Borders ...... 18 ii. 9. The hospitality issue ...... 20 iii. Postmodernism ...... 22 iii. 1. Postmodernism Subverts Eurocentrism ...... 22 iii. 2. Postcolonialism ...... 24 iii. 3. Approaching Postmodernism ...... 25 iii. 4. Postmodernity is Characterized by Simulations...... 27 iii. 5. Postmodernism and Mobility in Cinema ...... 28 Chapter 1: Migratory Road Movies from the East to the West ...... 30 1. 1. The Road Movie Genre ...... 31 1. 1. 1. The Cinematic Precursors of the Road Movie...... 32 1. 1. 2. The Establishment of the Road Movie as a Genre in the Late-1960s ...... 33 1. 1. 3. Existential Irony in the Early-1970s Road Movie ...... 35 1. 1. 4. The 1980s Postmodern Road Movie ...... 37 1. 1. 5. The 1990s Multicultural Road Movie ...... 39 1. 1. 6. The European Road Movie ...... 40 1. 2. Migration Cinema - Hamid Naficy’s “Accented Cinema” ...... 43 1. 3. In This World (2002) ...... 53 1. 3. 1. Documentary Influences ...... 58 1. 4. Promised Land (2004) ...... 63 1. 4. 1. Documentary influences ...... 67 1. 4. 2. Feminist Perspective ...... 68 1. 5. Eden Is West (2009) ...... 73 1. 5. 1. Inspiration by Homer’s Odyssey ...... 77 1. 5. 2. References to Road Movies ...... 77 1. 5. 3. References to Accented Cinema ...... 80 1. 5. 4. Postmodern Features ...... 83 1. 5. 5. Representation of Paris ...... 85 1. 5. 6. Political Comment Regarding Migration ...... 87 1. 6. Postmodern Globalized Border Crossing - Transitional Places and “Third Space”..... 89 1. 6. 1. Border Crossing ...... 89 1. 6. 2. “Thirdspace”-Transitional Places ...... 91 1. 6. 3. The Camp in In This World ...... 93 1. 6. 4. City vs Desert in Promised Land ...... 97 1. 6. 5. The Hotel in Eden is West ...... 99 1. 7. Conclusion ...... 103

Chapter 2: Migratory vs Privileged Journeys ...... 106 2. 1. “Network narrative” ...... 107 2. 1. 1. “Network Narrative” and Postmodernism ...... 110 2. 1 .2. Fragmentation in the Postmodern Era ...... 111 2. 1. 3. Random Chance and Coincidence ...... 112 2. 2. Babel (2006) ...... 115 2. 3. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000) ...... 119 2. 4. The Missing Star (2006) ...... 124 2. 4. 1. Industrialization ...... 125 2. 4. 2. East-West Relationship and the Role of the Language ...... 128 2. 4. 3. Binary Pairs, Postcolonialism and Postmodernism ...... 130 2. 4. 4. Exchange of identities ...... 133 2. 4. 5. Openess towards the Other and towards Transnational Productions ...... 135 2. 5. The Landscape and the Tourist Gaze-Eurocentrism...... 138 2. 5. 1. Big Urban Metropolis vs Rural Province ...... 138 2. 5. 2. The Tourist Gaze ...... 139 2. 5. 3. Gazing at theLandscape in Babel ...... 141 2. 5. 4. Gazing at theLandscape in Code Unknown ...... 142 2. 5. 5. Gazing at theLandscape in The Missing Star ...... 144 2. 5. 6. Is the Wetstern Gaze Released from Its “Superiority”? ...... 145 2. 5. 7. Eurocentrism Prevails in Babel and Code Unknown ...... 148 2. 5. 8. Issues of Eurocentrism and China as an emergent power in The Missing Star .. 151 2. 6. Conclusion ...... 154 Chapter 3: Global Non-places ...... 158 3. 1. Michel Foucault’s Heterotopias...... 159 3. 2. Marc Augé’s Non-places ...... 162 3. 3. The Terminal ...... 165 3. 3. 1. The Airport as a Non-place in The Terminal ...... 168 3. 4. My Sweet Home (2001)...... 169 3. 4. 1. The “Globus” Bar as a Non-place in My Sweet Home ...... 176 3. 5. The World (2004) ...... 178 3. 5. 1. The World Park as a Non-place in The World ...... 180 3. 6. Cosmopolitans vs Other Travelers ...... 183 3. 6. 1. Globetrotters vs Locals in The Terminal ...... 185 3. 6. 2. Cosmopolitans vs Labour Migrants in My Sweet Home...... 186 3. 6. 3. Tourists vs Workers in The World ...... 189 3. 7. The American Dream/ Capitalism ...... 191 3. 7. 1. Globalization, McDonaldization and Americanization ...... 191 3. 7. 2. Consumerism and Strict Migration Policies in The Terminal ...... 192 3. 7. 3. America’s Privileged Position in My Sweet Home ...... 195 3. 7. 4. Mc Donaldization in The World ...... 197 3. 8. Conclusion ...... 206 Conclusion ...... 209 List of films ...... 219 Films about Border Crossing ...... 219 Early Films about Mexican-US Border Crossing ...... 220 Recent Films about Mexican-US Border Crossing ...... 221 Border Crossing in Europe ...... 222 Films about Migrants Trying to Reach London ...... 223 Issues of Conflict and Border Crossing in Middle East ...... 224 Films about immigration in Europe ...... 224 Films about Border Crossing and Immigration in Germany and Switzerland ...... 225

iii

Films about Immigration in Italy ...... 226 Films about Immigrants from Eastern Europe in London ...... 227 Films about Immigrants of Asian Descent in London ...... 227 Films about Cypriots and International Migrants in London ...... 228 Films about Immigrants in France ...... 229 Films about Mobility, Travelling and Migration Regarding Greece ...... 231 Films about Travelling to Greece ...... 231 Films about Mobility and Migration in a Greek Context ...... 232 Films about the Migration of Albanians in Greece ...... 236 Films about Immigrants in the US ...... 238 Immigration in and from Asian Countries ...... 240 Road Movies Regarding Identity Issues ...... 241 Recent Road Movies Focusing rather on Self-Exploration ...... 241 Road Movies about People with Special Needs ...... 243 Road Movies about Seniors ...... 244 Queer Road Movies ...... 245 Films about Roma ...... 246 Culinary Road Movies ...... 246 Films about Travels in Time and Space ...... 247 Recent Films about Mobility and Migration Referring to Older Times ...... 247 Multi-protagonist Films Taking Place in Various Countries and Continents ...... 248 Films about Racial and Colonial Issues in Australia, America and Africa ...... 249 Early Films about Racial Issues in Australia ...... 250 Recent Films about Racial Issues in Australia ...... 250 Films about Racial Issues in the US ...... 252 Films about Indigenous People Exploitation in South America ...... 253 Issues of Race and Dislocation in Early Films Set in Africa...... 254 Issues of Race, Dislocation end Exploitation in Recent Films Set in Africa ...... 255 Issues of Race and Slavery in Films about or Set in Africa ...... 256 Films about Exploitation and Profiting in Relation to Mobility ...... 258 Films about Illegal Migrant Smuggling ...... 258 Films about Trafficking ...... 259 Films of Mobility about Drugs, Oil, Pharmaceuticals and Corruption ...... 260 Films about Sex Tourism ...... 260 Filmography ...... 262 Works Cited ...... 271 Biographical Note ...... 290

Acknowledgements

The PhD research was for me a long journey of discovery, knowledge, enrichment, visual stimulation and, although sometimes tiredness, most of the times a pleasure.

Throughout this journey, apart from my personal research in films and articles, I had the opportunity to meet and consult people with similar interests who have helped me broaden my horizons.

Above all, I want to thank my supervisor, Professor Yiorgos Kalogeras, who accepted me as his student giving me thus the opportunity to deepen on issues related to American culture, ethnic studies, film studies, globalization, post-modernsim and migration. Professor

Yiorgos Kalogeras was the best supervisror I could have, as he was kind enough to guide me, patient to read my drafts and correct me as well as discreet to let me free develop my own thoughts and questionings. I will always be deeply grateful to him for mentoring me, for guiding the progress of my dissertation and for his constant encouragement. Additionally, I am thankful to Professor Yiorgos Kalogeras for showing faith in me and giving me the opportunity to teach to University students two courses at the Department of English

Language and Literature, named “Computer Literacy and Research Skills” and “Introduction to the Research Paper”. I am grateful also to have been introduced to the lecture series

“Problematics of Culture and Theory” where I had the opportunity to attend lectures discussing issues related to American culture, literature, English language etc.

I am also indebted to the second member of the committee, Professor Gregory

Paschalidis, for his support during my PhD research and for providing me with the necessary documents and recommendation letters during my applications to research projects and conferences.

v I also want to express my gratitude to the third member of my supervisory committee,

Assistant Professor Christina Adamou, for reading and correcting my draft with detailed thorouhness and for providing me with insightful remarks in relation to film issues.

I could not omit expressing my deep gratefulness and appreciation to Professor

Markus Heide for sending me an invitation and giving me thus the opportunity to spend six months, from February to July 2014, at Humboldt University in Berlin conducting research sponsored by the Greek State Scolarship Foundation (I.K.Y.). I am thankful to Professor

Markus Heide for reading my draft, for discussing with me issues related to migration, borders and cosmopolitanism and for encouraging me to continue with a lot of enthusiasm. I am pleased to have been part of the academic community of American studies at Humboldt

University in Berlin and having participated in the international research co-operation on

Cosmopolitan Film Cultures and the weekly lecture series on Border Studies. During my sojourn in Berlin I had the opportunity to consult the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center at

Humboldt University. I also wish to thank Ms Cordula Doehrer, the librarian of the Deutsche

Kinemathek/ the German Museum for Film and Television who helped me gather useful material for my thesis.

I would also like to thank Professor Frank Hoffman and Professor Silke Flegel from the University of Bochum for giving me the opportunity to participate in the summer schools in Germany taking place every August for three years named “Dialogue for Europe” engaging with topics concerning Europe as an institution, national identities, borders etc.

My deepest gratitude I reserve for my family who have been constantly a source of support of every kind. My parents Giorgos Arvanitidis and Elsa Myrogianni as well as my brother Foivos Arvanitidis have supported me with love and encouragement in every little step during the long process of research and thesis writing. Without their support and valuable conversations around topics related to globalization, the changing of the world and immigration the current thesis could have not been completed.

Abstract

My thesis entitled “Moving On the Globe: Issues of Mobility and Migration in a

Globalized World as Depicted in Films of the 21st Century" explores how globalization has affected issues like mobility, migration, space perception, homeland, nationality, ethnicity, identity and communication, as depicted in contemporary films. Specifically, I explore various types of mobility as presented in films produced in several countries around the world and try to link it with specific theories, forms, genres and movements.

In the first chapter I analyze films that depict mainly migratory journeys from the East to the West like In This World (2002) by Michael Winterbottom, Promised Land (2004) by

Amos Gitai and Eden Is West (2009) by Costa-Gavras. I analyze these films by correlating them to the road movie genre, the “classic” American film genre that celebrates mobility, as well as to Hamid Naficy’s “accented” cinema, a cinema that addresses the difficulties and agonies of migration, encountered both in the characters of the films as well as in their directors. I place a special emphasis on the act of border crossing as well as in the plethora of transit places like trains, truck containers and other vehicles, arguing that the majority of such

“in-between” and “third-spaces” witness a sense of relativity and homelessness, indicative of the post-modern era. I suggest that these films represent to a large extent the reality, as they adopt the docu-drama form or include documentary elements in their narratives.

The films presented in the second chapter juxtapose migratory versus privileged journeys in films like Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000) by

Michael Haneke, Babel (2006) by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and The Missing Star (2006) by Gianni Amelio. Regarding space, I explore the depiction of big western multicultural and affluent cities in opposition to underdeveloped, unprivileged rural areas. I use theories regarding spectatorship by scholars like John Urry, in order to examine the films’ perspective, which, several times fails to disengage the western point of view. As far as the film form is

vii concerned, I suggest that the adoption of the “network narrative” by two films in this chapter is indicative of issues like the interconnectedness but also fragmentation and difficulty in communication, main features of postmodernism.

The films presented in the third chapter deal with characters situated in confined, yet globalized places like an airport terminal in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004), a theme park in Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) or a bar in the film My Sweet Home (2001) by

Philippos Tsitos. I address Marc Augé’s theory about non-places in order to enlighten the situation and function of such artificial and gloabalized places as, by being nodes of transition and constant movement, they become anonymous and alienated. Furthermore, the capitalist spirit of the airport’s terminal with various popular American brand-named shops as well as the transformation of tourism to a “product” through the various simulations of architectural landmarks are reminiscent of the capitalistic “Americanization” of the word. Most importantly, the feeling of homelessness is dominant in such postmodern globalized places.

I claim that contemporary films produced all over the world address very effectively topics regarding the constant mobility, migration and the fragmentation of space and experiences due to globalization, by trying to show that in the end the values of communication and the need for contact will always be at the core of human existence.

Introduction

i. The Thesis’ Aims and Contents

There is no doubt that globalization has brought tremendous changes and has influenced countries and societies in many aspects. The quintessence of globalization is mobility and the interconnectedness of various places around the world. Our contemporary globalized world is characterized by the mobility and flux of capital, people, products, information, ideas. It has been claimed that the main motive for globalization is the maximization of profit (mainly of the West), unfortunately in burden to the so called Third

World and developing countries. Consequently, globalization is correlated to a growing divide between the privileged mostly wealthy Western citizens, who are able to travel the world with ease, and the underprivileged people of other parts of the world, who, striken by war or poverty, are forced to migrate under extremely harsh conditions in search for a better life.

Such an increased mobility and migration, however, has brought changes both in the perception of space and in the communication and relationships between people from different racial, ethnic, social, religious and cultural backgrounds. These diverse experiences in various parts of the world as well as random encounters with people from diverse originis have created an accentuated sense of disorientation and fragmentation that perfectly aligns with the movement of postmodernism, that questions established hierarchies and celebrates plurality, relativity and ambiguity.

Since a prominent feature of the contemporary globalized postmodern world is the emphasis both on the visual as well as on movement, I have decided to engage in my thesis with the issues of mobility and migration as presented in films produced in the 21st century.

2 Through the analysis of certain films that I have chosen as indicative of such topics I intend to examine if contemporary films reflect and represent the society and its main concerns and how this is done. The majority of films produced during the last years engaging with issues of globalization and migration witness the importance of such an issue that is anyway more than apparent in daily life and media. Recent academic researchers acknowledge also the prominence of such issues. Isolina Ballesteros for example, in her latest book Immigration

Cinema in the New Europe states the following: “Old and new political conflicts and economic scarcity in the developing world, along with widespread globalization and the financial crisis in the developed world that began in 2008, propelled and complicated the human migratory impulse, and with it, the cinematic urge to recreate it” (xii).

Through the employment of various contemporary social theories regarding space, like

Marc Augé’s theory of “non-places” about a-historical and a-cultural places inspired by

Michel Foucault’s theory of heterotopias, Edward Soja’s theory of “third space” and Homi

Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, I will examine if the sense of space, in its stable, bound traditional form, no longer exists in real life as well as in films representing it. Due to the increased and rapid mobility as well as due to the homogenizing capitalism, several places, nowadays, have turned into “non-places” characterized by anonymity and constant transition.

Such places include airports, train stations, hotels, supermarkets, transnational corporations and food chains, like McDonald’s, theme parks etc. These places could be considered also as

“in-between” places, characterized by hybridity and thus attributed the name of “third-space.”

I intend to explore the function of space in films from various perspectives; locality vs globality, rural vs urban space, historical and cultural places vs “non places” and “third spaces”, stable space vs movement, unified space vs fragmented space. I believe that the consequence of globalization and increased mobility is a sense of homelessness that could be applied not only to poor but also to privileged people nowadays. I will examine if such a situation is also expressed in the cinematic representations. Edward Said’s observation that

3 contemporary life is marked by a “generalized condition of homelessness” and Fredric

Jameson’s reference to the “existential bewilderment in this new postmodern space” as a

“culture in which one cannot position himself” (Stephanson 38) are more than indicative of such an argument. So, I am going to explore if this sense of homelessness is represented in recent films.

I will also focus on the different experiences regarding travelling and dislocation between underprivileged immigrants and cosmopolitan travelers. Drawing on the theories of

Ulf Hannerz regarding cosmopolitans and of John Urry regarding the tourist gaze, I am going to explore if, in the postmodern age of mixing and relativity, the traces of colonialism and eurocentrism are evident in films produced in the 21st century.

Regarding the cinematic conventions, I will use elements from the road movie genre and the accented cinema in order to illuminate features that are common in films dealing with mobility and migration under the spectre of globalization. Some of the films examined in this project, if not characterized as road movies as such, present great affinities with the concept of the traditional American road movie in the sense that the latter constitutes a critique of society. According to Tim Cresswell and Deborah Dixon “[m]obility in film implies more than the unfixing of such staples as time and space; it also points to the transformation and even the dissolution of key social institutions such as family and home, flag and country, and even civilization and humanity”(11). Most of the films dealt with here, although “global”, as far as the content, their production or the plurality of languages spoken in them, constitute mainly a critique of the contemporary globalized society; they usually adopt the point of view of the underprivileged, the victims of globalization; thus, their protagonists resemble the counter-culture characters of the classic American road movies. Additionally, I will use

Hamid Naficy’s theory of accented cinema, as the main topics of these films are migration, representations of home as well as the recipient country, and liminal places.

4 Regarding the way topics of mobility and globalization are depicted in films, I explore if recent films adopt various forms, styles and genres in order to address such complex issues.

Such genres include the road movie as well as the accented cinema, while the form may follow the linear classical narrative, the “network” narrative or the docu-drama mode.

Additionally, an important element is that such films are usually transnational productions, being shot at several locations and using actors from different nationalities.

The films analyzed in the thesis were chosen according to several criteria. First and foremost, emphasis was placed in the content. I chose specific films that correspond thematically to three chapters of my thesis. Consequently, the films of the first chapter deal with migratory journeys from the East to the West as well as with the very prominent topic of trafficking, a hideous activity which expanded due to globalization profits. The films addressed in the second chapter explore issues related to globalization and space, mobility in general, privileged travels vs. migratory journeys as well as China’s emergence as a new global industrial force. The films positioned in the third chapter deal with globalized non- places and the consequent feeling of homelessness, with America’s global capitalist influence and with simulated worlds.

A second very important criterion for the choice of films was the wish to represent various genres, in order to show that migration and globalization topics are dealt in various styles. Although all the films analyzed are feature films, some of them adopt the form of the docu-drama by incorporating many documentary elements (In This World) while others adopt in a very profound way the road movie genre (Eden Is West). Two of the films in the second chapter use the network narrative form in order to address in a more accurate way the poly- locality and fragmentation of globalization (Babel and Code Unknown). The film The World adopts elements of the pastiche mode, by incorporating animation within its narrative, a mode indicative of postmodernism. Finally, the mainstream narrative is represented in The

Terminal.

5 A third criterion was that the directors of the films come from various countries around the world including Greece. Michael Winterbottom comes from the UK, Michael

Haneke from Austria, Gianni Amelio from Italy, Philippos Tsitos and Costa-Gavras from

Greece, although the first working in Germany and the latter in France. Outside Europe,

Amos Gitai comes from Israel, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu from Mexico, operating in his country as well as in the US, Steven Spielberg is the quintessence of the US, while Jia Jhang- ke lives and works in China.

A consequent fourth criterion was that the films analyzed present a variety of countries, people, languages, cultures and landscapes indicative of a globalized world. So, in

In This World the Afghan protagonists living in Pakistan cross Iran, Turkey, Italy and France in order to reach London. Babel presents the lives of Americans, Mexicans, Moroccans and

Japanese while in My Sweet Home there are several ethnicities gathered together, such as

Americans, Germans, Russians, Turks, Japanese, a Greek girl, a Moroccan guy, a Philippine woman, a Pakistani guy etc.

A fifth criterion was that the films analyzed should belong to both more low-budget independent productions (My Sweet Home) as well as to big international expensive co- productions (Babel) in order to become clear that such issues can be addressed in various forms of production.

A final criterion was that in several films America appears to be strongly connected with the influence of cultural imperialism and globalization profits. Such examples are the consumption of Coke (Babel, In This World, Eden is West), the construction of the

McDisneysized theme park (The World) and the building of an artificial space full of shops of

American brands (The Terminal).

The present thesis is divided into three chapters, each one of them dealing thematically with a different aspect of mobility and globalization, and generically with a different type of

6 film. Respectively, I will provide different theoretical argumentation in every chapter in order to support my views.

In the first chapter, the films chosen depict perilous journeys of refugees (In This

World), immigrants (Eden Is West) and trafficked girls (Promised Land) that undergo great trials in their attempt to leave the East and reach a western and affluent metropolis.

Thematically and generically these films are road movies, as the main element in the films is mobility. However, as the characters move to other countries out of necessity, the films are full of elements described in the migratory films analyzed by Hamid Naficy in his book An

Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. In This World and Promised Land belong to the docu-drama category as they have strong influences and elements from the documentary mode (immediate relation to reality), while Eden Is West follows the classic fiction narrative including documentary elements like the use of amateur secondary characters. The films analyzed present a variety of countries and locations; the British director

Michael Winterbottom depicts the journey and border crossing of a young Afghan refugee through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Italy, France and the UK. The Israeli director Amos Gitai explores the sad story of trafficked Estonian girls through Egypt to Israel. The Greek Costa-

Gavras narrates the journey of an immigrant named Elia through Greece, Italy and Germany to Paris, France. An important connecting link in the films discussed in this chapter is the enormous difficulty in the physical border crossing the protagonists have to deal with.

Furthermore, despite the constant movement, these films place importance on the empty between-spaces in which the protagonists remain in the beginning or throughout their journey and transitional places, like transport vehicles, hotels and camps.

The films analyzed in the second chapter juxtapose privileged ways of traveling versus dislocation out of need. The films in this chapter deal with forced migration from developing countries to the West, but also with professional and entertainment visits from western countries to countries of the East. Thus, the privileged way of travelling out of curiosity to

7 other places and the touristic and voyeuristic gaze is juxtaposed to the harsh and perilous migratory journey for survival. John Urry’s work regarding the sociology of tourism and mobility is also taken into account for the better understanding of the tourist’s psychology and his consumptive voyeuristic gaze. Two of the films (Babel and Code Unknown) in this chapter adopt the “network narrative” mode, a mode that reflects very accurately globalization as they focus on poly-locality, fragmentation and interconnectedness. The third film (The

Missing Star) includes also both privileged and migratory travels juxtaposing thus the differences in situations and power relations. The variety of countries and locations is more than evident in the films analyzed in this chapter, as well; the Mexican operating in the US

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu presents an interconnected mosaic of the contemporary globalized world depicting America (US and Mexico), Africa (Morocco) and Asia (Japan).

The Austrian, operating as well in France, Michael Haneke, presents a multicultural Paris, including nationalities, apart from the French one, like Romanian, Malian and Algerian. The

Italian Gianni Amelio draws comparisons between the collapsing power of Italy and the new emerging industrial state of China. Despite the big diversity in countries, ethnicities and nationalities all films presented in this chapter seek the deepest common element in all countries and cultures: the need for human contact and communication.

The films of the third chapter revolve around anonymous non-places like the airport

(The Terminal), a random bar (My Sweet Home) and a theme park (The World) exploring the topic of globalized locality. The protagonists wander mostly in spaces as described in Marc

Augé’s theory of non-places, places that are a-cultural and a-historical. These spaces could be also characterized as globalized, as they signify transition, diaspora and hybridity. In this sense, they can also be characterized as “third-spaces” according to Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity as a new cultural form of multiculturalism. The American Hollywood director

Steven Spielberg in The Terminal explores issues of immigration laws and border policies when the East European protagonist faces difficulties in entering New York and spends a lot

8 of time in JFK’s airport terminal. The Greek operating in Germany Philippos Tsitos wonders which one is the best place to live and which place can be considered as home. The characters in his film gathered in a bar in Berlin come from various parts of the world like the US,

Russia, Morocco and Japan. The Chinese Jia Zhang-ke is preoccupied with topics of tourism, the concept of the theme park as a “travel” destination, issues of authenticity as well as migration. His film includes animated interludes aligning it more directly to postmodernism through the pastiche mode. The common link in these films is the issue of globalization as confined in a specific place and thus juxtaposed to locality.

ii. Globalization

ii. 1. The Beginning of Globalization

Globalization is a very complex phenomenon to be easily defined, but its complexity makes it so interesting and multilayered. Although it could be claimed that globalization has mainly started and is mainly driven by financial considerations, its social and cultural consequences on which I will be focusing are not to be underestimated.

It is difficult to determine when exactly globalization started; Nayan Chanda’s argument that globalization can be traced back to the late Ice Age, when a group of humans walked out of Africa in search of better food and security, wandered for fifty thousand years and eventually settled on all the continents, might seem a bit extreme. His statement, however, that “globalization stems, among other things from a basic human urge to seek a better and more fulfilling life” (xiv) is totally plausible. Furthermore, his focus on four key- features of globalization, i.e. trade (commerce), missionary work (religion), adventures

(politics) and conquest (warfare), seems pertinent.

Various epochs could be considered as the beginning of globalization. Therborn acknowledges six main epochs: 1) the fourth to the seventh centuries which witnessed the globalization of religions, 2) the late fifteenth century highlighted by European colonial conquests, 3) the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries during which globalization resulted from various intra-European wars, 4) the mid-nineteenth century to 1918, the heyday of European imperialism, 5) the post World War II period and 6) the post-Cold War period

(38). On the other hand, Robertson in his article Mapping the Global Condition:

Globalization as the Central Concept supports a different and more recent set of epochs

10 beginning with the fifteenth century (15-30). In general, there are several phases and propositions regarding when globalization started.

In my opinion, the fifteenth century and the European explorations of the Americas is a key phase to the era of globalization not only in terms of geographical expansion and interconnectedness but also in terms of the contact with other cultures, and the latter’s inhuman exploitation by the West for profit. The emergence of the United States as the global power in the years following World War II, as well as the rise of multi-national corporations

(MNC’s) along with the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, caused all sorts of global flows including immigration and tourism along with capitalistic economic transactions.

ii. 2. Globalization’s Early Vision

Following the collapse of the Soviet system between 1989 and 1992, and the end of the Cold War, many social scientists promulgated an idealistic vision of globalization as a harbinger of peace, global co-operation, and cultural exchange. Political philosophers looked back towards the Enlightenment and Immanuel Kant’s aspiration for world government and perpetual peace as a model of a future global civil society (Wasserstrom, Hunt and Young 6).

Unfortunately, not all of these “promises” were fulfilled, as Samuel Huntington’s

Clash of cultures article, and later book, caused plausible doubts about the possibility of new conflicts around ethnicity and religion. After 9/11, the bombings in London, Madrid and Bali, and more recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and Brussels in 2016, globalization studies took a more critical and pessimistic turn, with much more emphasis on the state, political borders and security. It is recognized that globalization also brings with it the globalization of violence, low-intensity conflicts, international crime and trafficking in people. Warfare has also played a critical role in the process of globalization. The economic

11 crisis of 2008–9, the credit crunch, and the growth of global recession were also very important factors in the re-assessment of globalization.

Thus, while optimistic visions of globalization had talked about mobility across borders, as a main feature of a global world, as well as the permeable nature of societies and the decline of the nation state, the security crisis produced a renewed interest in state activities in controlling migration and patrolling borders (Turner, “Theories of globalization” 6). It was clear that globalization could also result in the ‘enclave society’, an enclosed social space that is created by the erection of a barrier between an outside and an inside world like the construction of walls to keep out migrants (Turner, “The Enclave Society” 287).

ii. 3. Approaching Globalization

At this point, it should be mentioned that while globalization studies have flourished, there is still little agreement about the nature of globalization and its overall direction. Among the variety of books dedicated to globalization, George Ritzer’s Globalization: A Basic Text and Bryan Turner’s The Routledge International Handbook of Globalization Studies offer very interesting insights to the topic. Respectively to the variety of books and articles dedicated to globalization, there are several definitions, as well. I believe that a very accurate definition is the one stated by Anthony Giddens as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”(64). For example, either the migrants in the West or the plethora of products at a low price in western countries is the result of poor and Third world countries exploitation or bad living conditions and suffering. The quintessence of such a definition is expressed in the film Babel by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu; the film shows very well the interconnectedness in the world through four different stories that occur in four different countries. According to David Morley and Kevin Robins the term “globalization”

12 concerns the interconnection of various localities as well as the relations between global and local space. They suggest that “globalisation is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle: it is a matter of inserting a multiplicity of localities into the overall picture of a new global system”

(116).

James Beckford gives also an overview of the basic elements that characterize globalization: (1) the growing frequency, volume and interrelatedness of cultures, commodities, information, and peoples across both time and space; (2) the increasing capacity of information technologies to reduce and compress time and space (giving rise to notions such as the global village of McLuhan); (3) the diffusion of routine practices and protocols for processing global flows of information, money, commodities and people; (4) the emergence of institutions and social movements to promote, regulate, oversee or reject globalization; and

(5) the emergence of new types of global consciousness or ideologies of globalism that give some expression to this social interconnectedness such as cosmopolitanism (119).

ii. 4. The Global/Local Dichotomy and the “Glocal”

Edward Soja stresses that “the contemporary period of restructuring has been accompanied by an accentuated visibility and consciousness of spatiality and spatialisation, regionalisation and regionalism (Postmodern Geographies 173). It could be said that the most important thing globalization brought is the re-examination of space in terms of the local- global duality and in terms of the interconnectedness of various places distant from one another. It should be noted as well that globalization could be considered as an ongoing process between the local and the global. There has been a more general awareness of the importance of ‘glocalization’ or the interaction and merging of local cultures and global processes. Some contemporary cultural theories support that standardization is not entirely possible due to the global/local dynamic that will tend to produce a fluid and unstable

13 hybridization of cultures. So there is a kind of controversy between the homogenenization and standardization argument, like in McDonaldization, versus cultural and social hybridity and diversity.

Nevertheless, the dichotomy between the local and the global is undeniably very evident in the world. As “local” substitutes the particular and “global” the universal, a meaningful binary pair that already existed in theories of development became a dominant language with which to frame theoretical analyses (Radhakrishnan 27). Immanuel Wallerstein and other world-systems theorists argued that core/periphery locations were based on exploitative capitalist relationships in which the core (namely, the US and Europe) extracts resources and goods from the periphery (the so-called “developing” or “third” world) in an interdependent exchange that keeps the periphery poor and the core wealthy, while the semi- periphery, a buffer zone, ensures political stability in the system (Radhakrishnan

26).Robertson claimed that the term “glocalization” does not mean simply global homogenization or heterogenization but it is a fusion of the two, combining the universal and the particular in everyday life. He pointed out that the local does not assert it against the global and that locality should not be considered in opposition to the global (Robertson,

“Glocalization” 26). Transnational corporations increasingly direct advertising towards various parts of the globe which is tailored to specific differentiated audiences and markets.

Even the per se example of homogenization, McDonald’s, could be considered as glocal as it slightly adjusts its products according to the country in which it is situated. The term “glocal” is a combination of the words global and local and follows the Japanese term dochaku, which derives from the agricultural principle of adapting one’s farming techniques to local conditions and which was taken up by Japanese business interests in the 1980s. Another term that has been proposed is ‘transnationalism’ as the very concept of ‘urban’ requires a new notion for the social space that is a cross-roads where various practices of national, transnational or even global scale factors interplay (Hudson 438).

14 ii. 5. The global city as a process of flow and juxtapositions

Particularly important is the scheme of the big metropolitan global city which encompasses most of the aspects of globalization like the concentration of capital and financial centers, as well as the cosmopolitan elites and the underprivileged migrants. The global or world city according to Amin and Thrift is an “amalgam of often disjointed processes and social heterogeneity, a place of near and far connections” (8). The use of metaphor “flow” is an indication of how amorphous urban geographers and cultural theorists consider global interactions at all levels. One way to think of global city is to consider it as a postmodern congestion of fragmented, disconnected and socially differentiated enclaves. In such cities we can find the most impressive contrasts, the rich and the poor, the new middle- class and the homeless, as well as an assembly of various ethnic, class and traditional identifications, concentrated all together within the same spatial location. This phaenomenon that took place in some large Western cities in the 1980s has been regarded by some as an example of postmodernization (Featherstone, Undoing Culture 118).

Yet, many of the cultural factors associated with this process — the postmodern emphasis upon the mixing of codes, fragmentation, incoherence, disjunction and fusion — were characteristics of cities in colonial societies, such as Rio de Janeiro or Calcutta, centuries before they appeared in the West (King, “The Times and Spaces” 108-124). In any case, big cities today are characterized by fluidity, fragmentation rather than integrity, and extraterritorial connections. Amin and Thrift claim that the city of today has no centre, no completeness and no fixed parts; it can not even be theorized as a whole (8).

That is why, for Castells, it is important to see the global city now in terms of flows, which belongs to the dominant interests of modern society. This is ‘the spatial logic of the new system’ (417) in which the advanced services (finance, consulting, marketing, information gathering) are at the core of global economic processes (Castells 409). This

15 networked society has profound implications for conceptualizing the global city. Perhaps one of the most breakthrough articulations in the new thinking about cities, which is clearly stated by Castells, is that the global city is not a place but a process (417). The process entails the interconnection of cities as centres of production and consumption of advanced services embedded in a global network. Sassen extends such a thought further: ‘these multiple flows and transactions are increasingly producing a cross-border space anchored in cities that to some extent bypass national states’ (“Locating cities” 83).

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their book “Empire” theorize an ongoing transition from the phenomenon of imperial state centered around individual nation-states, a phenomenon that ended in the 1970s, to an emergent postmodern construct created among ruling powers which the authors call "Empire". The concept of Empire is characterized by lack of boundaries:

Empire’s rule has no limits … Second, the concept of Empire presents itself

not as a historical regime originating in conquest, but rather as an order that

effectively suspends history and thereby fixes the existing state of affairs for

eternity. … Third, the rule of Empire operates on all registers of the social

order extending down to the depth of the social world … The object of its rule

is social life in its entirety. ( xiv–xv)

To sum up, world/global cities are nodes for global operations that overcome the limits of the power of the nation-state, and facilitate global flows. Sociologists such as

Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen conceptualized a network system. A network approach focused on the interconnections and exchanges between locations or nodes in different parts of the globe. Thus, nodes of power and powerlessness could be located either in the “center” or in the “periphery.” For Castells, those who cannot participate in those networks, due either to geographic or material location, are left out of the system and marginalized. Similarly, for

Sassen, economic and financial ties cross borders, but come together in the intensified nodes

16 of global cities. Here, material and geographic location holds also the key to accessing the global economic system in which the majority of the world’s population is left at the margin.

ii. 6. Theories of flows

Still other theorists found that the rapid cultural change of globalization indicated no system at all, but rather the fragmentation of culture, wherein identities and locations no longer resided together. As Tim Cresswell and Deborah Dixon mention, “[i]n discussions of race and ethnicity, identities that were once clearly located in places, regions, homelands, and nations have been displaced by notions of hybridity and diaspora” (6).

Arjun Appadurai conceptualized the culture of globalization in terms of fragments, disconnections, flows, and “scapes,” and focused on the movement of culture across geographic locations. Global capital is just one more moving scape or flow among many (33).

Appadurai argues that the global cultural economy can be conceptualised as a series of global cultural flows. These flows are: ethnoscapes (the landscape of mobile people such as tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles and guest workers); mediascapes (the flow of images as an interconnected repertoire of print, celluloid, electronic screens and billboards which present accounts of reality); technoscapes (the global dispersal of technology); financescapes (the disposition of global capital through currency markets, stock exchanges and commodity speculations); ideoscapes (the landscape of images and ideas that are often associated with the ideologies of states and state power). These landscapes of flows can help us to understand the global city, as, on the one hand, the channels for these flows are cities composing a global cosmopolitan culture, and, on the other hand, they are imagined worlds ‘that is, multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons or groups spread around the globe’ (Appadurai 33). This makes possible the multiple conjuctions to

17 wide spread places and allows an infinite interaction of networks, which is a main feature of global society.

In this frame, ethnic diversification due to immigration in new locations, might be thought of as ‘a set of processes whereby global elements are localized, international labour markets are constituted, and cultures from all over the world are de- and reterritorialized’

(Sassen, Globalization and Discontents xxxi). All these processes transform the notion of space and contribute to multi-cultural global cities.

It should be mentioned, however, that the space of flows does not permeate every level of urban environment and every cultural practice. Most people live in a place which might be understood in the anthropological sense as relational, historical, and concerned with identity. So, there must be a distinction between places that are characterized by deep ties to the local history and spaces that are defined by flows, and are generic, losing their ties with geography and time (Hudson 439).

This distinction, however, between the spaces of flows, which are not connected to a given nation or community, and spaces of place, that could be converted into a global space/local place polarization, has been considered by some scholars to be too simplistic

(Hubbard 117). It has been acclaimed that this kind of urban spatial conformations, as well as the locations inserted within them are liable to change, porous and multilayered. The use of the metaphor ‘flow’ is an indication of how shapeless are considered global interactions of any kind by urban geographers and cultural theorists. This means that we have to accept the fluid, formless and transient relations between the local, the national and the global (Hudson

439).

18 ii. 7. The Rich/Poor Division Remains despite the Flows

The distinction nevertheless global/local is a useful tool for considering the difference between the spaces of flows in a global city, and transnational cultural practices at the local level, only if we admit that the modes of transnational connection are different. So, while it is clear that class and ethnic concentrations in districts, ghettos, and quarters has always been a feature of cities, it is also true that global cities enclose, on the one hand, regions of poverty and, on the other hand, the space for protected enclaves for the rich, cosmopolitan class. They are structurally integrated but socially fragmented. As a result, one way to consider the global city is to think of it as a postmodern collection of fragmented, disconnected, and socially differentiated enclaves.

Castells very accurately refers apart from the global processes of Americanization and

Japanization, or Westernization and Orientalization to the process of the Brazilianization of the world: the twofold procedure of spatial and cultural amalgamation. The “dual cities” are characterized by the clear distinction inside of them between the upper class apartment complexes and the lower and underclass ethnic ghettos and the zones of crime and disorder, like in Los Angeles for example, according to Mike Davis (9).

As a result, the main point to be made is that globalization has increased the mobility of both cosmopolitan elites and labour immigrants, and has created what has been called

“transnational social spaces”, either for denationalized global classes or for deterritorialized immigrants (Hudson 440).

ii. 8. The Function of Borders

Mobility is one of the distinguishing characteristics of modern globalization, demonstrated in dramatically increased empirical flows of capital, information, and people.

19 Thus, the border has become one of the dominant spatio-legal metaphors of contemporary politics, either in their purported disappearance/rearticulation or surprising persistence.

Michele Acuto says “borders have to be measured for their presence, or absence, and the role they play in constructing social relations”. Many authors describe globalization using metaphors of flow, liquidity and fluidity in combination with the porosity of borders. Then borders can be understood as the “hubs and nodes” that determine the speed, direction, and composition of the flows. Within this global network society, routing and identification become key agents of control. It should be taken into account, however, that mobility should not be over-estimated, as 98% of all people are immobile (Salter 491). Then, borders should be examined in relation to mobility because, as Mimi Sheller and Urry argue, “the study of mobility also involves those immobile infrastructures that organise the intermittent flow of people, information, and image, as well as the borders or ‘gates’ that limit, channel, and regulate movement or anticipated movement” (212).

Borders are obviously very important as they represent the limits of the state and the state’s sovereignity. They have evolved as a solution to the governmental problems of security, population management, economic circulation, and identity and they designate with clarity a space in which the citizens can feel protected. They are very significant as they control the entrance and exit of the travelers. They also inscribe a particular set of economic relations through taxes, duties, and regulation—including the regulation of copyright, technologies, and expertise, although this is often abolished through globalized commodity chains. Finally, borders are symbolically important for the claim of a unique identity, although this is diminished again by the ease of global communications (Salter 492). Chris

Rumford highlights this change in the discriminatory geopolitical function of borders:

“borders are now less important in terms of military defence and coercive control, and are notable for their (selective) permeability to human mobility” (159). Bauman makes a similar point: “Ability or disability to move divides the world into the globalized and the localized …

20 some inhabit the globe; others are chained to their place” (“On Glocalization” 21). Finally,

Ettiene Balibar argues that borders are heterogenous: “some borders are not situated at the borders at all, in the geographical-politico-administrative sense of the term. They are in fact elsewhere, wherever selective controls are to be found, such as, for example, health or security checks” (Politics 84).

Marc Augé defined the border as a “non-place” and particularly “the traveller’s space”

(86), emblematic of supemodernity: “the passenger through nonplaces retrieves his identity only at Customs, at the tollbooth, at the check-out counter.”

Space is, of course, at the heart of the geographical study of borders, and the way that space and meaning are co-constituted in the social sciences originated in geography (Urry,

“Social Networks” 158). So, borders are these liminal, in-between spaces which constitute not only the barriers of flow and movement but also manage inclusion and exclusion as well as desires and fantasies. Thus, the topography of the spaces of flows is determined by the geography of borders. Borders are also examined by the perspective of places that promote the meeting or cooperation (Salter 521).

ii. 9. The hospitality issue

Jacques Derrida, the famous philosopher and prominent figure associated with postmodern philosophy, in one seminar he gave in 1996 in Paris, with the title Of Hospitality, addressed important issues related to foreigners and hospites. He reminded that, in ancient

Greece the stranger/guest was specific and had a specific name, was subject to the law, was responsible and had a determinate identity. If someone appeared as anonymous, without a family name, without a family and without a social status, he would not be treated as a stranger/guest but as a barbarian.

21 Derrida then mentions that one of the most important problems that a stranger (and he is not referring to an illegal stranger) faces is that he cannot usually speak satisfactorily the language of the country that welcomes or expels him, that he is always in danger, as he cannot defend himself. So the stranger is first of all a stranger to the language of the hospitality that is given to him. The one who offers the hospitality — the host, the king, the authorities or the

State — imposes translation into his one language and this is already “the first act of violence” (15). He demands from the foreigner to understand him, to speak his language, to be familiar with any kind of secret codes before he welcomes him in his country. Derrida says that the mother tongue is like a mobile habitat, a garment or a tent, like a second skin that someone wears on himself. Language moves with us being “the least immovable thing, the most mobile of personal bodies, which remains the stable but portable condition of all mobilities” (90).

Derrida, in his attempt to go beyond all restrictions that are imposed on the strangers, refers to the hospitality without conditions, which he names “absolute hospitality”. According to it, there is no need of any kind of agreement. We have to welcome the “Other”, the anonymous and the unknown and we have to provide lodging to him without asking anything in return. He states that “The law of absolute hospitality commands a break with hospitality by right, with law or justice as rights” (25). But this gives birth to a new question: If we decide that we do not need the law, how can we distinguish between a guest and a parasite?

Consequently, hospitality has to be submitted to a jurisdiction. We cannot welcome anyone who arrives without having the benefit of the right to hospitality or the right of asylum.

“Without this right, a new arrival can only be introduced “in my home”, in the host’s “at home” as a parasite, a guest who is wrong, illegitimate, clandestine, liable to expulsion or arrest” (60).

All the above have to do with host ethics that have a direct connection with the notion of borders. Mark Salter, analyzing the role and function of borders and their control, reminds

22 us also of the cosmopolitan world of Homeric poems, where the responsibility for hospitality belonged to the kings. After, however, the concretization of the borders, the host ethic has been linked to an ethic of security, mostly for the Western world. “As a consequence,” Salter claims “the studies of border ethics are seen in the exceptions: refugees, detention camps, sans-papiers, illegal and migrant labour, airports, zones d’attentes, and enclaves” (526).

On the other hand, it is pretty clear that the increased cultural flows will not necessarily produce a greater tolerance and cosmopolitanism. An increasing familiriaty with

“the other”, or the representation of the other’s world view or ideology, may equally lead to a disturbing sense of absorption. This may be a consequence of the inability to channel and manipulate global cultural flows successfully, especially those of people, information and images, which increases the demand of equal participation, citizenship rights and greater autonomy on the part of regional, ethnic and other minorities (Featherstone, Undoing Culture

91).

iii. Postmodernism

iii. 1. Postmodernism Subverts Eurocentrism

Despite the prejudices and strict border policies, the constant contact with the racial, ethnic, cultural and religious “Other” brought the need for engagement. The shifting global balance of power, which has resulted in the West, having to take into account “the rest” of the world is producing a relativization in which other foundational values emerge to come into collision upon the global stage. From this perspective, postmodernism can be related to the various ways in which Western intellectuals have detected the symptoms of this shift in the global balance of power, although, of course, some of them may have deciphered the shift as

23 an internal process taking place within Western modernity (Featherstone, Consumer Culture

83).

Postmodernism, as a movement that subverts normative structures and celebrates relativity and de-centerness, is also concerned with “denaturalizing” and deconstructing previous established ideas about racial hierarchies. Although a postcolonial discourse existed even before, “the dismantling of the structuring binary opposition of centre and margin” became more intense in “postmodernism’s commitment to deconstructing the authoritarian and logocentric master narratives of European culture”. Postmodernism thus focuses more on alternative cultural narratives, “both in terms of the ways non-European cultures represent themselves, as well as in focus on the politics of the representations that the European has made of its other” (Woods 48).

European colonialism played an important role in the spatial totalization of the

Western World and the standpoint from which all other cultures were to be theorized and hierarchically ordered. During the second half of the twentieth century, Americanization came to replace Europeanization. But in this post-Second World War era began also a phase of decolonization, and the growth in the global power of the non-West introduced a process of the relativization of the world. This means that the Western world revealed to be only a world among many worlds. “What this simple but undeniable recognition pointed to was that history was not only temporal or chronological but also spatial and relational” (Sakai 106). This changing aspect in the “we and they” and the changing nature of identity formation, as people live more mobile lives and deal with more fluid identities, “this process of mobility and migrancy, now labeled postmodern by some, […] is held to be both the methodological key and the actuality of the contemporary world” (Featherstone, Undoing Culture 154).

24 iii. 2. Postcolonialism

A key thinker on such matters is Edward Said, who created a counter narrative in his book Orientalism. Said expressed his opposition to the western narrative which, he claimed, was structured according to specific politics and interests of the West. His work emerged from the fact that more people are crossing borders, as well as from the shift in the global balance of power away from the West, to the extent that it cannot now avoid listening to the “Other”.

Another theorist who engaged in the representation of colonial power is Gayatri Spivak who through her famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” has become associated with the

Subaltern Studies group, a term that designates non-elite or subordinated social groups.

The postcolonial perspective argues that the cultural and political identities are constructed through a process of alterity or otherness. Homi Bhabha, one of the most important figures in contemporary post-colonial studies, attempts to deconstruct the old dichotomies of East/West, Self/Other and Centre/Margin by exploring notions like hybridity and liminality. In Bhabha’s definition, the hybrid refers to a “third space” or “in-between space” which emerges from a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions, like the colonial power and the colonized culture. Bhabha’s main discussion of hybridity is in his book The

Location of Culture. The word liminality derives from the Latin word “limen” meaning

“threshold”, and like hybridity refers to an “in-between space”. For Bhabha, it is important to recognize that the “post” in “postcolonial” does not merely mean “after”: rather the “post” designates a space of cultural contest and change.

So, the image of culture now has become more complex in opposition to previous and oversimplified perceptions of it as something integrated, unified, settled and static. As Mike

Featherstone suggests,

[r]ather than the emergence of a unified global culture there is a strong

tendency for the process of globalization to provide a stage for global

25 differences not only to open up a “world showcase of cultures” in which the

examples of the distant exotic are brought directly into the home, but to

provide a field for a more discordant clashing of cultures. […] It is no longer

as easy for Western nations to maintain the superiority of adopting a

“civilizational mission” towards the rest of the world, in which the others are

depicted as occupying the lower rungs of a symbolic hierarchy, which they are

gradually being educated to climb up to follow their betters. Rather, this

modernist image is being disputed and challenged. The term postmodernism

can be understood as pointing to this process of cultural fragmentation and

collapse of symbolic hierarchies. (Featherstone, Undoing Culture 13)

The “Other” through the global flows, is now an interlocutor and not an opponent.

However, the multiplicity of images of others causes the need to modify and change our own point of view of self-images, a task which is not easy. As Featherstone argues, this can be considered as “one of the reasons whereby the process of globalization does not merely produce new varieties of cosmopolitanism, but sets off a series of deglobalizing reactions, the retreat to various localisms, regionalisms and nationalisms” (Undoing Culture 82).

iii. 3. Approaching Postmodernism

Dick Hebdige, a media theorist and sociologist, has described the main characteristics of postmodernism, some of which are the following: reflexivity, commodity fetishism, fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the “de-centring” of the subject, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the “implosion of meaning”, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturized technologies, societal

26 and economic shifts into a “media”, “consumer” or “multinational” phase, a sense of

“placelessness” or the abandonment of placelessness (“critical regionalism”) etc. (181-2).

Tim Woods explains very well under which circumstances postmodernism was created:

Whereas philosophers such as Rousseau, Kant and Hegel at the beginning of

the Enlightenment placed a great deal of faith in a human’s ability to reason as

a means of ensuring and preserving humanity’s freedom, many twentieth-

century philosophers, especially those living through and after the Holocaust,

have come to feel that such faith in reason is misplaced, since the exercise of

human reason and logic can just as probably lead to an Auschwitz or Belsen as

it can to liberty, equality and fraternity. Such questioning suspicion of the

Enlightenment is principally associated with the work of Jean-Francois

Lyotard, for whom postmodernism is an attack on reason. (9)

Such a twist can be equated to the one mentioned earlier about the expectations regarding globalization to bring unity and world peace which did not actually happen.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have described postmodernism using the metaphor of the “rhizome” (21). This is the lateral root structure of certain plants, and the metaphor describes how all social and cultural activities in postmodernism are dispersed, divergent systems or structures. This contrasts with the organized, hierarchical, “trunk-and-brunch” structure of modernism.

Frederic Jameson, a great thinker of postmodernism, proposed the “cognitive mapping” as a “cure” for the fragmented alienation of subjects in postmodern culture.

“Cognitive mapping” is a reorientation of our experience of time and space in an era where it is difficult to place ourselves into a definable time-space location that has been altered by the culture of global capitalism, which, for example, replicates the same chain stores, fast-food outlets, theme pubs and shopping malls around the globe (Woods 40).

iii. 4. Postmodernity is Characterized by Simulations

Baudrillard claims that we have entered a new postmodern era of simulations which is governed by information and signs and a new cybernetic technology. He argues that whereas earlier cultures depended on either immediate communication or, later, print, contemporary culture is dominated by images from the electronic mass media. These new images align to a world of simulacra, of models, codes and digitalized reality. In a society where simulations have become dominant, these models structure experience and erode distinctions between the model and reality (121).

Baudrillard’s conception of postmodernity is founded upon three principal ideas - simulation, implosion and hyperreality. Where the distinctions between the real and the unreal become so blurred, the word “hyperreal” is used to signify more than real. Hyperreality is the position where distinctions between objects and their representations are faded, and the only thing that remains is simulacra. For example, he argues that in Disneyland, the models of scenes and figures from the United States are hyperreal, more real than their instantiation in the social world. Consequently, there is not only separation between the real and the hyperral, but the reality of the simulation becomes the benchmark for the real itself. The world becomes a universe of simulacra without referents (13).

Several theorists, like Jameson, have linked postmodernism to consumer culture.

According to Featherstone, “the term consumer culture points not only to the increasing production and salience of cultural goods and commodities, but also to the way in which […] consumption progressively involves the consumption of signs and images” (Undoing Culture

75). The key feature of consumer culture — the fragmentation and over-production of culture

— is often regarded as the central feature of postmodernism.

28 Frederic Jameson popularized the term postmodernism, yet at the same time he never ceased to critique it. For Jameson, postmodernism is to be regarded as the cultural logic of late, or consumer, capitalism. Jameson’s depiction of postmodern consumer culture draws on

Braudillard in highlighting the signs and images of a simulational world. Consumer culture’s fragmented sign-play becomes more complicated with the introduction of images, goods, and signs deriving from other cultures, which, as the flows of interchange intensify, cannot be merely regarded as distant, strange and exotic.

iii. 5. Postmodernism and Mobility in Cinema

Last but not least, postmodernism is closely linked to traveling. The linkage between mobility and the regenerative powers of travel is a powerful theme in Western culture.

According to Featherstone, “[t]ravel has often been regarded as aiding the decentring of habitual categories, a form of playing with cultural disorder, something which can also be found in postmodern theory” (Undoing Culture 128). As Leed explains, “[t]ravel can be understood as paradigmatic of experience and we should remember that the root of the word

“experience” is per, which means to try, to test, to risk. Travel of course, can be routine and mundane, or something to be endured as an impediment until one is settled back at home. […]

It has been argued that it was not until modern times that travel was celebrated as a voyage of self-discovery (Leed 7).

It could be said that the celebratory form of travelling and self-discovery is easily linked to the road movie genre while the negative aspect of travelling full of obstacles and hardships alludes to the filmed perilous migratory journeys. The main books about road movies are Road Movies: From Muybridge and Melies to Lynch and Kiarostami by Devin

Orgeron, The Road Movie Book by Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, and the most analytical

Driving Visions: Exploring the road movie by David Laderman. As far as migratory films are

29 concerned, Hamid Naficy’s book An Accented Cinema provides a plethora of examples of that distinct kind. As travelling in both cases involves the discovery and contact with other lands, peoples and cultures, the issue of the contact with the “Other” is a very prominent one in such films. This issue, however, comes up more and more in recent films dealing with these burning issues of migration, borders, mobility and ethnic mixing. Consequent topics that arise, like the Western affluent privilege versus the “Other”, are also extensively portrayed. I think it is important to mention recent films in order to show just how much these films have multiplied during the last years reflecting these issues. Despite the fact that the films could be more or less positioned in a specific category due to their respective topic, it should be noted that the boundaries of the categories intersect; for example, a border film is very possible to include also migration or racial issues. For an extensive overview, see List of Films.

Chapter 1: Migratory Road Movies from the East to the West

This chapter presents three contemporary migratory road movies as characteristic examples of the recent migration flows to the West and of the globalization’s profitable discontents, like human trafficking. These films are In This World (2002) by Michael

Winterbottom, Promised Land (2004) by Amos Gitai and Eden Is West (2009) by Costa-

Gavras.

The chapter begins with a theoretical part and distinct examples of films providing an overview of the road movie genre and the accented cinema, as these genres have influenced to a great extent contemporary migratory movies. Such films follow - and modify - road movie conventions as well as a documentary aesthetic in order to present the dangers and the risks in which the immigrants expose theirselves during border-crossing. In Ballestero’s words: “In border-crossing immigration films, the road trip functions as an allegorical contemplation of

European attitudes towards its Others. They are open-ended films whose stories end with more movement and new destinations” (179).

After a presentation and analysis of these three films, I provide an additional theoretical frame regarding “third-space”, and examples of transitional, hybrid, in-between places like the camp and the hotel, as such places occupy a central role in these films and present the immigrant’s negative experiences. Another perspective of these transitional places, focusing on the consumerist aspect, is given in the third chapter, as well as relevant examples, such as the airport and the theme park.

31 1. 1. The Road Movie Genre

The road movie genre has its roots in the long tradition of the European journey literature, which in a way is connected to a kind of critique of the social condition. In literature, Homer’s Odyssey could be typically considered the first narrative upon which is based not only the long European journey literature tradition but the even more recently emerged genre of the road movies (Laderman 6). By constantly postponing Odysseus’s arrival and his desire to reclaim his identity as king of Ithaca, Homer stresses the value of the journey rather than the destination. On such a notion is based the backbone of the road movie’s genre as a whole.

The journey literature tradition has immediately been integrated in America, as it reflects very well the formation and the very essence of American national identity which is based on travelling and displacement. As Janis P. Stout claims, American national history

“begins with voyages, of exploration or escape or migration” (5): the first European expeditions of conquest, the flight of persecuted Europeans that came to colonize the New

World and the consequent migration waves of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries constitute America’s national self-definition in terms of population movement and expansion.

The novel On the Road, celebrating the journey as pure movement per se, reflects the affluence of American postwar society, which generates leisure travel (even though the novel’s protagonist is often down and out). It can be considered as a “master narrative” for the road movie, especially the distinctive modernist/rebel version that emerges in the late

1960s (Laderman 10). All road movies use the cross-country journey as a means of achieving extreme experiences, conceived as therapeutic relief from stable, repressive domestic

American culture. Robert Phillip Kolker writes: “The road is more than a physical presence in

American film; it is a sign — a communicative cultural presence connoting freedom of movement, adventure, discovery, danger, escape” (228).

1. 1. 1. The Cinematic Precursors of the Road Movie

The road movie is not only a “new” independent genre of the New American cinema but also an amalgam of certain classical Hollywood elements. The Western, for example, is a classical genre of substantial formative significance for the road movie with its emphasis on the ambiguous border between nature and culture, and its prevalent use of the journey as narrative structure (Laderman 23).

More directly influential on road movies are Depression-era social conscience films which use mobility to express a rebellious response to the social crisis of the Depression

(Laderman 24). In contrast to its Depression-era predecessors, the noir road film, which follows, exaggerates the criminal or outlaw element, in desperate psychological rather than sociopolitical terms. The Grapes of Wrath, belonging to the Depression-era films, is a romantic, politically progressive film with much social critique; the family’s search for a home is bound up with the pursuit for social justice. The film revolving mainly around a quest, and belonging thus thematically to the “quest narrative”, anticipates Easy Rider. On the other hand, Detour, according to Laderman, belonging to the film noir genre “is more psychologically and criminally oriented, coding road travel as an ominous threat to identity”

(27). Consequently it fits the “outlaw narrative”, anticipating thus Bonnie and Clyde.

It could be said that the whole road movie genre follows these two themes: the quest road movie and the outlaw road movie. Quest road movies emphasize roaming itself, usually in terms of some discovery; the tone suggests a movement toward something (life’s meaning, the true America and Mexico). Outlaw road movies emphasize a more desperate, fugitive flight from the scene of a crime or the pursuit of the law. Most road movies incline toward one or the other of these two narrative directions. Yet often one type possesses elements of the other and both types link transgression and liberation with mobility (Laderman 82).

1. 1. 2. The Establishment of the Road Movie as a Genre in the Late-1960s

The generic establishment of the road movie is considered to take place in the late

1960s, with the appearance of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969). Which were though the conditions under which the genre formed itself?

The American road movie in general, but especially in this period, is strongly related with the American society’s fascination with the road. The proliferation of the automobile as a popular commodity on a mass scale, desired by and available to most of the public, in relation to the construction of the actual interstate highway system, constitute a key factor to the road movie’s thematic. It should be noted that cars and movies, as consumer objects, have a special bond between them: not only did they evolve more or less at the same period (late 1920s), but both of them provide mobility (literally, or in the form of ‘‘escapist’’ narrative entertainment) and new visions of the world (through the cinematic screen or the screen-like car’s windows and rear view mirror) (Laderman 3).

The road movie’s kinship with driving — with cars and motorcycles as vehicles of transport and exploration — derives from its modernist affection, which celebrates technology as a liberating force that leads to progress. But modernism, apart from its rebellious and criticizing character, contains also an inclination towards conformity. Thus, the road movie, in general, vacillates between the contrasting couple of rebellion/conformity, a contradiction analogous to the nature/culture antinomy of the Western. The most important formative period of the road movie, though, is the countercultural upheaval of the late 1960s — a historical moment that may be characterized as modernism’s last gasp before being transformed into postmodern culture (Laderman 6).

Two films that deal with the topic of youth rebellion against the social norms are

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) by Arthur Penn, more in the direction of the outlaw couple, and

Easy Rider (1969) by Dennis Hopper, in the direction of the quest of personal identity rather

34 than the American landscape. Bonnie and Clyde, based on actual incidents, narrates the story of a young gangster couple during their murderous and thieving wanderings across America.

As Laderman observes, despite the fact that the film is set during the Depression, it is usually considered a film “about” the countercultural political activism of the 1960s (50). On the other hand, the protagonists became popular figures and the desire to imitate them caused the production of related clothes and other commodities. In this sense, the film by launching the gangster style, on the one hand, signaled the forthcoming economical crisis and, on the other hand, proposed an imaginary solution for the problems of everyday life.

Inasmuch as this economic crisis threatened the ability of American capitalism

to reconstitute and expand its domain, Bonnie and Clyde made it possible to

imagine new styles of consumption, new forms of mobility, and potential

reconfigurations of class, racial, and sexual boundaries. (Cohan and Hark 79)

The film is a characteristic example of the rebellion/conformity antinomy that pervades most of the road movies. The protagonists rebel against the social norms by adopting a bohemian and outlaw lifestyle, but in the end both of them are shot to death. On the one hand, the film’s end exposes — if not condemns — the conservative society, which is explicitly negative to an alternative rebellious stance, by showing the sympathetic protagonists fighting against their brutal death. On the other hand, the film’s end reveals its own conservative inclination, where ideological safety and conformity finally triumph: the criminals have to “pay” in order for the catharsis to be achieved. Furthermore, the antinomy of rebellion/conformity becomes evident as well in Clyde’s behavior. Although Clyde rebels against the conservative capitalist society, after a more careful glance, it becomes obvious that he embodies the very basis of that society: the lust for money and success (Laderman 64).

Another facet which undermines the film’s rebellious character is the conservative portrayal of African Americans and the glorification of the white patriarchal dominance. The portrayal of blacks is revealed to be only “decorative”. They appear mostly as token, voiceless, static

35 and passive spectators watching rather than participating in the action and in adventures of the attractive white antiheroes (Laderman 65).

The contradiction between rebellion and conformity becomes also obvious in the final scenes of Easy Rider. Similarly to Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider’s protagonists are shot down; but in this case the “accusation” is less clear. They are “punished” for simply having adopted a bohemian mobile lifestyle, intolerable to the conservative American society. The scene, for example, where Wyatt asks a hitchhiker if he ever wanted to be somebody else is indicative of the journey’s resulting questioning about identity’s essence. The hitchhiker’s negative response, though, reveals his contentment with himself, in opposition to the dominant consumer culture that fosters the forever unfulfilled desire to be somebody else (or to possess something else). This is a distinct incident illuminating the film’s critique of social norms. The journey, and its eventual lack of fulfillment, “comes to mirror ironically the unfulfilled desires proffered by the consumer/materialist culture they take flight from”

(Laderman 76). As with Bonnie and Clyde, and the road movie generally, the initial promise and thrill of mobility gradually turns sour. On the whole, the road movie’s glorified mobility seems to generate a disillusioned attitude in the protagonists, who have been unable truly to escape, and who have internalized the pressures of conformist society. Furthermore, as Lee

Hill claimed, “[t]he absence of a significant dialogue scene or encounter with a single black man or woman was a missed opportunity to expand the film’s critique of the American

Dream” (54).

1. 1. 3. Existential Irony in the Early-1970s Road Movie

This period’s road movies, although still modernist, are characterized by introspection, cynicism, irony, nihilism, alienation and existential loss. The visionary rebellion, the excitement and the social critique that marked the previous period’s road movies — even if

36 they ended up in a bad way — became internalized, focusing more on psychological than on sociopolitical issues. Driving on the open road becomes an allegory of a personal search through life’s meaningless landscape. Laden with psychological confusion and existential angst, the characters, alienated from each other, wander with no specific purpose and destination. This apathy informs both the movement of the narrative and the development of characters, producing a paradoxical sense of ‘‘standstill’’ while moving, going without making oneself go. In other words, there is a sense of drift (Laderman, 84). These features indicate the influence of postwar European cinema, where auteurism, modernism, and existentialism have merged.

This shift in the road movie, though, reflects also the broader sociopolitical situation in early 1970s America. It is a period described by bitter confusion and disillusionment, when the Woodstock generation’s hopes for deep social change failed to materialize. In the

1970s, the country seemed torn apart by the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, feminism, and other socially and politically divisive issues. This mood culminated with the Watergate crisis, which spawned widespread cynicism toward political authority, a cynicism about the

American virtues of ‘‘ambition, vision, drive’’ (Laderman 85). Political frustration and disillusionment got internalized by the road movies’ characters, dramatized as individual psychological and emotional conflicts. With no sense of home, disillusioned with both the idealistic counterculture and a corrupt conservative government, these lonely film protagonists drove around and around to an unknown destination.

A distinctive example showing an aimless wandering is the film Five Easy Pieces

(1970) by Bob Rafelson; although it is considered to be a road movie, the journey depicted covers no more than ten minutes of screen time. Rather, the protagonist, Bobby, seems to be confused, unsatisfied and “stuck” in the locations he finds himself each time. Even on the road he is presented as motionless during a traffic jam. Bobby seems to suffer more from his own personal confusion rather than from the social system or the American culture at large

37 (though the latter is implicated as partial cause of his personal confusion). Bobby “exposes the modern sickness of the American family and […] other disintegrating structures” from which he flees “blindly and unsuccessfully” (Orgeron 184). The end of the film conforms with the period’s aimlessness: he embarks on a truck heading to an unknown destination.

Two other films that reflect very well this era are Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) by

Monte Hellman, which explores also the meaning(lessness) of road travel, and Badlands

(1973) by Terrence Malick, where the journey indicates the disoriented wandering across the vast American landscape in order to flee the law.

1. 1. 4. The 1980s Postmodern Road Movie

The road movie returned more powerful as postmodern American independent films got deeply influenced by the European cinema. We have to keep in mind though, that, at least in terms of the road movie’s history, the postmodern should not be understood as distinct from/after modernism, but rather as a commercialized, or depoliticized, repackaging of modernist aesthetics: “something like modernism gone mass media” (Laderman 132). The postmodern road movie, exaggerating irony and cynicism and characterized by revisionism and self-consciousness, reflects the advent of postmodern culture at large.

Postmodern independent road movies influenced by European cinema are more self- conscious and usually mock their own generic status and modernist roots. In contrast to the dark, moody and meandering irony of the early-1970s road movie, the irony of the postmodern road movie is more heavy-handed, often cartoonish. More importantly, postmodern films draw attention to the “artificiality of performance and the performance of artificiality” (Laderman 134). The overall effect tends to depoliticize the genre lacking of historical, social, or political grounding. This postmodern period demonstrates a turn as far as

38 national and ethnic issues are concerned, derived from the more immediate interaction between Europe and America.

A film in the direction of the quest road movie, adopting the perspective of seeing

America through a foreigner’s eye, is Stranger than Paradise (1984) by Jim Jarmusch. It revolves around Eva, a girl from Hungary who comes in US to visit Willie and Eddie, two young hipsters leading in New York City an empty life “doing nothing”, out of choice. The film, typically self-reflective and postmodern, is a road movie in a peculiar, contrasting way: stability in combination with ennui is so exaggerated, that it becomes a caricature, the extreme opposite of movement and motivation. The film mocks its own generic roots and its characters possessing little of the driving fetishism of most road movies previously discussed.

Driving here is treated as a kind of a joke, full of irony and detached, blasé style. The static long take and lack of movement seem a deliberate, ironic subversion of all the necessary staples of a Hollywood film: movement, action, emotion ‘‘moving’’ the characters and audience (Laderman 146). But while the film minimizes driving per se, the theme of travel and migration is built into its fundamental framework.

The end of the film is typical of the “whatever” mood that pervades it: Stranger than

Paradise concludes with each of the three characters isolated, in transit, with no clear sense of destination or direction. Characteristic to such an attitude is the phrase Eddie earlier in the film has remarked by expressing a key theme of this road movie, and the road movie generally: “when you come to some place new, everything looks the same”.

Another characteristic example of a deceiving interaction between Europe and

America is the film Paris, Texas (1984) by Wim Wenders, which “revolves around the hopelessness of an American nomad’s search for self and family in a landscape of unreflexive icons” (Cohan and Hark 361).

Two films that allude to commercial TV are Drugstore Cowboy (1989) by Gus Van

Sant, which includes in the beginning a “home movie” sequence (handheld, Super-8) derived

39 from MTV, and Wild at Heart (1990) by David Lynch, which mocks TV talk shows and soap operas. The film’s technique is distinct of postmodernism: flashy, bizarre camera techniques

(use of artificial shots); recycling and blending of genres (road movie, soap opera etc.); extreme self-consciousness and posturing (self-reflectivity, irony) (Laderman 166).

1. 1. 5. The 1990s Multicultural Road Movie

The films of the 1990s are characterized by the visionary, politically rebellious spirit of Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider. Mostly within the postmodern independent context, though at times through the Hollywood mode, the genre’s repoliticized, reinvigorated cultural critique in the 1990s involves gays, people of color, and women (Laderman 176). The 1990s road movie therefore comes back to itself, in a sense, to embrace its original, countercultural purpose.

Thelma and Louise (1991) by Ridley Scott, repoliticizes the road movie by introducing feminism to the genre by putting in the driver’s seat two women. However,

“women take on roles coded as masculine in a masculinist genre, and therein lies part of the controversy that still surrounds this film” (Cohan and Hark 63). The plot combines both the quest and the outlaw narratives but it seems to have stronger affinity with Bonnie and Clyde’s tradition. Thelma and Louise are two women who, oppressed by their close patriarchal environment, decide to take a small vacation. But as on the way Thelma is nearly raped at a bar, Louise ends up shooting the rapist and afterwards, as a “snowball effect”, they flee the police committing crime after crime in their attempt to run away from a criminal patriarchal society. In the film’s end, when the police eventually corner them at the Grand Canyon, they choose to drive over the cliff in an affirmative suicide in order to escape prison and the patriarchal oppression they originally fled. Such an end could be deciphered through two contrasting ways: on the one hand, Thelma and Louise triumph through their conscious

40 decision to escape patriarchal oppression but, on the other hand, they are the victims of it as they have reached a dead end.

My Own Private Idaho (1991) by Gus Van Sant, combining elements of both the outlaw and quest narrative, revolves more around the theme of search of identity, as it deals with the story of two gay men.

Films that deal with racial issues are Get on the Bus (1996) by Spike Lee, referring to a group of black men travelling by bus, and for the first time focusing on their active role, while Smoke Signals (1998) by Chris Eyre, is the first major release feature film, about and authored by Native Americans, revealing their oppression.

1. 1. 6. The European Road Movie

Many contemporary European road movies appear as a reaction to, or reformulation of, the American genre. European roadmovies, however, seem less interested in depicting the adventures of criminals and outlaw couples or in romanticizing the freedom of the road as a political alternative expressing youth rebellion. They rather tend to explore issues of national identity, politics and philosophy. In other words, traveling outside of society becomes less important (and perhaps less possible) than traveling into the national culture, tracing the meaning of citizenship as a journey. As Laderman explains, “[w]ith smaller countries sharing more national borders, the European road movie explores different national identities in intimate topographical proximity” (248). Therefore, they tend toward the quest more than the flight.

According to Laderman, while obviously sharing some traits with the American existentialist 1970s road movie, the European road movies are characterized mostly by the following important features:

41 characters on the road out of necessity rather than choice, seeking work,

family, or a home; less valorization of the individual Road Man or the outlaw

couple, more emphasis on the traveling group; less fetishism of the

automobile; less emphasis on driving as high-speed action-spectacle. (248)

Nevertheless, despite the differences between the American and the European road movies, it should be definetivelly acknowledged that there is a European-American dialogue very crucial to the genre. The American postmodernist phase was originally influenced by the

European New Waves, while in the film Im Lauf der Zeit (In the Course of Time or Kings of the Road) (1976), Wenders refers to such a notion as the American colonization of the

European cultural unconscious.La Strada (1954) by Federico Fellini, translating literally as

‘‘the road’’ is about a girl, Gelsomina, who is sold by her mother to a traveling entertainer,

Zampano, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way. The film stresses discontents like economic dependence and patriarchal hierarchy. According to

Laderman, La Strada’s focus on poverty as the catalyst for mobility recalls Depression-era classical American road movies. The film is however a purely European road movie since it deals with the struggle for survival on the road as the only option, in contrast to the American road movie where the road is rather a choice (Laderman 249). Furthermore, this journey going nowhere constitutes a metaphor for the journey of life.

Weekend (1967) by Jean-Luc Godard is about a French married couple who decide to embark on a supposedly idyllic week-end trip to the countryside. The trip, however, turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.

According to Laderman, the film articulates a critique of Western middle-class society; nevertheless, it is distinct as Godard, unlike most American road film directors, displays little sympathy for his couple as well as for road travel, refusing to valorize them as flying from or

42 rebelling against society. They become, rather, the ultimate symbol of society’s materialism and decadence (255).

Kings of the Road (1976) by Wim Wenders is about a traveling projection-equipment mechanic who works in West Germany along the East-German border, visiting worn-out film- theatres. He meets up with a depressed young man whose marriage has just broken up, and the two decide to travel together. The film reflects upon postwar and post-Nazi German national culture through a reflection upon cinema itself. In fact, the film’s antidote to the mass culture of images is the aimless journey, which gradually restores the ability to communicate

(Laderman 261). Kings of the Road has an ambivalent relationship towards the American influence: the American Road (and American cinema) obviously inspires the film; yet here the American political legacy (which includes geopolitical divisions in topography and nationhood) prevents further movement (Laderman 264). According to Orgeron, “Wenders is fascinated by America’s mobility, and this fascination stems in part from what he takes to be his own country’s perplexing immobility” (148).

1. 2. Migration Cinema - Hamid Naficy’s “Accented Cinema”

The difficulties and sadness of exile and dislocation are known to all of those who have had that experience; the following passage by Edward Said describes accurately such a condition.

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the

unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the

self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And

while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious,

even triumphant episodes in an exile's life, these are no more than efforts

meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. The achievements of

exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind for

ever. (Reflections on Exile 357)

In opposition to the road movie’s main core, which is usually the rebellion against the conservative society — though sometimes reinforced due to economic hardships — and the exploration of the landscape and the inner self, mobility is also the main drive in migratory films, where the displacement that occurs is a forced one due to poverty or other unbearable conditions. Hamid Naficy has extensively engaged with issues related to migratory films in his book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking.

Hamid Naficy explains that “accented cinema” stands in opposition to the dominant cinema which is considered universal and without accent; accented cinema’s most important characteristic is that the filmmakers are displaced and that they use artisanal modes of production (An Accented Cinema 4). “Accented films” are produced mainly by Third World filmmakers and have an appeal across national borders, even in the West. These films are mainly a revolution against the Western and American films that were monopolizing cinema

44 screens. Consequently, the classical and the new Hollywood films which are intended for entertainment only are free from overt ideology and accent opposed to the alternative films.

As far as the technical level is concerned, accented films use “on camera and voice-over characters and actors who speak with a literal accent in their pronunciation” (An Accented

Cinema 24) opposed to the classical Hollywood cinema, where the characters' accents are not a reliable indicator of the actors' ethnicity. Through “accented cinema” Third World people ceased to be only consumers of western films and began to be producers of their own narratives (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 3).

Naficy divides the filmmakers’ dislocation to the West into two major categories: the first group came to the West between the 1950s and 1970s by Third World decolonization, wars of national liberation, the Soviet Union’s invasions of Poland, Hungary and

Czechoslovakia; the second group came during the 1980s and 1990s “as a result of the failure of nationalism, socialism, and communism; the ruptures caused by the emergence of postindustrial global economies, the rise of militant forms of Islam, the return of religious and ethnic wars and the fragmentation of nation-states; the changes in the European, Australian, and American immigration policies encouraging non-Western immigration; and the unprecedented technological developments and consolidation in computers and media” (An

Accented Cinema 10-11).

So, Naficy’s book deals mainly with films that postcolonial Third World filmmakers produced during their immigration in the West since the 1960s; additionally, there are discussed films by filmmakers of European or American descent living in exile. As said before, most of the accented filmmakers come from Third World and postcolonial countries and live in western cosmopolitan metropolises; they are thus experiencing a tension between their homelands and their new homes, a tension and a theme that becomes also evident in their films. Thus, they are considered “to be more prone to the tensions of marginality and difference” (An Accented Cinema 10) or, in other words, they are “the products of this dual

45 postcolonial displacement and postmodern or late modern scattering” (An Accented Cinema

11).

Naficy draws attention to the fact that in the same way that accented filmmakers are characterized by this duality, so is the style in their films. “Accented films are also mulatta texts” (An Accented Cinema 22). Their films contain both the structure of feelings of the filmmakers themselves as immigrants but also the traditions of exile and diaspora that pre- existed in earlier depictions. “From the cinematic traditions they acquire one set of voices, and from the exilic and diasporic traditions they acquire a second” (An Accented Cinema 22).

Additionally, Naficy points out the features and style accented films usually have; they can contain “fragmented, multilingual, epistolary, self-reflexive and critically juxtaposed narrative structure; amphibolic, doubled, crossed, and lost characters; subject matter and themes that involve journeying, historicity, identity, and displacement; dysphoric, euphoric, nostalgic, synaesthetic, liminal, and politicized structures of feeling; interstitial and collective modes of production” (An Accented Cinema 4).

As far as its name is concerned, accent is one of the most intimate and distinct features of either a group or an individual person. In opposition to the accent, mainstream media and cinema usually adopt the “official” accent, which means the accent that is considered to be standard and neutral. Regarding cinema, the standard and neutral accent refers to the dominant cinema usually the classical and Hollywood cinemas aiming mainly at entertainment. Consequently, alternative cinemas are accented “but each is accented in certain specific ways that distinguish it” (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 23). Even more, “exilic and diasporic accent permeates the film’s deep structure: its narrative, visual style, characters, subject matter, theme and plot” (An Accented Cinema 23). One of the greatest sacrifices when living abroad is the deprivation of one’s own language and consequently part of the identity, as language is an essential feature of the individual identity. Many accented filmmakers thus decide to produce their films in their own languages in burden of a possible broader film

46 distribution. Nevertheless, most accented films are bilingual or multilingual (An Accented

Cinema 24).

It is very important to note at this point that accented cinema does not clearly oppose the dominant cinema since it is also produced in the West. According to Naficy “produced in a capitalist (if alternative) mode of production, the accented films are not necessarily radical, for they act as agents not only of expression and defiance but also of assimilation, even legitimation, of their makers and their audiences” (An Accented Cinema 26).

It could be said that accented cinema has been influenced not only by postmodernism and postcolonialism but also by the so called “Third Cinema”, a Latin-American cinema of liberation. The Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha, in his article “The Aesthetics of Hunger”, and the Argentinean cineastes Fernando Solanas and Spanish-born Octavio Getino, in their famous manifesto "Towards a Third Cinema", critiqued the mainstream, capitalist “first cinema” and the petit bourgeois, authorial “second cinema”, by proposing the “Third

Cinema”, an imperfect and unprofessional cinema. The accented cinema, however, “is much more situated than the “Third Cinema”, for it is necessarily made by (and often for) specific displaced subjects and diasporized communities” (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 30). While

Third Cinema films support class and armed struggle, accented cinema fights in a discursive and semiotic level.

Referring to specific places, but being produced by displaced filmmakers, accented films are simultaneously local and global. They describe, and several times critique, the home and host societies and the exilic conditions. Furthermore, they also depart from mainstream films with their artisanal mode of production and aesthetics of imperfection as well as with the mixing of various cinematic genres, the subversion of the conventions of storytelling and spectator positioning and the critical juxtaposition of different worlds, languages, and cultures.

47 Most importantly, as these films are deterritorialized, they are preoccupied very much with issues concerning space apart from travelling and displacement. In Naficy’s words,

“[t]heir preoccupation with place is expressed in their open and closed space-time

(chronotopical) representations” (An Accented Cinema 5). The homeland is mainly presented as open, light-colored and nostalgic while life in exile several times is connected to claustrophobia, darkness, confinement and despair. The “open” form of the homeland, as far as the mis-en-scene is concerned, prefers external locations, open settings and landscapes, and bright natural lighting. On the contrary, the “closed” form favors interior locations and closed settings, like tight living quarters, dark lighting and characters that are confined in their movement. The open form implies immediacy, intimacy and familiarity while the closed one, unfamiliarity, distance and claustrophobia. Such an alternation between these two opposites

“is similar to the feeling structures of postmodernism. […] to the extent that the accented and postmodernist cinemas both immerse us in these dystopic and euphoric moments of unresolved polarity, they are similar” (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 27).

According to Naficy “all accented films are to some extent postmodernist” (An

Accented Cinema 27); he bases his statement by drawing parallels between the feeling structures of postmodernism and the dislocatory feeling structures of accented films which mostly represent the homeland as open and utopian and the exile as claustrophobic and dystopian. Naficy further explains the dialectic postmodern structure of feeling by quoting

Fred Pfeil who describes postmodernist art as “a very unstable play between a primal delight and a primal fear, between two simultaneous versions of the primary aggressive impulse”

(Naficy, An Accented Cinema 27). The bond between accented and postmodernist cinemas is the representation of “dystopic and euphoric moments of unresolved polarity” (Naficy, An

Accented Cinema 27).

Naficy, however, draws our attention to the fact that accented films may depart from postmodernism, as they usually present the homeland “as a grand and deeply rooted referent,

48 which stops the postmodernist play of signification” (An Accented Cinema 27). Naficy further explains that the reference of landscapes and monuments, peoples, histories, politics and cultures of the homeland allude to the modernist concepts of nationalism and state formation, while the postmodernist signification finds its place again only when the return to homeland proves to be impossible, illusory or undesirable.

Apart from the landscape, the characters of the accented films are also amphibolic and split, double and hybridized like the filmmakers themselves as displaced subjects. Naficy mentions “They may own no passport or hold multiple passports, and they may be stranded between legality and illegality (An Accented Cinema 32). Accented filmmakers who live in various modes of transnational otherness “inscribe and (re)enact in their films the fears, freedoms and possibilities of split subjectivity and multiple identities. These take the form of fragmented narratives, consisting of ellipses, ruptures and generic juxtapositions and admixtures; self-reflexive interweaving of the filmmaker’s own biography, person and persona in the diegesis; and an emphasis both on a performing self and on a performance structure” (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 271). Additionally, accented films often include characters that are travelers and wanderers who are constantly on the move, seeking home or being unable to settle. It is very interesting to note that accented films “frequently contain foreigners who attempt to pass as natives, with their success dependent on the knowledge by both foreigners and natives of what constitutes “foreign” and “native” and on the accuracy and deftness with which these codes are reproduced and signified upon” (Naficy, An Accented

Cinema 275).

Most of us take for granted our place in the world and come face-to-face with it only when we are threatened with displacement. However, it should be noted that the way from the homeland abroad and reverse is not straight. It involves usually intermediate places of transit.

As Naficy mentions, “many, particularly refugees and asylees, are forced to stay in intermediary places during their circuitous home-seeking journeys. These transitional places

49 are also part of the idea of place that forms their identities and their chronotopical figuration in accented films” (An Accented Cinema 152).

Naficy places great importance to the third space chronotope which are “transitional and transnational places and spaces, such as borders, tunnels, seaports, airports, and hotels, and vehicles of mobility, such as trains, buses, and suitcases” (An Accented Cinema 5).

Border crossing and journeying are narratives that include such sites and vehicles.

At this point it should be noted that the journeys either in the migratory films or in the road movies are not only physical and territorial but also psychological, and concern the shifts in identity that changes because “identity is not a fixed essence but a process of becoming”

(An Accented Cinema 6).Very often, displaced characters in the films may enter the host country with a status — as exiles, refugees, asylees, students or illegal aliens — but this status may change during their habituation due to studies and culture. “They undergo transformation, or their transformation is hindered, by the legal status with which they enter the new country, and by the work they do there, the activities they undertake, the associations they form, and the media they produce and consume, as well as by the host society’s historical perception and current reception of them” (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 237). Such concepts like places of constant instability and transit as well as the fluid identities are attributes of the globalized postmodern world. Naficy himself acknowledges accented’s cinema affinity with globalization in his following words: “I direct attention to a new and critical imagination in the global media: an accented cinema of exile and diaspora and its embedded theory of criticism” (An Accented Cinema 8).

As it is plausible, the most prominent topic in accented films are journeys of every kind; outward journeys of escape, home seeking, and home founding; journeys of quest, homelessness and lostness; and inward, homecoming journeys. According to Naficy, journeys depicting routes to the West are particularly important, “partly because they reflect the filmmakers' own trajectory and the general flow of value worldwide” (An Accented Cinema

50 33). Important westering journeys mentioned by Naficy are Xavier Koller’s Journey of Hope

(1990) where a family of Turks from a rural area decide to migrate to Swizerland which is imagined as a promised land and Gregory Nava’s El Norte (1983) where two young Mayan

Indians siblings from Guatemala embark on a difficult journey to the United States.

Unfortunatelly, in both cases the journeys end up in a complete disaster revealing the difficult situation of an immigrant in a foreign land. Naficy also devotes a lot of space to Armenian director Atom Egoyan living and filmmaking in Canada, as a prominent example of accented filmmaker, and his films like Calendar (1993), Felicia’s Journey (1999) and Ararat (2002)

(Naficy, An Accented Cinema 57). Another category of films worth mentioning is the beur cinema, which means films that refer to Arab immigrants living in France. The most representative example of this category is La Haine (1995) by Mathieu Kassovitz (Naficy, An

Accented Cinema 99). Naficy adds also in accented films the category of epistolary narratives which comprise communication through letters. Some examples of this category include

Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1977), Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance (1988) or John Mekas’s Lost, Lost, Lost (1976) (An Accented Cinema 103).

Naficy, furthermore, provides examples of accented films which are particularly linked to a certain notion in regard to travelling. For example, under the subcategory of

“homeland” he refers to Michel Khleifi’s Wedding in Galilee (1987), while under the subcategory “house” he mentions the film House (1980) by Amos Gitai as well as Andrei

Tarkovsky’s films like Sacrifice (1986) or Nostalgia (1983) (Naficy, An Accented Cinema

177). When homeland is presented like a prison, Yilmaz Guney’s Yol (1982) is the most prominent example (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 181). Home-seeking journeys are depicted in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) and Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger

(1990). Typical films in the subcategory “journey of homelessness” are Mira Nair’s Salaam

Bombay! (1988), Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies (1988) and Wim Wenders’ Paris,

Texas (1984) (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 227). A homecoming journey is depicted in

51 Fernando Solanas’s South (1988) and The Journey (1992). The most typical films of border crossing are the Chicano films like Gregory Nava’s El Norte (1983) while hotels and motels play a special role in Reza Allamehzadeh's The Guests of Hotel Astoria (1989) (Naficy, An

Accented Cinema 249). Films depicting trains and buses are The Bus (1977) by the Turkish

Tunc Okan and Who’s That Singing over There (1980) by Slobodan Sijan.

One of the most important accented films is Gregory Nava’s El Norte (The North)

(1983) which narrates the journey of two Mayan siblings, Enrique and Rosa, from Guatemala to the United States in order to escape government terror. The story takes place during the

Guatemalan civil war, which ended in 1996, between American armed military and leftist guerrillas that resulted in a lot of killings and a million of people into exile or away from their homes. Nava is considered as an accented director who has personal experience of exile since he is a Chicano filmmaker that operates in the United States.

The film is divided into three parts. The first part takes place in the Guatemalan nature depicting the life there, the work in the coffee fields, the Mayan-tradition family gatherings and anti-government resistance. These depictions will be recalled later in the memory of the two siblings during the difficulties they face during their journey and their stay in the United

States. In a sense, this is exemplary of “the bifocality of displaced people, who live in empirically and symbolically different spaces simultaneously” (Naficy 157). As this corresponds more to Rosa’s imagination while Enrique is more attached to reality, the film reproduces stereotypes that associate woman with nature and culture and men with action and adventure, something that is also encountered in the road movie genre.

The second part depicts the passage through Mexico and the border crossing inside a tunnel. Opposed to the openness of the first part, the second part is characterized by closeness and claustrophobia. The third part is devoted to the difficulties they face during their life in

Los Angeles working in restaurants and factories. The end of the film is devastating as Rosa dies of typhus she caught from tunnel rats.

52 The film is exemplary of the sentiment of homelessness such exiles feel. Characteristic are Rosa’s words: “In our own land, we have no home. They want to kill us. There’s no home for us there. In Mexico there’s only poverty — we can’t make a home there either. And, here, in the north, we aren’t accepted.” Nevertheless, the film has been critiqued for presenting the

Indians only as victims and, by adopting the mode of the melodrama, for urging toleration instead of confrontation and change.

1. 3. In This World (2002)

You’re better off in your own country

In This World (2002) by Michael Winterbottom narrates the illegal and perilous journey of the sixteen-year-old Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat from the

Shamshatoo refugee camp, outside Peshawar in Pakistan, along the so called “Silk Road”- the film’s initial title - to London. Their journey, however, proves to be anything but silky: it is full of obstacles and difficulties as well as disappointments and losses.

Winterbottom’s choice of using part of the Silk Road as the geographical setting of the film can be variously interpreted; on the one hand, it is a reminder that communication between the West and the East has existed for a long time. On the other hand, the Silk Road as a sophisticated network of communication and exchange of exotic commodities and culture has nowadays become a rather dangerous road full of obstacles that has to be crossed for survival. The illegal immigrants have taken the place of the “exotic commodities” but with an ironically meaningful difference: despite the fact that they are treated as commodities and not humans, they are not exotic but rather the “undesirable Other”. From another perspective, according to Yosefa Loshitzky, “Winterbottom makes a political statement by using the setting of Marco Polo’s Travels”, a book that “was one of the founding texts of Orientalism, imprinting the idea of an exotic East as a symbol of difference and as the ultimate

Other/double of the West” (126). The acknowledgement of another center apart from the

West, since Marco Polo’s time, is a predecessor of important contemporary centers around the world. In Paul Smethurst’s words, this “recasting of the world into a more dynamic and multicentered geographical space was the first step toward what we now call globalization”

(Loshitzky 126). Furthermore, according to Smethurst, Marco Polo’s Travels suggested a

54 morality of openness towards diversity and tolerance instead of division and xenophobia, which also is relevant today (Loshitzky 127). The moral of the film In This World is very similar, its aim being to make the average Western spectator feel closer to and understand better the migrant’s situation, risks and agonies.

The film begins in a documentary style, with images from the Shamshatoo refugee camp and informative captions about the location and the time, February 2002. A male

Western voice-over informs the spectator that “53 thousand Afghan refugees live in

Shamshatoo camp at the city of Peshawar in Pakistan. The first arrived in 1979 fleeing the

Soviet invasion of their country. The most recent came to escape the US-led bombing campaign which began on October 7th, 2001. Many children like Jamal were born here. Jamal is an orphan who works in a brick factory. He gets paid less than a dollar a day. It is estimated that 7.9 billion dollars were spent on bombing Afghanistan in 2001. Spending on refugees is far less generous. The daily food ration is 480 grams of wheat flour, 25 grams of vegetable oil and 60 grams of pulses. Every family is given a tent, a plastic sheet, three blankets and a stove.”

Scenes follow showing the purpose and the planning of the journey, as well as life in

Pakistan including a festival, a celebratory big meal and traditional dances, revealing the community spirit. Enayat’s uncle, Wakeel, explains that he wants to help his nephew to have a good future by sending him to London, as he is not able to send him to America. Jamal who speaks English offers to accompany Enayat who doesn’t. The arrangements for the journey take place and a large sum of money is paid to the “organizer”, despite his warnings that someone lives better in his own country and that it is going to be a dangerous trip. Another voice-over next, informs: “There are 14, 5 million refugees in the world. More than five million live in Asia. Almost one million of these live in Peshawar. Many of them want to leave. Every year, one million people in the world put their lives in the hands of people

55 smugglers…Some arrive safely at their destination. Many get caught by the authorities. Some die along the way.”

From Peshawar Jamal and Enayat embark on their long journey to London. First, they go by bus to the city of Quetta and next, in order to continue their trip to Taftan on the back of a van, Jamal bribes the authority person at the border with Enayat’s walkman. The trip continues by car through the desert until they enter Iran; to go to Tehran, according to

Behrooz, their Iranian smuggler, they have to change their clothes to look like Iranians. After having spent ten days in a shabby room by paying for it with extra ten thousand Rials per day, they continue their journey by bus. At the border control, however, although Jamal and Enyat deny their identities as Afghans, they are driven back to Pakistan as they have no ID cards to prove that they are Iranians.

One week later they embark on the same journey again with the rest of the money

Enayat has saved, hidden in his shoe. They travel by bus through Iran and this time they are lucky as they pass the control without being caught. They finally reach Tehran, the first big urban city up to this moment on their trip, on the 12th of April 2002. Five days later, after their sojourn in a dirty room once again, they are transported in the back of a van to a cargo truck carrying oranges. They later arrive in a small village, where they rest for a while and play football with other children. Having spent some nights there and after greeting the hospitable and kind inhabitants of the village, Jamal and Enayat continue their journey on foot this time through the snowy mountains of Turkey. The scene with the protagonists crossing the snowy mountains is shot in black and white as if it was a film negative and in a blurry way, presumably to stress the difficulties encountered. The scene is reminiscent of a similar one in

Journey of Hope (1990) where the Turkish family is trying to pass the snowy Swiss Alps.

Their journey next includes transportation in the back of a truck loaded with sheep and afterwards in a big empty cargo truck, together with an Iranian couple and their infant heading for Denmark. The cargo’s big empty interior space, in combination with the constant jolts

56 along the bumpy road, creates a claustrophobic feeling to the spectator. On 29th April, 2002 they reach Istanbul. After passing through dirty, narrow streets they enter a shabby and dark room where they stay in for a week paying thirty million Liras each. The few moments they spend playing football with the kids of the neighborhood make them forget their misery momentarily, despite the confined and dirty space that is available for their game. The next day they start work under inhumane conditions, surrounded by extraordinary levels of noise in a dirty underground factory that produces cutlery. The illegal migrant’s labor under inhumane conditions during his journey towards a big metropolis is also depicted in Eden Is West where the protagonist, Elias, works for a factory that produces electrical appliances.

A few days later, the factory’s owner takes Jamal and Enayat together with the Iranian family from the factory and leads them to a truck which transports them into a narrow container. The container gets locked and loaded onto another cargo truck which is next driven onto a huge cargo ship. The ensuing dark and blurred shots revealing only the migrants’ faces intermittently by means of the Iranian infant’s flashlight create a new feeling of uncertainty and claustrophobia to the spectator. After an animated map showing the ship’s course through the Mediterranean Sea and captions stating that 40 hours have passed, the spectator is exposed once again to the same claustrophobic images inside the container but with a difference: as the

“passengers” patience has reached its end, they are screaming and shouting for the door to be opened.

When they finally reach Trieste and the container is opened, Enayat and the Iranian couple are dead, while only the infant and Jamal have survived the inhumane journey. Jamal runs away, all alone now. Two weeks later, according to the captions, Jamal is shown trying to sell bracelets to people in the streets and cafes of Italy. By stealing a backpack he eventually manages to get some money in order to buy a train ticket to Paris. Travelling on a modern, fast, comfortable train for the first time, he enters and crosses France until he arrives at Sangatte camp on the 6th of June, 2002, as it is shown on an animated map again.

57 There, he stays in a tent, as thousands other immigrants do, in order to cross over to the other side of the sea and reach England. A happy break during his tiring and frustrating journey is again the football game Jamal plays with the other immigrants at the Sangatte sea shore. One night, he leaves the Sangatte camp together with Yusif, a guy whom he befriended. They manage to climb between the wheels of a lorry, where they have to endure the cold, the smell of gas, and of course the deafening noise of the lorry engine.

The following scene, depicting Jamal washing glasses at a restaurant in London, as the captions inform us, and hearing orders to speed up and be faster, puts into question the whole journey. Furthermore, the film’s title finally reveals its actual meaning, when Jamal, calling his uncle back home from London, informs him that Enayat “is not in this world”. At this point it is important to cite Winterbottom’s comment:

It's worth noting that Jamal ended up giving In This World its title. When he

was checking that the subtitles matched what he was actually saying in the

film, he came across one scene near the end where he refers to a person's

[Enayat’s] death. The subtitler had translated the word as exactly that –

“death”. But Jamal contested it. “That wasn't what I said” he told me. “I said

“He's not in this world.” A small distinction but, I think, a significant one.

The following shots depicting life in Shamshatoo camp and children smiling at the camera might raise plausible questions to the spectator: Ιs life really bad there? Was Jamal’s journey worth it? Does Jamal have a better life in London now? No matter what the answers to these questions are, Jamal’s tremendous effort, like that of many other immigrants is not going to last; captions inform that on August 9th, 2002 Jamal’s application for asylum was rejected. Although he was granted exceptional leave to stay in London, he has to leave Britain before his eighteenth birthday.

In This World won several prestigious awards, among others the BAFTA Film Award

2004 for the Best Film not in the English Language, the Golden Bear, the Peace Film Award

58 and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin International Film Festival 2003. But, despite the positive appraisal of the critics, the film did not make much money and had a limited distribution. Winterbottom, however, seemed very conscious about his choice from the very beginning of this project. “Is it going to play in multiplexes? No, obviously not. Is it going to play anywhere? Probably not. But the point is it will be interesting to do, and if you’ve got something interesting to do, then why wouldn't you want to do it? I want to do what I want to do rather than what's good for my career” (Hattenstone).

1. 3. 1. Documentary Influences

Apart from the thematic borders/boundaries presented in In This World, there is also a generic border crossing between the fictional and documentary mode. In This World was shot like a documentary using small, hand-held DV cameras, and much of the film was improvised as the filmmakers followed the two non-professional actors, Jamal and Enayat (whom they indeed found in a refugee camp in Pakistan) along this route. According to Winterbottom this film should be considered “a documentary of the journey we organized for Jamal and

Enayatullah” (Bennett 294).

In fact, David Farrier, in his article “The journey is the film is the journey: Michael

Winterbottom’s In This World”, supports the existence of a chiastic structure in the film, in which “the journey is the film, and the film is the journey” (Farrier 224). Consequently, there are crossings between fiction and reality, and between the experience of the migrant and the filmmaker. According to Winterbottom, as Farrier mentions, the film itself could be paralleled to an illegal migrant; “because some regional authorities were uncomfortable with the filmmaker’s activities, often the producers would have to carry the previous days’ rushes clandestinely across a border in advance of the crew to avoid confiscation” (Farrier 230). In fact, during production the film was known as The Silk Road, a name used “primarily as a

59 cover, since officials in many countries were told the film was a documentary about that historical subject. Later, it was known as M1187511, which was the UK Home Office’s file number for the real-life Jamal’s application for refugee status” (Naficy, “Phobic spaces” 122).

It was only before its release that the film acquired its final title, In This World. So, it could be said that in a way the film indeed shares the similarity of the migrant who is constantly forced and tries to change his identity in order to fit in the new context he finds himself each time.

Very insightfully Farrier draws also a parallel between the filmmaker and the migrant, according to Zygmunt Bauman’s definitions of the tourist and the vagabond respectively. The filmmaker, like the tourist, enjoying a privileged position remains the master of his will and destiny, being able to make decisions while the vagabond/migrants are forced to confront the situations their fate puts them into. In Bauman’s words:

The tourists stay or move at their heart’s desire…The vagabonds know that

they won’t stay in a place for long, however strongly they wish to, since

nowhere they stop are they likely to be welcome. The tourists move because

they find the world within their (global) reach irresistibly attractive - the

vagabonds move because they find the world within their (local) reach

unbearably inhospitable. The tourists travel because they want to; the

vagabonds because they have no other bearable choice. (Globalization 92-93)

Characteristic is Winterbottom’s statement: “It cost us with our papers and British passports £800 to get to Pakistan, but it costs an Afghan refugee £10,000 - a vast amount for their families - and a good deal of risk to come here” (Gibbons). Furthermore, it is interesting to point out that, although Winterbottom and his screenwriter Toni Grisoni underwent similar obstacles and harsh conditions a refugee has to deal with, like being detained by soldiers at an army base in the desert of Pakistan and in general following the same route, they got quite easily released and allowed themselves the luxury of taking a taxi some times, things that wouldn’t have happened to an actual refugee. In fact, Jamal and Enayat remained illegal

60 immigrants even during the process of making the film. Winterbottom explains: “We were trying to do things as honestly as possible, but the job of getting Jamal and Enayatullah to the

UK and back involved forged documents, smuggling and bribery” (Winterbottom).

Nevertheless, the blurred boundary between the fiction and the reality is testified as well by the fact that “[a] few days after he [Jamal] returned to Pakistan when filming ended, his widowed mother decided the $7,000 (£4,500) he earned as an actor was best spent trying to get him back to Britain where one day he might be able to earn enough to support his four siblings” (Gibbons). So, in this sense the film functioned as a motive for Jamal to move back to London. Winterbottom observes: “In one sense, the film is not his story — we set up that journey, after all, and who knows if he would have made it on his own steam. But I like the confusion that exists now between Jamal the character and Jamal the person” (Winterbottom).

However, as the film informs the spectator towards its end through captions, although Jamal was granted exceptional leave to remain as an asylum seeker in London until his eighteenth birthday, it was expected that afterwards he would be deported to Afghanistan, a country he had never visited before, despite his Afghan nationality.

Winterbottom himself admits the intentional blurring of reality and fiction: “The film does play with what’s true and what’s not”. He continues: “If we wanted to change something, we would, and obviously all the illegal or dangerous events are staged, but usually we tried to create situations where people didn’t have to act. We never said to anyone, you should be this sort of person, you should say this, you should act in this sort of way” (Smith,

Damon 62).

Winterbottom’s documentary style filmmaking recalls the immediacy of the French

New Wave and Italian neorealism as well as the Dogme 95’s manifesto about shooting with natural light, handheld digital cameras and low budget production. In Winterbottom’s words:

“[f]rom my point of view, the smaller the crew the better, and the simpler the story the better.

61 Hand-held cameras and natural light are good. All those things make the film even more focused on what’s actually happening in front of the camera” (Smith, Damon xvi).

On the other hand, he does draw attention to the constructedness of the film by incorporating animated maps to indicate the journey’s route, voice-over in the film’s beginning giving information about the situation in Shamshatoo camp as well as captions about the time and the place during the journey. Furthermore, the filmmaker’s presence becomes evident at certain times by a very fast-paced editing. According to Rebecca Prime such an editing creates “an impression of fragmented space similar to that experienced by the refugees as they travel through unfamiliar landscapes.”

Winterbottom’s realistic documentary style has, of course, an overt connection to politics. In This World, being conceived as a response to the United Kingdom’s ongoing asylum debate, and the events of September 11 (which occurred while the film was still in pre-production), proved the film’s creation even more accurate and up-to-date than ever. It should be mentioned, however, that Winterbottom himself has expressed his discomfort to be identified as a “political filmmaker” and prefers instead to draw attention to the humanistic aspect of his films. The film, as said before, was produced as a reaction to the anti- immigration delirium that flooded the UK press and aimed to give a human face to those who sometimes sacrifice their lives to get there, like the 58 Chinese immigrants who were found dead in a lorry while trying to be smuggled into the UK on June 16th 2000 (Felperin 19).

Winterbottom supports that it is horrible the way the political argument is shaped, that calling someone an “economic migrant” is a kind of a curse. He states:

The sense of protectionism of Europe for Europeans only is rampant. We

should be able to say that these people are trying to make better lives for

themselves and for their families, and we should make it possible; we should

welcome it. And we should not do what we do at the moment, which is to

make their ride as horrible as possible. (Power 76)

62 Although Michael Winterbottom is not an “accented” filmmaker, like Costa Gavras who lives in Paris or Amos Gitai who also has lived in Paris for many years, his film In This

World could be characterized as “accented” as it does share many characteristics with the accented films, as described by Hamid Naficy. The characters speak English with an accent; the mode of production of the film is collective and artisanal; the film follows the accented film style by juxtaposing different worlds, languages and cultures, departs from the mainstream film style and is highly political.

Winterbottom’s choice to engage in such a difficult, demanding and rather sad topic without the perspectives of earning money makes him a Western director not only interested and alert in the contemporary global problems but also deeply humanitarian, trying to sensitize western audiences regarding the obstacles immigrants are facing, promoting thus a more open and understanding attitude towards the “Other”.

1. 4. Promised Land (2004)

You don’t have to think you’re a prostitute You should think you are working

Promised Land (Ha-Aretz Hamuvtachat) (2004), the first film of Amos Gitai’s

Frontier Trilogy, which also includes Free Zone (2005) and Disengagement (2007), begins with a long shot depicting a caravan moving under the moonlight in the desert. Shot on digital video “and then blown up to 35mm, the camerawork is often shaky and the image grainy”.

This, the director believes, enhances a certain sense of urgency in the viewers (Brown et al.

163). In my opinion, such an image might appear to the spectator exotic and idyllic, reminiscent perhaps of the familiar “Christmas” image of the three magicians heading to the divine Child. Subsequently, there is a quite long scene depicting the caravan’s travelers resting and discussing around a campfire; there are Bedouins speaking in Arabic, as well as girls from Eastern Europe speaking Estonian. In my opinion, this scene could be paralleled to a typical campfire scene of the American road movie where the travelers spend some time resting, talking and getting to know each other better. A sex scene between a Bedouin and a girl remains ambiguous drawing the spectator’s attention. The next shaky scene, probably shot with a hand-held camera, presenting the girls’ abrupt transportation to mini vans by well- built men, definitely evokes suspicions of illegal trafficking. The girls’ surprised and fearful faces testify to the illicitness of the act.

Suddenly the mini vans stop in the middle of nowhere and the girls are forced to get out into the night and line up one next to the other. An auction is taking place. While their faces are illuminated briefly by a flashlight, a woman starts bidding on them trying to sell them to some dealers standing nearby. The woman advertises their beauty, even by forcing them to reveal parts of their bodies like their breasts or bottoms. The English language in

64 which the transaction takes place as well as the woman’s constant question “how much?”, in combination with the numbers she shouts to indicate the price that the girls are going to fetch, are indicative of the ugly aspect of globalization whose aim is only profit. As Jean-Michel

Frodon argues, “…[t]he fact that prostitution has become a mass phenomenon in Israel is an authentic, social, and above all psychological marker in a society that originally wanted to be of “moral” if not puritanical origin”. Furthermore, contemporary Israeli sociology describes

“commercial sex as a reaction to the state of permanent danger, linked to the terrorist threat, the military occupation of the territories, the incessant border controls, and the repeated threats from neighboring countries” (Frodon 143). The blurred, dark, shaky shots by hand held camera create to the spectator a feeling of nervousness, alienation and discomfort. After the end of the auction the girls are forced back to the mini vans and driven away.

Next, follows a long travelling shot depicting houses at daytime in Israel while on the move from the girls’ perspective inside the van. They are only able to peek outside through the van’s narrow slot. When the van stops in Ramallah, a Palestinian city located 10 km north of Israel, as a girl reads in a shield, in an unrecognizable place in the middle of a street, some of the girls are forced to wear the country’s traditional long dresses and cover their heads, changing thus their identity. They are next led forcefully towards an unknown destination.

The rest of the girls are driven and led to a big ship named “The Red Sea Star”. The interior of the ship is dark and depressing. The woman, who was selling the girls earlier, called Anne, orders them now to take off their clothes and to line up naked in the ship’s interior corridor. She next orders her assistant Igor to shower them; the girls are being washed with cold water from a hose like animals. The empty, cold, and inhospitable interior of the ship combined with the girls’ screams and the woman’s strict orders create to the spectator a feeling of abhorrence and disgust.

The girls are next dressed “appropriately” for the job with provocative underwear.

Subsequently, they are led to the ship’s lobby where low lighting and loud music dominate.

65 The girls’ make-up is undertaken by an apparently experienced in such “business” woman,

Hanna, played by the well-known actress Hanna Schygulla. The verses she recites are the beginning of Bertolt Brecht’s poem If sharks were human: “If sharks were human they would build big boxes into the sea and they would put all kinds of delicious dishes into the boxes for the little fishes and generally they would keep it really sanitary. For instance, if a little fish would hurt its fin, then, they would put immediately a bandage on it so it wouldn’t die too fast but last for the dark belly of the big shark”. The poem functions as an allegory to the film; the girls who are prepared to be ready like commodities for consumption by the clients could be paralleled to the little fishes that are being taken care of in order to end up in the shark’s belly.

It could be said that, in this case, if the sharks are the traffickers and the little fishes are the

Estonian girls, then the shark’s belly could be the profit. Bertolt Brecht’s poem criticizes capitalist society and reveals the ruler-subservient hierarchy indicative of Amos Gitai’s leftist ideas.

Hanna narrates to Diana, one of the girls, her own story which also involves migration; many years ago she also had to leave her home, a border city in Germany, following her big love to Israel, as he was a Jew and did not feel quite right in Germany.

When they later split up, she met another man who showed her another kind of life, a “side- road” as she calls it, the illegal trafficking business. She states that, although she is no longer with him, they keep doing “business”: he has the northern part, and she has the southern. She proposes that a girl should not think of herself as a prostitute but merely as a working woman.

Such a comment makes even more profound the degradation and abhorrence that is correlated to the notion of prostitution. In my opinion, Promised Land reveals the actual inhumane conditions prostitutes have to deal with, as opposed to superficial and misleading

Hollywood representations of prostitution, such as in Pretty Woman (1990) by Garry

Marshall, for example. Gitai explains his conscious choice of showing realistic situations:

66 Cinema has contributed to a kind of glamorization of prostitution. Most

movies hold on to this sort of 19th Century idea about brothels, call girls etc.

But the truth is that in our age the merchandizing technique of prostitution

reached new peaks in the brutal slave trading mechanisms. I decided not to

romanticize the harsh modern reality of these women. For Promised Land, I

wanted to show concrete, realistic images about the trafficking of women and

prostitution. (Lormand)

In the following scene, a kind of “party” with loud music is taking place at the ship’s lobby. A young beautiful woman, Rose, who was present at the auction as an observer, comes to the ship, and Diana begs her for help. It is the first time in the film that it is explicitly stated, through Diana’s words, that the women on the ship are abused and treated as sex objects despite their will. Rose, however, avoids helping Diana and leaves the ship.

In the next scene, a truck is transporting the girls to a construction site, in front of a bar called “Promised Land”. The irony in the bar’s name is obvious, regarding both the illegal acts taking place as well as the space per se; it is an inhospitable, under-illuminated and labyrinthine environment. The girls have to climb some stairs at first, pass through dark corridors and descend down again. According to Frodon, Gitai presents Israel as a big brothel,

“less because he condemns the country among others, and more because he perceives it as a more evolved and horrible example of the global configuration” (145).

The following scenes address more the spectator’s feeling as they are connected to each other in a rather loose way. Diana’s and Rose’s stay in a room creates a deeper bond between them; it is also a motive for a retrospection as well as time for an inner self- exploration. Various images and scenes, real and imagined, mingle together confusing sometimes the spectator; scenes of an orthodox church, where Diana in a white dress sings along with other girls in the choir and Rose observes them, are interrupted by images of sex

67 and naked humiliation in front of the traffickers. The light color of white representing purity is opposed to the dark colors used to depict the dirty side of paid sex.

A sudden explosion and fire brings agitation and turmoil to the building; some girls are dead while others are transported in an ambulance. While the firemen are trying to put out the fire, Rose is searching for Diana everywhere, among the overwhelmed and disoriented girls. While the traffickers try to collect the girls back, Rose finally finds Diana and manages to protect her from the hands of a trafficker. Diana who seems to be disoriented and out of her mind tries to escape but Rose manages to take her away from that place by taking care of her and looking after her. The film ends with the two girls running away at night on the open road.

1. 4. 1. Documentary influences

Promised Land was an official selection of the 2005 Venice International Film

Festival but never got an American distributor. Gitai follows the documentary style through extensive use of hand-held camera, natural light and actual location as he consciously wants to differentiate his work from the everyday media representation. He explains:

If you're a filmmaker, the only thing you can do, [is to have a] subversive

attitude. You have to turn your back [on the media] and say…I'm going to

show you something different. And you — my public — you will decide for

yourself… I'm going to show you sequence shots, master shots, so that you

will know that I am not cutting and pasting bits and pieces; I'm showing you a

complete situation. So you can assemble the pieces in your own brain. It will

maybe haunt you for some time, stay in your mind. Next time you will watch

the evening news, you will still keep a trace of what I showed you and then it

will make this very slow gradual work of proposing an alternative reading. So

the question of form is essential to it [...]. This is the experience I like myself

68 as the spectator. I like to interpret films. I don't like just to consume them, just

to swallow them in one gulp. They demand something of me. I have to be an

interpreter. (Guillen)

Gitai further stresses the strong link to reality of the fictionalized events he presents:

Before the actual shooting of Promised Land, extensive research was made

thanks to reports from human rights organizations in Israel and elsewhere,

hundreds of pages of testimonies by victims of white slave traffic, exposing

these international networks, as well as records giving the details of their

operations. I used it as a point of reference to determine the zone of reality in

fictionalizing the real events. (Lormand)

1. 4. 2. Feminist Perspective

At this point it is important to draw attention to the fact that Promised Land departs from the more common representation of male migration and adopts a more feminist approach by presenting women as the film’s main characters. The more recent trend of women migrant representations certainly reflects the current economic and social situation. Ginette Verstraete in her article “Women’s Resistance Strategies in a High-Tech Multicultural Europe” explains:

“Instead of the male-dominated, industrial labor of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there is now a shortage of workers in the, often informal, service sector, a field dominated by immigrant women: nursing, teaching, and cleaning” (114).

There is no doubt that during the last twenty to thirty years a series of social, economic and political transformations brought what has been termed as the “new migration”.

Such transformations according to Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli include “the impact of glasnost through the Eastern Block, the end of the Cold War, the fall of Communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.” Additional contributory factors that could be identified

69 are “the advent of post-Fordism, with the decline of the manufacturing industry, the shift to a service economy, the growth of disorganized capitalism, of neo-liberal economy and of globalization” (Mazierska and Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe 139).

Despite the fact that the novelty of the post-1989 European migratory flows has been questioned and regarded as a continuation of older patterns of immigration, there is no doubt that the “feminization of migration” is rather new.

Whereas in the past men were the ones who first ventured to foreign countries

in search of better paid work, nowadays an increasing number of women travel

alone, leaving their families behind. Many of these women migrate in response

to new demands in the service sector, hoping to work as agricultural laborers,

nannies, maids, or as providers of care for the elderly or the disabled. Others,

however, are enticed by offers to become the brides of men in other countries

or fall prey to prostitution. (Bardan 95)

Several contemporary films deal with the problems and harsh conditions immigrant women have to face. The Mexican Amelia in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s film Babel (2006) similarly to the Filipino Gloria in Lukas Moodysson’s film Mammoth (2009) work as nannies to wealthy American families. The young Chinese Liu Hua in Gianni Amelio’s film The

Missing Star (2006) similarly to the young Chinese Shun Li in Andrea Serge’s film My name is Li (2011) migrates to Italy in order to be able to support her young son financially. The

Ukrainian Olga in Ulrich Seidl’s film Import/Export (2007) migrates to Austria in order to work as a nurse for elderly people. All these women have migrated alone to a foreign country in order to work in the service sector; furthermore, a very important common element in most of them is that they are single mothers who are forced to work far away in order to provide the bare necessities to their children.

There are also several contemporary films that deal with the issue of women trafficked to prostitution, a topic even more directly connected to capitalism and globalization. Such

70 films are the following: Lilja 4-ever (2002) by Lukas Moodysson, Sex Traffic (2004) by

David Yates, Human Trafficking (2005) by Christian Duguay, Trade (2007) by Marco

Kreuzpaintner, Cargo (2011) by Yan Vizinberg, and Trade of Innocents (2012) by

Christopher Bessette.

In Promised Land women are the victims and, despite the quite limited depiction of men, the latter ones enjoy the privilege of being depicted first and for quite long in the first close shot. In fact, although the spectator can also hear women’s voices at first, he only sees men, as if women are unimportant and thus invisible. Furthermore, it could be argued that men are usually depicted when leading women on the road; on the contrary, women are mostly confined in enclosed spaces according to the traditional correlation of women and domesticity and, when on the road, usually accompanied by men. The film follows thus the traditional association of man with the road and of woman with the house or any enclosed space. Chris Rojek and John Urry in the book Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory refer to this association since old times:

The first explorers often refused to take women on board because they were

believed to bring bad luck and to distract the men from their task. Bourgeois

culture evolved the home as the temple of femininity. Domestic life was

radically segregated from the public sphere. Although women obviously

inhabited public space, they did so under the protection of a chaperon. Women

who attempted to roam the metropolis freely struggled with deep male

prejudices regarding sexuality and space. These prejudices involved lurid

accounts of the dangers to feminine virtues of unaccompanied wandering.

Public space was presented as being dominated by prostitutes, pickpockets,

beggars and muggers. It is no accident that prostitutes were often described as

“women of the streets”. (16)

71 According to Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli “[t]he association of women on the road with prostitution became particularly strong in Eastern Europe after the collapse of

Communism due to the influx of prostitutes from the Balkans and the ex-Soviet Union”

(Crossing New Europe 166). This is evident in the above mentioned films, as the major area for women trafficking is the ex-Soviet Union.

In Promised Land the traditional opposition of the good/passive woman versus the active/vicious one can be clearly traced. The Estonian girls are typical examples of the naive and trustful women who get deceived, victimized and, in this case, trafficked. On the other hand, there are clear representations of the active/vicious and exploitative woman type as well; Anne is a very active, strong and masculine woman in a man’s role, auctioning the

Estonian girls and being interested only in profit. She is a typical bossy woman giving orders even to a strong and macho guy like Igor, who submissively obeys her. The German Hanna, the head of the trafficking business, appears in the film with more feminine characteristics than Anne: she is well-dressed and she has a motherly attitude as she tries to soothe and comfort the girls. She even explains her situation; deep down she might be another

“victimized” woman. However, despite her more feminine appearance, she still occupies a profitable position by exploiting and trafficking women, acquiring thus a masculine role. She is furthermore independent, as according to her words she no longer is in a relationship with that man, but they still do “business” together.

The film, however, does not remain in that classical division of women, but introduces another type of woman, Rose. Rose, an external and indifferent observer at first, is the woman that gets gradually involved in the situation and eventually saves and frees Diana. It could be argued that in the beginning Rose exhibits masculine attributes having a rather cold and distant position and a desire for voyeurism. She later, however, places herself in the position of the Estonian girls and suffers along with Diana. When the explosion takes place, she does maintain her self confidence and calmness and eventually manages to escape by saving Diana,

72 as well. In a sense, she is attributed with the masculine role of taking care of and saving the threatened and disoriented female, Diana. In my personal view, Rose represents the brake of the prostitute/woman of the street association; by freeing Diana from stability and enclosure and running in the street with her at the end of the film, she promotes the ideal of the free woman who, being in the street, is able to control her own destiny. According to Frodon, such an act can be also interpreted as a renewed version of the original Jewish message, with a possible Messianic reading of Promised Land whereby the English tourist, Rose, would be the

Messiah, and the attack, which will destroy the prostitutes’ prison, would be the Apocalypse, tearing open the gates of a future that is once again possible (Frodon 147).

Gitai expresses his point of view towards women:

It might be interesting to allow women to take over. Maybe they would apply

a more down to earth and humanistic vision to our conflict. At the same time, I

don't want to idealize women too much. Women are also capable of being

killers. I consider myself non-racist and non-sexist, so I think we all have the

potential of being angelic but also monstrous. I think that today, because

women are still subject to sexist attitudes, they are agents of change in a

positive way. Not because of some sort of DNA composition, but because of

the social circumstances. They haven't yet been allowed to achieve their

maximum liberty.Maybe the condition of not always being in the most

powerful positions has given them a good critical way of looking at things.

Women can be good agents of change, but they will have to assume this. It

won't be given. It can't be taken for granted. (Brussat)

73 1. 5. Eden Is West (2009)

This world is such a mess, only a magician can change it

Elias, a young man from an undefined Eastern country, tries to migrate to the West which, according to his dream, can be equated to paradise; in reality, though, his journey and even the destination proves to be everything but a paradise. He has to travel through many countries, encounter various people and adjust himself to different situations in order to overcome the hardships. Elias, the postmodern Ulysses of our times, becomes thus the symbol of every migrant who tries to find a better life and future.

The film’s first shot depicts a ship sailing into the open sea. It is the ship which transports hundreds of illegal immigrants — Elias among them. As this is only revealed in the next shot, it could be argued that the depiction of the ship in the first shot has a deeper meaning; the ship is a clear symbol of mobility; yet, at the same time, according to Michel

Foucault, it is “the heterotopia par excellence” as it is “a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea” (336). Furthermore, in Foucault’s words, the ship, “the greatest reserve of the imagination” makes Elias dream of a new life and a new land while at the same time the spectator fantasizes a new cinematic journey.

Eden is West, inspired according to the director by Homer’s Odyssey, narrates the hindrances and interruptions in the attempt for the search of a new home, a new land and, eventually, a new identity. The critical point of the loss of the old identity occurs when the immigrants, right before their ascent to this ship from a boat, tear up their passports and their identity cards, and throw them to the sea.

In the following shot, Elias washed out on a shore wakes up after being hit with a ball.

Unlike Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus is washed out naked and tries to hide his nudity

74 from Nausica, in the film Gavras transforms the original scene into a post-modern one; Elias, being washed out with his clothes on, has to take them off, in order to resemble the others on the beach which turns out to be a nudists’ beach. A naked girl invites Elias to play ball with them but he kindly refuses, grabs the hotel’s yellow towel to hide his genitals and proceeds to the changing cabin, where he wears some clothes that he finds there. Now he is taken for the hotel’s staff as in the back of his shirt is written the hotel’s name-logo, Eden Club-Paradise.

In my opinion, the hotel refers to the three basic elements that the West is based on: the Greek civilization, Christianity and the Roman law-administration. Eden Club-Paradise is situated in Greece, its name alludes to the Bible and it is governed by strict legislation. Yet, despite its location in Greece, the various languages spoken and heard at the hotel (Greek,

French, German, Engish, Russian etc.) render it a globalized space. The West is seen as paradise for all the migrants who come from the East and try to find a better life in the West.

Yet “Paradise” reveals its other “faces” very soon; the demand of the tourists’ children for

Coca-Cola alludes to consumerism, Americanization and globalization, especially of the

West. Furthermore, the strict migration policy becomes evident by the presence of the police in the hotel searching for illegal immigrants, as well as by the barbed wires that surround the hotel.

The new identity of Elias, after stealing again some clothes is that of a tourist. In this way, he avoids being recognized as a clandestine during the night immigrant hunt that occurs in the hotel. He gets though caught by the hotel’s homosexual manager, due to his handsomeness, after having turned down his erotic desire.

Elias gets the opportunity later on to contribute to the hotel in another way; he becomes the magician’s Nicolas Nickelby assistant during a show for the hotel’s customers.

In the show, he impersonates first a policeman chasing immigrants, an ironic comment to reality, and then a maharaja, alluding to Elias’s eastern origin and mocking his miserable condition. At the end of the show, the magician gives Elias his card and invites him to Paris to

75 meet him in “Lido”. This gesture is interpreted by Elias as an invitation for a further co- operation evoking a feeling of optimism for his future. For the moment though he has to protect himself from a bursting storm.

As a deus ex machina, Ms Lisner, a German tourist at the hotel, invites Elias to accompany her to her bungalow, due to the rain; Elias changes his identity once again to become the woman’s illicit lover. When the following day the hotel’s managers suddenly invade Ms Lisner’s room having discovered that Elias is an immigrant and demand his deportation, he departs secretly from the hotel with a boat he finds on the shore, the equivalents of Calypso and Odysseus’s raft. From the moment he reaches land again, his journey is reminiscent of a road movie with various adventures.

His first encounter with a guy in a car who promises to help him proves to be a disaster, as he tricks him and steals all his money that Ms Lisner had granted to him. This incident is reminiscent of Stavros’s Topouzoglou situation in the film “America, America”

(1963) by Elia Kazan. Stavros, the film’s protagonist, on the road to Constantinople got robbed by the Turkish thief Abdul who initially pretended to be his friend. Elias, similarly to

Stavros continues his journey having however “lost some of his innocence” (Neve 149).

Luckily, Elias, later on, after finding help and support by a middle-aged provincial woman, Sophia, reaches Italy. At this point, it should be mentioned that Gavras presents the passage through the borders between Greece and Italy as something quite easy, while in reality things are not exactly like this. It is well known that in Patras, Greece’s sea gateway to the West, from where ships daily leave to various Italian ports, many immigrants remain stuck in a state of “neither here nor there” something similar to a state of “permanent temporariness”, being unable to continue their journey (Spinthourakis and Antonopoulou 77).

When he reaches Italy, Elias continues his journey as a hitch-hiker in the car of a snobbish and upstart Greek couple encountered in a gas station. When they abandon him unexpectedly in the middle of snowed mountains, Elias luckily gets picked up very soon by

76 two Germans, Karl and Guenter, in a transport lorry. Despite the initial doubts for Elias’s maltreatment, as they seem to be homosexual, they treat him very nicely, even warning and hiding him from the police. The theme of the robust and brutal but good-hearted truck driver can be traced back to the film by Xavier Koller “Journey of Hope” (Reise der Hoffnung,

1990), where the Swiss truck driver treats well and assists a family of illegal Turkish immigrants on their way to Switzerland. The initial doubt between Karl and Guenter of Elias being a terrorist, is immediately rejected by their statement that the terrorists use planes and trains and they have identity documents, while he seems to be really hungry and in need. This sounds like a comment by the director, drawing attention to the usual accusations people attach to every migrant without any second thought.

Elias, once again alone in the street, after having passed the borders of Germany to

France, gets approached by two French-speaking guys and accepts the offered illegal job, in a worksite where old TV monitors are recycled, in exchange of the promise for French papers and passport. When he realizes the deceitfulness he leaves and, once more in the street and chased by the police, he changes his identity and conjoins a bunch of Roma who get him into their car.

When Elias finally manages to find the magician in Paris and reminds him of his invitation to meet him, he simply gives him a “magic” stick departing immediately and leaving Elias disappointed and pending. The end of the film remains ambiguous and highly symbolic; Elias, by holding his “magic” stick and by pointing it to the Eiffel tower makes the tower appear “magical” as well, as it seems to shimmer. The fictional frightening image of many policemen lined up does not seem to threaten him anymore. After a direct-Brechtian look to the camera and the spectator, Elias makes his way towards the glittering Eiffel tower.

1. 5. 1. Inspiration by Homer’s Odyssey

The film, as mentioned earlier, is inspired by the first fictional journey, Homer’s

Odyssey. It adopts, however, a postmodern view, making the journey even more challenging and uncertain, as it is not a home-coming journey, like Homer’s The Odyssey, but a home- seeking journey, a journey definitely more abstract, open and more difficult. Very importantly, Elias is an anti-hero, a simple poor migrant, opposed to the wealthy and established Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. He also has to invent by himself a different identity each time without having the help of goddess Athena, as the Homeric hero had. The most significant thing, however, is that, although in Homer’s Odyssey Ithaca consists of the glorious homeland and the stable reference point, in Eden Is West there is not such a glorified homeland. Its name is not even mentioned remaining abstract and Elias does not seem to have a special relation to it. In Eden Is West the journey’s goal is not the homeland, but an imaginary ideal place to live, Paris (Ballesteros 195).

1. 5. 2. References to Road Movies

In my opinion, the film is informed by the American road movie, as described in

David Laderman’s book Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, which celebrates the journey as an exploration of space but also of the self. Furthermore, Eden Is West, a French film by a Greek director, follows the European road movie tradition which is mainly preoccupied with the issue of human dislocation and migration for economic reasons.

The film, although it is primarily a “quest narrative”, includes some elements of the

“outlaw narrative”. Elias is searching for a job, a new home, even a new identity and self, but the journey emphasizes also his attempt to escape from the police, a typical element of the outlaw road film. Responding to criticism that the film depicts too many policemen, Gavras

78 responds that this is so because it is seen through Elias’ perspective. “Elias fears the police.

So in his vision, the police are everywhere, whereas we who may not be so scared of the police will not notice them so much” (Eguchi).

Such a double perspective - Elias’s and the Western world’s -, as far as the point of view is concerned, is another post-modern characteristic. Gavras explains:

[W]hile this film is about Elias’s story, it also talks about people in the west.

How we, as people in the west, live, and how we act when encountering

people like Elias. How we accept him and how we do not accept him. For

example, how we exploit him sexually and how we make him do things he

does not want. So it depicts the two worlds: Elias’ and ours. (Eguchi)

Unlike what Laderman’s book claims to be the post-modern attribute of the 1980s post-modern American road movie, Eden Is West has a social and political background. In this sense the film clearly shares features of the 1990s multicultural road movie such as the genre’s re-politicized cultural critique. Elias might not be gay, black or a woman, as usually are the central characters in the multicultural road movies analyzed by Laderman, but he certainly is an outsider and “Other”, in line with the above mentioned characters. In my opinion, Eden Is West could easily come also under the multicultural road movie through its depiction of various nationalities, as well as women and gay men.

Finally, it could be said that Eden Is West has also some of the characteristics of the early 1970s road movie; although it does rely on a social and political critique, absent from the 1970s existential road movie, it resembles it in the engagement with psychological issues and personal search. Elias is shown in his interaction with the outside world but the spectator is in the position to feel his inner state as well, characterized by loneliness and alienation, features of the existential road movie. Gavras describes Elias’s psychological state:

Loneliness is what is in the character the most. He is alone in the city, and the

people walking will look at him, but in the end, they will just pass on by. He

79 cannot even talk about his problem. This is the kind of loneliness that’s there.

(Eguchi)

In the same way that the existential road movies reflect the broader sociopolitical situation in early 1970s America, Eden Is West reflects the current globalized and financial precarious situation. Gavras compares his immigration to France with contemporary experiences: “When I came to France, it was still a time where you could find hope that the world was heading in a positive direction. One could still feel secure about finding some kind of work then. But with the present economy deteriorating, the employment rate is mounting”

(Eguchi). Ultimately, Eden Is West as a European film has most of the features described in

Laderman’s book in the chapter concerning the European road movie. In general terms,

European road movies do not emphasize so much the criminal adventures of outlaws or the romanticized freedom of the road expressing counterculture and rebellion like most of the

Americans do. The European road movie is mostly associated with introspection, psychological and emotional search rather than violence and danger. According to Laderman,

“traveling outside of society becomes less important (and perhaps less possible) than traveling into the national culture, tracing the meaning of citizenship as a journey” (248). The European road movie is preoccupied mainly with national identities and national borders due to the border proximity of many different countries. It explores issues of quest related to national identity and community often with philosophical and political dimensions. The main points distinguishing the European from the American road movie are stated by Laderman:

“characters on the road out of necessity rather than choice, seeking work, family, or a home; less valorization of the individual Road Man or the outlaw couple, more emphasis on the traveling group; less fetishism of the automobile; less emphasis on driving as high-speed action-spectacle” (248).

Eden Is West definitely follows the European tradition as the central character, Elias, travels out of necessity and not out of rebellion. On the contrary, he constantly tries to

80 conform to every situation he faces each time. Despite the fact, however, that he is not a criminal, he constantly tries to avoid getting caught by the police, a feature of the “outlaw”

American road movie. The film does present Elias’s personal quest elaborating on his psychological and emotional state, in line with the European road movie; simultaneously, however, the film constitutes a critique of society, the most prominent feature of the

American road movie. Eden Is West concerns the issue of identity, national and personal, a

European’s road movie trait but at the same time it reminds one of moving on the margins of society since Elias is depicted as a pariah. The film conforms also to the European road movie tradition regarding the means of transport; Elias travels any way possible or available, by ship, boat, coach, on foot etc. Such a necessity is obviously “miles away” from the car fetishism as a status symbol in many American road movies.

1. 5. 3. References to Accented Cinema

Eden Is West could also come under the category of “accented cinema”, as described in Hamid Naficy’s book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking.

The director is a “situated but universal” figure that became an auteur, working independently using collective modes of production. Gavras, who left Greece partly by being forced to, as he was barred from Greek universities due to his father’s leftist political action, maintains as other exilic filmmakers an ambivalent relationship with his previous and current place and culture. He fits thus Naficy’s description: “As partial, fragmented, and multiple subjects, these filmmakers are capable of producing ambiguity and doubt about the taken for granted values of their home and host societies” (An Accented Cinema 13).

As far as the style and the mode of production is concerned, accented cinema does not always conform to the mainstream, dominant style of classic cinema which usually presents through filming and editing a realistic depiction of the world. According to Naficy,

81 “[p]roduced in a capitalist (if alternative) mode of production, the accented films are not necessarily radical, for they act as agents not only of expression and defiance but also of assimilation, even legitimization, of their makers and their audiences” (An Accented Cinema

26). Gavras has been from the very beginning of his career concerned about his audience; it was thus a conscious decision to follow a mainstream style to narrate his films which in general terms is easier to follow and gain a larger audience. The director himself explains:

“The problem of audience is complex. You can't forget them, but you don’t know who they are or what they like. I try to be the first audience, to keep my virginity as a spectator” (Jaggi).

A large audience can be achieved only through emotional engagement and by being entertained, as the director states. “Entertainment is important. We go to the cinema for entertainment purposes. When we say entertainment, in Greek, we have the word

Psychagogia. I like the word because it has the word psyche which means “soul” and the word agogia which means “to learn”. So entertainment is to make the soul learn. Film is a popular art form from its beginning. It also talks about society” (Eguchi). This does not mean however, that Gavras’s cinema can be equalled to that of classical Hollywood. Eden Is West, and especially the first part dedicated to the hotel incidents, reveals also Gavras’s contempt towards “mainstream” tourists and the tourist industry and his simultaneous fondness of a kind of counter-cultured, exploratory travel Elias has to make, following the tradition of the

American road movie. According to Mazierska and Rascaroli, “[i]n its perceived inauthenticity, commodification and kitsch, tourism is typically contrasted with travelling”

(Crossing New Europe 35). The tourists presented in the film seem to be greedy and selfish without much understanding for the “Other” or any actual willingness to open up to other cultures. The Russian tourist demands from Elias to clean his toilet immediately, the German

Ms. Lisner craves for sex, while the constantly quarreling Greek couple on the road is extremely snobbish and self-centered. All of them, while having travelled to another country,

82 appear to be uninterested in meeting or coming closer to other cultures; they travel for relaxation, sexual pleasure or prestige.

The characters’ isolation and especially Elias’s loneliness and inability to communicate can be attributed also to his inability to speak proper French or English. In line with the “accented” films, as described by Hamid Naficy, Eden Is West is literally an accented film since its protagonist, Elias, speaks French with an accent. Furthermore, his inability to speak French properly makes him “use his eyes and his body to get by. He has to understand the society he was suddenly allowed to enter, the society that was unknown to him, by the mere act of seeing. He cannot do this by using language” (Eguchi). At this point, it should be noted that Elias’s general inability to communicate verbally is a Gavras’s conscious homage to the silent films. According to him, “Films made in the silent era and silent films were the most beautifully made in the world” (Eguchi). It could be said that Elias, sometimes being a mute clumsy character, refers to Charlie Chaplin’s silent films and specifically to the short film The Immigrant (1917).

In this respect, since Elias has to use body language in order to understand and to become understood, the film becomes even more global, apart from the fact that it includes various languages, as most accented films do. It has to be pointed out also that Elias’s native language is a constructed one. It was the director’s intention to make it seem universal in order to stress that “the immigrant” could come from anywhere. Such an attitude towards language in general is clearly a post-modern one. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that it is French that he has to learn and speak properly, the language of the country of destination; in this respect it is the western point of view that prevails.

1. 5. 4. Postmodern Features

Gavras adopts a rather post-modern attitude as far as the portrayal of the women is concerned. All women in the film are portrayed as very independent, active, powerful or even bossy females in charge of their lives and on the road. Ms. Lisner, presented as the contemporary western female figure, is extremely dynamic and independent behaving in a rather masculine way; she travels alone in another country having left her family and job in

Germany, being ready for whatever sexual adventures come her way. Even the Greek Sofia, who represents a traditional rural woman, is very energetic and independent: she is a single mother of two children, and runs a bird selling business. She is a soft-hearted woman with initiative who, upon encountering Elias on the road while driving her tractor, invites him both into her vehicle and her life. Even the hotel’s directress, who does not appear to travel, is dynamic in a place characterized by constant movement and transition. So, the female representations in Eden Is West differ substantially from Eyerman’s and Loefgren’s description that women generally “must content themselves with rather predictable supporting roles, the motherly or cynical waitress at the roadside diner, the damsel in distess or the seductive hitchhiker” (Eyerman and Loefgren 65).

Yet, despite the aforementioned, women are not completely disconnected from the traditional notions of femaleness. Despite their independence, all women depicted seem to have the need to be attached to a man; Ms. Lisner and Sofia desire Elias’s company, the first one temporarily while the second one permanently. Furthermore, the classical notion of correlation between femaleness and domesticity is not completely subverted: Ms. Lisner is a tourist but she is mostly seen in the enclosed space of her cabana desiring sexual intercourse;

Sofia, although firstly seen on the road, later on is rather associated with her humble traditional house and family life. Most importantly, it should be pointed out that the film’s main wandering and travelling character is Elias; he is the one who travels outdoors, the

84 masculine space in cinema following the tradition of the western’s frontier and the

Hollywood’s road movie highway (Mazierska and Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe 121). It should be stressed, however, that women in Eden Is West are not simply passive figures or just erotic distractions and obstacles as in typical Hollywood road movies. On the contrary, they are rather important “help-stations” in Elias’s journey. Ms. Lisner offers him a shelter during a night with heavy rain, money and a hideout while Sofia offers him accommodation, work and food, as well. The film is postmodern from a more technical perspective, as well.

First of all, as already mentioned, Eden Is West reminds the spectator from time to time of its artificiality including self-referential scenes like the ones showing cameras shooting a film.

Even the magician’s Nickelby theatrical performance - having integrated incidents from the film - functions as a reminder of the performance’s artificiality and by extension even the film’s artificiality.

Another post-modern characteristic is the film’s open end, which leaves the spectator unsure about the course of events in the end. Such a characteristic is encountered in both the

American existentialist road movies of the 70s as well as in the postmodern ones of the 80s influenced by the French New Wave, where Gavras made his apprenticeship.

A further post-modern characteristic in the end of the film is the use of magic realism which according to Theo L. D’haen is the cutting edge of postmodernism (Mazierska and

Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe 27). For Elias, who remains alone and jobless with an uncertain future in a foreign country, even when he reaches Paris, the Eiffel tower offers with its glittering a new hope. It should be mentioned here that Nicolas Nickleby is the major hero of Charles Dickens’s eponymous work. In my opinion, the novel, being an ironic social satire, aimed at what Dickens perceived as social injustices. In this respect, the magician’s name functions as a symbol and his “magic” aims to point out the social injustice that Elias and many other immigrants have to face. It seems that, in line with the use of magic realism in other cases, like in Latin American literature, also in this case “magic is often the only way to

85 understand the world and survive in hostile circumstances; it is a secret weapon of the disadvantaged and marginalized” (Mazierska and Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe 26).

While the magician Nickelby is the one who performs magic tricks, he sees the world realistically as he appears belonging to the established Parisian society. Elias, on the other hand, being marginalized is the one who sees and needs magic in order to cope with the outside hostile world. So, we have another ironic gaze of Costa-Gavras.

1. 5. 5. Representation of Paris

As far as the representation of Paris is concerned, Gavras adopts a rather ambiguous stance; although for Elias throughout his whole journey Paris was imagined as something like a paradise or a promised land, when he actually arrives there, the reality appears to be completely different and disappointing. Elias, at this point, seems to represent the young

Gavras, who, when firstly arrived in Paris full of hopes and dreams, found the scenery dull and disappointing. Gavras remembers:

It was the worst moment of my life. I took the train so I arrived in Lyon

station. The Paris I saw the moment I stepped out of the station was raining,

dreary, and of course, in those times, the surface of the buildings were black

with soot. Fog was setting in, and it was a sad landscape. The moment I saw

this, I thought, why did I even think of coming here? It was really the most

pessimistic vision”. (Eguchi)

In spite of such a disappointing and pessimistic vision of Paris, Gavras decides to end his film with a glorious and shimmering image of the Eiffel tower, the symbol of Paris.

Gavras explains that in the last scene, “magic is no use. Magic cannot help him [Elias]. So this is a way to show this as well. But maybe Paris, with its reputation as a city of light can help him.” Gavras continues saying that for Elias “the Eiffel Tower represents hope. Paris is a

86 city of light, a city of human rights and a city of the French revolution and the Eiffel Tower represents all this. Paris is also the city of the Arts” (Eguchi). It becomes obvious that, for

Gavras, Paris is of great importance, not only as the city that hosted him but as the city which helped him develop artistically and professionally. In this sense, Gavras shares a very important characteristic with other directors of the French New Wave, like Godard, Truffault,

Rivette and Rohmer in whose work Paris plays a significant role (Mazierska and Rascaroli,

Crossing New Europe 46). In Eden Is West it could be said that it is in this last scene the first time Elias, as well as the spectator, see Paris in the traditional, “touristic” glorious way.

Ultimately, no matter that the director has shown that he is aware of the tremendous difficulties outsiders and immigrants have to face in the “other” non-touristic and non- imperial parts of the city, for Gavras Paris remains to represent a utopic city of hope.

1. 5. 6. Political Comment Regarding Migration

Eden Is West, despite its essential post-modernist features, is pervaded by a strong political comment on the contemporary immigration problem which is organically connected to realism. Gavras, having assimilated influences from the French New Wave integrates into his film documentary techniques, for example by using non-professional actors. He states: “In the ship they are all real immigrants. In Lavrion there is an immigrant host center…I found immigrants from everywhere: Kurds, Iraqis, Pakistani, Hindu, and some black ones too…They were excellent walk-on since they knew the topic very well” (Gavras).

Additionally, the film’s scene depicting the Roma people was also shot with non professionals. The Roma in the film function as a symbol of wanderlust and eternal homelessness, two key characteristics of our contemporary globalized era. According to

Gavras, “Gypsies are permanent immigrants by habit as well as by need. When we want to habituate them somewhere they revolt and want to wander here and there” (Gavras).

It could be said that, apart from the Roma, the whole film functions as a symbol of immigration. In this sense Elias is elevated to an icon of the immigrants in all countries and eras. Gavras explains: “The name Elias is encountered in all the religions: in the Christian, the

Jewish and the Muslim. Furthermore, the name stems from the ancient Greek word “helios”

(sun). Elias can be anybody. If we gave him a nationality it would be as if we had to classify him automatically under a certain category. He would thus acquire an additional background expert for the one of the immigrant” (Gavras).

Gavras’s Eden Is West, however, despite its timelessness and initial influence from

The Odyssey, corresponds directly to our contemporary era following the current political and social situations like any other of his films. In an era of migration flows and border destabilization:

88 [m]igration policies and immigration control are the core of the current

political agenda in many European countries, and in the European Union

itself…The “immigrant” has become a social symbol for immigrants who

supposedly abuse welfare arrangements (social security, housing, education

and health care), commit crimes and jeopardize the employment of established

citizens. At the same time, Western Europe is caught in a “conflict of interest

and of policy” typical of industrialized societies -“between maximizing labour

supply (and flexibility) on the one hand and protecting a nation’s cultural

integrity on the other”.(Mazierska and Rascaroli, Crossing New Europe 141)

So, while the immigrant has been linked mainly due to mass media to a negative and threatening image, Gavras’s goal through this film was to narrate the story of an immigrant in a way that does not terrify. Gavras explains: “Even though there are many films that deal with these immigrants, they may only show the tragic state they are in, and only to the extent where they are rejected by society. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to pay homage to the immigrants and to show that these people from other countries could play an important role in the society” (Eguchi). Indeed, Elias on a social level is either invisible or not wanted, but on a personal level, he sometimes ends up helping others. Gavras states in an interview: “We speak about globalization of economy, but it’s also globalization for immigration. Millions of people, they’re willing to have a better life. A better life, they cannot have it where they live, so they move.” (Adams).

1. 6. Postmodern Globalized Border Crossing - Transitional Places and “Third Space”

1. 6. 1. Border Crossing

The border itself as a general meaning is a very ambivalent space as concepts of race, class, gender and membership intersect. As Naficy states, “border consciousness, like exilic liminality, is theoretically against binarism and duality and for a third optique, which is multiperspectival and tolerant of ambiguity, ambivalence and chaos” (An Accented Cinema

31). Despite the globalization process, which proclaims, theoretically at least, the world’s unification, physical borders remain real and very dangerous for those who have to cross them.

The border, as an in-between place full of ambiguity and intersections, reached literary circles and became romanticized and even idealized, especially through the famous work

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza [1987] of the cultural theorist and feminist philosopher Gloria Anzaldua. Nevertheless, the border’s real harsh conditions still remain in existence and could be described as “open and infected wounds” because “unequal power relations and incompatible identities prevent the wound from healing” (Naficy, An Accented

Cinema 32). Consequently, as borders exist everywhere, there is a variety of films from diverse national backgrounds and countries that deal with border crossings. I have included a long list of such films at the end of my thesis.

Perhaps the border that has resulted in more feature films than any other is the two- thousand-mile United States-Mexico border, which has generated scores of films in the

United States and 147 films in Mexico in a single decade, between 1979 and 1989. These films, apart from the general characterization of migratory films, can be called according to

90 Naficy “border films” as their plot involves significant journeying and border crossing as well as use of border settings. The films themselves cross generic and narrative boundaries

(Naficy, An Accented Cinema 239).

The most popular type of border films is the Chicano cinema, produced mostly by

Mexican-Americans in the United States, but away from Hollywood; its critique is evident “in the strict binary opposition that it posited between American and Spanish “imperialist” cultures and Mexican and Indian “authentic” native cultures” (Naficy, An Accented Cinema

239). Recognized as a film movement since the release of Luis Valdez’s I am Joaquin (1969),

Chicano cinema increased its appeal including various border films, like Gregory Nava’s film

El Norte (1983), Ramon Menendez’s Stand and Deliver (1987), Cheech Marin’s Born in East

L.A. (1987), Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1993), as mentioned by Naficy. Some recent

Mexican-American films that deal with border crossing are Central Station (1998) by Walter

Salles, Smoke Signals (1998) by Chris Eyre, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) by Tommy Lee Jones, Bordertown (2006) by Gregory Nava, Fast Food Nation (2006) by

Richard Linklater, La Misma Luna (2007) by Patricia Riggen, and Sin Nombre (2009) by

Cary Fukunaga.

Hamid Naficy explains that “[a]long with this evolution of the Chicano cinema, terms such as “border” and “border crossing”, which originally referred to the experience of the undocumented and bracero Mexican farmworkers who crossed into the Unites States for seasonal work, expanded to become metaphors for borders and border crossing of all kinds”

(Naficy, An Accented Cinema 240).

Regarding the border topic, it is very interesting to see how it is presented in Promised

Land; although the Egyptian nomads cross one of the best-protected borders in the world and the division between Jews and Arabs is well known, in this case, in the name of commerce and profit, the border seems to become transparent: it is actually extremely easy to cross the

91 border and come to an agreement as far as the sale of “fresh meat”, i.e. the young women, is concerned. In Jean-Michel Frodon’s words,

The issues of geographical and political borders that still separate peoples and

families are infinitely porous when it comes to traffic and the demands of

profit. Israel here is less a country of its own than an extreme place of paradox,

[…] a “post-modern” space connected to globalization-commercial, but also

technological and societal. (146)

The close relationship between contemporary American border films and globalization is also stressed in the article “Cosmopolitics in Border Film: Amores Perros (2000) and Sleep

Dealer (2008)” by Markus Heide. According to Heide,

Some more recent American productions connect local border issues with

issues of globalization, such as people-smuggling, undocumented workers,

maquiladoras, global media, the American fear of terrorists crossing the

borders, transnational economic linkages, the power of multinational

corporations, the growing economic North-South divide. (96)

As film examples Heide mentions Trade (2007) by Marco Kreuzpaintner, Crossing

Over (2009) by Wayne Kramer and Sin Nombre (2009) by Cary Joji Fukunaga pointing out that while, on the one hand, the films criticize economic globalization, on the other hand, they are produced “within the parameters and logic of free global capital” (96).

1. 6. 2. “Thirdspace”-Transitional Places

All these films, as typical “border films”, apart from any depiction of utopic open spaces/chronotopes (nature, landscapes) correlated usually with the idealized homeland and the opposite dystopic closed spaces of exile, are full of places of transition. Naficy states:

“The thirdspace chronotope involves transitional places and transnational sites, such as

92 borders, airports, and train stations, and transportation vehicles, such as buses, ships, and trains” (An Accented Cinema 154). In This World constitutes in a sense the quintessence of such transportation vehicles. Jamal and Enayat have to change many and various means of transportation throughout their journey, like buses, trucks, truck containers and ships. The

Estonian girls in Promised Land are also transported under inhumane conditions inside mini vans and trucks, and have to remain inside a ship which is used as a transitional place before their arrival at the bar called the “Promised Land”.

These transitional places constitute a different kind of space on their own; it is a kind of space between the starting point and the destination, it is a space “in between”, alienated and autonomous from the surrounding environment.

As Edward Soja states, thirdspace is distinguished by an “all-inclusive simultaneity”:

Everything comes together in Thirdspace: subjectivity and objectivity, the

abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the

unimaginable, the repetitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind

and body, consciousness and the unconscious, the disciplined and the

transdisciplinary, everyday life and unending history. (Thirdspace 56-57)

Naficy described these kinds of spaces:

As an exilic strategy, “thirding” goes beyond the sum of its binary antecedents

of homeland and host society, for it involves reconstituting “an open

alternative that is both similar and strikingly different” (Soja, Thirdspace 61).

Soja’s phrase “similar and strikingly different” must now be added to

Derrida’s “both and neither”, Rudshie’s “at once plural and partial”,

Anzaldua’s “mestizaje”, Bhabba’s “hybridity”, Naficy’s “haggling” and

“interstitiality”, Robertson’s “glocal”, and Gillian Rose’s “at once inside and

outside”. (Naficy, An Accented Cinema 220)

1. 6. 3. The Camp in In This World

One of the key concepts posed in these films and especially in In This World is the concept of the camp. The concept of the camp as a space intrudes more and more into contemporary globalized life. In fact, Giorgio Agamben, a contemporary Italian philosopher influenced by Michel Foucault’s biopolitics (1978)1 and Hannah Arendt’s vita activa (1958)2, positing two models of social organization, the camp and the polis, states that “Today it is not the city but rather the camp that is the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West”

(Agamben 181).

Agamben explains that the camps occurred not out of ordinary law but out of exception and martial law (167). He refers historically to the first appearances of the camp, the campos de concentraciones, created by the Spanish in Cuba in 1896 to eliminate the popular uprising of the colony or the “concentration camps” into which the English herded the

Boers toward the start of the 20th century. He then of course extensively analyses the case of the Nazi Lager camps. Agamben further explains:

Insofar as its inhabitants were stripped of every political status and wholly

reduced to bare life, the camp was also the most absolute biopolitical space

ever to have been realized, in which power confronts nothing but pure life,

without any mediation. (Agamben 171)

Following Agamben’s distinction between zoe, or bare life, the fact of being alive, and bios, or full life, the social presence in the world, it becomes obvious that the camp’s inhabitants are reduced only to bare life. Agamben parallels the camp’s inhabitant with the homo sacer of the Roman Empire. The homo sacer has been excluded from the religious

1 Michel Foucault’s concept of “biopolitcs” firstly mentioned in his lecture series Society Must Be Defended, and later on in his The Birth of Biopolitcs and The Courage of Truth lectures, refers to a control apparatus exerted over a population. 2 According to Hannah Arendt’s book The Human Condition, “vita activa” designates three fundamental human activities: labor, work and action.

94 community and from all political life; his entire existence is reduced to a bare life stripped of every right because of the fact that anyone can kill him without committing homicide; he can save himself only in perpetual flight or a foreign land.

Didier Fassin in his article “Compassion and Repression: The Moral Economy of

Immigration Policies in France” extends Agamben’s theory of the camp to the contemporary refugee camps and specifically to Sangatte. He states: “The refugees thus occupy a central place in our moral economy because they reveal the persistence of bare life in contemporary societies: deprived from their human rights by lack of citizenship, they can only claim to stay alive, most of the time confined in camps […]” (367).

The Shamshatoo camp in Pakistan depicted in In This World is a typical example of a contemporary refugee camp in the East. It was created out of exception and martial law in line with Agamben’s statement in order to “host” fifty three thousand Afghan refugees, some of them fleeing since the 1979 Soviet invasion of their country, and the most recent ones escaping the US-led bombing campaign in 2001. The fact that the camp’s inhabitants are reduced only to “bare life” becomes obvious from the descriptions in the beginning of the film that the daily food ration is 480 grams of wheat flour, 25 grams of vegetable oil and 60 grams of pulses. Even more, Jamal, being only sixteen years old, has to work in a brick factory and gets paid less than a dollar a day.

The Shamshatoo camp’s existence for over twenty years fits in line with Agamben’s statement that “The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule”. He further explains: “In the camp, the state of exception, which was essentially a temporary suspension of the rule of law on the basis of a factual state of danger, is now given a permanent spatial arrangement, which as such nevertheless remains outside the normal order” (Agamben 169).

A more permanent spatial arrangement was created in the Sangatte refugee camp; the camp, an unused warehouse of 25.000 square meters, a few kilometers outside Calais in

95 France, opened in 1999 in order to provide accommodation only for a short time to immigrants heading for England. During the two and a half years of its existence (Nicolas

Sarkozy, being then the French minister of the Interior of the new right-wing government ordered its closure in 2002) (Fassin 364), it accommodated up to 50.000 immigrants with most of them having remained there for more or less a month. Although refugees were not citizens, they did have human rights and their circulation was free as long as they did not try to cross the channel.

The situation changed, however, according to Fassin, when the British government, under public pressure, decided to block illegal entrance. Fassin states: “[G]etting out of

Sangatte became more and more difficult for immigrants, and the Red Cross Center increasingly turned into a place of confinement, with as many as 1.500 people in a place initially opened to receive 200-300 persons” (363). Fassin concludes that “thinking about

Sangatte in terms of the broader form of the camp might help to comprehend the profound nature of our treatment of refugees and in a broader sense the moral economy of our societies” (376). According to Ballesteros, the camps are characterized by an inert and motionless nature and they are no-man’s land where refugees keep living their lives regardless of their impotence (190). In Michel Agier’s words, “[R]efugee camps are the most advanced form of the global treatment of stigmatized identities and undesirable groups” (61).

The confinement of the immigrants as well as the increased security measures are the results following the events of the September 11th based on a feeling both of threat of terrorist attacks and of insecurity of criminality and delinquency in everyday life. Furthermore, behind the more plausible argument that too many refugees might damage the welfare system, religious, ethnic and racial factors are of no less importance. In Fassin’s words: “it has to do with the protection of a European, Christian, and white civilization against Third World,

Muslim or black populations”; “Within this context, which has evolved far from the humanist

96 principles of the Geneva Convention3, asylum seekers and aliens in general are seen as potential threats to these three dimensions of European security” (Fassin 381). The contemporary refugee camps and specifically the Sangatte camp are also influenced by the oxymoron political program of France which dictates “reconcile humanitarian aid to refugees with refusal of clandestine immigration”. So, the humanitarian aspect, (Red Cross, canteen delivering meals and volunteers) coexists with the political aspect (strict controls and police presence).

Despite the fact that the camp functions as a storage space for “undesirable” subjects, the “alienated” ones who live outside the polis, I think that one should take into account

Fassin who, complementing Agamben, argues that both the polis and the camp constitute two sides of contemporary democracies. In Fassin’s words, “[b]ecause these regimes defend the polis for the happy few, they invent the camp for the undesirable. In the former, life is recognized as the political existence of the citizen, whereas in the latter, it is reduced to the bare life of the vagabond.” Concluding, “these tensions between the two figures of our world explain why, with respect to asylum seekers and unwanted others in general, repression and compassion are so profoundly linked” (Fassin 381).

The division between the polis and the camp is prominently posed in the film

Welcome (2009) by Philippe Lioret where the Sangatte camp plays a crucial role as the place of the illegal immigrants’ habituation. The film Le Havre (2011) by Aki Kaurismaki deals also with illegal migration and the topic of the hosting of the migrant against the law. The setting is a French port, Havre in this case, and the French Marcel Marx hides from the authorities a young African boy, Idrissa, an illigeal immigrant, by accommodating him in his house. The distinction between the polis and the camp is a decisive one, setting the

3 The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR) is a United Nations multilateral treaty and as amended by the 1967 Protocol, defines who is a refugee, and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. According to it "No Contracting State shall expel or return ('refouler') a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social or political opinion" (Article 33(1)).

97 boundaries between the “privileged” citizens versus the illegal outcasts. A transition, however, from the camp to the polis does not necessarily mean the change in one’s status. In the film In This World, Jamal, who grew up in a refugee camp and remained in various transitional places during his travel, among them the Sangatte camp, when he finally reaches and enters the polis, London, still remains an alien, a third world underclass immigrant who washes dishes, he still remains a stranger.

1. 6. 4. City vs Desert in Promised Land

In This World (2002) together with Code 46 (2003) and The Road to Guantanamo

(2006), all films directed by Michael Winterbottom, are according to Yosefa Loshitzky a trilogy that explores issues of travelling, migration, race, identity, border crossing, war, the camp as a space, the role of news in a media saturated globalized world, as well as the consequences of the September 11 2001 in U.S. and the July 7th 2005 in London.

Code 46 is a love story that takes place in the future where global warming has reduced much of the world to arid zones. People lucky enough to own special, hard-to-get passport, called “papelles”, live in large, barricaded cities, while those without papelles, on the “outside”, live in misery in the desert. So, the film revolves around two main spaces, the global mega-city of Shanghai, “a Babylon of a transient population composed of different ethno-racial groups that inhabit temporary spaces and speak a global-hybridized language”

(Loshitzky 129), reminiscent of the futuristic city in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and the “al fuera”, the desert, a place of exclusion, very similar to the bare and extended landscapes of the Shamshatoo camp in In This World. Winterbottom explains that the opposition of city versus desert was an intended one. He further elaborates on the idea of the city: “There's the idea of a city being not so much part of a nation, you're not from India or

China or America, you live in the city or outside the city, you’re in the system or outside the

98 system” (Mitchell 69). In my opinion, Loshitzky correctly points out that the city of Shanghai in the film Code 46 “represents the postmodern global city which, despite its lack of national boundaries and characteristics, its multi-ethnic population, and generic urban landscape, is a gated community, fortified against undesirable migrants from outside who lack the desired papelles to gain access to the inside” (130).

It could be argued that even the desert presented in the beginning of Promised Land could be equated with the desert of Code 46; both deserts are places of exclusion where women - Maria in Code 46 and the Estonian girls in Promised Land - remain excluded victims, unable to control themselves and their destinies. Maria is controlled by the Sphinx

Company - she is forced to an abortion, a selective cleansing of her memory, infected by a virus and is eventually permanently banished to the desert. The Estonian girls are maltreated, beaten, sexually abused in the middle of the desert and they are eventually sold to traders as if they were animals or trading products. Gitai himself explains:

I had read about the auctioning of women in a variety of locations. I chose to

do the auctioning of the women at night, in a desert site. I surrounded these

women by a group of vehicles to create a feeling of claustrophobia. It became

evident that the continuous intimidation and humiliation of the victims is

functional to the trafficking system. This is necessary throughout the process

of taking women and converting them into a commodity to be sold, abused

and raped. (Lormand)

Both films, adopting a feminist perspective depict the dark side of globalization and its impact on the commodification of the human body.

1. 6. 5. The Hotel in Eden is West

A space which is presented to the spectator as oscillating between utopia and dystopia is the Hotel Eden Club-Paradise. Its prestigious name denotes explicitly the capitalist tourist ideology that presents a luxurious hotel as “paradise’. From Elias’s point of view, however, the hotel’s title becomes extremely ironic. In order to hide his actual identity he pretends to be the hotel’s employee and is thus forced to do various jobs, like carrying luggage and cleaning toilets. Most importantly he has to hide himself from the hotel’s direction, the police and their wild, merciless hunt of illegal immigrants. Elias might be lucky or smart enough to avoid getting caught, due to his constant identity shifts and transformations, but his compatriot and co-traveler gets arrested by the police in front of Elias’s eyes. Hotel functions in this case as border. So, from the illegal immigrant’s point of view, the hotel could be considered to belong to the category of hotels that are described as “demonic places, spaces of abjection, derangement, violence and horror” in Moving Pictures/Stopping Places (Clarke 3).

No matter how difficult and adverse circumstances Elias encounters at the “Eden

Club-Paradise”, the hotel plays a significant role as a necessary and important station in his trajectory. It is a border space, having “the aporetic nature of a fixed place dedicated to movement” (Clarke, Moving Pictures 3). It is the immediate station between Elias’s sea travel and his further adventures on the road. It is a place “simultaneously disrupting and securing mobility; halting yet enabling movement; translating passage into the passage of time; heightening emotion as much as fostering motion; provoking transition as much as smoothing transit; registering identity whilst promoting anonymity” (Clarke, Moving Pictures 3). It is the place where Elias’s travel stops for a while. Yet while a fixed place, the hotel enables Elias’s movement in the sense that it makes him realize how strong his goal to continue his travel is; furthermore, by encountering the magician Nicolas Nickelby, he finds a specific motive for his travel, no matter how much it actually does correspond to reality. As all hotels, it is a place

100 that, although it promotes anonymity, registering one’s identity seems extremely important; so, Elias faces great difficulties by being illegal.

It is interesting to see the hotel’s ambivalent concept as a shelter, on the one hand, and as a “border control”, on the other. Such an ambivalent concept can be traced back to the hotel’s origins in the 1790s: it collected the names of its clients promising discretion and privacy — “a haven from the outside world as well as from the moralistic gaze of social standards” — but, on the other side, it reported them to the police (Clarke, Moving Pictures

74). For Elias the “Eden Club” functions similarly in a double-sided way: it is simultaneously a hiding place due to its anonymity but also a kind of a trap due to its confined space and strict surveillance policies.

Elias, in order to avoid getting caught, thanks to his inventiveness tries to remain unnoticed and changes constantly roles and identities; in Gavras’s words, Elias “tries to adapt himself every time in all the situations, bad or good. That’s the fate of an immigrant”

(Adams). Since the moment the sea washes him out on the hotel’s beach, he changes several roles/identities: nudist, hotel’s staff, luggage carrier but also plumber, then actor in Nickelby’s show impersonating a policeman and, finally, Ms. Lisner’s “lover”. According to Ewa

Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli, “[t]he idea of freeing oneself from a previous identity and

…generally changing identity “on demand” is a postmodern concept” (Crossing New Europe

24). This seems to be another case following the paradigm of several other cases where the hotel or motel “have provided settings for a rich history of film narratives, most memorably those in which identity has proven to be a tricky thing - something complicated, obfuscated or anguished over” (Clarke 235). In Yvette Blackwood’s words: “This kind of narrative, where one becomes someone else (but not entirely, not completely), operates as an exploration of multiple realities in postmodernity, and the hotel becomes the central organizing figure for these parallel realities” (Clarke, Moving Pictures 293).

101 Hotel space could be also considered as an allegory of contemporary subjectivity. The various separate individual rooms connected through corridors and the common space of the lobby constitute, in a way, parallel worlds. Yvette Blackwood in her article “Parallel Hotel

Worlds” analyzes certain films, like Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train (1989), Sofia Coppola’s

Lost in Translation (2003) and David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), that use the hotel as a means to narrate multiple stories concerned with post-modern issues such as identity, text, location and subjectivity (Clarke, Moving Pictures 277). In our case, almost half of the film

Eden Is West, although considered a road-movie in the track of the Odyssey, is dedicated to the “stable” place of the hotel; such a thing reveals the director’s concern about space as a post-modern concept and as a depiction of parallel worlds, each one confined in its subjectivity. The privileged tourists who have come to Eden Club to escape for a while from their routine life, like Ms. Lisner, share the hotel’s common spaces with the hotel’s staff, like

Jack, Yvan and the hotel’s directress, as well as unknowingly with illegal immigrants, like

Elias. The hotel’s space is experienced differently according to the respective point of view.

For Ms. Lisner it is a place of escape from her life, her family and job in Hamburg, it is a place of freedom where she can satisfy her sexual needs. On the contrary, for Elias the hotel is experienced as a constant struggle for survival; he has to hide his real identity in order to avoid getting caught by the hotel’s managers and the police. For Elias the hotel, as society’s microcosm, is a place of restraint and surveillance. It is in the hotel, however, that Elias, thanks to his encounter with the magician Nicolas Nickelby, sets a more specific goal to his journey, to go to find and work for him in Paris. For the magician Nickelby the hotel is simply a station in his tour, while for the hotel’s permanent staff it constitutes a strict work place where certain rules have to be followed.

Despite the fact that these “parallel worlds” actually meet in the hotel and are, willingly or not, in a certain kind of interaction, it is true that “[n]o matter how elite or run- down, hotels and motels are the places, where, paradoxically, “[e]veryone is alone with

102 themselves” (Clarke, Moving Pictures 236). Katherine Lawrie Van de Ven’s observation in her article “Just an Anonymous Room: Cinematic Hotels and Motels as Mnemonic

Purgatories” that “even when in the company of an often illicit-lover, protagonists are alone with their deeds and self-doubt, future uncertain” is valid in Eden Is West, as well (236); Ms.

Lisner will go back to Hamburg while Elias’ future remains uncertain. Jack, the hotel’s manager who tried to become Elias’s illicit lover, remains alone with his deeds and self- doubt. Finally, in the same way that Yvette Blackwood argues referring to the film Mystery

Train, that isolation permeates its characters “despite the close proximity in which friends, lovers, and strangers find themselves”, it could be also stated that the characters in the hotel in

Eden Is West are lonely. “[T]hey are intimate because of proximity, but metaphysically distant” (Clarke, Moving Pictures 283).

103

1. 7. Conclusion

The first chapter has dealt mainly with migratory journeys from the East to the West as presented in the films In This World (2002) by Michael Winterbottom, Promised Land

(2004) by Amos Gitai and Eden Is West (2009) by Costa-Gavras. The films are examined in the framework of the globalization process which is closely connected to profit making but also to an increasingly growing feeling of homelessness and instability due to the plethora of transit “in-between” places.

In a world where the notion of space is constantly shifting and mobility has become the quintessence of everyday life, the positioning of oneself within a fixed place or a stable feeling of orientation, in the sense of cognitive mapping, becomes very difficult. So, we see that Jamal and Elias are constantly trying to re-orient themselves according to the different country and social situation they find themselves each time, while the Estonian trafficked girls are totally lost as they have become pawns to the profitable globalizing forces.

Through the depiction of such long lasting journeys these films make clear that despite the interconnectedness and the shrinking of space that globalization brought, for many underprivileged immigrants space remains vast and borders still constitute a huge obstacle during movement. Furthermore, the protagonists spend a lot of time in anonymous and alienated transit in-between non-places or third spaces, such as transport vehicles, stations, hotels and camps. Even more, they are sometimes treated as products transported in lorries with fruits or sheep, or even worse in enclosed claustrophobic containers risking their lives.

The constant change of means and spaces creates a sense of disorientation and fragmentation both for protagonists and spectators, characteristic features of postmodernism.

The vast and often barren landscapes the immigrants cross, like the mountains or the desert, are juxtaposed to their dream western cities like Paris or London which constitute for

104 them imagined worlds. Even when they reach their dreams, however, they still remain at poor, dirty and underprivileged spaces. The trafficked girls remain enclosed at shabby motels in

Israel, Jamal washes dishes at the kitchen of a restaurant in London while Elias wanders homeless in the streets of Paris.

Next to the shift of the notion of space, a deconstruction of fixed traditional values takes place, like the one of identity, home, fatherland, family or friendship. Jamal is an orphan who has not even been in his fatherland, Afghanistan, as he grew up in a refugee camp in

Pakistan. Regarding Elias, the spectator remains unaware of his country of origin, while he changes constantly his identity according to each situation he finds himself. Both Jamal and

Elias lose their friends and co-travelers, as Jamal’s cousin Enayat dies along the road while

Elias’ friend gets caught by the immigration police. The trafficked girls, victims of sexual trade, are also cut off from their homelands and families.

What remains stable, however, is the immediate connection with reality, as In This

World and Promised Land are docu-dramas while Eden Is West, although a feature film, has also elements from documentaries, like the use of non-professional actors and actual locations shootings. The films include various locations and countries like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey,

Greece, Italy, France, England, Estonia, Egypt, Israel and are international co-productions in line with the globalization spirit. Additionally, a variety of languages are heard in the films like French, German, Italian, Greek, Farsi, Pashto, Arabic, Russian, the Roma language, and even a constructed language for the purposes of the film that Elias speaks so that his nationality will remain hidden. However, the international language is by far English, additionally to the body language.

Regarding the genre, the films have elements of the road movie genre and the accented cinema. Although the films are closer to the European road movies, in the sense that the characters move out of necessity, these films share also some features with the American multicultural road movies, mostly of the 1990s which introduces people of color, gay and

105 women. Women play the pivotal role in Amos Gitai’s film, in Gavras’s film gay people are presented in a very natural way, while in Winterbottom’s film young Jamal does not belong to the white Caucasian race.

Regarding the accented cinema elements, these films are polyglot, several transitional places are included in the narratives, and depictions of both open and happy landscapes as well as dark and claustrophobic spaces exist. Such elements, present in the accented cinema but also in postmodern films, are encountered a lot in Amos Gitai’s film; the chronotopical representation of the open and closed space-time is evident, as images of the light and white dressed girls singing in the church are juxtaposed to the dark and enclosed spaces where they are kept as prisoners.

What is also important to note, is, that, similarly to the road movies and the accented cinema which critique the society, the directors of these films critique their homelands. An indicative example in Winterbottom’s film is a pun about the English word “thank” which gets understood as “tank” and thus as a threat. Gavras includes in his film a very bad- mannered Greek couple which treats Elias just as a toy to enjoy their own boredom. Gitai’s film on the whole constitutes a critique on the globalized trafficking and on Israel.

Of particular interest are the films’ titles; Promised Land is connected to the history of

Jews while In This World refers to the Muslim belief of the existence of another world after death. Eden Is West also alludes to the Bible although within the film there is not any religious connotation. It should be noted however that the title is reminiscent of Elia Kazan’s film East of Eden, as well as the name of the protagonist Elias is the same one with that of the famous director.

In all three films, the directors adopt a humanitarian perspective that supports

Derrida’s statement about unconditional hospitality towards strangers regardless of their illegal status. Such a compassionate and idealized image of the immigrants perhaps does not always correspond to real situations.

106 Chapter 2: Migratory vs Privileged Journeys

The second chapter explores multi-ethnic and multi-cultural encounters in the age of globalization and poly-locality as presented in contemporary films. Regarding the form, it explores the network narrative mode. As far as the content is concerned, it focuses on privileged journeys versus migratory ones as well as on the encounter and communication with the Other, which is mostly accompanied by distance, fear and prejudices. Through the films explored, Babel (2006) by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Code Unknown: Incomplete

Tales of Several Journeys (2000) by Michael Haneke and The Missing Star (2006) by Gianni

Amelio, I try to enlighten contemporary views on race, ethnicity and Eurocentrism.

The chapter begins with a theoretical part about the network narrative as an indicative mode of globalization and postmodernism by showing explicitly issues of fragmentation and interconnectedness at the same time. After the presentation of the first two films, which adopt the network narrative and address issues concerning miscommunication and prejudices towards the racial and ethnic Other, an analysis follows of the third film, which deals with reverse journeys and focuses on the industrial emergence of China. As all three films present images and landascapes of various countries, the spectator inevitably resembles the privileged tourist by consuming in a voyeuristic way the foreign landscapes. In this respect, I provide some additional theory on the tourist gaze which marks the gap between the white privileged western point of view versus the perspective of the immigrant in need. Most of the directors try to raise awareness about the difficulties immigrants have to face in their new countries where they live. According to Ballesteros, “these white intellectual discourses deploy moral authority by acknowledging Europe’s history of xenophobia and racism and by eliciting a sort of white obligation toward the subjects of Europe’s colonial enterprises from a receptive white audience eager for “white moral redemption”” (15). A deeper and more detailed

107 examination of the films, indeed, proves that the directors several times fail to escape the western perspective.

2. 1. “Network narrative”

Since 1990 a new style of films began to flourish in Hollywood which involved a variety of characters and places. This plurality of places and protagonists led to a different form of narration: instead of the traditional linear Aristotelian progressive narrative, the so called network narrative was deployed. Various scholars have engaged with the issue of non linear structure in films, each one of them having ascribed different names: “ensemble and mosaic films (Troehler 2000, 2007) (85-102), sequential and tandem narratives (Aronson

2001), polyphonic, parallel and daisy-chain plots (Ramirez Berg 2006) (5-61), or network narratives (Bordwell 2006)” (Del Mar Azcona 9). The most well-known terminology is the one of network narrative by Bordwell in the chapter called “Subjective Stories and Network

Narratives” in his book The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies.

According to Bordwell, network films are multi-protagonist with multi-linear narratives that intersect (Poetics of Cinema 192).

Warren Buckland, on the other hand, has come up with the term “puzzle films”. In fact, Buckland argues that Bordwell should not actually depart from Aristotle’s conception of plot; Buckland, in his book Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, supports that contemporary “puzzle films” extend beyond Aristotle’s term complex

(peplegmenos). He maintains that “the arrangement of events is not just complex, but complicated and perplexing; the events are not simply interwoven, but entangled” (Buckland

3). Buckland describes the “puzzle films” as following: they “embrace nonlinearity, time loops, and fragmented spatio-temporal reality. These films blur the boundaries between different levels of reality, are riddled with gaps, deception, labyrinthine structures, ambiguity,

108 and overt coincidences” (Buckland 6). Buckland refers to films like Lost Highway (1997) by

David Lynch, Run Lola Run ( 1998) by Tom Tykwer, The Sixth Sense (1999) by M. Night

Shyamalan, Memento (2000) by Christopher Nolan, Oldboy (2003) by Chan-wook Park, or

2046 (2004) by Kar Wai Wong, films dealing mostly with memory, senses and feelings.

Maria del Mar Azcona, in her book The Multi-Protagonist Film, deals also with entangled stories and multiple characters, but mainly under the perspectives of globalization and intimate relationships. This makes complete sense, as the multi-protagonist pattern is not something new in cinema but it is in the last two decades that has started to be used broadly and has evolved as a separate genre reflecting the trans-cultural tendencies. Maria del Mar

Azcona explains the needs and reasons for the appearance of the multi-protagonist narrative opposed to the classical single protagonist narrative pattern:

The complex social, economic and political processes that have crystallized in

concepts such as globalization, trans-nationalism, deterrioralization, and

diaspora produced the need to find ways of representing the consequences of

these phenomena in film. In a globalized and increasingly shrinking world, the

notions of chance and serendipity acquired a new relevance, whereas

interpersonal relationships across various geographical locations, as well as

the impact on people of new political and economic structures, came to the

fore. Again, multi-protagonist narratives appeared as an obvious canvas upon

which such aspects of modern societies could be articulated, offering

perspectives that range from the constraining effects of global processes on

people’s freedom to the interconnectedness between individuals on a globe

scale. (7)

According to David Bordwell, nearly 150 US films using this type of narrative structure have been released since 1990 (Poetics of Cinema 191). Maria del Mar Azcona supports that the number of films has increased during the first decade of twenty-first century

109 and provides a list with several films, like Traffic (2000) by Steven Soderbergh, Thirteen

Conversations About One Thing (2001) by Jill Sprecher, Casa de los babys (2003) by John

Sayles, Crash (2004) by Paul Haggis, Babel (2006) by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Fast

Food Nation (2006) by Richard Linklater and Crossing Over (2009) by Wayne Kramer (Del

Mar Azcona 2). She further mentions some other multi-protagonist films of other nationalities, like the Mexican Cosas Insignificantes (2008) by Andrea Martinez Crowther.

Other films following the multi-protagonist pattern are Things You Can Tell Just by

Looking at Her (2000) by Rodrigo Garcia, Lichter (2003) by Hans-Christian Schmid and

Import/Export (2007) by Ulrich Seidl. There are multi-protagonist films taking place in a big metropolis like Nachtgestalten (1999) by Andreas Dresen in Berlin, Paris je t’aime (2006) with many short stories directed by various directors in Paris or similarly New York I Love

You (2008) in New York. Night on Earth (1999) by Jim Jarmush, a film about five different stories of five cab drivers in various American and European cities taking place during the same night could be considered as a predecessor to Babel; the main difference, however, is that the stories in Night on Earth do not intertwine as in Babel. Furthermore, Babel involves stories more globally oriented, while Night on Earth confines itself only in American and

European cities.

Maria del Mar Azcona draws attention to the fact that the structure of the multi- protagonist films is not new, and as typical old examples she mentions Intolerance (1916) by

D.W. Griffith and Grand Hotel (1932) by Edmund Goulding. Next, followed other multi- protagonist films taking place in hotels, as the hotel with its many separate rooms fits very well to various interconnected stories. Maria del Mar Azcona mentions the Weekend at the

Waldorf (1945) by Robert Z. Leonard, Hotel Berlin (1945) by Peter Godfrey, Hotel (1967) by

Richard Quine and the Ambassador Hotel in Bobby (2006) by Emilio Estevez (9). It is also worth mentioning films such as Mystery Train (1989) by Jim Jarmusch and Lost in

Translation (2003) by Sofia Coppola. In fact, the article “Parallel Hotel Worlds” from the

110 book Moving Pictures/Stopping Places: Hotels and Motels on Film explores the issue of parallel interconnected stories taking place in hotels (Blackwood 277-296).

2. 1. 1. “Network Narrative” and Postmodernism

Referring to the fact that television and soap operas have influenced the multi- protagonist films which often adopt the form of a thriller, like Syriana (2005) by Stephen

Gaghan, or melodrama, like Crash (2004) by Paul Haggis and Babel (2006) by Alejandro

Gonzalez Inarritu, Maria del Mar Azcona mentions that themes like loneliness, chance and coincidence play a very central role in the multi-protagonist films (28). Furthermore, multi- protagonist films offer a plurality of perspectives by dealing with various characters and events without privileging any of them. Such a view places multi-protagonist films in the category of post-modern cinema.

On the other hand, Inarritu acknowledges the immediate impact of our contemporary technological environment to the abandonment of the linear narrative:

I think that we have been exposed to so many different media now - the kids

are now basically dealing with three, four, five realities at the same time: they

are watching CNN and are reading the treadmill at the bottom of the screen -

then a friend calls from New York while they are receiving an e-mail from

New Zealand….And the virtuality that we are now living in makes our minds

more prepared to deal with stories that are nonlinear - you can be playing with

several realities”. (Littger 190)

M. Keith Booker in his book Postmodern Hollywood: What’s New in Film and Why It

Makes Us Feel So Strange tries to define what a postmodern film is and what its characteristics are. Booker mentions that, according to Fredric Jameson, post-modern art narrative, such as novel and films, has two distinct features regarding form and technique:

111 formal fragmentation and pastiche. According to Jameson, these features are aesthetic symptoms of a post-modern society created by the fact that capitalism, during the decolonization era, mainly in the 1950s, has entered its late phase characterized by the rapidly increasing global hegemony of consumer capitalism (Booker xviii).

2. 1 .2. Fragmentation in the Postmodern Era

Fragmentation, however, according to Jameson, apart from being a formal attribute, appears as well in the psyche of the individual. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Lacan,

Jameson argues that, amid the increasing complexity and fragmentation of experience in the post-modern world, the individual subject experiences a loss of temporal continuity that causes him or her to experience the world somewhat in the manner of a schizophrenic.

Jameson supports:

In other words, schizophrenic experience is an experience of isolated,

disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers which fail to link into a

coherent sequence. The schizophrenic does not know personal identity in our

sense, since our feeling of identity depends on our sense of the persistence of

the “I” and the “me” over time. (Jameson 119)

On the other hand, fragmentation, apart from being a sentiment that characters feel, is of course the essential feature around which the narrative of the multi-protagonist film evolves. Temenuga Trifonova explains very accurately the relationship between the fragment and its philosophical concept with contemporary narrative in cinema as a depiction of globalization. In her critique of systematic/dogmatic philosophy, Nietzsche privileged the fragment, which, like existence itself, does not have a beginning or an end but begins or returns eternally.

112 Nietzsche’s philosophy of the fragment, his dismissal of totalizing, exhaustive,

evidentiary accounts of reality, along with modernist literature’s emphasis on

the graphic aspect of language - an emphasis on the rootlessness or

groundlessness of the signifier, on its democratization and deterritorialisation -

reverberate in contemporary cinema’s tendency to privilege visuality over

narrativity and multiple, intersecting, fragmentary narratives over singular,

linear ones. This is not surprising after all: with the idea of a closed,

homogenous society becoming increasingly untenable, the classical film

narrative has proven equally obsolete. Fragmentary narratives register more

truthfully the complexities of life in the age of globalization, drawing

connections between seemingly disparate phenomena, while, at the same time,

exploring local resistances to the homogenizing forces of globalization, which

often threaten to obscure social, cultural and national differences. (Trifonova

66)

Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli, taking into account the theories of Anthony

Giddens, Stuart Hall and Zygmunt Bauman, note that “in post-modernity it is impossible to find anything solid, and we are all condemned to decentredness, fragmentation and fluidity” (

Crossing New Europe 142).

2. 1. 3. Random Chance and Coincidence

Another important factor defining the multi-protagonist narrative apart from fragmentation is the factor of chance and randomness. In all the films analyzed in this chapter, the most important events happen out of coincidence. The interconnectedness among the characters seems totally arbitrary and random.

On the other hand, behind each coincidence event there can be traced an explanation or a social phenomenon. In Babel for example, Susan’s injury from a bullet coming from a

113 rifle which was sold to a Moroccan herder in order to kill jackals by a neighbor, who got the rifle as a gift from an affluent Japanese businessman, seems at first completely coincidental and arbitrary; yet if someone speculates further, various social phenomena will come to the surface. The rifle, found in the hands of the sons of the Moroccan herder, who are eventually accused as criminals and terrorists (inspired by the climate of September 11), is transported to the underdeveloped and rural country of Morocco from the super-modern city of Tokyo by a wealthy businessman, whose hobby is hunting. In a closer examination of social norms, it becomes evident that the wealthy man, living in the Western consumerist way of life whose hobby is to kill animals just for pleasure, in return for a good tour in his travel to Morocco donates to his tour-guide a rifle, a symbol of domination over underdeveloped countries since colonial times. On the other hand, the sons of the herder who are forced to work, even though they are still children, prove to be naive and ignorant about the catastrophic consequences a rifle might have. However, the narrative in Babel is so elaborately complex, that it is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to accuse somebody as a culprit. In Maria del Mar Azcona’s words:

With divine punishment having been replaced by the whimsical nature of

chance and the power of economic and political structures, any sense of

control that we may think that we have over our lives is only an illusion.

However, unlike in the biblical Babel, we have nobody to blame. (142)

Maria del Mar Azcona draws on Zygmunt Bauman and his concept of “the unholy trinity” of uncertainty, insecurity and unsafety in order to stress the power of random chance and coincidence. According to Bauman, being in the world is no longer something logical but rather chance defines the event, as if in a game (Liquid Modernity 117). Maria del Mar

Azcona, on the other hand, stresses the impact of other external factors:

In the light of events since September 11, individuals must face the challenge

to think of life’s possibilities and responsibilities not in exclusively

114 individualistic terms - shaped by individual decisions, capacities and

incapacities, personal achievements and failures - but as interwoven with

cultural relations, social problems and other external forces. Multi-protagonist

films and their manifold intersections offer one of the most appropriate

templates to represent present-day concerns in a filmic way. (143)

Chance plays also a crucial role in the film Code Unknown by Michael Haneke, because many important relationships occur randomly. Code Unknown poses similar questions as “Haneke explicitly addresses the problem of the unequal distribution of power in society and highlights the complex relationship between the weak and the strong, the exploited and the exploiters, but typically shows that neither unambiguously inhabits either position. The very existence and structure of exploitation makes all parties co-conspirators in their own unhappiness” (McCann and Sorfa 5). In Code Unknown, the chance, the trivial and the accidental play a great role, and a random action causes a series of events: Jean’s trivial, thoughtless gesture of throwing an empty bag in Maria’s lap, and thereby provoking

Amadou’s anger, sets in motion a series of random encounters between strangers and consequently personal, social, class, racial and ethical conflicts. “Haneke’s interest in any- moment-whatever and any-place-whatever, to use Deleuze’s terminology, in arbitrary moments and accidental encounters, is not only aesthetic but ultimately ethical and political”

(Trifonova 71).

Finally, The Missing Star is also based on chance regarding the random encounter of

Vinzenco and Liu Hua in Italy, and for a second time surprisingly again in China! The film narrates a story of two interralated paths, the one of Vincenzo and the other of Liu. Vincenzo,

“[i]n seeing and encountering many new, unexpected things, he will question his own identity, forcing him and the audience to critically evaluate our existence in relation to the rest of the world” (Vitti 378).

115

2. 2. Babel (2006)

Why are we here?

Despite the interconnectedness and easier communication facilitated by globalization, the communicational problems remain taking the form of misunderstandings, loneliness and alienation. This is especially evident in the film Babel, as even its title alludes to the biblical story of the tower of Babel where miscommunication prevented the completion of the tower.

The plot of the film intertwines four interconnected stories each one taking place in a different part of the globe within five days; in the first story, Richard and Susan Jones are a wealthy American couple who travel from California to Morocco in order to avoid their sentimental problems. The second story is about Amelia, the Mexican nanny who takes care of Mike and Debbie Jones, the children of Richard and Susan. As she wants to attend her son’s wedding in Mexico and unable to find a replacement to take care of the children, she eventually decides to take them with her to Mexico. In the third story, Abdoullah Adboum is a poor Moroccan herder who buys from Hassan Ibrahim, another herder, a rifle. Abdoullah gives the rifle to his sons, Ahmed and Yussef, in order to keep the jackals away from the herd.

As Ahmed and Yussef want to test whether the rifle is able to shoot long enough, they aim at a bus passing on a far away road on the mountain. The spectator can see a bit later that Susan, who is on the bus, has been shot by a bullet. This incident is interpreted by the media as a terrorist attack. In the fourth story, Chieko Wataya, a deaf-mute Japanese girl who lives in the super modern city of Tokyo, faces communication problems, like the rejection from the opposite sex and the inability to be involved in an intimate relationship, emotional distance from her father and loneliness because of her mother’s death. The person that links this story with the former ones is Chieko’s father, Yasujiro Wataya, who, on a trip he made to Morocco,

116 gave a rifle to Hassan as a present in order to thank him for being a good guide during his hunt.

In all the stories, protagonists are dealing with communication problems: Richard and

Susan have a problematic relationship. After Susan’s injury in Morocco, Richard has to deal with the other tourists/bus passengers, with the local people, with the American embassy and mainly with his wounded wife. Amelia disobeys her employer Richard, and leaves with his children to Mexico. Yussef hides the fact that he was the one who shot at the bus and argues with his brother Ahmed. Finally, Chieko gets constantly rejected by the other sex due to her disability.

All these problems prove that communication is not only necessarily connected to the annihilation of distances. In the film, distances seem to become eliminated due to modern technological achievements, such as the plane (Richard and Susan fly from the US to

Morocco, Chieko’s father flew from Japan to Morocco for hunting) and the car (Amelia is driven from the US to Mexico for a day), a fact that is supposed to bring faster and easier communication. Communication problems, however, are evident between the characters in all the stories, a fact that causes problematic situations. So, although communications technology seems to promise perfection of communication, in reality, the essence of communication lays in much deeper feelings and needs, as the film Babel shows. Furthermore, as the director himself has stated, the real borders are not external physical lines but are inside us - they are fences between ideas (Deleyto and Del Mar Azcona, 107). As Maria del Mar Azcona puts it,

In our contemporary Babel, the sense of division and dislocation is not so

much the consequence of the lack of a common language as of our inability or

unwillingness to communicate — the Moroccan guide’s grandmother does not

speak a word of English but is far more in tune with the suffering of Susan and

Richard than any of their fellow travelers. (142)

117 The lack of communication causes a feeling of loneliness, a topic which becomes more prominent in the second and fourth story. In the case of Amelia, Inarritu makes a comment on the Mexican identity in relation to loneliness. After various communication problems with her boss and her nephew Santiago, Amelia ends up at a certain point wandering alone in the vast desert under the burning sun. Such a lonely wandering could be interpreted as a metaphor of the existential loneliness, as loneliness is in general the essence of human condition (Deleyto and Azcona 11).

Octavio Paz, however, in his book The Labyrinth of Solitude, connects loneliness with the tradition of solitude regarding the Mexican identity. He claims that Mexican identity is a problematic one, as “Mexicans do not want to be Indian or Spanish, they do not see themselves as mestizos either, but rather as an abstraction, as motherless children with no origin, always looking elsewhere for an imaginary identity” (Deleyto and Azcona 10).

Furthermore, the strong presence of their neighboring country has increased the enclosure of the Mexican in them. Solitude and loneliness function thus as a metaphor of a country whose sociopolitical center was weak, leaving its citizens isolated and abandoned, according to

Ramirez Berg (2). This historical sense of loneliness is present in most of the films of

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu including Babel.

In the fourth story, the communicational problems encountered are linked to the way of life in the Western metropolises and are interpersonal, psychological and internal; Chieko in Tokyo deals with the problem of loneliness and alienation as far as intimate relationships are concerned.

On the contrary, the problems encountered in underdeveloped countries and cities are more practical, concerning survival, and cannot afford the “luxury” of being about internal psychological questionings. The family of herders in the rocky and deserted mountains of

Morocco has to struggle very hard to earn their living while Amelia is forced to leave her country, Mexico, to find a job in the US.

118 The film ends with all of the stories having reached a kind of resolution confirming the initial power relations and hierarchies. The white, wealthy and privileged Americans manage to return to their home safe and sound despite the dangers and harsh conditions they had to go through. Specifically, Susan is carried by a helicopter sent by the American embassy to a hospital in Casablanca and then back home. Her two lost children, Mike and

Debbie, have been found by the police and are given back to the family. Chieko, although deaf-mute, is a girl living a privileged life; despite the sexual rejections she confronts, she manages to find reconcile with her father. The protagonists of the other two stories, on the other hand, have to suffer harsh consequences. The Mexican Amelia, after being collected by the border patrol officers, is accused of having neglected the children and is eventually forced to voluntary deportation. Although she loses her job and the life she had built for sixteen years in the U.S., at least she is able to reunite with her son and her other relatives in Mexico.

The most tragic story is that of the Moroccan family; as the Moroccan police officers are after

Abdoullah and his sons, they shoot and kill Ahmed. It is only then that Yussef gives himself up to the police officers admitting his guilt. The whole scene of Abdoullah holding in his arms his unfairly dead son Ahmed, and Yussef surrendering with tears in his eyes to the police begging them to save his brother, is very moving and indicative of their destiny.

This “destiny”, however, has a historical explanation. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. has implemented a stronger border-protection policy, and tough immigration legislation. They also have been very sensitive regarding incidents in Arab countries where

U.S. citizens were involved, branding them as terrorist attacks. In this context, it could be claimed that the “culprits” Amelia and the Moroccan children are innocent victims of historical circumstances and that, in spite of the distance between them, are closely linked as they are both related to the safety and protection of the members of the U.S. family (Deleyto and Del Mar Azcona 110).

119 2. 3. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000)

Your fucking door code’s changed!

Code Unknown revolves around interconnected stories dealing with the issue of miscommunication as well as the notion of home and travelling, as the subtitle reveals:

Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys. The film’s title is indicative of the main issues explored, like the one of miscommunication, exclusion and borders (code unknown), fragmentation and diversity (incomplete tales) and mobility and migration (several journeys).

Specifically, the title stands for both a secret key code and more importantly the lost code in communication between people.

The basic characters include Jean, a young boy who escapes from his father’s farm as he doesn’t want to work there anymore, opposed to his father’s strict and distant wish. Jean’s brother Georges, lives in Paris with his girlfriend Anne Laurent but is currently in Kosovo covering the war as a photographer. Anne is an actress impersonating various roles in theater or in films. Irina is an illegal immigrant from Romania currently begging on the streets of

Paris, while Amadou is the son of an African family living in Paris.

The incident connecting all these separate characters is when Jean, while in Paris, throws at a certain point a used bag on the lap of Irina, who begs on the street. Amadou, having witnessed the incident, feels insulted and demands Jean to apologize to the woman.

Jean refuses and a fight starts with the police intervening; Irina gets deported, Amadou is ordered to follow the officers to the police station while Jean is free to leave.

The film’s plot has not got the dramatic tension of Babel but is rather a more distant representation of certain parts of life of various people living in Paris. Issues of travel and home play a crucial role in the film: Jean wants to abandon his rural house and wants to live in the big metropolis of Paris; however, as Anne informs him that her apartment is small, Jean is forced to return to the farm; the thriller in which Anne acts revolves around the notion of

120 home and house, as well: the character Anne plays goes to visit an apartment, but the owner locks her inside with the intention to see her die by suffocation. Georges returns to the comfort of his house in Paris, after having travelled to Kosovo and photographed the war.

Irina, being an illegal immigrant in Paris, when deported back to Romania, visits the house her children are building. She eventually returns to Paris illegally hidden in a truck. Finally,

Amadou explains through sign language to his little mute-deaf sister that their father, a former taxi driver in Paris, left to return to Africa and start there a new life.

This plurality in characters, locations, languages etc. alludes also to the fragmentation the contemporary globalized life consists of. In fact, the film consists of various bits of stories very loosely connected to each other. Such a style, like the “network” narrative, totally corresponds to the modern day character of living which is fragmented and consists of various experiences due to the increased mobility and change of locations. According to Mazierska and Rascaroli the film points out “the existence of a new society in which the old Western bastions of national and personal identity have been undermined and replaced by a void, a fragmentation of experience and a diffuse awareness of the increasing ambiguity of the real and of the lack of codes to interpret it” (Crossing New Europe 145).

The stories ultimately remain unresolved as the subtitle also informs us; Incomplete

Tales of Several Journeys; Jean’s father informs Anne and Georges that Jean has left the farm six weeks ago but has no intention to do anything, as he is not sure which would be the best future for him. George is unable to enter the apartment remaining “homeless”, as the door’s code has obviously been changed by Anne. Irina’s former begging spot in Paris is now occupied by another beggar; she is also kicked out from a new begging spot she finds, remaining thus “spotless” on the street. Amadou’s father migrates again away from his family in Paris to start a new life back in Africa, despite his absence for many years.

The film deals to a large extend with borders, both physical and symbolic ones. The strict borders policies and the difficulty in border crossing towards privileged western

121 European countries like France becomes more than evident in the case of the illegal

Romanian Irina who gets deported. On the contrary, the French George is able to cross easily borders and travel to Kosovo and work as a photographer. At this point, however, it is important to mention that the French citizens do not remain always intact. An incident taking place in the public space of metro in Paris, where an Arab immigrant verbally harasses the

French Anne, reveals that even French citizens in their own country might experience back the anger and racism immigrants feel. The film could be then considered prophetic at this point regarding the later terrorist attacks of the 9/11 (2001) in the Twin Towers of the World

Trade Center in New York, the Madrid train bombings attacks on the 11th of March 2004, the

7/7 (2005) in the London underground or the most recent Paris attacks on the 13th of

November 2013 and Brussels attacks in the airport and metro on March 22nd 2016, just to name some.

Symbolic borders play an even more important role in the film. As the title indicates, the code for crossing the borders of communication and understanding the “Other” is unknown. The French young Jean who throws the used bag to the beggar Irina does not seem to empathize with her position although he is in search of a house in Paris himself. The

Franco-African Amadou on the contrary, being an immigrant and having probably experienced racism himself, is in position to understand her and even demands for her respect.

The film is also strongly preoccupied with issues of miscommunication and racial discrimination. In the urban city of Paris “problems of communication, together with multiculturalism and immigration, occupy a central space, as they do in Crash, even if this film presents them as intrinsic to and exclusive of Los Angeles” (Del Mar Azcona 36). The film’s title Code Unknown seems to refer both to the changed door code in Anne’s apartment and to the unknown code between the interaction and communication among people. In fact, the film begins and ends in a kind of cycle, with deaf-mute children trying to explain through mimics some concepts to other children without, unfortunately, any success. This might

122 suggest how difficult communication among people is. Temenuga Trifonova in the article

“Michael Haneke and the Politics of Film Form” connects the concepts explored in sign language with the film’s title and themes: “In fact, the deaf children’s various interpretations of the girl’s behaviour read like a synopsis of recurrent themes in Haneke’s oeuvre: loneliness, alienation, failure to communicate, bad conscience and entrapment” (70).

Trifonova further tries to interpret the film’s title:

Thus, the code in the film’s title refers to two different codes: the code of

social communication, which Haneke sees as broken, and, on the other hand,

the cinematic code which offers greater hopes for being decoded, possibly

breaking the code to social communication as well. (74)

All of the film’s characters are having arguments and problems in communicating with each other. Jean has problems of communication with his father. Anne is having an argument with Georges, regarding the attitude she should adopt towards her neighbors, when she hears, and is also informed through a note, that they are hitting their underage daughter.

Irina, when back home in Romania, hides the fact that she works as a beggar in Paris; she boasts instead that she has found a very good job in a school and that she returned to Romania because she missed the children and not because she has been deported. Amadou’s younger brother deals with problems in communication and bullying at school when another kid takes his jacket and blackmails him.

Amadou and his brother are not the only ones in the film dealing with problems and racial discrimination due to their color and foreignness. Irina gets also treated very badly by

Jean, when he throws on her lap the empty bag; it is a sign of treating immigrants and outcasts with contempt considering them inferior. However, it is very interesting to note how easily power relations change; Irina narrates to a Romanian friend a past incident when she was in

Romania in the superior position of giving money to a gypsy beggar; she explains that she was disgusted by her dirtiness and that she quickly went to wash her hands. Afterwards,

123 however, she recalls crying, a similar incident happening to her this time; a young man was about to give her some money when she was a beggar in the streets of Paris but when he saw her outstretched hand he just threw the bill into her lap as if she nauseated him. On the other hand, the film shows that not only foreigners or immigrants can find themselves in an uncomfortable position; Anne is made to feel very uncomfortable at a certain incident inside the metro when a young Arab starts insulting her without reason.

Concluding, it could be said that loneliness, alienation and communicational problems encountered in all the characters analyzed in these films are to a great extent consequences of globalization.

124

2. 4. The Missing Star (2006)

I have never imagined China like this

Although most of the displacements taking place in the contemporary globalized era are directed towards the big western metropolises, as is the case in the films analyzed in the first chapter, there are also other kind of movements, professional, touristic, etc. Such a different kind of travelling, a reverse journey from a decreasing capitalist country like Italy to a new emerging financial centre, in this case China, is depicted in the film The Missing Star

(2006) by Gianni Amelio. The film’s main plot revolves around a mechanic’s, Vincenzo’s, trip to China.

In The Missing Star, a major Chinese company buys the industrial machinery of an old plant factory in Italy. Vincenzo Buonavolontà, the responsible mechanic, tries to explain to the Chinese representatives - with the help of Liu Hua, the Chinese girl interpreter - that one of the factory’s accessories, specifically a hydraulic power switch, is dysfunctional and needs replacement. He offers to repair it, but it seems that, due to the technical jargon, Liu Hua faces some difficulties in translating and intervenes insulting her. The following day, Vincenzo, having repaired the power switch, realizes that the Chinese group has left Italy without it and decides to go in person to China and deliver the converter. His journey to China and the search for the factory prove to be much more different and difficult of what he had initially thought. Luckily, Liu Hua, whom he encounters by chance in China again, proves to be of help; with her, Vincenzo discovers the developing industrialized and provincial China.

The Missing Star is the English translation of the Italian original title La Stella che non c’è. Although the film’s initial idea comes from the novel “La dismissione” (2002) (The decommissioning) by Ermanno Rea, the aspect of globalization and of a long journey to

125 China, a leading country in the global economy, are firstly introduced by the director Gianni

Amelio. The novel narrates the story of an Italian mechanic, Vincenzo, during the dismounting of the Ilva steel factory in Bagnoli on the coast near Naples in 1991 which in the past had employed thirteen thousand people, and his memories of the years he worked there.

When the Chinese come to Italy to learn all about the machinery they have purchased and that will be taken down and re-built at Meishan, they offer a job to Vincenzo, but he refuses to leave Italy. In the film, on the contrary, it is Vincenzo’s own decision to embark on a journey to China and this eventually becomes the film’s main focus. Thus, the issue becomes the relationship between West (Italy) and East (China) in the era of globalization.

The film combines the characteristic of exploration of someone’s own will, stemming from the road movie genre (Vincenzo “Goodwill” embarks on the journey to China on his own will) and the characteristic of forced dislocation due to harsh financial conditions stemming from the migratory journeys (Liu Hua moves from the provinces to Shanghai and temporarily to Italy in search for a job). Economic liberalization in China in combination with changes in the restrictions against migration has led rural men and women to migrate into cities to seek employment far away from their homes (Guthrie 80).

2. 4. 1. Industrialization

The wasted, deserted and industrialized landscapes in this film are reminiscent of the barren, grey, impersonal landscapes of Antonioni’s Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, 1964) and they pose the issue of pollution and alienation in an industrializing modernity. Amelio himself acknowledges Antonioni’s influence on his films: “I'm closer to the story that Antonioni is telling, and my characters are closer to the characters that you find in Antonioni's films. In neo-realism, things are always close-ended, whereas in Antonioni’s films, they’re suspended, open-ended” (D’Arcy).

126 Antonioni explained the birth of his idea for the Red Desert by describing the landscape around Ravenna: “The violent transformation of the countryside around the city has had a strong effect on me. Before, there were immense groves of pine trees, very beautiful, which today are completely dead. Soon even the few that have survived will die and give way to factories, artificial waterways, and docks. This is a reflection of what is happening in the rest of the world” (284). Amelio’s descriptions are in total accordance with the above:

“Wherever we shot, the skies were grey, cloudy, impenetrable, from the frighteningly high levels of pollution. We only saw the sun when we got to inner Mongolia” (De Marco).

Most importantly, not only the natural landscape but also the human psyche itself has been affected by these changes. Antonioni had made such a conscious statement: “The world that the characters in the film come into conflict with isn’t the world of factories. Behind the industrial transformation lies another one — a transformation of the spirit, of human psychology. This new way of life conditions the behavior both of those who work in the factories and of those, who, outside of it, suffer its effects” (284).

This can be seen in Amelio’s film, as well. A train or a bus full of tired, miserable, poorly-dressed Chinese provincials reveals the hardships of daily life in certain parts of

China. Even when Vincenzo and Liu Hua sail on the famous Yangtze River, otherwise known as the “Blue River”, Liu Hua explains that, for the construction of the biggest barrage in the world producing eighteen thousand megawatt of electricity, many people were forced to abandon their homes, due to the floods. “The sugar cane is not sweet in both ends”, she adds, pointing out that for every achievement there is a price that needs to be paid.

Images of even bigger degradation are presented in the beehive-like tenement house, the alternative of a hotel, where they go to spend the night in order to save money. Here again, on their way up to the building on the stairs, they encounter wretched workers wandering around with their families, and small children. While Vincenzo seems exhausted and a bit angry for the tiring process of getting up so many stairs, Liu Hua, still full of energy, answers

127 to Vincenzo’s question concerning the existence of elevators, that there are elevators from the tenth floor, but one should pay for their use, if they would still work.

The “apartment” they finally reach is indicative of the degraded conditions of life.

“Vincenzo’s gaze reveals the effect of globalization on workers. He sees tiny rooms where young men and women nap half-naked in bunk beds before resuming work, while others run sewing machines or iron clothes. Vincenzo’s craftsmanship stands in direct contrast to the fast-paced, dehumanized sweatshop, where workers are enslaved by the demands of mass production” (Vitti 384). Scenes of greater degradation and poverty, though, are to be seen in the surrounding areas of the worksites and factories: a woman washing clothes in a wash-tub in the street, some children playing in a corner, while another one is eating a bit further, a woman cleaning octopuses on a small dirty table. Liu Hua explains that the families who clean the factory and fix the workers’ wrecked equipment live there, just nearby the plant.

Such images are not fictional, if we consider Gianni Amelio’s words:

They [the censors] didn’t want us to shoot in the steel mills of Chongqing,

one of the most terrifying places on earth, where women prepare food among

poisonous miasmas and barefoot and abandoned children run around among

the waste from the steel mill. They forbid me to film a small demonstration

organized by students who were protesting against the pollution from the steel

mill. But I can’t complain about how we were treated. The Chinese may knock

you down, but then they help you get back up”. (De Marco)

Vincenzo (as well as the spectator) encounters also characteristic images of the poor, provincial China in Liu Hua’s homeland, in her grandmother’s house. This constitutes a typical provincial cottage industry which processes cotton and rice noodles. Vincenzo meets also there Liu Hua’s young son, Sao Li, who remains there, being taken care of by his grandmother, hidden and unregistered, as his father has abandoned them. Liu Hua, having migrated in order to seek a job, represents a typical case for China. As Doug Guthrie

128 mentions, “young women form a big part of the labor force that is steadily migrating to urban and coastal areas — a fact that has fundamental consequences for the structure of the

Chinese family in rural areas” (80). Liu Hua informs Vincenzo that in China many children in a family equal to a fine, as “they will use more public resources” (Guthrie 86). Consequently, many children remain unregistered and hidden or abandoned.

2. 4. 2. East-West Relationship and the Role of the Language

The film, at times adopting Liu Hua’s point of view, reveals Vincenzo’s, and generally the Westerner’s, weaknesses and naivete. Vincenzo’s naive superiority is revealed through several incidents: his disregard of Liu Hua’s statement that in China the technicians can be also good, his self-confidence that he is the only one who can fix the mechanical problem, or his initial disgust for and contempt of Chinese food which he ends up liking. Moreover, when they visit a steel mill and the Chinese police arrests Vincenzo, he tries to explain angrily to them that the converter is not a bomb, but he is also frightened, as he recalls that the death sentence might be still valid in China. Liu Hua explaines to him after they get released that she was kept that long in the police station because the principal was trying to find the location of the factory. “The Chinese may knock you down, but then they help you get back up”, as Liu Hua says.

Other incidents reveal the subjective “supremacy” concerning the role of language as a feature of postmodernism depending on time, place, power relations and the point of view posed in the film. It is of great importance to notice that Vincenzo’s whole journey to China could be attributed to a misunderstanding involving the inadequacy of translation. In Italy,

Vincenzo goes to meet the Chinese representatives who bought the factory in order to warn them about a deficit he has discovered. He says that he himself will fix the problem, but he asks them to be patient and not to use oxy welding during the dismantling. Obviously, the

129 young Chinese girl, Liu Hua, who works as a translator, faces some problems with the technical jargon and translates inaccurately. So, when the director responds through the translator that they do not intend to burn the smelting-furnace, Vincenzo, furious about the wrong translation, grabs the dictionary trying to do the translation himself. This has as a result for Liu Hua to lose her job, as the spectator of the film gets informed in a posterior scene.

Later on, though, when in China, and after he encounters again Liu Hua by chance,

Vincenzo tries to win her sympathy in order to get help, as he does not speak Chinese, confirming that the role of language depends on the situation, the place and the power relations. Situated in a strange country now and without speaking the language, he cannot act superior but, on the contrary, he is dependent on Liu Hua. Furthermore, it should be stressed that in order for a better identification with Vincenzo to be achieved, Liu Hua’s response to him in Chinese at this point is not translated through subtitles.

Towards the end of the film, Vincenzo abandons Liu Hua who has fallen asleep in a truck. Vincenzo, alone, this time seems to be more self-confident than in the beginning of his trip to China. Although he hasn’t learned any Chinese, he manages to communicate with signs and body language and resolve his basic needs, food and sleep. The following day, while sitting outside a factory, unexpectedly, one of the workers recognizes the converter, he explains through signs that they need it, and he carries it to the factory. Although Vincenzo seems content and fulfilled, ironically, it is revealed to the spectator that the whole journey was unnecessary as the factory already possessed many converters.

The last scene, in which Vincenzo arriving at the train station reunites with Liu Hua, poses certain important issues in a symbolic way. Firstly, Liu Hua returns money to Vincenzo who is now broke and really needs it, saying that she has kept her share. Such an act could symbolize the West being financed by an impoverished East. Secondly, Liu Hua says that her son started crying because his toy was destroyed and she gives it to Vincenzo to fix it.

Vincenzo’s response though, that the time when the toys got repaired has passed and that they

130 will buy him a new one, is distinctive of the period of consumerism and mass production, diminishing the goal of his whole journey. But as a road movie, it is the journey that counts and not the goal: it is through the journey that Vincenzo, standing for the West, has come closer and sympathized with Liu Hua, who represents the East. It is now, in the end of the film and the journey, that Liu Hua speaks in Chinese (no translation) and Vincenzo responds in Italian, as if he understood Chinese, bridging the gap between them. After all, in Gianni

Amelio’s words, “I hate journeys, in the sense of discovering a country; I see them only as a means of getting to know a person” (Douin). According to Vitti, “The journey also recalls historical emigration and signifies the lack of permanency and roots in postmodern society as well as the uncontrolled modernization that has destroyed many good traditional values”

(374).

2. 4. 3. Binary Pairs, Postcolonialism and Postmodernism

In my opinion, The Missing Star could be considered as a kind of reversed and expanded version of Wim Wender’s Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Staedten,1974) regarding the protagonists’ identities, gender roles and landscape: in Wim Wender’s film the German protagonist, the journalist Phil Winter, feels disoriented and overwhelmed in New York by signs of postmodernity like television ads, neon signs and posters, and he manages to find his national and personal identity again only after a long wandering in his homeland with little

Alice. Vincenzo, on the other hand, rediscovers himself far away from his own country, in

China. According to Amelio’s statement, he “is a man who needs to regain a lost groundedness. He has nothing left; he wants to know if he has a chance at a second life. So he invents a mechanical failure as a trick to convince himself that his new path is the right one”

(De Marco). Amelio acknowledges his preference for setting films abroad to discover the inner workings of his characters.

131 Regarding the gender roles, in opposition to the search for Alice’s mother and eventually grandmother in Alice in the Cities, in The Missing Star it is the mature Liu Hua who helps the naive and ignorant Vincenzo to search for the factory. Liu Hua is presented in a simple way, dressed in western clothes, handling the situations that occur in a smart way, and, although leading and trying to be helpful to Vincenzo, maintaining her pride and independence. Such an image comes into total opposition to the traditional oriental woman, as usually and conventionally described in the writings of Western travelers and novelists. As

Said states: “women are usually the creatures of a male power-fantasy. They express unlimited sensuality, they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing” (Orientalism

207). Liu Hua’s strong personality and solid character becomes once more evident when she resists and returns the insults of a Chinese pimp who accuses her of being a whore, when he sees her together with Vincenzo. According to Vitti, “Liu Hua also has qualities that reflect her nationality; she often says the Chinese are stubborn, and have to struggle for recognition and respect. The fact that she is very concerned with money can be seen as an aspect of

China’s transition, embracing capitalism and consumerism, although she is also young and trying to make her own way” (379).

It could be noticed that apart from the masculine-feminine opposition the film relies very much on binaries and contrasting notions: the West (Italy) vs the East (China); the foreigner vs the native (depending on the location: in Italy Vincenzo was the native and Liu

Hua the foreigner while in China the situation is the reverse); the wealthy metropolis (the multicultural Shanghai) vs the sordid province (Liu Hua’s enclosed hometown); the global

(the ease of travelling from one part of the globe to another, i.e. Italy-China) vs the local ( the bonding with a specific place, i.e. Liu Hua’s grandmother in the village); the constructed

(industrialized and modern) vs the natural environment (the disappearance of the virgin, intact landscapes); the belief (Vincenzo’s notion of China before the journey) vs the knowledge

(Vincenzo’s and spectator’s image of China after the trip-film); the alienation (Vincenzo’s

132 and Liu Hua’s different gender, economic, social and national background) vs the intimacy

(Vincenzo’s and Liu Hua’s acquaintance and eventual friendship).

It should be noticed though, that these binary oppositions do not remain completely solid and unaffected by the end of the film. The critical position towards the binary social relation of the world of “Orient” and “West”, as described by Edward Said (Orientalism 45), and notions of power and knowledge as the inseparable components of such a binary relation articulated by him and Michel Foucault, is adopted in the film which reinforces a rather post- colonialist stance redirecting the “dualistic opposition of colonizer and colonized toward a movement of exchange and shifting positionings” (Rivi 112).

Even the title contains two notions, as the word “stella” in Italian, as well as “star” in

English, could be interpreted both as either an emblem shaped like a conventionalized star

(Collins English Dictionary 1128) or any object of machinery usually made of steel having the shape of a star (Zingarelli 1740). In the film, the second interpretation refers to the missing converter while the former one alludes to the Chinese flag, consisting of five yellow stars, the smaller four of them placed in semicircle around the bigger one. By the end of

1949, when the contemporary Chinese flag was created, the four stars symbolized the four social classes - workers, peasants, the petit bourgeoisie and the patriotic capitalists - while the larger one, standing for the Communist Party of China, professed to represent and unite these classes in the Chinese nation. Parallel interpretations are that the stars, shaped like a Begonia leaf, stand for the territories of China or for the five largest ethnic groups, conflating with the

"Five Races Under One Union" flag, used in 1912–28 by the Republic of China, whose five- coloured stripes represented the Han, Manchus, Mongols, Hui and Tibetans (Zarrow 363).

In the film, Liu Hua in her discussion with Vicenzo gives her own explanation. The four stars on the Chinese flag symbolize honesty, patience, justice and solidarity, the main virtues of the Chinese people. In my opinion, Vicenzo’s response is very significant. He says that he has heard something different but that “always something is missing”, indicating

133 plurality, relativity and uncertainty, key features of postmodernism, and enriching with a deeper meaning the title of the film.

Another sign of post-modernity appears several times in the film: in the beginning of his trip, when Vincenzo visits the Chinese company, the current director stares the whole time at the television, while talking. Later on, when Vincenzo spends a night in a deserted place in the province among workers, all of them stare at the television which constitutes their evening entertainment; at a certain point, in particular, the television’s screen covers for a while the whole shot, positioning thus the spectator in Vincenzo’s place, as if watching Chinese television along with the Chinese workers, but without understanding the language, being able to look only at the images. Television functions thus as a simulated world. Amelio here adopts a critical stance towards television as a means that intrudes and hinders human communication or offers itself for frivolous and thoughtless relaxation.

2. 4. 4. Exchange of identities

Although the notions of journey and national identity as well as the attempt to understand the “Other” are reoccurring topics in most of Gianni Amelio’s films, it could be said that The Missing Star has strong affinity with his previous film Lamerica (1994); this film is based on journeys that end in a kind of “exchange of identities”, linking the phenomena of Italian emigration to America during the 1940s, the Italian colonialism, and the migration from Albania to Italy in the 1990s (Duncan 204).

The film narrates the story of two Italian racketeers, Fiore and his assistant Gino, who travel to Albania just after the fall of communism to set up a fictive shoe firm and pocket the subsidies from the government. Their attempt fails and Gino, after many adventures through which he loses gradually all the external signifiers of privilege, such as his smart-suit, his sun glasses, his car, and finally his passport, ends up in a rusty vessel full of Albanians who want

134 to migrate to Italy, without any difference of them. Together with him is Michele, an old

Albanian man who proved to be a Sicilian, exactly like Gino.

The ship, “a floating part of space, a placeless place” (Foucault 7) constitutes here a manifest typical example of heterotopia blurring the boundaries between the Albanian and

Italian identity, between the Albanian migration to Italy in the 1990s and the previous Italian migration to America during the 1940s. The close-ups to various migrant’s faces contribute to the universality and the timelessness of the topic of migration, reminding that Italy some decades ago was in the same situation as Albania in the 1990s.

Although the film The Missing Star does not include the reversal as far as the identity is concerned, it resembles Lamerica in the idle and supposed superiority of the West and western capitalism towards the East and former communist countries — Albania and China.

Gino ends up in a situation exactly like an Albanian immigrant, while Albania as a state proves to be working better at certain points than expected, when, for example, Gino is arrested for the fraud he committed.

Vincenzo is an even more tragic figure, as up to the end he fails to realize the uselessness of his journey. This is only revealed to the spectator, as it similarly proves that

China with its high rates of industrialization has exceeded nowadays the West, at least in some sectors. On the other hand, both films dedicate many panning and long shots in order to show the poverty and wretchedness that rules in post-communist Albania and newly industrialized China. Both films are political as well as personal, addressing not just the contemporary Albanian or Chinese reality but also wider questions, such as racism and the relationship of the affluent West to the poorer world.

Additionally, although both films, shot in realist style, adopt mainly the Westerner’s point of view - the Italian one in these cases -, this is not absolute: Gino proves not to be as invulnerable as he seemed in the beginning, while in various cases the spectator might identify with Liu Hua’s point of view and stand critically towards Vincenzo and the West in

135 general. Finally, although the journeys proved fruitless — Gino failed with the company and

Vincenzo did not actually offer any help —, they have contributed to the western protagonists’ better understanding and knowledge of the country they visited and mainly to the closer contact with the Other, the core of the conventional road movie.

2. 4. 5. Openess towards the Other and towards Transnational Productions

The Other is a multi-encompassing term which is encountered in various disciplines. It occupies a central position in the discources of ethnicity and immigration as it evokes issues of power relations. In philosophy, the term The Other identifies the other human being, in his and her differences from the Self. Consequently, the condition and quality of Otherness, is the state of being different from and alien to the social identity of a person and to the identity of the Self. According to The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (Bullock), Otherness is the condition of political exclusion effected either by the State or by the social institutions invested with the corresponding socio-political power (620). Likewise, in the field of human geography, the action term to Other identifies and excludes a person from the social group, placing him or her at the margins of society, where the social norms do not apply to and for the person labelled as the Other (Mountz 328). In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy it is accurately stated that the use of the language of Otherness in the anthropological discourse

(Oriental Studies) about Western encounters with non-Western cultures preserves the dominator-dominated discourse of hegemony, just as misrepresenting the feminine as Other reasserts male privilege as primary in social discourse (Honderich 637). According to

Mountz, in the framework of Orientalism, the imperial conquest of “non-white” countries was intellectually justified with the fetishization of the Eastern world, which was effected with cultural generalizations that divided the peoples of the world into the artificial, binary- relationship of “The Eastern World and The Western World”, the dichotomy which identified,

136 designated, and subordinated the peoples of the Orient as the Other — as the non-European

Self (328). Thus, the praxis of Othering reduced to cultural inferiority the people, places, and things of the Eastern world, which then justified colonialism by establishing the West as the superior standard of culture (Said, Orientalism 49).

The film The Missing Star challenges such power relations by suggesting a deeper understanding of the Other and focusing more on the common features of the humans regardless of ethnic and national background rather than the differences. Such a stance departs from the post-colonial perspective of the Other as part of a dominator-dominated binary relationship and leans more towards a postmodern attitude that celebrates difference.

Vincenzo and Liu Hua face some problems in understanding each other and in their communication due to various reasons, such as the different national, linguistic and cultural background but also due to their different age and gender. However, Vincenzo’s journey with

Liu Hua is a way of developing a personal relationship and helping him “overcome otherness”

(Vitti 381). As Antonio C. Vitti states, “The missing star of the title is finally found in contact with the other” (392).

The attempt to understand the Other is also the topic of the film My name is Li (Io

Sono Li), 2011, by Andrea Segre regarding China and Italy, — which won the 2012 LUX film prize of the European Parliament. The story revolves around the special — and disapproved of - friendship between Bepi, an old fisherman of Slavic origin called “the Poet”, and Shun Li, a young and meek Chinese bar worker, against the background of a melancholic Venetian lagoon. The film shares some similarities with The Missing Star, as both films deal with a special friendship that develops between a young Chinese woman and an Italian (or Italian with Slavic origin) man. Furthermore, a common element in both films is the Chinese woman’s migration to Italy in order to work and be able to support her young son. Most importantly, both films promote the understanding of the Other through deeper self-reflection.

Andrea Segre responds positively to the question of whether two different roads can be

137 crossed: “If they have the courage to find a new, common orientation they can be crossed. I don’t mean that somebody should search something externally, but rather internally, inside himself. By getting to know better yourself you gain the hope to meet the others as well. We don’t need to confront the other cultures as something exotic. This is a colonized way of thinking. The meeting with the others is simultaneously a new identity for us” (Katsounaki 3).

The film The Missing Star poses also the issue of globalization, not only in content but in form as well, as its production is globalized consisting of the collaboration between Italy,

France, Switzerland and Singapore. The former collaborations between European countries for the production of films are now expanding even more integrating countries outside

Europe. As Luisa Rivi states in her book “European Cinema after 1989: Cultural Identity and

Transnational Production” co-productions with other (European or third) countries is made possible and supported for the better circulation of films outside their country of origin.

Characteristic is the slogan “European films go global”, used by the European audiovisual ministers of the European Union at the Cannes Film Festival 2006, promoting the global orientation of the films. “Co-production based in Europe but involving countries beyond its borders are expanding the reach of contemporary European cinema and challenging yet again our understanding of cultural identities and hybrid status” (Rivi 143). This is the case of The

Missing Star, dealing with China, a country which emerging from its marginality has become a thriving global economy (Rivi 143). According to C. Vitti, the most important thing is

“finding a balance between progress and human values” (392).

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2. 5. The Landscape and the Tourist Gaze-Eurocentrism

2. 5. 1. Big Urban Metropolis vs Rural Province

The films in the second chapter, apart from the communicational problems interpersonal relationships have, offer mainly an insight to the landscape and the lifestyle of various countries. The most striking observation is the presentation of the distinct differences between western affluent metropolises and third world underdeveloped landscapes. In Babel, wealthy San Diego in the US and the hypermodern Tokyo in Japan are juxtaposed to the colourful yet full of crime Tijuana in Mexico and the remote and deserted mountains in

Tazarine, Morocco. In Code Unknown, the differences between the metropolitan city of Paris and underdeveloped parts of the world, like Kosovo, Certeze in Romania and Gabon in

Africa, are not that striking yet evident. In The Missing Star, the difference between the big urban city of Beijing and the vast industrial yet impoverished rural areas is more than evident, as well.

Life differs according to the place of residence; in Babel, for example, the harsh and demanding life of a herder in the rocky and sterile mountains of Morocco is contrasted to the easy and wealthy life of the Americans in San Diego or the super modern and high-tech life in

Tokyo. Code Unknown goes even further, presenting the differences within the same country or even city; the crowded and multicultural urban city of Paris is contrasted to the traditional and demanding and isolated rural life in the farm. Furthermore, life in Paris is not the same for everybody: Maria has to struggle for a spot in order to do the humiliating and demeaning

“job” of a beggar while Anne has the privilege of owning an apartment, the entrance code of which can change according to her wish, and leading an interesting acting career. In The

139 Missing Star, the luxurious office of the director of the industrial company in Beijing comes into total contrast to the completely impoverished rural industrial areas in provincial China.

Furthermore, countries and cities in the periphery to Europe and USA are represented as places full of dangers and corruption, where any kind of problems and troubles are possible. In Mexico Mike and Debbie get lost, in Morocco Susan gets shot, in Kosovo there is a terrible war with many victims, while Romania, Africa and rural China suffer from underdevelopment and low infrastructure in line with most of the East European and Third

World countries.

2. 5. 2. The Tourist Gaze

The films discussed in this chapter, apart from revealing the inequalities of globalization and of privileged and unprivileged countries, display also landscapes indicative of the regions/countries presented. The spectator, in this case, could be paralleled to

Benjamin’s flaneur of the nineteenth century who wanders as a stroller in the modern city of

Paris receiving scopophilic pleasure just by looking around the sights and without actually engaging himself with the inhabitants. Benjamin writes:

The gaze which the allegorical genious turns on the city betrays, instead, a

profound alienation. It is the gaze of the flaneur, whose way of life still

conceals behind a beneficent mirage the anxiety of the future inhabitants of

our metropolises. The flaneur seeks refuge in the crowd. The crowd is the veil

through which the familiar city is transformed for the flaneur into

phantasmagoria. (21)

David Clarke in his book The Cinematic City analyses further the flaneur’s attitude:

For the flaneur, the (sexually charged) pleasures of the city stemmed from an

aesthetic proximity to others that was wholly detached from any social

140 proximity (and hence from any responsibility or consequence) - summarized

in Buck-Morss’ pitchy description of the flaneur’s guiding principle as “look,

but do not touch”. (5)

In a similar way, the film’s spectator enjoys watching in a voyeuristic way other countries and cities without actually engaging himself with the place or the people as it is a virtual and simulated tour. In fact, the practice of flanerie and the apparatus of cinema both effectively embraced the virtual. Anne Friedberg, in her book Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, maintains that “flanerie can be historically situated as an urban phenomenon linked to, in gradual but direct ways, the new aesthetic reception found in “moviegoing” (3).

As flanerie could be considered the precursor of tourism, it becomes easily understandable that there are many links between tourism and film spectatorship.

Many theorists have commented on the analogous practices between film viewing and tourism and the similarities in the framing of the spectacle. So, there are parallels between the travelling shot, so common in film, and the view from a bus/train. Ellen Strain has extended the definition of the tourist gaze to further practices like cinema and television watching, anthropological inquiry etc. (Strain 3). Strain acknowledges the fact that the turn to the study of tourism begins with Dean MacCannell’s 1976 book The Tourist that includes the tourist’s motivations to seek exotic lands. The main answer is authenticity, as a reaction to the alienation that grew out of industrialization and the subsequent fragmentation of modern society. The “fading of a sense of reality and oneness with the world” leads to the search of the so-called primitive societies. MacCannell explains: “Modern man has been condemned to look elsewhere, everywhere, for his authenticity, to see if he can catch a glimpse of it reflected in the simplicity, poverty, chastity or purity of others” (41). As, however, the real is fading away, there is a compensatory attempt to manufacture it, producing thus in

Baudrillardian terms a simulated experience, a feature of post-modernism. Consequently, the

141 films presenting “staged authentic” places, like theme parks for example, could be certainly be considered as postmodern.

2. 5. 3. Gazing at the Landscape in Babel

The films analyzed in this chapter are particularly connected to the scopophilic pleasures that resemble the touristic experience of seeing new places. The diversity and accuracy of the countries and cities presented in the films offer to the spectator the opportunity to enjoy a virtual, imaginary journey to various and diverse places. What is worth noticing, is that in several cases the new places are shown through a car or another means of transport as if the spectator was actually taking a tour in the city.

In Babel, the spectator’s introduction to the vast and dry areas of the Moroccan desert is made through the moving tourist bus inside of which Susan and Richard are sitting. It could be argued, consequently, that it is a western point of view adopted confronting the landscape in a rather privileged and exoticized, Eurocentric way. A similar privileged western point of view, yet full of admiration this time, is also adopted in the case of Richard and Susan’s children, Mike and Debbie, who enter Mexico in Santiago’s car. Colorful images of traffic and people wandering the streets in a rather “inappropriate” way, selling unhealthy food, being dressed too colorfully for the western eye, or even prostitutes cause Mike to recall his mother’s warning that Mexico is a dangerous place. The film, in this way, shows an expected stereotypical representation of Mexico, yet at the same time stands critical towards it, by having Santiago mocking Mike’s observation with his ironical phrase “Yes, it is full of

Mexicans”, questioning thus the abstract link that all Mexicans are dangerous by being

Mexican.

As far as the representation of the hyper-modern and technologically advanced Tokyo is concerned, images of the ultra modern city are also to be seen through the car of Chieko’s

142 father. In this case, however, despite Tokyo being situated in the East, conceptually it belongs to the West, as it is an advanced and developed city following or even exceeding the models of west European and American cities. The gaze in this section is still a western one, admiring the achievements of a hyper developed Asian city. Tokyo could be considered as the quintessence of postmodern urban space, “a site of difference, fragmentation, conflict, and plurality, and, as the comments by Soja and Featherstone demonstrate, it has also tended to be represented in spatial rather than temporal terms” (Clarke, The Cinematic City 169). The young Chieko and her experience of the postmodern urban Tokyo could be paralleled to Paul

Patton’s description of the relationship between the “self” and the cityscape.

To the extent that the inhabitant of the (post)modern city is no longer a subject

apart from his or her performances, the border between self and city has

become fluid…the city as experienced by a subject which is itself the product

of urban experience, a decentred subject which can neither fully identify with

nor fully dissociate from the signs which constitute the city. (Clarke, The

Cinematic City 170)

2. 5. 4. Gazing at theLandscape in Code Unknown

In Code Unknown there are two scenes revealing the landscape of two countries through the point of view as looking inside a car. The first case is the depiction of Certeze, in

Romania, through the point of view of an acquaintance of Irina, who is driving the car. The place is rather rural and underdeveloped with many houses under construction. Although in this case there is no subject from a western developed country to look at the landscape in a privileged way like in Babel, it can be assumed that in this case the role of the privileged

Eurocentric gaze is undertaken by the spectator who is probably assumed to belong mostly to a western privileged class. Similarly, a western privileged spectator’s gaze is assumed

143 regarding the representation of Africa through the point of view of Amadou’s father while driving his car. The spectator’s western Eurocentric gaze is probably implied to be looking with fascination, and perhaps some contempt at an underdeveloped place full of people, dressed colorfully and carrying staff on their heads and wandering around so much that

Amadou’s father has to beep often in order for them to make way for the car. Such an image full of people wandering around on a warm sunny day comes into total contrast with the following scene depicting the subway in Paris, a place rather cold, functioning on very specific terms, people sitting mostly silently inside. It should be stressed that in the film Paris is not depicted a single time through its tourist landmark monuments or its picturesque neighborhoods. Silvey notes: “Code Unknown breaks with traditions of representing Paris as a tourist site and instead treats it as an anonymous city.” It is simply shown as a big anonymous and alienated city where everyone has to struggle for survival or respect, especially the migrants.

At this point, it should be noted also that, although for the “foreign” places a western gaze might be implied, as far as the point of view of migrants is concerned, the hometowns

“are not romanticized or framed as places of origin and belonging” (Silvey). This is especially evident in the story of Amadou, as, when a counselor tells Amadou’s mother that Amadou should return to Africa, the place of origin is no longer considered as a place of intimacy and belonging as the mother responds negatively. According to Silvey, “When Amadou’s father returns to Mali, the claustrophobic view from inside the taxi of the crowds in the street emphasize the dislocation and asynchrony between of himself and any sense of Mali being an ancestral home.”

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2. 5. 5. Gazing at theLandscape in The Missing Star

Although in The Missing Star there are not so many shots through windows of moving vehicles depicting an exotic landscape, movement with various means of transportation is essentially intertwined with gazing at different landscapes. In this film, it could be argued that the gaze at all these Chinese landscapes is also the western one, Vincenzo’s, who is Italian, but also of the implied westerner spectator. Only in the beginning of the film, there is the

Chinese perspective through the Chinese factory buyers who observe a decadent and full of unemployment part of Italy selling the once vibrant steel factory. So, Italy is presented not in a positive light but, on the contrary, in a very modern and realistic way with all its problems.

Vincenzo’s western gaze on China begins in a rather glorious and admirable way as he looks at the super modern bridge from the window of the taxi transporting him from the airport to the city of Songhai. The vast under construction urban landscape of Songhai full of skyscrapers and tall modern buildings causes admiration to the European eye. China as a fast developing industrial nation exceeds Europe. As Vincenzo travels, however, and enters deeper into the country to more unknown and provincial areas, like his arrival in Aouhan in

Hubei province, the grandiose is minimized. There are big industrial plants but life does not seem so glamorous. His gaze continues through a boat sailing on the “Blue River” by reaching the Tchontschin province where, outside the factories, images of degradation and poverty cause feelings of desperation and pity. Next, Vincenzo being sick arrives by bus in

Liu Hua’s hometown where he experiences poor provincial yet humane life. The following scenes, however, reveal industrialization’s consequences: factories with exhausted workers situated in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by vast and deserted areas reveal the price that has to be paid for China’s development. In any case, the only sure thing is that, although

Vincenzo’s gaze - and presumably the spectator’s, as well - begun in admiration and curiosity

145 towards such a, seemingly at least, different world from a Western country, it ends with a better understanding of the “Other”, whether this is a country or a person.

2. 5. 6. Is the Wetstern Gaze Released from Its “Superiority”?

With so many representations of various cities and countries included in these films a plausible question arises: do these films lead the spectator to adopt a more open and tolerable attitude towards other countries and cultures or do they unconsciously remain at a rather conservative attitude by privileging the western affluent gaze? MacCannell poses the question in a more concrete way: “Does tourism and/or postmodernity conceived in the most positive way as a celebration of distance, difference or differentiation, ultimately liberate consciousness or enslave it?” (xx). In the same line, as an extension of the tourism, the commercialized multiculturalism of entertainment media raises similar questions. As

American filmmakers and television producers direct their cameras overseas and foreign- made films receive global distribution, are western audiences exposed to a “utopia of difference” or is it a cultural colonization?

According to Strain, worlds outside the West are usually perceived as imagined and commodified. Through leisure travel the priviledged “first world” tourists view “third world” people as objectified. In this context, the latter ones transform themselves into a “degraded form of their native culture for a moneyed audience” perpetuating thus an economic dependence and power relations that can be traced back to colonialism (11).

Similarly to the tourist paradigm, films several times adopt a conservative view towards other cultures. A very accurate and extensive analysis upon this topic is conducted by

Deborah Shaw in her article “Babel and the Global Hollywood Gaze”. Shaw supports that although films like Babel attempt to adopt a “world cinema” gaze, by consciously trying to avoid a western tourist Eurocentric point of view, they hardly succeed in doing so, as they

146 continue to privilege western narratives (11-31). Babel could be characterized as a Hollywood world cinema text, as, on the one hand, it focuses on the «interconnectedness of cinematic practices and cultures in the age of globalization” and deals with “hybridity, transculturation, border crossing, transnationalism and translation” (Dennison and Lim 6) but, on the other hand, it is very important to mention that it relies primarily on U.S. funding (Paramount,

Vantage) and deploys the star system (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett etc.) to attract audiences.

Furthermore, apart from the more technical side of the film, which relies on US funding and famous actors, it can be argued that even the narrative despite its transnationalism privileges again the American concerns and point of view; two of the four storylines are concerned with the fates of North American characters, and, additionally, regarding the topics posed, “Mexican immigration to the US and the “war on terror” are very much North

American “global” concerns” (Shaw 15). The Japanese storyline dealing with teenage alienation is also a topic easily understood and felt by Western audiences. So, despite

Inarritu’s conscious intention to avoid a western gaze, as this is also evident in his statement

“The most important thing for me was not to tell a story from the point of view of tourists in some country. […] I tried very hard to see what was important to them, to sacrifice and subordinate my point of view in order to see the drama of their world through their eyes”

(Gardels), there are some indications that he did not manage to avoid totally the tourist gaze.

The notion of the “tourist gaze” first appeared with the publication of John Urry’s

1990 sociological text entitled The Tourist Gaze. The tourist gaze often rests upon an assumed viewer of the developed world observing a “third world other”. According to John Urry, the tourist gaze “facilitates the world of the “other” to be controlled from afar, combining detachment and mastery” (The Tourist Gaze 147). In Shaws words,

The foreign ‘other” becomes an object of consumption, included in the price

of the cinema ticket or the tour, with audiences/tourists encouraged to confuse

seeing with understanding and knowing a country. (19)

147 Such a characteristic tourist gaze in Babel is the gaze of the American tourists including Richard and Susan on the bus with a travelling shot reducing Moroccan women to veiled, shadowy, exotic figures. Morocco appears to be just the exotic background for the two

Hollywood stars (Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt) enacting a bourgeois couple in crisis. Leisured travel has been defined by some as the fatuous interaction between privileged “first world” tourists and an objectified class of “third world” people. Within this understanding of tourism, the latter group performs a degraded form of their native culture for a wealthy audience, and unknowingly participates in a perpetuation of economic dependence, instabile industrial development, and power dynamics reminiscent of colonialism (Strain 11).

In Babel, when Susan gets wounded and is transported to the local Moroccan town of

Tazarine, Susan and Richard seem to be indeed angry with the local population who does not understand or speak English. Such an observation fits totally Crystal’s remark that usually the

British or American tourist who travels the world expects and assumes that everyone speaks

English (Crystal 17). Furthermore, at the beginning of the trip to Morocco, Susan reveals her

American capitalist dominant mentality when she asks a waiter in Morocco for a diet Coke; she eventually has to lower her standards and accept a regular Coke.

Although later, after Susan’s injury, it could be said that the gaze becomes inverted as the American couple becomes now an object for the eyes of the locals, as Shaw supports “the decentring of the hegemonic gaze is not complete, as the objects of the camera’s gaze are predominantly Susan and Richard, with the Moroccans in supporting roles” (20).

Such a stance follows Edward Said’s remarks on America’s dominance over the

Orient, by having described Orientalism as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Orientalism 3). As very accurately Shaw observes, contemporary post-9/11 Orientalism takes the form of Islamophobia and paranoia, with Arabs and Muslims seen to be seeking to destroy the West. Although such fears are strongly challenged in the film, by proving such fears and scenarios as groundless, the result of Ahmed

148 being killed and the American citizens return to their home in the end of the film safe and sound, demonstrates once again the Westerners’ “superiority”.

2. 5. 7. Eurocentrism Prevails in Babel and Code Unknown

A crucial point of critique regarding Babel is that, although the film demonstrates openness towards other cultures by depicting extensively landscapes of other countries, it does not actually deviate from stereotypes and mainstream expectations as the landscapes depicted fulfill totally the spectator’s pre-supposed ideas and images about how a place should look like. The film thus functions in the mainstream tourist way as, according to Urry

“tourists are, in a way, semioticians, reading the landscape for signifiers of certain pre- established notions or signs derived from various discourses of travel and tourism” (The

Tourist Gaze 13). The places depicted in the film correspond to national stereotypes, as Japan is hyper-modern full of impressive neon-bright cityscapes, Mexico is colorful, loud and decadent, while Morocco is deserted and poor with rocky mountains. As far as the representation of Morocco and even perhaps Mexico is concerned, Said’s observation about

Eurocentric ideas positioning the Orient in inferiority and backwardness becomes totally applicable (Said 76). According to Shaw, although in the film there is implied “a world cinema gaze” based on common suffering in all the characters, at the end it becomes evident that the privileged white family is rescued while the dark skinned inhabitants of the Third world suffer or die.

Furthermore, Shaw maintains that the film fails to adopt the Third World perspective as it does fail to be explained Frederic Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping. According to

Jameson, in contemporary society there is a gap as far as the positioning of the individual is concerned in relation to the reality of “class structures,” and this results in “the incapacity of our minds, at least in present, to map the great global multinational and decentred

149 communicational network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects” (44).

This “incapacity to map socially […] (is) crippling to political experience and leads to political and social alienation” (Jameson, “Cognitive Mapping” 347-357). Jameson supports that cognitive mapping can counter this through “a pedagogical political culture, which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system” (Postmodernism 54).

According to Shaw, the film Babel fails to provide such a cognitive mapping for its characters as they essentially lack political agency and they are mainly connected through the superficial melodramatic mode of common suffering (Shaw 26). As a result, although Babel attempts to promote a world cinema gaze, such an attempt fails to fulfill itself completely as the western white Eurocentric perspective reveals to be still superior both in terms of the gaze and narrative.

Something similar could be said about the film Code Unknown which also incorporates multiculturalism and yet the stories of the western French citizens seem to occupy more narrative space than its immigrant counterparts and, in general, the film seems to fail getting rid of a Eurocentric perspective. Although Code Unknown, like Babel, belongs to the category of transnational films, due to their international co-productions and topics, transnationalism is a term that does not always actually correspond to what it should be. Randal’s

Halle comment on trans-nationalism regarding European filmmaking is very indicative:

Transnational and transcultural have often been used to designate “marginal”,

or “third world”, or “migrant” cinemas, celebrating their fractured,

transgressive, “trans” nature. Such analyses de facto leave the European

national cultures as intact organic wholes — which they are not — and fill

the “marginal” with a fraught, high-tragic nature. These presumptions of a

European intactness versus an in- betweenism of Europe’s “others”, actually

150 prove to be profound promotions of Eurocentric perspectives. They do a

disservice to the artifacts they set out to analyse. (8)

Such a view can be traced in Code Unknown like in Babel, as the western American or

European characters despite the troubles they might face, at the end remain intact, while it is the “marginal Others” or migrants who have to confront all the troubles and suffering.

Although Anne in Code Unknown has to endure being verbally harassed by a young Arab migrant on the subway in her own country, her position remains completely intact compared to the Romanian Irina or Amadou’s father who, due to bad financial conditions or homesickness, have to move constantly back and forth between their country in Africa and

France, Paris in this case, in their attempt to somehow improve their lives.

The privileged position of the western whites compared to immigrants is presented as challenged in Alex Lykidis’s article “Minority and Immigrant Representation in Recent

European Cinema”. He writes regarding Haneke’s French speaking films Code Unknown

(2000) and Cache (2005): “In these films, bourgeois privilege is challenged during traumatic multicultural encounters that reveal the breakdown of spatial demarcations between majority and minority groups in postcolonial France” (Lykidis 41). Lykidis continues saying that

“Haneke’s films are characterized by radical particularism and epistemological relativism that challenge the pretence of universality of French Republicanism and European cosmopolitanism”. He adds: “By denying audiences access to the subjectivities of immigrant and minority characters, Haneke stifles the potentially deleterious implications of identification that seeks to collapse rather than understand difference” (Lykidis 42).

Consequently, it could be said that, although Paris in Code Unknown is presented as a multicultural city where racial encounters of every kind are possible, on the other hand, the rather limited description of the “racial Others” and the emphasis on the white French citizens are in line with Bhaskar Sarkar’s remark that “Global multiculturalism would appear to provide the cultural basis of neo-colonialism” (42). Furthermore, an important factor that

151 should be mentioned is that as in Babel, where the funding is mainly American, in Code

Unknown the funding is mainly French (Silvey); such a factor could be considered also crucial, regarding the point of view and the emphasis given mainly on Europe.

2. 5. 8. Issues of Eurocentrism and China as an emergent power in The Missing Star

As far as The Missing Star is concerned, it could be said that it is perhaps the film that mostly succeeds in deconstructing the Westerner’s superiority by criticizing Vincenzo’s attitude at various moments; this does not mean however that the Western gaze is absent.

According to Vitti, “The Missing Star tells more about Italy than China through the character

Vincenzo Buonavolonta” (375). The revelation of a typical Westerner’s ignorance about reality in China finds its expression in Vincenzo’s words: “I have never imagined China like this.” Amelio’s preoccupation with “another” China, a China unfamiliar to the typical

Westerner tourist becomes evident, as famous Chinese monumental landmarks are absent from his film. Instead, the director presents through Vincenzo’s eyes images of less attractive, impoverished Chinese industrialized provinces.

The industrialized landscapes in China betray the high speed of modernization and progress, concepts contrasting with western traditional notions about the Orient as static, frozen and eternally fixed (Said, Orientalism 208). The film offers an insight into an “other”

China, unfamiliar to the Western gaze, a poor developing China influenced by the dictates of a globalized economy. According to Vitti, “[f]or many, China lost the mystique of a Third

World anti-imperialist beacon to become a major partner in capitalism and globalization.

Amelio’s film views these changes through Vincenzo’s gaze”(370). Vincenzo, unlike Marco

Polo who discovered an imperial China through the Silk Road, explores a highly industrialized China, “a country of incredible contrasts, from the science fiction that is

152 Shanghai to the extremely poor countryside, where people live in favelas” (De Marco), as the director himself said in an interview.

Italy is not presented positively, either. The film begins by showing Italian workers gathered outside a factory protesting. At the factory’s gate there is a panel informing: “The factory is sold to Chinese with money”. Amelio, adopts at this part the Chinese point of view: one of the Chinese buyers on the bus, who are about to reach it, asks his co-passenger if the

Colosseum is there, revealing his vague and naive idea of Italy, and the other one answers him in a mocking way that the Colosseum cannot be there, as it is in Rome. The event reaches its culmination, when, later on, the Chinese buyers pose for a photo in front of the huge and round “Colosseum-like” factory’s smelting-furnace, reminding typical tourist photos in front of landmark monuments. It is a director’s ironic comment: the Chinese have not come to admire the Colosseum (and Italy) and take a picture in front of it; they have rather come, and take a picture of a factory they now own, proving Italy’s decadence.

Later on, another incident reveals again Chinese ignorance of Italy: on a bus, a young

Chinese asks Liu Hua about the origin of the sleeping Vincenzo and to her answer, that he is

Italian, he asks again whether Italians are Iraqis. Italy, being compared to Iraq loses its prestige as an affluent Western nation. Liu Hua responds, of course, negatively informing that

Italians are Europeans. According to Vitti, “[t]he line masks a subtle comment on the Italian intervention as peacekeepers in the US war on Iraq” (387). Italy’s prestige becomes once again deconstructed when Liu Hua explains to Vincenzo that she has studied the Italian language because it is a “minor” language, and as her high school was not good enough, she did not have the opportunity to gather many credits in order to study a “major” language at the university. In the following scene Liu Hua takes the lift while Vincenzo, being slower, is forced to follow her by the stairs. The shot showing Liu Hua on the lift elevating fast while

Vincenzo going slowly from the stairs could symbolically denote China’s fast development compared to Italy’s.

153 It should be noted that since China’s encounter with the West, westerners adopted an ambivalent stance to it. On the one hand, there was wealth and culture, on the other hand, the big gap between western and eastern cultural practices was threatening any possible friendly co-operations. In recent years, as China has emerged from its isolation and entered the global economy, debates over how to view, acknowledge, and accept Asian differences have increased, as the realms of economics, politics, and human rights have all become intertwined

(Guthrie 279).

Nowadays, however, despite the differences between China and the West, the gap is narrowing. This becomes evident from Vincenzo’s responce to Chong Fu, the Chinese’s firm director: “We represent the West, and we are degenerate, corrupt, and egoistic, but you are no different. China is a big market that has aspirations to become equal to others - better yet, more powerful than others” (Vitti 370). For many, China lost the mystique of a Third World anti-imperialist beacon to become a major partner in capitalism and globalization. Amelio’s film views these changes through Vincenzo’s gaze.

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2. 6. Conclusion

The films analyzed in the second chapter deal with a variety of topics related to globalization and postmodernism. The most prominent ones are the poly-locality of space and the fragmentation of experience which is expressed very accurately through the network narrative or the puzzle mode. In the realm of space, differences between urban technologically advanced cities versus underdeveloped rural landscapes are posed. The depiction of a variety of landscapes from different countries and continents brings to the fore the question of spectatorship and gaze. The ambivalence between a touristic/voyeuristic gaze which craves for the consumption of new places and new cultures and a compassionate and understanding attitude towards the Other and its beliefs without any prejudices remains unresolved in the films. Nevertheless, the spectator posseses a privileged position in comparison to the displaced immigrants depicted in the films. What is of great interest to note, is that the films analyzed in this chapter present two different kinds of travelling, the privileged cosmopolitan one and the migratory one towards affluent Western cities. Finally, a striking issue that pervades all the narratives is that of communication problems between the characters in the films regardless of age, gander, nationality and ethnicity. Although globalization seems to unify on the one hand, on the other it causes also more communication issues due to the fragmentation of experience and due to the racial and cultural mixing and the random encounters.

The network narrative and the puzzle form reflect very well the complexities of globalization like the interconnectedness and fragmentation at the same time by having nonlinear structure, time loops, fragmented spatio-temporal reality, labyrinthine structures, ambiguity, and overt coincidences. Such modes and features are clearly postmodern, as the various narratives that interconnect and entangle align with the features of postmodernism

155 which are the relativity, the de-centerness, the collapse of cultural hierarchies and cultural disorder.

Following this pattern the films Babel and Code Unknown consist of various stories with different characters and locations. It has to be noted that Code Unknown follows at least a temporal order while Babel breaks both in a very confusing way location and time. The connections made between seemingly disparate phenomena highlight deeper the forces of globalization.

The deportation of Romanian Irina back to her country or French-African Amadou’s mistreatment by the authorities relate to a strict immigration control and racial discrimination that relates to notions of intact race and nation, features of Eurocentrism. Similarly in Babel, the correlation of a gunshot in Morocco that injures an American tourist to Muslim terrorist activities reveals the ethnic and religious prejudices of the Western world, conflicts and a

“clash of cultures”. Consequently, it becomes evident that despite the attempt to destabilize and deconstruct conservative notions of Eurocentrism, several phenomena witness the opposite.

Such distinctions exist also in terms of space. Respectively, landscapes differ as well, in relation to location and welfare; Privileged cities like California, Tokyo or Paris are juxtaposed to underprivileged areas of poor countries like Morocco, Mexico, Romania or

Mali. Such differences are explained by the fact that core/periphery locations were based on exploitative capitalist relationships in which the core (namely, the US and Europe) extracts resources and goods from the periphery (the so-called “developing” or “third” world) in an interdependent exchange that keeps the periphery poor and the core wealthy.

The variety of landscapes and places that presents different cultures and ways of life enables a voyeuristic way of looking especially towards underdeveloped areas. Indicative are the glimpses of chaotic Mexico through Santiago’ s car from the perspective of the American

Mike and Debbie or of the vast deserted rural Morocco through the tourist bus from the

156 perspective of the American Susan and Richard in Babel. In Code Unknown the presentation of Cluj in Romania full of constructed houses and of colorful yet underdeveloped Mali through cars occurs through the gaze of the spectator, positioning thus similarly to the

Americans in the previous case, in the privileged state. Consequently, it can be argued that on the one hand the presentation of various countries and locations witnesses a multiculturalism and openness towards the different and other cultures, but, on the other hand, a latent privilege perspective undermines the principles of postmodernism and relativity by reminding the deep roots of Eurocentrism and colonialism.

The films present as well the distinction between the privileged ones who can travel easily - the Americans and the Japanese Jasujiro in Babel, the French Georges in Code

Unknown and the Italian Vincenzo in The Missing Star - and the ones who migrate in order to find a job or improve their lives - the Mexican Amelia in Babel, the Romanian Irina and the

Malian family of Amadou in Code Unknown, and the Chinese Liu Hua in The Missing Star.

Of course, several others do not have the opportunity to move at all but remain confined to their place of origin like the Moroccan family in Babel, or the Chinese workers in industrial rural areas of China in The Missing Star. Distinctions between privileged citizens versus poor immigrants are also evident within the cities, for example in Paris; in Code Unknown this becomes evident when a young Arab immigrant verbally harasses the French Anne in the subway. Since the privileged citizens live in good areas while the immigrants in ghettos separated, we can talk of an “enclave society”. Nevertheless, common public spaces like the subway promote interaction between people from diverse ethnic and social background.

In cases like this, communication problems are revealed to be created due to differences in social class, ethnicity, language etc. In The Missing Star the Italian Vincenzo has also miscommunication issues with the Chinese Liu Hua due to language but also due to the different culture. At the end of the films, however, the characters seem to have come closer through their journey together, a feature of the road movies as well. In Babel, the

157 culture and language does not seem to be a barrier to the compassionate feelings of the old

Moroccan grandmother towards the wounded American Susan, as she seems to be more understanding and sensitive than the other American tourists and co-travelers.

Communication problems appear to exist as well between people of the same background like between the French Georges and Anne or between the American Anne and Richard who decide to make a trip to Morocco to escape their marital problems.

Indicative of the miscommunication issue that pervades this chapter are the titles of the films. In all three films communication is hidered due to the lack of a common code. In

Babel, as in the biblical story, there is no common code, in Code Unknown the messages are difficult to be deciphered while in The Missing Star Vincezo’s statement that “always something is missing” refers to an uncompleted code that obstructs the communication.

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Chapter 3: Global Non-places

The third chapter deals with contemporary globalized non-places as presented in three contemporary films: the airport’s terminal in The Terminal (2004) by Steven Spielberg, the bar “Globus” in My sweet home (2001) by Philippos Tsitos and the theme park “The World” in The World (2004) by Zhangke Jia.

The chapter begins with a theoretical introduction about Michel Foucault’s heterotopias theory and Marc Augé’s theory of non-places. As a non-place could be considered any transitory place, in the contemporary globalized era, which is characterized mostly by mechanical functions, alienation, a commercialized character, and a distance from any relation to historicity or identity. In this sense, it is a hybrid place having an ephemeral character and being in constant transition. After the presentation of the first two films and a correlation with a feeling of homelessness in today’s globalized world, I proceed to the presentation of the third film which explores the American influence and consumerist spirit around the world, through the artificial environment of a theme park in China. As all three films deal with the difference between the privileged cosmopolitans who are free to travel the world and the labor immigrants who are forced to dislocate, I provide some further analysis on this issue parallel to the American influence globally.

159

3. 1. Michel Foucault’s Heterotopias

As already mentioned, space plays a major role in the contemporary globalized era and many theorists have engaged with this issue in the last decades. An emblematic work which has inspired them is Michel Foucault’s article, published already in 1967, “Of Other

Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”.

Foucault has determined utopias as “arrangements which have no real space”, representing society itself as perfection, and thus “fundamentally unreal” (4). In his article, however, he devoted much more space in explaining what heterotopias are; he called heterotopia “a sort of place that lies outside all places and yet is actually localizable”, existing within society but being a sort of counter arrangement (4). In order to make clear the difference between utopia and heterotopia he recalled the notion of a mirror which is a

“placeless place” (4).

In order to define heterotopia, Foucault gives six principles that characterize a place as such. As first principle, he claims that heterotopias have always existed, although in a big variety. He draws back to primitive societies, where the so-called “crisis heterotopias” could be found comprising privileged, sacred or forbidden places restricted for individuals who experience a crisis, like adolescents, women during the menstrual period or in labor and old people. He maintains, however, that the crisis heterotopias have been replaced by others, as the notion of space has taken the form of relations among sites. He names them “heterotopias of deviance”, and as such could be considered psychiatric clinics and prisons.

The second principle is that the same heterotopia can have a different function as society changes in various historical moments. He gives the example of a cemetery which from the center of a city was transferred later to the border of it, losing its sacred role.

160 As a third principle he mentions the fact that heterotopia as a single real place can collocate several irreconcilable sites. As examples he refers the theater, the garden and the cinema “a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space” (6).

The fourth principle is linked to time. The heterotopia appears when there is an absolute break with traditional time. Such a moment is death and this explains why cemeteries are places of heterotopia. In this sense, the term heterochronia could be more accurate. The perfect example for that is the museum, a place that encloses all times and all epochs being itself outside of time. The opposite of this kind of heterotopia, linked to accumulation of time, is the one linked with flow and transition. Relevant examples are fairgrounds or vacation villages, although in some cases, like the Polynesian villages, the aim is the rediscovery of Polynesian life abolishing time and thus becoming similar to museums in a way (7).

The fifth principle has to do with the opening and closing of a heterotopia. In general, there is no free access to such a place. Sometimes the entry is compulsory, as in a prison, other times permission is needed. In some cases, the entrance actually guides to exclusion. At this point, Foulcaut recalls the great farms in Brazil where the front door guided into a bedroom where every traveler could stay, remaining though excluded from the rest of the house where the family lived. The American motel rooms could belong to such a type of heterotopia where illicit sex is, on the one hand, protected but, on the other hand, concealed.

The last and most prominent characteristic of the heterotopias, according to Foucault, is their oscillation between two opposing poles, illusion and compensation; on the one hand, they create a space of illusion “that reveals how all of the real space is more illusory, all the locations within which life is fragmented” (8), and the example would be the brothel; on the other hand, they form another real space “as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled”. He suggests that some Jesuits colonies have functioned

161 in this way, where everything, either space or everyday life, was regulated in every particularity according to the Christian faith.

Finally, Foulcaut concludes that if we would like to name a heterotopia par excellence this is the ship “a floating piece of space, a place without a place that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea…” (9).

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3. 2. Marc Augé’s Non-places

In his book Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity published in 1992, the French anthropologist Marc Augé has also been extensively preoccupied with issues regarding space. To begin with, he names “supermodern” the overabundance of events, the excess which characterizes contemporary life. He further correlates supermodernity with postmodernity as the two sides of a coin, the positive and the negative (30). This engagement with space could be linked to the contemporary globalized world. In Augé’s words, “the excess of space is correlative with the shrinking of the planet (31).

As non-places Augé characterizes “the installations needed for the accelerated circulations of passengers and goods, like high-speed roads and railways, interchanges, airports” as well as “the means of transport themselves, or the great commercial centers, or the extended transit camps where the planet’s refugees are parked” (34). As examples of non- places Augé refers to airport departure lounges, supermarkets, motorways and service stations, street-corner cash dispensers, high-speed trains. The “non-place” which “creates the shared identity of passengers, customers or Sunday drivers” (101) is opposed to the

“anthropological place” which is bound to cultural identity and memory, binding its inhabitants to the history of the locale. According to Augé, a place becomes historical and thus characterized by stability when identity is combined with relations. The “anthropological place” is relational, historical and concerned with identity in opposition to the non-place which cannot be defined as such. It could be said also that anthropological places are social, while non-places are characterized by solitariness.

Augé very accurately describes the transitory character of the non-places that surround us in the contemporary alienated and automated era.

163 A world where people are born in the clinic and die in hospital, where transit

points and temporary abodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhumane

conditions (hotel chains and squats, holiday clubs and refugee camps,

shantytowns threatened with demolition or doomed to festering longevity);

where a dense network of means of transport which are also inhabited spaces

is developing; where the habitué of supermarkets, slot machines and credit

cards communicates wordlessly, through gestures, with an abstract,

unmediated commerce; a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to

the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral offers the anthropologist (and

others) a new object, whose unprecedented dimensions might usefully be

measured before we start wondering to what sort of gaze it may be amenable.

(Augé 78)

Next, Augé, in connecting the word “space” with the act of travelling in order to describe the fragmentation of places during a journey, states that ‘[t]he traveler’s space may thus be the archetype of non-place” (86). Augé further explains that the word “non-place” refers not only to certain spaces (transport and transitory places) but also to the relations the individuals form with these spaces. The link between the individuals and the non-places is several times mediated by words and texts. A good example is the popularity of the TV shows which derives from the promise of giving rich prizes of travel and accommodation in expensive and exotic places (a week for two at a three-star hotel in Morocco); “the mere mention of the prizes is sufficient to give pleasure to viewers who have never won them and never will” (Augé 95). The weight of words or images is something not to be underestimated as “[c]ertain places exist only through the words that evoke them, and in this sense they are non-places, or rather, imaginary places: banal utopias, clichés” (Augé 95). The words, texts and signs are even more evident in the non-places of supermodernity, like the motorway, the supermarket or the airport lounge; they may have the form of “instructions” like “take right-

164 hand lane”, prohibitive “do not enter”, or informative. Although the non-places are characterized by automated instructions, solitude and anonymity, Augé observes the paradox that “a foreigner lost in a country he does not know (a passing stranger) can feel at home only there, in the anonymity of motorways, service stations, big stores or hotel chains” (106).

165

3. 3. The Terminal

Free to go anywhere you like, within the confines of the international transit lounge

The Terminal, directed by Steven Spielberg, definitively belongs to mainstream

Hollywood blockbuster cinema. It should be mentioned, however, that the film resides in the filmmaking period after Schindler’s List (1993) when Spielberg’s films shifted to more overtly socially and politically oriented topics. Such a shift can be partially explained with the

US decline of financial support to the American film industry and the dependence upon non-

US support.

Although the film preserves the format of the classical Hollywood narrative that involves a love story and a happy ending, The Terminal actually engages with deep political and social issues that tormented America during its production. As Frederic Wasser states in his book Steven Spielberg’s America, “Spielberg has become the Hollywood director who both explains America to the world and gives the American perspective on world events” (3).

In my opinion, however, in the case of The Terminal it could be argued the exact opposite; the film’s protagonist, Viktor Navorski, coming from an undefined East European country and being stuck at the JFK’s airport terminal, learns gradually to speak some English, with an

Eastern accent, of course. In this respect, by making the popular American actor Tom Hanks speak in an accented way, it could be argued that Spielberg tries to adopt the foreigner’s point of view in perceiving not only the English language but the whole American way of thinking.

The result, though, of such a perspective is questionable, as Tom Hanks subconsciously still remains the world’s famous American actor in the spectator’s eyes.

166 Although The Terminal is fictional, it is based on the real story of the Iranian Mehran

Karimi Nasseri who remained for 18 years, from 1988 to 2006, in Terminal 1 of Charles de

Gaulle International Airport in Paris, France.

The Terminal is about Viktor Navorski, a traveler from the fictional country of

Krakozhia, who embarks on a trip to New York in order to meet a black jazz player and get an autograph from him in order to complete his father’s autograph collection. When he arrives at the airport, however, Viktor is informed by Frank Dixon, the American director of customs and border protection at JFK, that, as there has been a military coup in Krakozhia, his visa and passport are not recognized by the US, and he is thus not allowed either to enter New York city or return back to his country. Dixon’s trial “to tempt Navorski into becoming an illegal intruder into the U.S., or alternately into falsely claiming refugee status” (Wasser 200) has no success, as Viktor prefers to follow the rules and remain into the terminal, becoming suddenly

“a citizen of nowhere”.

Viktor becomes thus, all at once, transformed from a privileged traveler to an uprooted immigrant. The transitional and anonymous space of the terminal becomes now a permanent residence for Viktor as he starts out of necessity transforming it to his “home”; thanks to his mending skills he conjoins two lines of seats and converts them to a kind of bed; he walks around the terminal in his bathrobe to the restrooms for his morning hygiene; he even starts to

“work” by returning the used trolleys in their initial position gaining the “reward” coins, just to rush into the Burger King nearby to satisfy his hunger. Such a place and situation though could be barely characterized as “home”, as it rather brings out the migrant’s resourcefulness in his attempt to survive. Furthermore, is lacks the coziness and warmth the notion of “home” traditionally carries with it; on the contrary, Viktor has to confront the strict and controlling gaze of Frank Dixon, who, through his surveillance cameras tries to sabotage him in any progress he makes. Nevertheless, Viktor gradually adjusts himself to his new life in the airport; he gradually learns English and he befriends the Brazilian immigrant Enrique Cruz,

167 who works in the food supply department and provides Viktor with food, and Gupta Rajan and Joe Mulroy, immigrants of Indian and African American descent who work as staff at the airport, as well. He even falls in love with the beautiful stewardess Amelia Warren and he gets hired by the airport’s construction team, due to his excellent fixing skills.

As Viktor’s persistence and craftiness make him eventually earn more money than

Dixon, Dixon decides that Viktor is a national security risk. His demands, however, for Viktor to be transported to a federal detention centre or a federal prison or another airport are rejected.

Suddenly, one day, Viktor is informed that the war in Krakozhia is over. Although

Amelia provides him with a one-day visa travel to New York, he has to face new troubles, as

Dixon allows him to go back to his country but not to New York. Viktor, however, remaining steady to his decision to travel to New York, and having all the support of his friends, he finally goes to New York, meets the jazz player and gets the autograph. At the end, he can happily return back home. It is only in the last shot that the spectator can finally see New

York’s Times Square.

It is more than obvious that the film is characterized by a feeling of homelessness;

Viktor Navorski constitutes the quintessence of the homeless man living in the anonymous space of the airport. The only thing that helps Viktor to make him feel at home is his own inventiveness and skills as well as the support of his new immigrant friends working at the terminal. As the contemporary globalized era is characterized by constant mobility and migration, McKenzie Wark seems to express very well this idea regarding not only our era but also Spielberg’s film in his phrase “we no longer have roots, we have aerials” and “we no longer have origins, we have terminals” (xiv, x).

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3. 3. 1. The Airport as a Non-place in The Terminal

The plot of the film presented above takes place in an anonymous and transitional non-place which could be also characterized as global, as various ethnicities intersect within it. The airport’s terminal is an ambiguous place per se: first of all, it is a transitional place between the earth and the air. Despite the fact that it is situated in a specific stable place, it is characterized by constant fluidity, as the passengers use it only as a transitional stage for their travel, and the passengers themselves who cross it change and replace each other rapidly.

Furthermore, the terminal is a transitional and ambiguous space as far as nationality and identity is concerned: although situated in a specific country, its anonymity and alienation renders it a “non-place”. Viktor Navorski, the protagonist, trapped at the terminal, has to confront at the beginning the crushing solitude of the airport’s non-place anonymous environment being full of shops and automated machines. Characteristic are the suitcase trolleys as well as the automated machine that returns the coin to the customer at the end, the automated billboards announcing the flights, the surveillance cameras, as well as the various shops situated at the airport whose employees use also an automated language in order to interact with the customer, to fulfill his consumer wish. In the course of time, however,

Viktor, due to his persistence and inventiveness, as well as due to the friendship he develops with the small community of immigrants working in the terminal, he gradually manages to transform the initial cold and alienated place into a rather hospitable one and feel “at home”.

169

3. 4. My Sweet Home (2001)

always on the road; each time a different country, never the same place twice.

Unlike Spielberg’s big budget and blockbuster film, the Greek - living at the time in

Berlin - Filippos Tsitos addresses the same topic of homelessness and disorientation in his low budget first feature film My Sweet Home. The film adopts also the foreigner’s view on things, as the film’s protagonist, the American Bruce, is a foreigner in Berlin where he currently lives. It could be argued that the film includes some autobiographical elements as the director Tsitos himself was an immigrant in Berlin. It should be noticed, however, that both the director as well as Bruce, the protagonist, occupy a privileged position as foreigners in opposition to Viktor in The Terminal.

The film revolves mainly around an American waiter in Berlin, Bruce, and his irresolution concerning his stay in Berlin and his eventual marriage to a German woman,

Anke. Bruce, right after convincing Anke to marry him, decides to throw a party in “Globus”, the bar where he works, in order to celebrate his wedding. As he is a foreigner in Berlin and hardly has any friends there, he invites to his party the accidental customers of the bar. The bar “Globus” appears as a microcosm of multicultural Berlin but also of the globe that its name alludes to, as its customers are foreigners from every part of the world. During this peculiar multicultural party, various issues arise such as “home”, “travelling”, “race” which have become blurred and perplexed in the age of globalization. During the film, Bruce decides to leave Anke and to go back home in California. At the end, however, we see Bruce,

Anke and Liza - Anke’s daughter - ready to leave Berlin as a family.

170 The city of Berlin is the perfect setting for discussing issues like constant mobility as, according to Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli, Berlin, with regards to its population, could be considered as the epitome of transition and instability, traits that are reflected in many contemporary films dealing with or set in Berlin (From Moscow 135). An important reason for Berlin’s transitory character is its recent and rapid development “within decades rather than centuries, from a provincial German town into a major centre of German nationalism and a cosmopolitan metropolis” (Jesinghausen, 88-89).

In the period after the unification of Germany in 1990, with the exception of few films referring to the capital’s former division, the majority of films produced about Berlin focus on current situations. Films like Life is a Building Site (Das Leben ist eine Baustelle, 1997) by

Wolfgang Becker, Run, Lola, Run (Lola, Rennt, 1998) by Tom Tykwer or Night Shapes

(Nachtgestalten, 1998) by Andreas Dresen depict mainly contemporary Berlin’s instability and temporariness. The city’s ephemeral and transient character is revealed both by the urban landscape depicted - building sites, underground passages, railway stations — and by the people’s lives who are constantly in movement — foreigners, nomads, gastarbeiters, refugees, tourists, outsiders, homeless.

Berlin in the film My Sweet Home is depicted as the par excellence city of transition.

The introductory words heard as a voice-over after the film’s beginning captions underline this: “Ladies and Gentleman, Willkommen in Berlin. Welcome to Berlin, where everything is changing constantly. You have to run, you have to rush, you have to be very fast if you want to follow Berlin because, if New York is the city that never sleeps, Berlin is the city that never stands still. Hello, I’m Anke, your guide for today and I am wishing you a pleasant tour.” It is only in the end of this introduction that it is revealed who is speaking - Anke - and to whom - to tourists visiting Berlin. In this way, the voice-over functions as an introductory speech not only to the fictional tourists in the film but, more importantly, to the spectators, who, sharing many affinities with the tourists’ voyeuristic gaze, are also ready to experience the city of

171 Berlin through the film. This argument is reinforced in the end of the speech by Anke’s

Brechtian direct look to the spectators, as if she was addressing them, as well.

My Sweet Home deals with issues of constant change and transition mostly from the point of view of society’s outsiders. Furthermore, it shares similarities not only in content but also in form, which is often fragmented and patchy, with the fragmented contemporary life it depicts. Very interesting are the similarities we can trace between the discussed film and

Night Shapes (1998) by Andreas Dresen. Regarding the content, Berlin is the city where various interlocking stories take place in the course of a night whose protagonists are mainly outsiders. As far as the form is concerned, apart from the fact that both films adopt a fragmented form in their narrative, they begin in a way that introduces the spectator to the city’s transitory character. My Sweet Home’s first shot shows a bicycle’s wheels in motion commenting thus from the very beginning on the continuous movement and change in life and linking itself to the road movie genre. Night Shapes begins with an equivalent shot showing fast walking human feet in the streets of Berlin.

Dealing with issues of displacement, travelling and migration, My Sweet Home questions the notion of home and belonging, in general, as it is also evident from the film’s ironic title. David Morley, in his book Home Territories, refers to various ideas of how

“home” could be described. According to the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary he quotes, home is “a place, region or state to which one properly belongs, on which one’s affections centre, or where one finds refuge, rest or satisfaction.” We should bear in mind, however, that Benedict Anderson, in his well-known book Imagined Communities, has supported the notion of nation as an imagined political community arguing that the members of a nation, although foreigners between them, bear in their minds the image of their communion (6). Angelika Bammer argues that both nation and home are in this sense fictional constructs, “mythic narratives, stories the telling of which has the power to create the

‘we’ who are engaged in telling them” and to also create “the discursive right to a space (a

172 country, a neighbourhood, a place to live) that is due us ... in the name of the ‘we-ness’ we have just constructed” (ix-x). Referring to people who have been displaced from one place to another, she claims that home is neither here nor there. “Rather, itself a hybrid, it is both here and there – an amalgam, a pastiche, a performance” (ix). Roger Rouse also, considering the notion of “home” in the contemporary global context, observes that “the idea of home is remapped by migrants, so that it no longer represents simply one particular place (of origin or destination), but rather a dispersed set of linkages across the different places through which they move, “a single community spread across a variety of sites” (14).

As the director Filippos Tsitos himself states, “a home could be a person or a language or, of course, an actual house. In any way, home must be something felt in your heart, something for which you could say that you live for it” (Zoumpoulakis). In fact, Tsitos describes the film’s plot in the following words: “Let’s say that there are ten to twenty ethnicities gathered during a night in a bar and they fight each other over where it is the best place to live in. Nevertheless, actually they fight each other because nobody is happy with what he is doing and they eventually blame each other” (Zoumpoulakis).

The main protagonist, the American Bruce from California works as a waiter in the bar “Globus” in Berlin and he has problems deciding whether he wants to stay there and marry Anke or to go back to California. The German Anke, who lives in Berlin and works as a tour guide, being already a single mother to a small black girl named Liza whose father is from Cameroon, hesitates as to whether she should marry and commit herself to Bruce. The

German owner of the bar “Globus” wants to go anywhere else but stay in Berlin. A Thai woman “accompanying” a German guy tries to persuade herself that she is happy in Germany.

The Brazilian David who has family in Berlin must be deported back to Brazil. The Moroccan

Hakim is fed up with his work as a builder in Berlin and wants to move to Chalkidiki, Greece, where his girlfriend’s father owns a beach hotel. The Greek Despina though, Hakim’s girlfriend, does not want to go back and starts flirting with another Brazilian. The German taxi

173 driver who boasts having two houses, one in Berlin and one in Oho del Rios, and claims that he shares his life between Germany and Jamaica, is finally revealed to be a liar. The Japanese siblings Hiro and Hito appear decided to leave Japan and their home for good. The Russians

Vladimir and Kolia seem to have troubles with each other and their survival in Berlin. The

Pakistani Ino is fed up with his job as a lighter salesman in Berlin. Finally, the Balkan band

“Balkan All Stars” sings a song whose words portray very well the contemporary transitional and globalized life, with Berlin occupying a special place: “I pack Berlin in the suitcase. If I could only see it once again! I left sweet memories and recollections behind me. Paris is very nice in the Madeleine Street, and Rome is magical, Vienna opens its arms to me, but Berlin is everything to me”.

All these people, each one of them having a different ethnicity, seem to be uprooted and suspended, oscillating between two or more options of where they could live. As they are all gathered in the impersonal bar “Globus”, it could be said that their situation totally corresponds to Frederic Jameson’s remark concerning the contemporary “postmodern culture in which one cannot position itself” (Postmodernism 38). The patrons of the bar “Globus” seem, on the one hand, to have many possibilities of where to live, but, on the other hand, they seem to be like homeless, as well, being unsatisfied in any place and being stuck in a bar, whose name implies exactly the consequences of globalization.

The topic of homelessness is also encountered in most of the films mentioned above, produced after the city’s unification. Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli observe that all the places in which the characters of these films live are only poor substitutes for homes (From

Moscow 133). These include, for example, a container in a building site, a hostel, a hotel, a cardboard box. Furthermore, some of the characters seem to spend more time in their cars rather than in their houses, or many others have their actual homes in another country.

This is the case for the characters of My Sweet Home, as well: the majority of them come from another country, but even the houses depicted in Germany could be hardly

174 considered as “homes” with the traditional notion of a stable and cozy house. Bruce’s house shown in the end of the film is small, uncomfortable, old and dilapidated. The house of his

German ex-girlfriend is shown in a very transitional stage, full of cardboard boxes, revealing its temporariness. Anke does not even live on her own, but lives as a guest in her mother’s house.

The condition of homelessness and constant transition is presented in the film from two opposite sides: on the one hand, as a consciously chosen privileged way of life of continuous travelling and, on the other hand, as a forced way of life resulting from financial or other needs. The American Bruce, belonging to the first category, reveals at a certain point of the film that his initial plan was “immer unterwegs” — “always on the road; each time a different country, never the same place twice.” The Pakistani Ino, on the other hand, having migrated out of need and being forced to sell lighters in order to earn a living, accuses Bruce that he has no idea what a real problem looks like as he belongs to the privileged ones, if only because he is American.

In the film, “home” is a completely relative notion both in a strict and in a broader sense. A distinct opposition, as far as home as a house is concerned, is the one between the taxi driver and Gizela, Anke’s mother; the taxi driver, in an attempt to impress Gizela, claims that he spends his life between Berlin and Jamaica. He boasts that he lives six months in

Berlin driving the taxi and six months in his second house, in Ocho Rios. Gizela though seems completely unimpressed. She declares, in a totally indifferent way, that she lives right around the corner near the bakery. She adds that she is very happy that she lives near the bakery despite the fact that the bread is not something special, debunking the supposed exoticism of far away places like Jamaica and celebrating the comforts and coziness of the locality. In an unexpected turn, in the end of the film, Bruce notices that the taxi driver is too pale to be living half of the year in Jamaica, exposing thus his lie in his need to impress and show-off through the “home plus sun and luxury” scheme.

175 The notion of home in a broader sense, as a country, is relative, as well. In a tragic turn of events again, the Moroccan Hakim who wanted desperately to leave Berlin, remains stuck working as a builder screaming that he is fed up. On the opposite side, the Brazilian

David, who was celebrating Berlin and wanted to live there for ever, is shown in the end being dragged by others and screaming that he does not want to leave, as he was denied a further residence permit and must be deported. The film adopts a postmodernist view leaving all the options open. It adopts such a stance towards either the notion of home or life, in general.

Concluding, it could be said that the film’s open end, concerning the questions where the best place to live is and where home is, is compatible with Vincent Descombes definition of homeland as a virtual space — a rhetorical country. According to him, the answer to the question where someone is at home,

bears less on a geographical than a rhetorical territory. The character is at

home when he is at ease in the rhetoric of the people with whom he shares life.

The sign of being at home is the ability to make oneself understood without

too much difficulty, and to follow the reasoning of others, without any need

for long explanations. The rhetorical country of a character ends where his

interlocutors no longer understand the reasons he gives for his actions, the

criticisms he makes, or the enthusiasms he displays. A disturbance of

rhetorical communication marks the crossing of a frontier, which should of

course be envisaged as a border zone, a marchland, rather than a clearly drawn

line. (Augé 108)

The characters of the film My Sweet Home, living in the world of super-modernity are always and never at home, as “Globus” bar constitutes an in-between space, where the characters are both communicating and feeling at home but, at the same time, are arguing and making plans to return to their actual homes or leave for other places. This is a stance that

176 Filippos Tsitos adopts when he claims that he is oriented “here and there and wherever I can”

(Zoumpoulakis) proving that he himself belongs to this globalized era.

3. 4. 1. The “Globus” Bar as a Non-place in My Sweet Home

The “Globus” bar in My Sweet Home is also an anonymous stable non-place, yet globalized, as various ethnicities gather there. It is however ironic, in a way, as, although almost all conversations revolve around travelling and dislocation, most of the film’s action happens just in this bar. The bar, where Bruce, the protagonist, works as a waiter and where his “Polterabend” takes place, has a double role: on the one hand, it is an enclosed, claustrophobic space isolated from the rest of the city; on the other hand, although it constitutes an autonomous space, it is connected to the rest of the world due to its multicultural patrons and international phonecalls, becoming thus a globalized space. It could be said that the “Globus” bar is a kind of space where the distinction between “domestic” and

“exilic” is very difficult, if not impossible, and it could be characterized as what Homi

Bhabha describes as “third space”, “where the familiar and the foreign are conjoined, where it is less clear where home concludes and the foreign begins — where we must dwell in home as itself a hybrid space of coeval times and lives” (Morley 211).

“Globus” bar could be understood as a non-place in the sense that, in the beginning of the film at least, has a character of anonymity and solitude: its decadent character and its exterior walls full of graffiti are hardly representative of the stereotypical image of clean and tidy Germany; several foreigners stemming from every corner of the world have gathered in the bar by chance, which constitutes the microcosm of any globalized metropolis, in this case

Berlin. The bar, having no obvious relation to Germany’s history and identity, apart from being situated in Berlin, constitutes an anonymous globalized non-place that could actually be found in any big metropolis. It could be said though, that, despite these attributes, the bar

177 borrows something from the features of the “anthropological place”, towards the end of the film at least: a part of the anonymity and solitude disappears as the bar’s patrons get to know each other, dance, celebrate, discuss, in accordance to Augé’s statement that “[i]n the concrete reality of today’s world, places and spaces, places and non-places intertwine and tangle together” (107).

Within the bar, the patrons, representing many different ethnicities and speaking in various languages, gathered there by chance and constituting all of a sudden the party’s guests, singing, dancing, arguing and having fun, are reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. The negativity of the bar’s locality as a stable and fixed place without any interest reaches its culmination in the words of the bar’s German owner: “Ahhhh yes, this is what I want. I want to open my eyes and to be somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where… Vladivostok, Amazon,

South Pole, Tibet, New Delhi, Yugoslavia, Africa, China, Siberia, Angola, India, Fitzi,

Panama. It is indifferent to me. America is great! It is everywhere great! Everywhere apart from here, damn it!” Such a craving for wanderlust, or “what in German is called Fernweh which means…a desire to escape from one’s own homeland”, according to Hamid Naficy,

“can be just as insatiable and unrealizable as is the desire for return to the homeland for those who are in exile” (“Phobic spaces” 124). The German bar’s owner desire for exotic or far- away places and wanderlust corresponds totally to the contemporary approach towards mobility as a “social good” while “immobility increasingly acquires, by contrast, the connotation of defeat, of failure and of being left behind” (Bauman, Globalization 113).

Furthermore, such a listing of foreign, exotic, appealing places is the perfect paradigm of

Augé’s argument regarding the link between the non-places and the mere mention of them in words or texts. It is more likely that the bar owner will never visit the places he mentions, and in that sense they are indeed “non-places”; however, even only their names are sufficient to provide him with some pleasure that makes him forget his bond with locality.

178 3. 5. The World (2004)

Give us a day, we will show you the world

Yingjin Zhang in his book Cinema, Space and Polylocality in a Globalizing China explores and analyzes issues related to space and fragmentation as presented in Chinese films; among them is The World, which takes place in Beijing. Similarly to the city of Berlin, which is a city in constant transition and change, remapped and restructured, full of construction sites, Beijing is a city characterized by change as well, as “hasty, large-scale urban development since the early 1990s has demolished much of the old cityscape and replaced it with nondescript high-rise buildings and commercial blocks” (Zhang 73). More accurately,

“Beijing no longer provides a set of fixed imaginaries of imperial or socialist grandeur, peaceful leisure life, and self-content residents; rather, it has become a city caught in the whirlpool of globalization, a city crisscrossed by various spaces, temporalities, emotions, and ideologies, a city of ever-shifting landscapes, ethnoscapes and mindscapes” (Zhang 90).

The film The World deals with such a new constructed site, the theme park “The

World”, an amusement park where the visitor is able to tour among all the famous monuments of the world, replicas of which are gathered in the park. The fake constructed world of the park is nothing more than an imitation, an illusion of the reality and the real monuments. Jia

Zhang-ke explains:

It’s a fabricated world with which I’m trying to say something about China.

“Modernization” and globalization have arrived in China, but the country

seems modern only from the outside. There are many problems in China right

now, including how the Chinese deal with themselves. There are many

problems concerning freedom of speech. It may look very cosmopolitan, but

it’s not. (Walsh)

179 Ian Buruma further draws attention to the dangers of amusements parks like the World

Park:

China [may end up being] the shining model of authoritarian capitalism,

saluted by all illiberal regimes, corporate executives, and other PR men for an

emasculated, infantilised good life: the whole world as a gigantic theme park,

where constant fun and games will make free thought redundant. (Jaffe)

Although the film presents the lives of various poor Chinese employees from the

Shanxi province at the World Park, the main character is Zhao Xiao Tao. She works at the park mainly as a dance performer and has a relationship with Cheng Taisheng who works as a guard at the same Park, as well. Their relationship is not ideal, including arguments at times and Taisheng’s infidelity with Qun, a clothes’ designer copying famous brands.

Around this couple various other stories evolve; Tao’s ex-boyfriend Liangz is immigrating to Mongolia; Anna, a young woman from Russia, has immigrated to Beijing and works at the World Park under inhumane and illegal conditions, sometimes even as a businessmen escort. In the meantime, Qun, Taisheng’s girlfriend, gets a visa to France in order to join her husband, who already lives there. One of Taisheng’s friends, with the nickname “Little Sister”, dies in a construction accident while working overtime at night, in order to be able to repay his debts. Youyou, a beautiful young woman also working at the

World Park, gets promoted to “supervisor” after having slept with the park’s director Mu ang, only to discover that her promotion means nothing more than holding a walkie-talkie. Wei,

Tao’s friend and colleague, gets finally married with her boyfriend Niu, in spite of their constant arguments. Tao, at Wei’s bachelor party finds out about Taisheng’s secret love affair through a message on his mobile phone. The film’s end, in opposition to the luminous, vibrant and glamorous beginning, is very pessimistic, dark and bleak: Tao, very sad and distant due to

Taisheng’s infidelity gets gas poisoned in Wei’s house during Wei’s honeymoon.

180 The film Shijie is characterized by fragmentation and poly-locality not only in terms of space but also as far as the narrative and the plot is concerned; it presents simultaneously the lives of various characters who seem to be overwhelmed and disoriented by the demands of globalization and the struggle for survival. The director himself states:

I feel like I learn the world in small episodes, bits and pieces of life. This is a

new narrative method for me to connect everyone together in this film, similar

to the way you use a computer — you click here, you click there, each time

leading you to another location. This is how the world and its experiences are

connected to one another. These small episodes create the big picture, or that’s

the intention. (Walsh)

3. 5. 1. The World Park as a Non-place in The World

As far as the “World Park” in the film The World is concerned, it could be characterized as an expanded version of the non-place of the holiday village Foucault mentions. While the Polynesian holiday village offers spaces of nudity and primitive feelings to the city dweller, the World Park offers the experience of travelling and cosmopolitanism to the local citizen who is otherwise unable to travel.

The World Park, similarly to My Sweet Home’s “Globus” bar, is a globalized non- place reflecting the three concepts of space as stated and described in the beginning of Yingjin

Zhang’s book with the title Cinema, Space and Polylocality in a Globalizing China. The first concept is space as product, “according to which space is seen as produced by social, political and economic forces rather than as a natural given” (Zhang 1). Such a concept is totally applicable in the case of “The World” theme park; it is indeed not a natural space but, on the contrary, an artificial space, a product. A space produced by social (travelling the world inside

Beijing), political (Beijing’s promotion as a global city) and economic (the park attracting

181 many visitors earns a lot of money) forces. The second concept is the space as process,

“according to which space is conceived as multiple, coeval and relational”. The World Park is indeed characterized by multiplicity with its replicas of landmark monuments of various countries around the world. It is also relational, depending on the perspective conceived: for a tourist/visitor, the park constitutes amusement, travelling and entertainment while for the poor park’s employees the park is seen as an enclosed and entrapped place of work and duty. The third concept is space as productive, “according to which space becomes a dynamic force that generates changes, shapes experiences and demands narratives; as such, space constitutes what Massey calls “a simultaneity of stories-so-far” (Zhang 1). Again, this is applicable in the

World theme park which indeed causes changes in the lives of its employees and shapes experiences to everyone who visits the park. Furthermore, it actually constitutes simultaneity of stories, the stories of the park’s employees as presented in the film.

Yingjin Zhang, influenced by Manuel Castells, explains in his book:

Driven by the logic of flows, the world of places (for example, the home, the

city) is increasingly superseded by spaces characterized by circulation,

velocity and flow, and this tendency is visually reflected, on the one hand, in

the widespread demolition of old neighborhoods in developing cities like

Beijing and Shanghai and, on the other, in the proliferation of serialized,

ahistorical, and acultural architectural projects like international hotels,

airports, and supermarkets in world cities. Interestingly, such architectural

projects, along with the shopping mall, the highway, and the multiplex

cinema, are classified by Marc Augé as “non-places”, (Augé, 77-78) which

serve as symptoms of supermodernity and its essential quality: excess. (Zhang

Such an ahistorical and acultural architectural place is The World theme park. It certainly is ahistorical, as each landmark monument replica it includes comes from a

182 completely different place and era. For example, the ancient temple of the Parthenon in

Athens has nothing to do chronologically with the modern Eiffel tower in Paris. The theme park could be characterized as acultural as the monument replicas come from so many cultures that the whole space loses its meaning in terms of culture and becomes globalized and acultural. Furthermore, The World theme park is indeed characterized by excess, as, what is more excessive than visiting the whole world in just one park?

183

3. 6. Cosmopolitans vs Other Travelers

I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolites)

Diogenes of Sinope

Cosmopolitan is a word constructed from the Greek words kosmos “world” and politis

“citizen”, and means hence literally citizen of the world. Although this idea of citizenship could be examined from a political perspective in the context of globalization, in this case there will be mainly a focus on the cultural context. According to Ulf Hannerz cosmopolitans are “footloose” people, “on the move in the world” who “tend to want to immerse themselves in other cultures” and who are opposed to the locals who remain bound in a specific place.

For Hannerz,

Cosmopolitanism in a stricter sense includes a stance toward diversity itself,

toward the coexistence of cultures in the individual experience. A more

genuine cosmopolitanism is first of all an orientation, a willingness to engage

with the Other. It is an intellectual and aesthetic stance of openness toward

divergent cultural experience, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity.

(239)

For Hannerz the cosmopolitans seem to be “a significant group of people, with a special cultural role in the globalization process” (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture

186). Yet the cosmopolitans seem to be confined to a limited number, as, just by “being on the move is not enough to turn one into a cosmopolitan” (Hannerz 241). Hannerz draws attention to the fact that there must be no confusion between the cosmopolitans and other kinds of travelers, such as tourists, transnational employees, exiles, expatriates, labour

184 migrants etc. who do not have this disposition for cultural diversity but are on the move out of other motives.

According to Paul Theroux, a contemporary writer preoccupied with themes of journeys and cosmopolitanism, “[m]any people travel in order to feel at home, or to have an idealized experience of home: Spain is Home-plus-Sunshine; India is Home-plus-Servants;

Africa is Home-plus-Elephants-and-Lions; Ecuador is Home-plus-Volcanoes” (133). In such cases, mobility takes place for a specific reason and there is not any willingness or attempt to engage with the “Other” or to get to know various cultures. Such travel is far away from the concept of the cosmopolitanism.

According to Hannerz, tourists travel also from one place to another, but their ‘plus’ has usually nothing to do with different cultures, it is rather connected with beautiful natural landscapes, such as nice beaches. Besides, tourists do not mingle with the culture they visit but they remain simple spectators. Transnational employees in many cases would rather not have left home and are local at heart, but travel due to business (241). Such kind of business travelers usually do not experience any difference at all as they usually consume world-wide known products and remain in locations like air-terminals or five-star international hotels where the culture does not reveal itself (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 7). The exile could not be characterized by his/her openness towards another culture as such an involvement is a forced one. The expatriate, being a person who has chosen to live abroad for some period is the one closer to the cosmopolitan but not necessarily; colonialists for example were expatriates who abhorred “going native”. Finally, for most ordinary labour migrants going away from home ideally means higher income. Often the involvement with another culture is not a benefit but a necessary cost, to be kept as low as possible. A surrogate home is again created with the help of compatriots, in whose circle one becomes encapsulated.

185

3. 6. 1. Globetrotters vs Locals in The Terminal

It is important to draw attention to the fact that the travel experience can be completely different for somebody in a privileged position compared to an immigrant who is “forced” to travel in his attempt to pursue a better life. In The Terminal such a difference becomes more than evident. In fact, the film stresses the constant mobility and travelling of a privileged class which is represented through the airport’s travelers and the stewardess Amelia Warren who is always on the move, opposed to the locality and stability of an unprivileged migrant class mainly represented by the airport’s staff, the Indian Gupta Rajan, the Hispanic Enrique Cruz and the Afro-American Joe Mulroy, and also partly by the East European Viktor Navorski.

The airport’s main space, a clean and luxurious environment full of shops, as signs of consumerism, functions as a transitory place for all the travelers who pass through it in order to reach their destination. However, for some others, such a transitory place has a permanent function; for the airport’s staff it is their daily workplace. Although Viktor has embarked on his trip as a privileged traveler, due to the military coup in Krakhozia, he is treated as an uprooted immigrant. As he is forced to remain at the terminal, he is condemned to immobility and stagnation. However, Viktor, due to his persistence, flexibility, skills and hard work, embodies American values, so he manages to evolve even in the enclosed space of the terminal and eventually fulfill his goal to reach New York.

Although Viktor’s story develops into a story of fulfilment of the American Dream, that is eventual success through hard work, the same is not true for the undocumented immigrants. Most of them remain stuck and stable at the terminal, bound to their hard, several times dirty and probably underpaid jobs, unable to enjoy the pleasures of a privileged way of travelling. An ironic comment in the film indicative of the above situation is the grammatical mistake Victor makes due to his bad English, calling his friend Enrique instead of “man of mystery”, “man of misery”.

186

3. 6. 2. Cosmopolitans vs Labour Migrants in My Sweet Home

The gap between a more privileged class which enjoys travelling and is open to new experiences and an unprivileged class for which travelling and dislocation is necessary for its survival is also evident in the film My Sweet Home. The conflicting conversation that takes place in the anonymous space of the central bus station in Berlin between the American Bruce and the Pakistani Ino is indicative of such a difference. The bus station, like the bar “Globus”, constitutes an odd place, stable and fixed, on the one hand, but transitional, on the other, as the people who cross it move very fast and constantly. In such a transitional space, Bruce reveals to Ino his problem concerning his irresolution of where to go and what to do. “I don’t know. I thought…I don’t know what I thought! Marry to do what? Go back? To do what?

Stay here? To do what? I can’t see any meaning in anything any more. Do you understand me? No meaning!” Bruce’s problem, however, seems insignificant compared to the troubles of Ino, who just right before had to argue with the police and afterwards quitted his job as a lighter salesman, remaining pending regarding his survival. His boss’s warning that after his resignation all “doors” will be closed reveals that Ino was working for a racket that was taking advantage of him.

It becomes obvious that Bruce and Ino do not belong to the same group: Bruce could be classified under the category of the cosmopolitans, while Ino under the category of labour migrants.

Bruce constitutes a typical example of the cosmopolitan, even more than Anke who has a child with a guy from Cameroon and is about to marry an American, and even more than the German owner of the bar who wants to travel everywhere proving in this way his openness to diversity. Bruce reveals his cosmopolitanism several times: first of all his motos

“Immer unterwegs” (always on the road) and “Each time a different country, never the same place twice” are characteristic of the life of a cosmopolitan, whose “biography includes

187 periods of stays in different places” (Hannerz 240). Furthermore, Bruce’s invitation to his

“Polterabend” of all the patrons — each one of them stemming from a different country — and his willingness to get to know them reveals his openness to the Other, to ethnic and cultural diversity. Bruce proves also to be a real cosmopolitan by the fact that, despite his openness to diversity, is simultaneously unable to commit himself to a permanent engagement and changes his mind constantly, according to Ulf Hannerz’ s descriptions of the cosmopolitan: “The cosmopolitan may embrace the alien culture, but he does not become committed to it. All the time he knows where the exit is” (240).

Cosmopolitanism, despite its good attributes, is connected, according to John

Tomlinson, to three major problems. Firstly, the notion of the cosmopolitan, as well as of the traveler generally, is traditionally connected to the male gender. Thus, the cosmopolitan is usually considered to be literally the “man of the world” (home du monde) in contrast to women who are associated with stability and the domestic sphere. Secondly, the notion of the cosmopolitan is linked both literally and symbolically to the West. In Tomlinson’s words,

“[i]t is primarily westerners who get to be the globe-trotters — by choice, that is, not as refugees” (Globalization and Culture 187). Such a connection evokes of course the issue of ethnocentrism: Doreen Massey rightfully observes that the idea of cosmopolitanism along with that of globalization is linked to the white/First World’s supposed superiority (165). The third problem concerns the distinction between the cosmopolitan and the local and the eventual social privilege of the cosmopolitan who as a “cultural elite” has the opportunity “to rise above the petty concerns of the everyday” (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 189).

Such a distinction implies and links the local to narrowness, conservativeness and lack of openness.

In My Sweet Home, Bruce’s image as a cosmopolitan confirms all the “problems” mentioned above. A man who travels footloose here and there is seemingly unable to commit himself to anything permanent. Anke, on the other hand, as a typical woman, despite her

188 openness to other cultures, is indeed connected to stability and domesticity. When Bruce decides to return to America, to his home, Anke, as a symbol of immovability connected to family distracts him from his travel plan. At the end, though, Anke reveals to Bruce that she is ready to travel and to follow him to America subverting thus the stereotypical image of the immobile and domestic woman.

As far as the second issue is concerned, Bruce is indeed a figure of the West by being

American. Pakistani Ino’s words to Bruce reflect this very well: “You white shitty English- speaking bulldog!” Thirdly, Bruce’s privileged position makes him overlook the fact that his elite traveling lifestyle is not applicable to everyone and that, in Edward Said’s words, there is a big difference between “exile as a romanticised trope of intellectual life” and “the real conditions of displaced or migrant populations” (Morley 228). Characteristic are the phrases the Pakistani Ino says to Bruce in response to his irresolution of whether he should stay or go that he considers as a problem: “Mister, you don’t know what a problem looks like”, “What problems do you have?”, “You are privileged”, “Ok mister. Tell us your difficulty. Tell us your mini, not important, boring complication.”, “Hey, mister! The world is burning! Flames, everywhere flames, and you don’t know! No, no, no, mister! This is not a problem!”

To conclude, Bruce, being a white American man, enjoys the privileged position to be able to be a cosmopolitan by choice; the reverse is the case of Eastern, Pakistani Ino, who has migrated to the West as a labour migrant and tries to earn his living by selling lighters. A worth noticing feature is the director’s ironic comment on travelling labour migrants by showing Ino carrying all the time a Polaroid camera like the tourists do. Characteristic is also the word “mister” he uses when addressing to Bruce, making the gap between them more evident.

189

3. 6. 3. Tourists vs Workers in The World

The division between a privileged travelling class and an underprivileged one stuck to locality is also evident in the film The World. Similarly to the film The Terminal, the action occurs in a non-place, in this case the World Park. As in the The Terminal, there are the privileged ones who travel around the world, literally in the first case or even metaphorically in the case of the World Park, and there are also the less privileged ones, the staff, who work in the terminal or park and are condemned to locality and hardship.

The park, a space of poly-locality and variety, includes famous landmarks from countries all over the world; it is at first sight a celebratory space of globalization. However, the film juxtaposes simultaneously to the luxurious park the deprived and underprivileged lives of the park’s employees who are condemned to locality because of their poverty.

Zygmunt Bauman has very accurately expressed this situation in his phrase “Some inhabit the world; others are chained to place” (“On Glocalization” 307). Locality was hardly a problem when this was the norm, in the postmodern world, however, “being merely local in a globalized world is automatically rendered a secondary existence” (Clarke and Doel 37).

This bipolar opposition of globalization is also explicitly shown in the film’s beginning, in the title sequence; while an extreme long shot presents the World Park with the

Eiffel Tower and other high-rise buildings, suddenly a garbage picker appears in the frame and, while in the center, he stares at the spectator. As very accurately Yinghin Zheng points out, “Jia Zhang-ke remaps Beijing and globalization with intended irony and contradiction.

[…]. The garbage picker represents the unspeakable poverty and misery glossed over by the sheer spectacle of globalization: he appears as a nameless eyesore defacing the fabulous image of a globalizing city […] (Zhang 86).

The film The World although at first sight might seem to promote China’s development as a globalizing state and the World Park — one of the film’s sponsors —

190 (Zhang 86) is actually very critical towards the globalizing forces that brought enormous changes to Chinese society. Jia Zhang-ke like many contemporary Chinese filmmakers chooses to portray in his films “ordinary locals and translocals, who are always left behind by economic development” (Zhang 90) questioning thus the dominant systems and institutions and promoting ambivalence and contradiction. Jia Zhang-ke explains his opinion regarding globalized capitalism:

Major companies, especially from the US and other big countries, are benefiting from these low-paid workers, and also Chinese companies too. So these workers are the victims of this globalization. So before the country becomes wealthy again, there’s a stage in which a lot of people are going to sacrifice, but the business people don’t care about this. They don’t care at all. So the government should intervene and defend people. Because these workers work the longest hours, the most dangerous jobs and get the lowest wages. Some of these workers work 18 hours a day. Like the conditions of another century (Walsh). Jia Zhang-ke continues:

“Everybody is silent about this. That’s why we make films about it. It’s one of ways we can express ourselves about this problem” (Walsh).

191

3. 7. The American Dream/ Capitalism

3. 7. 1. Globalization, McDonaldization and Americanization

In economic terms, globalization is mostly regarded as another phase of the capitalist world system, aiming at increased global trade and transnational corporations. Sociological theories, on the other hand, try to explain globalization as the emergence of the world as a single place. George Ritzer, in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993), successfully managed to combine and transfer, in a way, economic terms to sociology by employing Max

Weber’s notion of rationalization to write about McDonald’s as a general process of global standardization. The global expansion of Starbucks, McDonald’s and KFC outlets is a compelling evidence of American influence over popular culture and lifestyles.

The brand that has received the more critique in academic circles, and vilification in activist circles, is the fast food chain of McDonald’s. Beginning from California in 1948, it spread to 117 countries, as a new branch opened every eight hours all over the world in the mid-1990s, although this explosion has declined in the 21st century (Inglis 502).

In the same way that certain foods can take on great symbolic value in certain socio- cultural contexts, so has McDonald’s been defined as the great symbol of American-led cultural globalization, together with other products of American ‘cultural imperialism’, such as Hollywood films and television, and Nike sports-gear (Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism

75). We can, thus, understand the great success and widespread dissemination of the argument of the American author Benjamin Barber, that “the early twenty-first century is characterized by an epic clash between ‘Jihad’ (localizing religious and ethnic fundamentalism and separatisms) on the one side, and McWorld (the globalizing institutions of Western corporate capitalism) on the other” (Inglis 502). The fact that McDonald’s can stand for a whole ‘world’

192 — or, specifically, a whole world-view — proves its great symbolic power in the present day.

On the other hand, although it is clear that the United States has played a pivotal role in modern globalization, it is too simplistic to describe the whole process of globalization as merely Americanization. Two main periods can be distinguished in the relation between the

United States and contemporary globalization. In the first phase, from 1945 to 2000, the US drives globalization, which seems to be a synonym for Westernization and Americanization, with familiar notions such as Coca Colonization and McDonaldization. In the second phase, a post-American world has begun to emerge. The impact of Japan on management systems, car manufacture, cuisine, fashion and films is evident in the influence of Asia on the rest of the world (Pieterse 102). So, contemporary globalization means not just Westernization but also

Easternization. Besides, ‘the West’ is not anymore a unified concept.

George Ritzer in his book The Globalization of Nothing (2003) critiques the processes of globalization and McDonaldization by arguing that “nothing”, aiming at the standardized and homogenous corporations like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Starbucks representimg globalization, are taking over and pushing away the “something”, referring to personal and local things like local sandwich shops, local hardware stores, family arts and crafts places, or local breakfast café.

3. 7. 2. Consumerism and Strict Migration Policies in The Terminal

The fact that major companies especially from the US benefit from laborers from poor or developing countries leads to issues concerning capitalism and the US dominion upon the rest of the world. In The Terminal the discussion of such issues is more than evident. First of all, Viktor’s desire to make such a long trip to New York while himself being from a rather underdeveloped country of Eastern Europe, reflects most people’s admiration of the US.

193 Furthermore, the US dominion upon the rest of the world, not only on such an abstract level but on a more concrete and practical one, is to be seen in America’s migration policy and surveillance, on the one hand, and a consumerist/capitalist way of thinking it imposes, on the other.

Frank Dixon, America’s governmental figure and director of customs and border protection at JFK, is presented in a strict and unsympathetic way preventing Viktor to reach the US and causing him various troubles. In a moment of desperation and while observing

Viktor’s enormous patience and adaptability remaining and living at the terminal, tries “to tempt Navorski into becoming an illegal intruder into the U.S., or alternately into falsely claiming refugee status” (Wasser 200). Viktor, however, does not fall into the trap; even when Dixon gives him the chance to leave, he decides to follow the rules and remain in the terminal. In his attempt to survive in the globalized and alienating space of the terminal, he uses his skills and inventiveness to the full; so, it could be said, he becomes a metaphor for all the immigrants in the US who try by all means to survive and gain a better life. Viktor in his attempt to earn money tries to find a job in the terminal’s shops.

The various shops situated in the terminal represent, apart from the globalization, consumerism, as well. The phrase the police officer uses with Viktor when he is left in the terminal is characteristic: “There’s only one thing you can do here, Mr. Navorski, shop!” echoing, in my opinion, the Baudrillardian phrase “there is nowhere to go but to the shops” referring to post-modern societies (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 88). It is interesting to note that during the construction of the airport set for the movie, various American corporations undertook the obligation to built mock-ups of their airport booths at their own expense for advertising reasons. Such corporations would be American Express, Hudson

News, Swatch and Burger King. The presence and portrayal of such corporations remains ambiguous in the film, which probably “simultaneously condemns and takes pleasure in the sensual images of consumerism” (Wasser 202).

194 Such a global consumer culture combined with the dominance of the English language

(Viktor tries desperately to learn English in his effort for survival and communication) underline American cultural imperialism. According to Jonathan Friedman, the discourse of cultural imperialism was seen as “the increasing hegemony of particular central cultures, the diffusion of American values, consumer goods and lifestyles” (79). As John Tomlinson argues, “there is no ignoring the fact that certain styles, brands, tastes and practices now have global currency” and that international airports “are prime examples of this sort of “cultural synchronization”: almost identical world-wide, offering uniform styles of furnishing, international cuisine and a whole range of familiar international brands in the duty-free shops”

(Globalization and Culture 83). As specific examples, we could mention Starbucks coffee that Frank Dixon drinks, Burger King where Viktor eats or the Nike shoes Viktor wishes to buy when he arrives at the airport.

Apart from America’s domination through commodification, a strict migration and border policy is evident. Frank Dixon’s authoritarian and controlling attitude towards migrants and possible criminals and invaders functions as a sign of America’s frightened and defensive stance towards foreigners and migrants after the events of 9/11. Yet Frederic

Wasser in his book Steven Spielberg’s America refers to an even more aggressive America mentioning the US invasion in Iraq, the illegal detention camps at Guantanamo, a series of arbitrary US border-crossing proceedings and a general US contempt towards its alliances and relationships with the rest of the world. Generally, Wasser argues that “Spielberg gave his international audience a better view of the US than the Bush government deserved” (199) by alluding to such issues only in a very ambiguous and latent way. Despite its oblique reference to political and social current issues, The Terminal follows the mainstream blockbuster recipe of the happy ending; although Viktor fails in his romance with the airline stewardess Amelia

Warden, he achieves his goal to go to New York City and get the jazz player’s signature.

195 The Terminal’s superficial and “safe” engagement with serious social and political issues, such as globalization, migration and border controls, as well as America’s general political attitude leading to cultural and financial imperialism, made the film receive mediocre reviews from the critics as well as rather low box office earnings.

3. 7. 3. America’s Privileged Position in My Sweet Home

We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist wunderbar We're all living in Amerika, Amerika, Amerika. We're all living in Amerika Coca-Cola, sometimes war; We're all living in Amerika Amerika, Amerika.

Rammstein, “Amerika”4

The issue of “Americaness” and the US’s privileged position in the world is also clearly posed in the film My Sweet Home. Bruce, by being a white American is automatically considered by the bar patrons as a privileged man who does not have any problems (at least serious ones) and is ruling the world. As a matter of fact, any aspect of his behaviour in the film is interpreted in relation to his American “privileged” nationality. In Gizela’s concern, whether Bruce has a residence permit, her daughter Anke answers by saying that he is

American, not Balkan, and that Americans do not have such kind of problems. Later on, the

Pakistani Ino stresses the gap dividing the two of them by saying to Bruce: “You’re American mister! American! Do you know what it means? You build the city. Without you everybody here would be dead. I sell lighters, you build and destroy cities.” Afterwards, even the bar’s

German owner accuses Bruce for his irresolution and egoistic attitude after having changed his mind again about marrying Anke and after deciding to work again as a waiter: “Six

4 Rammstein is an industrial metal band from Berlin, formed in 1994, whose songs are usually in German but they have also performed songs entirely or partially in other languages such as English, Spanish, French and Russian.

196 million people are unemployed! Six million! And what does Bruce do? Bruce destroys everything and then grabs the man’s skirt! Do you think this is ok? Is this what you do in Big

America?”

Bruce, however, is a contradictory figure himself. Although he is a privileged, white,

American man, he is not successful at all. In fact, according to his own words, he is a “loser”, he “didn’t make it” he has “achieved exactly nothing” by being just a waiter in a bar and, most importantly, by being unhappy. He also says to Ino that he has failed to realize his dream, to be a lead guitarist for Deep Purple, quite an unconventional dream. Bruce’s contradictory and unconventional image is reinforced by his indecisiveness and even more by the contestation of his “Americanness” by the Pakistani migrant, Ino: “Are you sure you’re

American? You seem like a really European type to me!”

On the other hand, Bruce, even though not a typical American, decides to return home in order to escape from his life of drudgery in Berlin. Furthermore, he himself presents

America to the others as an ideal place, describing it from a rather alluring, tourist point of view: “I will walk across the water’s two shores to the Promised Land, I’m going swimming in Miami, gonna go surfing in Cali-fucking-fornia, and get drunk in New York, eat the pizza in Chicago, drink a cup of coffee in Seattle, and I will lay under the sun until I ’m totally fried.” This triggers a kind of mock lottery among the people in the bar in order to decide who is going to accompany Bruce to America. The “winner” is going to get various, “prestigious gifts”, like Wall Street, a big house, an aircraft, New York, the Atlantic etc., according to the patrons’ wishes, while the rest will just “stay here and rust” in Bruce’s words. In this way,

America is elevated above the rest of the world, including Berlin. It should be mentioned, however, that the film’s open end regarding Bruce’s return to America as well as the fact that this celebration of America is followed just right afterwards by a song glorifying Berlin, makes the film’s view of America an ambiguous one.

197

3. 7. 4. Mc Donaldization in The World

America’s leading and paternalistic role is also evident in The World. The theme park

“World” follows the originally American “product” of Disneyland which is meant to offer amusement and the illusion of a perfect yet fake world, in a capitalist and commodified space where almost everything, even dreams, can be bought. The acknowledgement that the World

Park is a descendant of the American Disney Park following the “McDonaldization” and

“McDisneyzation” paradigm becomes obvious in the phrase heard in the film: “America is a young country. They are not cultural snobs but they knew how to create a show business culture.”

In my opinion, the World Park could be considered as a very typical example of what

George Ritzer calls “McDonaldization” and “McDisneyization” of tourism. Ritzer, in his book The McDonaldization Thesis argues that the authoritarian, profitable and consumerist way of functioning of the McDonald’s fast food chain applies nowadays more or less to modern society. Ritzer, influenced by Max Weber’s ideas on rationalization through bureaucracy, supports that the McDonald’s is the best paradigm for rationalization in the modern society. He also explores the implications of Hungarian-born sogiologist Karl

Manheim’s thinking on rationalization, as mainly expressed in his famous work Ideology and

Utopia, published in 1936, although not always coherent with ideas expressed in his later works; this can be partly attributed to Manheim’s experience of the chaotic Depression, the rise of Nazism and World War II. For Manheim, a rational centralized planning was the solution to the irrational chaos and disorder he had lived through. Ritzer, however, supports that “such rational centralized planning can be the cause, perhaps even the prime cause, of irrationality, especially the various irrationalities of rationality” (McDonaldization Thesis 3).

As a result, Ritzer correlates Manheim’s complete rationality with the threat of lack of thought and dehumanization associated with McDonaldization. In Ritzer’s words “It is clearly

198 dehumanizing to find oneself mindlessly functioning like a robot or an automaton in a

McDonaldized system” (McDonaldization Thesis, 3).

In my opinion, the World Park, following the McDonaldization paradigm and based on strict rules and profitability, is characterized by irrationality and dehumanization. The

World Park’s employees work hard following strict orders while the consequent dehumanization and irrationality is evident in their lives; no matter how glamorous their appearance in the various shows is, their private lives are characterized by poverty and misery. Tao, for example, wears shiny and luxurious dresses during her performances but her everyday clothes are cheap and blowzy. Furthermore, while the tourist side of the World Park is full of well-built expensive replica-monuments, Tao during her personal time wonders in dirty, old, moist and shabby corridors and dorms. Although she is able to “tour” constantly around the whole world in the World Park, she doesn’t even have a private place; he either shares a dorm with other girls or spends the night in cheap hotels. Even more, she is asked to become a businessmen “escort”, a “job” she refuses, while her former colleague and friend

Anna from Russia accepts it, due to her need for money. More explicitly, in Yinghin Zheng’ words, the employees of the World Park are “helplessly incarcerated prisoners behind the phantasmagoric facade of globalization” (Zhang 86).

In this sense, the World Park is analogous to Disney World, in the tourism field. In

George Ritzer’s words:

Not only is Disney a perfect example of the new means of tourism, but is has

played the same kind of role in tourism that McDonald’s plays in

consumption. That is, its success has made it the paradigm of the tourist realm.

As a result, it is possible to talk of the “McDisneyization” of tourism.

(McDonaldization Thesis, 10)

Ritzer continues claiming that this new type of tourism can be very well described in post-modern terms by simulacra, as pretty much everything is based on simulation rather than

199 reality. Ritzer explains that in Disney World virtually all the rides and attractions offer simulations of reality. Furthermore, the employees at Disney World interact with the visitors in a simulated, inauthentic way. This means that they follow scripts and have been thoroughly schooled in how to interact with visitors.

Furthermore, according to George Ritzer, if we accept that production is associated with modernity, then the consumption is the quintessence of the postmodern society

(McDonaldization Thesis, 9). Such a stance follows Jameson’s claim that the multinational capitalistic system is a key element of the post-modern world (Postmodernism 127). In a consumer culture, where human contact is replaced by the machines, fast-food restaurants constitute the quintessence of lonely, deserted capitalist non-places. George Ritzer describes fast-food restaurants as follows:

Baudrillard states that it is not surprising that fast-food restaurants, perhaps the quintessential American product, are similarly desert-like. Lacking in depth and emotion, every fast-food restaurant seems like every other. Ultimately, the entire terrain seems like some vast desert in which it is difficult to differentiate one superficial landmark from another.

People seem to come from nowhere and to head to nowhere (McDonaldization Thesis, 123).

Such a thing is also evident in the World Park, as shown in the film. First of all, in the

World Park all the rides and attractions are indeed simulations of reality: the small train which travels around the park circles the “whole world” in just fifteen minutes, while all the attractions are simulated replicas of the real monuments situated in the various cities of the world. Furthermore, similarly to Disney World, the employees at World Park interact with the visitors in a simulated, inauthentic way; the various performances they act in front of the audience are completely constructed and impersonal.

What is more, the predominance of modern technology in the form of computers, screens, mobile phones and virtual reality is also evident in the film. At a certain point, Tao and Taisheng take a virtual ride through a computer screen in the already simulated Work

200 Park; just by sitting together in a couch, they appear in the screen as if they fly on a carpet through all the monument-replicas of the World Park. This is the confirmation of the

McDonaldization thesis which supports that technologies like videos, the Internet, and especially virtual touring will replace journeys to far locales (Ritzer, McDonaldization Thesis

140). Additionally, the mobile phone as a means of impersonal modern way of communication plays an important role in the film.

The most striking post-modern element, however, are the short animated scenes interpelated into the narrative. They constitute a clear evidence of the film’s post-modern character, as they attach to the film the element of pastiche. Furthermore, the animated scenes represent the escape of the tough reality and the transfer to a dreamy, illusory world.

According to the director himself, Jia Zhang-ke, “Most individuals in China are living in an illusory world….Reality is a mess in China. It’s total chaos” (Zhang 89).

The film, apart from criticizing the negative aspects of globalization and drawing attention to the migration issue, addresses as well the topic of contemporary tourism. It can be argued that The World shows very well in a practical level the theory of George Ritzer about the “McDonaldization” and “McDisneyization” of tourism. Although Ritzer acknowledges the fact that, in his previous work related to “McDonaldization” issues, he relied mostly in theories about modernism, he later felt that it was necessary to include post-modern perspectives as well (McDonaldization Thesis 2). In fact, as “McDonaldization” and

“McDisneyization” are more or less explicit paradigms of consumerism, they are also linked to post-modernity, as it is well known that the post-modern society is a consumer society.

Furthermore, according to Ritzer, the domination and influence of the USA is of central role in concepts like Americanization and Westernization, as well (McDonaldization Thesis 8).

The acknowledgement that the World Park is an offshoot of the American Disney Park becomes obvious in the phrase heard in the film: “America is a young country. They are not cultural snobs but they knew how to create a show business culture.”

201 In this sense, the World Park could be also characterized as a “dry and emotionless desert”, as Baudrillard described America and Ritzer extended such a characterization to the fast-food restaurants, perhaps the quintessential American product. In the same way Ritzer argues that “lacking in depth and emotion, every fast-food restaurant seems like every other”

(McDonaldization Thesis 123), similarly the replica-monuments in the World Park have no actual differentiation from one another, as they are all gathered together. In Ritzer’s words again “the entire terrain seems like some vast desert in which it is difficult to differentiate one superficial landmark from another” (McDonaldization Thesis 123).

All the above can hardly be understood without the notion of the ignorant tourist; the latter often visits the sites in package tours without realizing what he actually sees. “The package tour is another wonderful example of this, as vacationers whirl through a series of sites often so quickly that they hardly know where they are, let alone the significance of what they are seeing” (Ritzer, McDonaldization Thesis 125). In my opinion, this applies very well also to the tourists of the World Park; it is highly doubtful that they really understand the importance or the particular characteristics of each monument. The monuments loose their value by being situated all together; for the tourists they are just sites to take pictures in. In

Ritzer’s words, “The massive proliferation and differentiation of signs ultimately end up being an incoherent blur. We are lost in a world of relentless and meaningless expansion”

(Ritzer, McDonaldization Thesis 125).

This is how the fragmented character of life is associated with the new means of consumption. To some post-modern social theorists, especially Jameson, the multinational capitalistic system is a key element of the postmodern world. In fact, it can be seen as lying at the base of the development and expansion of all of the new means of consumption. If we accept that “McDonaldization” and “McDisneyization” constitute the quintessence of consumption and of capitalism, then, Ritzer’s assumption that “McDisneyization” has expanded in other realms of society as well, for example tourism, seems very plausible.

202 Cruise ships, theme parks, casinos and shopping malls tend to resemble increasingly to amusement parks. So, through the influence of the Disney theme parks, many facets of the tourist world have been McDonaldized. Not only these tourist attractions look more and more like a Disney theme park, but they also encompass the four basic principles of

McDisneyization-McDonaldization (efficiency, predictability, calculability and control) and create irrationalities of rationality (Ritzer, McDonaldization Thesis 136).

It is, thus, very plausible to argue that the World Park is an aspect of the

McDonaldization of tourism, as well. The tourists visiting the World Park do not seem to be interested so much in the architectural, historical or cultural aspects of each monument, they rather seek fun and amusement. Visiting the whole world in one day without ever leaving

Beijing is indeed the irrationality generated by the rationality of the creation and organization of the World Park. Jia Jhang-ke comments on this irrationality by stating that the Chinese have been seized since 1979 by the desire to learn about the world, other countries and other cultures, and the World Park could be considered as an answer to such a trend. However, in his words again, “it’s hard to know what people can understand from these parks; the more often they visit them, the more absurd and over the top it becomes” (Batto).

In fact, such an idea of tourism stands in total opposition to the basic social practices of what is called tourism, as described by Urry in The Tourist Gaze. Among other things,

Urry mentions that tourist sites are “outside the normal places of residence and work”, “out of the ordinary” and separate from our day-to-day lives. He also mentions that there is “a clear intention to return home” and that we tour in order to see and experience something different

(3).

Although this is true to certain extent, the McDonaldization thesis claims that people often travel to other places in order to experience much of what they experience in their day- to-day lives. In Ritzer’s words, “they want their tourist experiences to be about as

McDonaldized as their day-to-day lives” (The MacDonaldization Thesis 137). According to a

203 McDonaldized lifeworld, some tourists seek highly predictable, efficient, calculable and controlled vacations. This could mean, for example, avoiding the unfamiliar associated with a different culture, enjoying the maximum vacation time for the money spent, knowing the exact time an itinerary will take, and give-and-take with people (employees) with controlled behavior.

In my opinion, these features apply perfectly to the World Park, as well; the tourists touring in the World Park avoid any association with other cultures as they remain inside of

Beijing, they have the opportunity to “see the world” in just one day and they spend less money than what they would need if they actually toured the whole world; furthermore, on the one hand, the visitors can be constantly informed about their position in the park and the duration of a tour and, on the other hand, the employees are very strictly controlled as in a

McDonald’s fast food restaurant.

Such an attitude leads to the idea of the so called “post-tourist”. Ritzer, based on

Feifer, mentions the basic features of the “post-tourist”:

First, the post-tourist finds it less and less necessary to leave home; the

Technologies discussed previously - television, videos, CD-Rom, the Internet

and virtual reality - allow people to “gaze” on tourist sites without leaving

home. Second, tourism has become highly eclectic, a pastiche of different

interests-visits to sacred, informative, broadening, beautiful, uplifting, or

simply different sites […]. Third, post-tourists play at and with touring; they

recognize that there is no “authentic” tourist experience. (The

MacDonaldization Thesis 141)

The features of the post-tourist apply very well to the tourists of the World Park who can be characterized as post-tourists, as well. They wish to travel by avoiding leaving home, and they indeed travel the world without leaving Beijing. Even more, the World Park’s virtual tour offers them the opportunity to travel the world without leaving their seat. Tourism, as

204 presented in the World Park, is a pastiche of various sites stemming from different places around the world and built in different eras. Last but not least, the World Park’s visitors are aware of the simulated experience the replica-monuments of the park may offer instead of the actual authentic experience of touring the world.

Rojek has also attributed three basic characteristics to post-tourism: the commodification of tourism, the tourism as an end in itself and not as the means to a higher goal, and the attraction of the post-tourists through spectacular signs associated with tourism

(Ritzer & Liska 102). Bryman adds as a prominent feature of post-tourism the domination of the fake over the real (177). Once again, these features are also valid for the World Park, except for the Disney Park. The visitors of the World Park tour around the monuments just for fun rather than be informed about their architecture or history. They are also allured by spectacular signs, as the park is full of neon lights advertising the park itself and spectacular glamorous shows in which the dancer dresses are inspired by a different country each time.

Finally, the simulated reality and commodification is more than obvious in the inauthentic, constructed replica-monuments. In general, the whole concept and organization of the World

Park is consistent with Urry’s argument that tourism has become a commodity to be advertised, marketed and sold much like every other commodity (The Tourist Gaze 15).

Characteristic is the World Park’s advertising moto: “Give us a day, we will show you the world”.

Elaborating further on the “authenticity” issue, Ritzer, opposed to MacCannell who supports that the tourist is always seeking authenticity (101), argues that the post-tourist, in the contemporary post-modern world dominated by simulations, seeks for them even in his travels. Similarly to the example he mentions from the food sector, that the tourist accustomed to the simulated dining experience at McDonald’s would be hardly eager to sacrifice the comfort and predictability to eat by a campfire or survive with nuts and berries through a walk in the woods, he claims that the post-tourist is also unwilling to spent much money, time or

205 strength in order to visit all the important monuments around the world. In Ritzer’s words,

“Most inhabitants of a postmodern world might be willing to eat at the campfire, as long as it is a simulated one on the lawn of the hotel” (The MacDonaldization Thesis 146). Likewise, the tourists in The World are willing to tour the world as long as this is possible to happen in just one day and without leaving Beijing.

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3. 8. Conclusion

The third chapter has dealt mainly with the contemporary globalizing transformation of space and the creation and multiplicity of the non-place and its representation in The

Terminal (2004) by Steven Spielberg, in My sweet home (2001) by Philippos Tsitos and in

The World (2004) by Zhang-ke Jia. Relevant topics such as a feeling of homelessness, a superficial consumerist spirit, the division between privileged cosmopolitans and labor migrants as well as the influence of the US globally have been also examined through their depiction in these films.

Marc Augé’s theory about non-places which is influenced by Michel Foucault’s heterotopias describes spaces like airport departure lounges, supermarkets, and service stations, street-corner cash dispensers, trains etc. which have lost their relation to history and identity and are rather characterized by alienation and automated instructions. The abundance of such artificial spaces which are mostly co-related to consumerism and to the fragmentation of globalization creates a feeling of disorientation and homelessness.

Viktor Navorski in The Terminal, at the first part of the film feels disoriented and lost similarly to Bruce and the other clients of the “Globus” bar in My sweet home. Although Tao in The World seems to have full orientation within the theme park, she does seem lost and dispersed as far as her personal life and financial situation is concerned. An interesting observation is that, although the world seems to have been expanded, the main characters of these films are shown to be confined within these specific enclosed spaces.

A consequent observation is the one that divides the people to privileged cosmopolitans and to deprived local ones. Zygmunt Bauman’s phrase “Ability or disability to move divides the world into the globalized and the localized … some inhabit the globe; others

207 are chained to their place” is depicted very illustrative in these films. Viktor is stuck into the airport along with the immigrant employees while all the others and the stewardess Amelia are constantly on the move to every part of the globe. In My Sweet Home, although Bruce seem to be stuck in the “Globus” bar, he actually has the opportunity to choose where to go while the Pakistani Ino who struggles for survival has not such luxuries like travelling. In a similar way to The Terminal, the employees of The World theme park seem to be stuck there, while the tourists come and go to visit the sites, even artificial.

Artificiality and simulations is another prominent issue posed and depicted which is strongly connected to postmodernism and consumerism. Keeping in mind that, in economic terms, globalization is mostly regarded as another phase of the capitalist world system, aiming at increased global trade and transnational corporations, the American brand stores at the

Terminal as well as the consumerist character of the theme park make sense. The only thing that Viktor is prompted to do by the police officer is to shop, while the theme park having concentrated replicas of all the important monuments in the world alludes to a consumerist kind of tourism. Even the clients of the “Globus” bar express the desire to visit other places and perform consumerist activities in line with the spirit of capitalism and privileged life.

The artificial needs of consumption and easy way of life on a theoretical level comport with the simulations on a realistic level. The American lifestyle of consumerism and superficiality and its influence upon the rest of the world is evident in all three film discussed in this chapter. The American brands of Starbucks or Burger King dominate in the terminal while the American Bruce advertizes his country by naming desirable activities like swimming in Miami, surfing in California, drinking in New York or eating pizza in Chicago.

The bar’s clients dream of Wall Street, a big house, an aircraft, New York, the Atlantic etc.

Another very prominent example of the influence of the American life style and also postmodernism is the theme park “The World” which follows the pattern of the Disney world.

The theme park, aiming at profit has “popularized” and made it easier for the tourists to visit

208 the important monuments of the world even if those are only fake replicas gathered all together in China. The convenience and quantity win at the expense of authenticity and the struggles of discovery. Even tourism, that originally means exploration, nowadays in the form of the World Park has become a standardized process following the McDonaldization and

McDisneyzation pattern. The so called post-tourists are satisfied only with the simulation of reality through the replicas or through virtual images and video games, features prominent in postmodernism. The film The World corresponds very accurately to Baudrillard’s statement that simulations have become dominant and to Jameson’s declaration that the postmodern culture is characterized by the plethora of products and the consumption of signs and images.

In the film The World not only the visitors of the theme park are driven by the cyber- technology but even the spectators of the film experience this new postmodern dimension as the film includes animated interludes.

The analysis of the films in the third chapter reveals that the identity formation has a strong link to consumption. Recalling the rebellion/conformity to society antinomy of the classic road movie genre, reminding that travelling usually was meant to be an exploration outside of society, it can be said that the characters of these films have no such attributes. On the contrary, they try to fit to the society by any means. Viktor embodying the American dream instead of spending manages to evolve his skills and become successful financially and even socially within the terminal. The clients of the “Globus” bar might seem to have failed or be disoriented but still desire luxurious real-estates and activities, which makes them to be totally in line with the demands and values of the capitalist society. The employees of the theme park struggle for the same values despite the difficulty of achieving their goal.

Indicative of the transformation of space are also the titles of the films which are ironic and undermine the actual meaning. In My Sweet Home the Globus bar constitutes a terminal to new destinations, in The World a theme park stands for the globe while The

Terminal has been transformed to a sweet home.

209

Conclusion

There is no greater sorrow in life than the loss of one’s native land

Euripides

One day there will be no borders, no boundaries, no flags

and no countries and the only passport will be the heart

Carlos Santana

These two quotes, each one of them bearing a great amount of truth, correspond, in my opinion, very well to the contemporary era. On the one hand, the loss of one’s native land with everything that comes with it like family, friends, culture and language alludes to the need for forced migration in the prospect of improving one’s living conditions. In opposition to the attitude that considers the loss of one’s native land as sad, lies the stance that celebrates the unification and interconnectedness of the world as well as the constant transition glorifying thus the notions of globalization and “citizen of the world”.

The current thesis, having engaged with topics related to mobility and migration as presented in contemporary films of the 21st century addresses both situations. The clearer distinction that can be made is that most of the times, underprivileged immigrants coming from countries stricken by poverty experience dislocation as a sad loss of their native land ( In

This World, Eden Is West) while privileged citizens of the western world mostly experience the opportunity of travelling, changing of country of residence as an adventure and as an attitude characterized by openness towards the world, other countries and cultures, in short, as a mode of cosmopolitanism ( Babel, My sweet home).

210 Different aspects of the same topic as well as fragmentation regarding the experience and space allude to the movement of postmodernism which is prominent in the contemporary globalized era as well as in the films analyzed.

As globalization’s main issues, like mobility and interconnectedness are closely linked to the notion of space, I decided to explore, on the one hand, how such issues are presented in films of 21st century, and, on the other hand, if and how the perception of space has perhaps altered during the last years. In order to be able to manage a big amount of material, I have decided to divide the thesis into three main chapters according to different kinds of mobility, always in relation to space.

In the concluding part of my thesis, I will try to summarize the main points and results. As a starting point, I want to focus on the fact that films as a visual art form reflect and represent the society and its main concerns. Furthermore, cinema, as a popular art form, has the ability to address mass audiences around the world by transmitting intense experiences through images, sounds and movements. Consequently, cinema has the power to influence and shape the audience’s ideas and attitudes. The famous postmodernist thinker Fredric

Jameson maintains that the cinematic art has become a prominent force in shaping a vast collective imagination and thus a valuable tool in transmitting ideology. Consequently, the films analyzed here reflect to a great extent the relation of the characters to the shifting spaces, a phenomenon experienced by the individuals in the real contemporary globalized world, as well. So, in Jameson’s terminology, cognitive mapping, as well as borders, locations and identities are the main topics posed and explored in the films of this thesis.

Through postmodernism’s prism and through an attempt to overcome the privileged

Eurocentric perspective, the films analyzed offer various narratives trying to adopt the immigrant’s perspective. In most of the films analyzed in my thesis the topic of immigration is dominant. In the case of Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal the difficulties of migration are seen as an opportunity of strengthening of the character as well as an opportunity for

211 improvement in a new environment, echoing thus the values of the American dream. In opposition to such a vision, in My Sweet Home by Philippos Tsitos the values of hard work and optimism are deconstructed, as most of the film’s characters experience a middle-life crisis as they have not achieved much in life and are very indecisive regarding the place they should continue to live.

Migration that occurs out of need is correlated with various kinds of difficulties which lead the heroes to change behavior and values. The Romanian peasant Irina, in Code

Unknown, becomes in Paris a beggar, while Muslim Jamal, in the film In This World, becomes a thief in order to get the necessary money for his journey. Other consequences of poverty are hunger — Elias in Eden is West eats the leftovers secretly in a restaurant — as well as the need to accept unhealthy and degrading jobs — Elias in Eden is West as well as

Jamal in In This World are forced to work illegally is shabby factories in order to earn some money.

Communication becomes difficult when there is lack of knowledge of the language;

Elias in Eden Is West cannot speak in French while Enayat in In This World does not know

English. Connected to the difficulty in communication is isolation which is experienced in particularly harsh ways; the trafficked Estonian girls in Promised Land are locked constantly in dirty and dark interior spaces while the transportation inside a container in In This World leads to suffocation and death. The topic of isolation is also posed in Code Unknown as well as in Babel through the deaf-mute children in the first case and the deaf-mute Japanese

Chieko in the second. Important topics connected to the migrant’s anxiety is the fear of the authorities — Elias in Eden Is West tries constantly to hide from the police officers — as well as the constant identity shifts on demand — Elias changes several times his clothes as well as his identity in order to pass by unnoticed.

The borders play a crucial role in the attempt for migration. Although borders have been suspended regarding the capital flows, the products circulation, the media and internet

212 existence all over the world and in general due to globalization, the physical borders still remain a great obstacle for the immigrants. In This World Jamal has to bribe a border officer in order for him and his cousin to continue their journey. Furthermore, Jamal and Enayat at a certain point hide their national identity in order to be able to cross the border in Iran. The illegal trespassing of borders is stressed in most of the films as several times the immigrants hide themselves in trucks, containers etc., like Jamal who hides above the wheels of a truck, the Romanian Irina passes the border hidden in a truck and the Estonian girls are locked inside trucks until they reach their destination. Even in Babel, the Mexican Santiago,

Amelia’s nephew, passes the border to the USA illegally, by avoiding the border officers and driving his car very fast. The borders, as a liminal, in-between zone can be considered as well as a non-place. Such an example could be considered the airport’s terminal in The Terminal, the hotel in Eden Is West, the refugee camps in In This World situated at the borders of two countries or even the metaphorical borders in the theme park in the film The World, when the tourists are transported from one “country” to another, inside the theme park.

Apart from the topic of migration and border crossing, the films examined in my thesis are preoccupied as well with the more general topic of mobility, for example due to tourism, due to professional reasons or due to personal exploration. Mobility in general is achieved through various transport means like cars, buses, ships, trains, coach, trucks, planes, even on foot. Mobility in terms of communication is also achieved through telephones — the characters in My sweet home call their parents, while Tao in The World communicates with messages through her cell phone. Furthermore, the TV communicates messages globally: in

Babel Chieko in Tokyo gets informed through TV about the return of the American couple back to the USA from Morocco.

Nevertheless, despite the increased mobility, the actual communication has not become easier. In My Sweet Home the characters gathered together in a bar are characterized by total disagreement and disorientation regarding which one is the best country to live. In

213 Babel, the American couple Richard and Susan travel to Morocco as an escape from their marital problems. The deaf-mute children in Code Unknown as well as deaf-mute Chieko in

Babel function as symbols for the difficulty of communication. Furthermore, in Code

Unknown, as even the title indicates, the unknown code in the building door necessary for the entrance functions in a symbolic level as well. In The World, Tao has problems in getting understood by her boyfriend. It should be mentioned, however, that some films present also positive aspects, as far as communication is concerned. In The Terminal the good communication and support among the immigrant employees of the airport lead the protagonist Viktor to achieve his goal. In The Missing Star, communication is finally achieved not through a common language or a common background like gender, age, nationality or culture but through common experiences, through the opening towards the

“Other” and ultimately through the common human nature. It should be mentioned, at this point, that the films analyzed in the thesis are characterized by a humanitarian spirit and aim to stress the common needs and values of the heroes as human beings.

Several times, though, the basic human needs and values are overstepped in the name of the profit in the contemporary globalized world. Trafficking is a hideous practice which grows bigger due to globalization as explored in Promised Land. The most prominent aspect of globalization is that of commodification and specifically of Americanization through the homogeneity of brand products. The most striking example in the films analyzed is the one in

The Terminal, where the protagonist, Viktor, during his “stay” at the airport is surrounded by

American brands like The Hudson, Burger King, Starbucks, and American Express.

Furthermore, regarding the American capitalist spirit, he is even informed by a police officer that the only thing he can do there is shopping. American brands like Coca-Cola are featured in several films signaling that American influence through capitalism exists globally. In the film In This World when Jamal and Enyat arrive in Iran they are offered Coca Cola, the same drink that American Susan in Babel orders when in Morocco or the drink that is popular

214 among the tourists in the Eden Club hotel in Greece in the film Eden Is West. American influence in the form of McDisneyzation is to be found in the theme park The World, where the theme park functions as a tourist attraction following the standards of the American

Disney World.

Such places, like the terminal or the theme park, are rendered into non-places through their anonymous, standardized and alienating character. Such anonymous and alienating homogeneous places follow in general the pattern of the Mc Donald fast food chain, being thus characterized by the McDonaldization process. A very crucial part of the globalization process is the domination of the English language; in The Terminal, Viktor tries desperately to learn English while in In This World Jamal embarks on this long journey accompanying his cousin Enyat only because he knows English.

Globalization means interconnectedness; in Eden Club Paradise Hotel several nationalities are gathered in one space, as well as in the bar in Berlin in My sweet home.

Furthermore, the interconnectedness is presented very well in Babel; a Japanese businessman donates to a Moroccan sheep herder a rifle through which an American woman gets wounded.

Through globalization, interconnectedness and constant mobility, the perception of space in its traditional sense has changed. Space used to be correlated with a specific nationality and historical tradition but nowadays with the existence of hybridity, in terms of people, products, culture etc., space has become globalized as well.

Such a sense of globalization and hybridity is especially evident in big metropolises, which encompass most of the aspects of globalization, like the concentration of capital and finance, as well as the cosmopolitan elites and the underprivileged migrants. The contemporary big city is a place characterized by constant change and flows, so it should be perceived as a process rather than a stable space. In this sense, the contemporary global city is truly a postmodern one, with main features the fragmentation and fluidity. The most accurate

215 term to describe the movement of mobile people, like tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles and guest workers, is Appadurai’s term “ethnoscapes”.

Big cities in the films are characterized largely by the mobility of people. Paris, in the films Code Unknown and Eden Is West, is a city characterized by constant mobility and fluidity yet also fragmentation. In Code Unknown young French Jean wants to move from the countryside to the city of Paris, young Franco-African Amadou tries still to adapt to the

French society despite his legal status, the Romanian illegal immigrant Irina begs in the streets of Paris. Paris is presented as a city of fluidity where communication between people from various backgrounds is a difficult task. In Eden Is West, Paris is also presented as a multicultural city of flows, although presented in a slightly more positive way. London in the film In This World is in opposition presented as a multicultural city where the immigrants constitute the labour class performing the most difficult and degrading jobs, like Jamal who ends up washing dishes at a restaurant. In My Sweet Home Berlin is presented as a multicultural city of constant fluidity which encompasses both labour migrants like the

Pakistani Ino as well as “cosmopolitans” like the American Bruce who enjoys being constantly on the move.

Through globalization the perception of space has changed as distances seem to have become eliminated. In the film The World, the theme park seems to include the whole globe in a specific place, as it consists of various replicas of important monuments situated all over the world. In the film My Sweet Home, the characters wonder where to travel without taking into account the distances. Additionally, in Babel, for example, there is rapid change of locations and countries in the globe witnessing thus a sense of proximity even between distant places.

Nevertheless, despite the feeling of interconnectedness and globalization that permeates the most developed parts of the world, there are still places isolated and usually

216 striken by poverty like the deserted and rocky mountains of Morocco in Babel or the industrialized rural areas in China in The Missing Star.

Due to globalization and interconnectedness, national identity has also been affected.

Hybridity, as a new way of living and interacting between people stemming from diverse backgrounds, has emerged as a necessity in a globalized world. As an example, Amadou in

Code Unknown possesses a hybrid identity that combines his African origin and his French citizenship.

Another very important aspect of the globalization and hybridization process in the films is the absence of the notion of exotic. Through the close contact with other cultures and different customs, what used to be considered as exotic, distant, and not understandable now comes closer and is more tangible. In Babel, with Susan’s injury, and her consequent treatment by Moroccan villagers, Morocco no longer seems to be so exotic and orientalized, but is rather perceived as an actual location where the simple native people offer help to

Susan. The previous voyeuristic and exoticized landscape is no longer something distant but has become an integral part of the American couple’s life and experience. Similarly, the vast rural industrialized landscapes of China are no longer considered as something far distant when crossed by Italian Vinzenzo. It has to be pointed out also that the films examined are oscillating between the familiar and known and the exotic and distant; on the one hand, they do present images and landscapes from various cultures as exotic to the western eyes but, on the other hand, they do break this cultural division through the common experiences and human needs. Nevertheless, it has to be pointed out that need for escape and the hope for a utopia, the hope that in a distant other place things will be better, is evident in all of the films examined. This motive is why the characters, either cosmopolitans or labour migrants, continue to travel.

It has to be stressed however, that, despite hybridization, ethnicity and nationality still play a very important role, as they are organically connected to the homeland. In migratory

217 films, homeland as a referent of nice memories appears very often. In Promised Land Diana recalls through abstract memories of white snow and church hymns her homeland, Estonia, while in My Sweet Home the characters of the film narrate stories of their homelands.

Furthermore, in Code Unknown ethnicity is a discrimination factor for the French policemen; the white French Jean is immediately free to leave, while the Franco-African Amadou, also a

French citizen, is obliged to follow the policemen to the station.

Nationality is co-related several times with certain stereotypes; in Babel, Mexico is referred to be a very dangerous place while such films as The Promised Land and The World indicate the high percentage of prostitution in countries like Estonia, Russia and China.

Another example is the co-relation of the Arabs with the terrorist attacks as it becomes evident from Babel and Code Unknown.

Concluding, it should be stressed that mobility has become an integral part of contemporary life whether it refers to privileged cosmopolitans or uprooted migrants.

Nevertheless, current political events like Trump’s election in the United States, Brexit or the rise of extreme right parties in France and other countries indicate a resistance to the vast mobility and migration flows in a globalized world. The need to preserve the nation-states with the traditional sense and the need to keep clear the notion of national identity appears as a very strong demand nowadays. Strict migration policies reflect such attitudes. What can be said, is, that, in the contemporary world of fragmentation and post-modernity, when everything is relative and everybody seeks its personal self-fulfillment, mobility and migration are notions widely practiced yet under question as well.

I hope that through the presentation of contemporary films dealing with such topics I managed to shed some light into the ambivalent topics of globalization and celebration of mobility and plurality on the one hand, but on the other hand the desire to preserve the roots and the identity as well as the prejudices and fears towards the “Other” and the different. The films I have examined having integrated elements of the road movie genre and the accented

218 cinema as well as features of post-modernism and globalization criticize the financial, social and political situation following thus the road movie tradition.

I believe that the examination of topics related to mobility, globalization and identity through the spectatorship of such films plays a very important role in the formation of ideas and attitudes not only towards immigrants and foreigners but also towards us as spectators and human beings.

Since globalization and mobility are very broad topics further research could be expaned and elaborated towards several directions. An interesting topic could involve the deeper examination of the changing position of the woman in contemporary China which enters dynamically into the industrial and globalizing forces. The traditional position of the woman at home changes, as she needs to earn money making thus her independent yet at several cases alienated and lonely as well. Apart from the films mentioned in this research, like The Missing Star (La stella che non c’e) (2006) by Gianni Amelio, Shun Li and the Poet

(Io sono Li) (2011) by Andrea Segre and The World (Shijie) (2004) by Jia Zhang-ke, the representation of woman in contemporary China could be recommended.

Another very prominent and up to date topic should include the examination of the so called clash of cultures in the form that has taken nowadays between the western values and the terrorist attacks of the Muslim world and the flud of immigrants from the East to western countries. Both aspects - the one that condemns immigration and otherness and the one that embrace it - are presented in the film Land of Plenty (2004) by Wim Wenders which places also a great emphasis on space. Similar depictions can be found at the Greek film Plateia

Amerikis (2016) by Yannis Sakaridis where a feeling of suffocation due to the great amounts of immigrants causes the creation of hatred towards them.

219

List of films

Films about Border Crossing

Fredric Jameson in his book The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the

World System (1992) explored geopolitics through the circulation of cinema on a global scale.

Jameson supports that the cinematic art has become a prominent force in shaping a vast collective imagination and thus a valuable tool. Jameson showed how film, a medium embodying ideology, had to intervene in the dialectics of cognitive mapping. Cognitive mapping could be considered as synonymous with psychogeography, the relation that an individual has and continually reinvents with the spaces and places he/she lives. Several recently produced films explore issues of space, borders and cognitive mapping, i.e. the relation of the characters to the shifting spaces. Borders or frontiers play a crucial role in the definition and markation of spaces as well as identities and power relations. Tom Conley, quoting Yves Lacoste and referring to his book La Geopolitique et le geographe mentions that;

Frontiers defined by rivers, chains of mountains or coastlines gave way to an

irrefragable “international institutionalization of frontiers”, a situation in

which geopolitics began to designate “the rivalries of powers on territories

[…] that are not abstract spaces, maps or platitudes without “rough edges”,

surfaces divided between “centers” and “peripheries” of men-producers as

economists believe but, rather, areas defined by the drawing of frontiers

resulting from relations of force. (Conley x)

220

Early Films about Mexican-US Border Crossing

There is a long tradition in border films about the topic of Mexican-US border crossing and in fact the more general term “border film” derives from it (Deleyto and Del Mar

Azcona 90). So, many of these films focus on the dramatic experience of border crossing and later on the various disappointments the immigrants encounter on the other side. The migration to the US began since the late 19th century (Keller 71) and continues until nowadays. Several films made by Mexican directors in the US criticize the imperialist and exploitative US attitude towards their Mexican neighbors. In fact, even as US citizens

Chicanos have been racialized as legally “white” but socially “black” (Noriega xxvi). The poet Gloria Anzaldua in her work Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza supports that borders are “set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them.

A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge” (25).

Luis Valdez’s film I am Joaquin (1969) inspired by a poem, speaks of the struggles that the Chicano people have faced in trying to achieve economic justice and equal rights in the U.S in the 1960s, as well as to find an identity of being part of a hybrid mestizo society.

Alambrista! (1977) by Robert M. Young, is about a young Mexican, who crosses the border into the United States with the hope to find work but things appear not to be so easy. Goin’

South (1978) by Jack Nicholson refers to reverse border crossing and is about Henry Moon who is captured for a capital offense when he fails to escape to Mexico. The Border (1982) by

Tony Richardson is about a corrupted border agent who nevertheless decides to help a woman get her baby back. Gregory Nava’s film El Norte (1983) refers to Mayan Indian peasants who, in their attempt to improve their lives, head to America, Los Angeles. Cheech Marin’s Born in

East L.A. (1987) is a comic satire about a US citizen of Mexican origin who helps dozens of illegal immigrants get into his country after undergoing the humiliation of mistaken deportation. Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1993) is about a traveling mariachi who is

221 mistaken for a murderous criminal. Gregory Nava’s My Family (1995) narrates the adventures of a Mexican immigrant family over three generations. Lone Star (1996) by John Sayles is a film about the revelation of long-hidden secrets in a Texas border town. Men with Guns

(1997) by John Sayles, is about a doctor who takes a trip to visit his former students who now work in impoverished villages. Central do Brasil (1998) by Walter Salles refers to the journey of a former school teacher and a young boy as they search for the father he never knew.

Smoke Signals (1998) by Chris Eyre, is a humorous yet serious story about two Indian Native

Americans who embark on a journey in order to collect one’s dead father’s ashes.

Recent Films about Mexican-US Border Crossing

The tradition regarding the border crossings continues until nowadays more enriched regarding not only the variety of ways and reasons of crossing but also regarding the countries involved and the particular circumstances witnessing a more globalized context. The border has become both a line of exclusion, conflict and defense against the other as well as a space of integration and hybridity (Deleyto and Del Mar Azcona 96).

An opposite border crossing from the US to Mexico occurs in Casa de los Babys

(2003) by John Sayles, when six American women travel to South America to adopt babies.

Sergio Arau’s comedy A Day Without a Mexican (2004) comments on the importance of

Mexicans in the US economy. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) by Tommy

Lee Jones deals with a border crossing regarding a burial in Mexico. Bordertown (2006) by

Gregory Nava explores the interests of the big US companies in Mexico through the murders of young Mexican girls near American-owned factories on the border of Juarez and El Paso.

Fast Food Nation (2006) by Richard Linklater offers deep insight into the corrupt system of big American fast food corporations exploiting Mexican illegal immigrants. Under the Same

Moon (La Misma Luna) (2007) by Patricia Riggen deals with the story of a young Mexican

222 boy who travels to the U.S. to find his mother. Sin Nombre (2009) by Cary Fukunaga deals with the journey of a Honduran young girl and a Mexican gangster across the American border. Issues of border crossings with a special focus on deportation are posed in Crossing

Over (2009) by Wayne Kramer. A Better Life (2011) by Chris Weitz, deals with illegal

Mexicans living in L.A. The Girl (2012) by David Riker is about a young Texan girl who begins smuggling Mexicans across the border. The Golden Dream (La Jaula de Oro) (2013) by Diego Quemada-Diez narrates the adventures of three Guatemalan teenagers during their attempt to reach the US. Especially interesting is the recent film Guten Tag Ramon (2013) by

Jorge Ramirez Suarez presenting the story of a Mexican who, as failing to escape the border patrol to go to the US, decides to migrate to Germany in order to earn some money. In Go for

Sisters (2013) by John Sayles, a mother searches her son who went missing on the Mexican border. In Frontera (2014) by Michael Berry an illegal Mexican crossing into the US is wrongly accused as being responsible for a death. Frozen River (2008) by Courtney Hunt deals with illegal border crossings between US and Canada.

Border Crossing in Europe

European countries, especially recently, tend to view migration as challenging and threatening to their territory and identity. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the transnational border crossings of migrants had become a key preoccupation of the governments and populations of the European Union, often referred to as “Fortress Europe” (Tarr 7). Fortress

Europe increasingly erects racial, ethnic and religious boundaries and closes its borders to the

“others” (Loshitzky 2). The following films offer some examples of the difficulties encountered in crossing borders in European territories.

Distant Lights (Lichter) (2003) by Hans-Christian Schmid is preoccupied with border crossings between Germany and East European countries like Poland and Ukrania.

223 Import/Export (2007) by Ulrich Seidl deals with border crossing from Ukrania to Austria, and reverse. Another film dealing with illegal border crossing in the area of Romanian-Hungarian border is Morgen (2010) by Marian Crisan. Le Havre (2011) by Aki Kaurismaki refers to the illegal offering of shelter to an African immigrant boy. The Judgment (2014) by Stephan

Komandarev refers to a father and a son living in a poor area, near the Bulgarian-Turkish-

Greek border. The topic of a single mother earning her living through smuggling illegal immigrants between the Turkish/Greek border is encountered in the very recent Greek film

Ohthes (Riverbanks) (2015) by Panos Karkanevatos.

Films about Migrants Trying to Reach London

There are films depicting very detailed the difficulties migrants and asylum seekers encounter in order to reach big western metropolises, particularly London. The unofficial penalty system designed to deny “failed asylum seekers” basic rights and support is a state mechanism, unfortunately currently harmonized with the European community. Loshitzky mentions that “in Britain, the Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act of 2002 denied accommodation and basic support to those who fail to claim asylum as soon as seventy-two hours after entering the country” (3). The screening process “reflects the rise of the surveillance society and the emergence of Panopticon Europe, the New Europe obsessed with controlling its geographical and cultural borders” (Loshitzky 4).

In This World (2002) by Michael Winterbottom is about the journey of Enayat and

Jamal, two Afghan refugees along the “silk road” through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Italy and

France towards London. Welcome (2009) by Philippe Lioret presents the enormous attempts of young Kurdish Bilal who has already crossed the Middle East and Europe to swim from

Calais the English Channel and reach London. Both films depict the harsh conditions of such attempts that very likely end up in death.

224

Issues of Conflict and Border Crossing in Middle East

A very peculiar road movie is Blackboards (Takhte siah) (2000) by Samira

Makhmalbaf about itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, looking for students near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Baran (2001) by Majid Majidi depicts the harsh life conditions of illegal Turks and Afghan workers in Tehran. Kandahar

(2001) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf revolves around an Afghanistan-born woman living in

Canada who embarks on a journey back home. Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand) (2004) by Bahman Ghobadi presents the sad lives of refugee children near the

Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion. Free Zone (2005) by Amos Gitai deals with border crossings in the area of the Middle East; the story elaborates on conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians and the role of the US in a symbolic level, as well. In

Disengagement (2007) by Amos Gitai a French woman of Israeli origin comes to the Gaza

Strip to find her long ago abandoned daughter. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, in European ground this time, is also posed in the film Strangers (2007) by Guy Nattiv and

Erez Tadmor. Salt of this Sea (Milh Hadha al-Bahr) (2008) by Annemarie Jacir explores issues of border policies in Palestine. Route Irish (2010) by Ken Loach revolves around murder, conspiracy, cover-ups, and revenge in Iraq because of the war. In Taxi (2015) by

Jafar Panahi, the director himself poses as a taxi driver revealing life in Iran.

Films about immigration in Europe

After the Cold War, Europe has been increasingly defined by migration across national boundaries. Perhaps quite unexpectedly then, there have been public discussions about asylum seekers as well as legal and illegal immigration in several European countries, such as the UK, Sweden, Germany and France.

225 In October 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the attempt in

Germany to create a multicultural society had “failed utterly”. Merkel urged

immigrants to integrate more fully into the German society. Similarly, British

Prime Minister David Cameron announced in his famous speech in February

2011 the failure of multiculturalism in the United Kingdom and demanded that

immigrants embrace a British identity, instead of staying outside the majority

culture. Filmmakers have explored and challenged these types of demands for

“new” European and diasporic identities, and studied the changing borders of

Europe during the past decades. (Merivirta et al. 4)

Films about Border Crossing and Immigration in Germany and Switzerland

Germany and Switzerland are of the most important host countries regarding immigrants for many years. The waves of “gastarbeiters” from the South European and North

African countries and Turkey flooded Germany during the 1960s in search for work. There are several films depicting the obstacles the immigrants encountered in order to reach these countries as well as the difficulties in the lifes they led abroad; these North European wealthy and developed countries are too cold, distant and evoke feelings of loneliness and sorrow in comparison to the sunny, warm and family-oriented fatherlands. Even more, the evocation in some films of the Nazi period renders these countries even more cold, neutral and inhumane towards the suffering of the Other (Loshitzky 20).

The topic of migration to another land and its subsequent racial discrimination is posed quite early in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) (1974) by Rainer Werner

Fassbinder; the film sheds light upon the daily difficulties and racist obstacles Ali from

Morocco faces in his life in Germany and his relationship with a senior German woman.

Journey of Hope (Reise der Hoffnung) (1990) by Xavier Koller narrates the story of a Turkish

226 poor family who tries to immigrate illegaly to Switzerland. Schwarzfahrer (1993) by Pepe

Danquart poses the issue of racism experienced by a young black man on a streetcar. My

Sweet Home (2001) by Filippos Tsitos revolves around a bounch of immigrants living in

Berlin who are gathered by chance in a café and try to figure out where the best place to live is and what to do with their lives. The edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite) (2007) by

Fatih Akin poses issues of migration and home in journeys between Germany and Turkey.

Almanya-Willkommen in Deutschland (2011) by Yasemin Samdereli presents in a comic way the story of three generations of a Turkish immigrant family. The plot is based on the travel first of the grandparents during the sixties from Turkey to Germany in order to work as gastarbeiters and nowadays the opposed trip back to Turkey for touristic purposes.

Films about Immigration in Italy

Italy along with other South European countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal used to experience migrant outflows to the Northern Europe. Before the recent financial crisis, however, all these countries constituted desired destinations for immigrants from Eastern

Europe or North Africa.

Solino (2002) by Fatih Akin is about an Italian family in the sixties who immigrate from Solino in Italy to Duisburg in the Ruhr area and establish the first Pizza restaurant in town. Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide (Quando sei nato non puoi piu nasconderti) (2005), by Marco Tullio Giordana, explores the topic of migration and its consequent difficulties juxtaposed to a privileged way of life. Sandro, an Italian child from a wealthy family accidentally falls in the sea and is eventually saved by a boat full of immigrants. Once in land, however, when social and racial hierarchies function again, Sandro is able to enjoy a completely different life than his illegal co-travelers. Terraferma (2011) by

Emanuele Crialese poses the issue of illegal immigration as experienced by the Sicilian

227 inhabitants of a small island. Racial issues along with the teenage ones are explored in Ali has blue eyes (Ali ha gli occhi azzurri) (2012) by Claudio Giovannesi, a film about Nader, a teenager of Egyptian origin living in Rome and experimenting with delinquency.

Films about Immigrants from Eastern Europe in London

The immigrants from Eastern European countries, and especially the former

Yugoslavia, have been seen as a threat for the Balkanization of Europe. Some of the films pose the topic of “invasion” of the Barbarians even to the most private spaces of upper-class

Britons (Loshitzky 53). Despite the distinct differences however, according to Loshitzky analyzing the film Beautiful People, the “two hybrid nations”, Britain and Bosnia, are not essential “others” but mirror each other in a variety of complex ways (58).

Such relationships between foreigners/refugees from former Yugoslavia and London permanent inhabitants are explored in the above mentioned Beautiful People (1999) by

Jasmin Dizdar. Issues of inequality including nationality problems are encountered in Born

Equal (2006) by Dominique Savage. In Breaking and Entering (2006) by Anthony Minghella, when Will, a Londoner married architect, develops an emotional relationship with the single mother and immigrant from Sarajevo Amira, their unequal status gets revealed.

Films about Immigrants of Asian Descent in London

The presence of many Asians (Indians and Pakistanis) in London can be easily explained and traced back to the colonization era of Britain in India. London, a contemporary globalized western metropolis has become a hybrid space of class, ethnicity and nationality; similarly, the foreign inhabitants or the postcolonial subjects are comprehended in terms of

228 hybridness or in-betweeness (Dirlik 336). Such an in-betweeness of Bristish and Asian culture and identity is experienced by characters in many films dealing with these topics.

Racial issues, that Pakistani face in London, can be traced back to My Beautiful

Laundrette (1985) by Stephen Frears. The Anglicization of Pakistanis is the topic of East is

East (1999) by Damien O’Donnell. Differences between Indians and Britons are posed in

Anita &Me (2002) by Metin Huseyin. Bend it like Beckham (2002) by Gurinder Chadha discusses the need for integration in the British society. In Ae Fond Kiss (2004) by Ken

Loach, the issue of race and cultural differences becomes more than evident when a young

Asian man enters into a relationship with a British woman. Nationality and race issues play also an important role in Brick Lane (2007) by Sarah Gavron; the action takes place in

London and is about the difficulties a young Bangladeshi woman faces as she moved from

Bangladesh to East London for an arranged marriage. In West is West (2010) by Andy De

Emmony, a Pakistani immigrant father living in London decides to take his son back to his fatherland.

Films about Cypriots and International Migrants in London

A number of films portray the struggle of immigrants in order to survive in such a big and multicultural city like London. In the films, the immigrants get mostly exploited by working in demeaning and harsh jobs or they try to open and run a business of their own.

Frears’s film Dirty Pretty Things (2002) deals with the difficulties illegal immigrants face; the exploitation of immigrants is evident in the harsh working conditions and even more in the illegal organ transplant commerce in exchange for fake British papers. In the film, the intimate relationship between the Nigerian Okwe and the Turkish Senay remains unfulfilled as they have to struggle for survival. Bullet Boy (2004) by Saul Dibb is about the street gang violent life of young black teenagers in London, a British Boyz n the Hood.

229 Children of Men (2006) by Alfonso Cuaron, is set in 2027 in a dystopian London; immigration policies are strict and the human race is in danger of exctintion. London River

(2009) by Rachid Bouchareb deals with the atmosphere of fear and prejudices against immigrants during the 2005 terrorist attacks in London. Fish n’ Chips (2011) by Elias

Demetriou, presents the life of Andy, a hard working Cypriot immigrant in London.

Papadopoulos & Sons (2012), by Marcus Markou, deals also with the opening of a fish and chips shop in London.

Films about Immigrants in France

France is among the main destination-countries for immigrants from Africa (the postcolonial Arabs, the South Asian Muslims and the African blacks), due to its colonial past to a large extent. The public space of Paris becomes a space of ‘contigency and crossing paths’ (Archer 33). A lot of films adopt the immigrants point of view and protest at their inhuman treatment at the hands of the French (and other) authorities. In other cases, however, films also show individual French citizens willing and able to assist migrants. In doing so,

“they aim to reclaim France as a plural multi-ethnic, multicultural society, open to difference and hybridity” (Tarr 9).

Tea in the Harem (Le the au harem d’ Archimede) (1985) by Mehdi Charef depicts the life of young immigrant deliquents in the neighbourhoods of Paris. La haine (1995) by

Mathieu Kassovitz depicts 24 hours in the lives of three young men of various ethnic descends (a Jew, an Arab and a Black) in the French suburban “ghetto” the day after a violent riot. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (Code inconnu: Recit incomplete de divers voyages) (2000) by Michael Haneke constitutes a mosaic of different stories about inhabitants of Paris stemming from various nationalities. La faute a Voltaire (2000) by

Abdellatif Kechiche refers to the difficult immigrant life in Paris. Time of the Wolf (Le temp

230 du loup) (2003) by Michael Haneke presents in a bleak and abstract way serious concerns regarding the future in relation to environmental and immigration issues. The relationship between French citizens and Muslims is of central importance in Michael Haneke’s Hidden

(Cache) (2005) where George’s Laurent adopted brother Majid appears as an unexpected thread to him evoking colonial guilts. The secret of the grain (La graine et le mulet) (2007) by

Abdellatif Kechiche shows the life of an Arab family living as immigrants in the southern

French port town of Sète. In The class (Entre les murs) (2008) by Laurent Cantent the teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself during a year with his racially mixed Parisian students. Eden Is West (Eden a l’Ouest) (2009) by Costa-Gavras narrates the story of Elias, an illegal immigrant from an Eastern country in his attempt to reach Paris.

Illegal (2010) by Olivier Masset-Depasse is about a young Russian woman who lives illegally in Belgium with her 13-year-old son. Intouchables (2011) by Olivier Nakache and Eric

Toledano is preoccupied as well with racial issues in France and the relationship between the

African Driss and the French quadriplegic millionair Philippe. Relationships between French citizens and immigrants in an epoch of unemployment appear in a more comic tone in Samba

(2014) by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano; Samba, an illegal immigrant from Senegal, tries to earn a living. Issues of multiculturality and racial mixing are posed as well in Qu’est- ce qu’on a fait au bon dieu? (2014) by Philippe de Chauveron. The recent film Dheepan

(2015) by Jacques Audiard, which won the golden Palm, is about Dheepan, a Sri Lankan

Tamil warrior, and the difficulties he encounters when he flees and lives in France.

Chocolat (2016) by Roschdy Zem is about the story of the first black circus artist in

France, in the late 19th century and the difficulties he encounters due to his skin colour.

231 Films about Mobility, Travelling and Migration Regarding Greece

Greece occupies a special position both geographically, by being situated in the middle of three continents — Europe, Asia and Africa — but also culturally, by being considered the origin of Western civilization. Greece was and still is a focal point for foreign tourists who come to visit its antiquities but also its lures towards a more sensual life thanks to its sun, sea, food and islands. At the same time, however, especially in the last years,

Greece constitutes the border country for millions of immigrants from Africa and Asia who try to pass to the rest of Europe. In Etienne Balibar’s words, “I am speaking of the “borders of

Europe” in Greece, one of the “peripheral” countries of Europe in its traditional configuration

— a configuration that reflects powerful myths and a long-lived series of historical event” (1).

Greece has quite rapidly changed its role from a sending country (Greeks were migrating to

Germany, the USA and Australia) to a receiving country (Albanians, Pakistanis etc.) until the recent financial crisis of 2008 which still persists and caused the migration of many Greeks abroad again.

Films about Travelling to Greece

Greece, is “a country located between East and West, considered part of the first world despite its relatively recent emergence from the control of empire builders” and regardless of its current turbulent political, social and financial situation. Several, especially earlier, films

“helped propagate an image of Greece as a place of titillating contradictions, with its reassuring familiarity and exciting exoticism” (Strain 156). As due to Greece’s poor financial situation and consequent lack of prevalent artistic representation abroad, films of other nationalities promoted ideal images of Greece focused on its glorious ancient past and contemporary attractive features of sea, sun, and sexual promises ignoring its deeper problems

232 (Strain 156). It should be noted however, that such images of Greece, that were circulated abroad through these films increased tourism in Greece 800 per cent (Strain 165).

Yiorgos Anagnostou states, for example, regarding the recent film My Life in Ruins:

The film is transparent in casting “Greece” as a redemptive destination, fully

delivering the fundamental promise of the tourist industry: the positive

transformation of the traveler, or, as the opening line in the script promises,

the “reconnect[ion] with their souls. (5)

Such representations of Greece can be found in the following films:

In Never on Sunday (Pote tin Kyriaki) (1960) by Jules Dassin, an American scholar visits Greece and falls in love with a prostitute. Alexis Zorbas (1964) by Mihalis Kakogiannis juxtaposes the values of an uptight English writer and the colourful life of the vivid Greek

Alexis Zorba. Summer Lovers (1982) by Randal Kleiser explores sexuality in the Greek

Islands. Shirley Valentine (1989) by Lewis Gilbert is about a middle-aged Liverpool housewife who revives again after some vacations in Greece. My Life in Ruins (2009) by

Donald Petrie explores the touristic side of Greece.

Films about Mobility and Migration in a Greek Context

Popular Greek films during the “golden age” of Greek cinema in the 50s, 60s and 70s offer few images of foreign lands in contrast to depictions of Athens or other parts of Greece.

However, as Dimitris Eleftheriotis states, “foreign landmarks or foreigness in general, are consistently used as points of reference (without ever properly constituting an object of cinematic exploration) usually as off-screen spaces exploited for their romantic or comedic potential” (Papadimitriou and Tzioumakis 22). A common reference is that of an affluent acquaintance, usually an uncle or an aunt who returned from the USA and is considered as a

“savior” for his family in Greece, like in the popular film I theia apo to Chicago (1957) by

233 Alekos Sakellarios. Characteristic are the words of Aglaia Mitropoulou regarding the film

Dollaria kai oneira (1956) by Ion Daifas: “the whole Greece was waiting for the American help […] and the Greek was always counting on the intervention of a deus ex machine” (226).

Such kinds of references, however, were usually naive and superficial, aiming only at the entertainment of a wide audience (Sotiropoulou 25).

Fewer films have actually dealt with the struggles of Greek immigrants in the United

States or elsewhere, presenting a more realistic picture of the difficulties of making a living abroad. America America (1963) by Elia Kazan was the first serious treatment of the theme of immigration to the USA produced by a major studio (Warner Bros) and “[a]lthough the film did not succeed in the box office, all the same, it resonated with the experience of younger directors in Greece, some of whom felt that it captured accurately and topically an aspect of the Greek history of immigration” (Kalogeras, “Retrieval” 155). A completely different approach in showing migration to the United Satates is the one that Lakis Papasthatis adopted in his film Letters from America (Grammata apo tin Ameriki) (1972). The film is based on a package of letters and postcards that the director discovered in the flea market of Monastiraki in Athens. The spectator watches the filmed photographs while an actor read the letters through a voice-over. According to Yiorgos Kalogeras

what Lakis Papastathis focalizes is not the material success or failure of the

new immigrants; instead, through photography and voice-off, he creates a

fluidity that reflects and comments on the transformation of the ethnic,

national and gender politics of the new immigrants as immigrants and as

repatriated subjects. (“Retrieval” 169)

Theo Angelopoulos is one of the most important Greek directors, whose reputation expands also abroad, who focuses in his films on issues about travelling and migration. As

Andrew Horton very accurately states, “the journey and the need for a home — personal, political, aesthetic, historical, and geographic — stand at the center of each Angelopoulos

234 film”. He furthermore argues that his films, several times inspired by the ancient myths of

Greece, “mirror the timeless reality of Greeks: they have been, are, and, one suspects, always will be a nation of travelers, either by choice or by chance” (Horton 38). Characteristic is the phrase from the film The Suspended Step of the Stork To meteoro vima tou pelargou () (1991) which is repeated in Ulysses’ Gaze (To vlemma tou Odyssea) (1995): “How many borders do we have to cross before we can get home?” Angelopoulos’ words have proven to be prophetic about the contemporary era which is marked by mobility and migration; “We are very much

“in between” all of us here…I don’t know what will happen now. But a new epoch is beginning. Borders, attitudes, relations, all will change” (Horton 82).

Dark Odyssey (1961) by William Kyriakis and Radley Metzger is about a young

Greek immigrant in New York City. America, America (1963) by Elia Kazan describes the hardships a young Anatolian Greek faces on his way to the United States. The film The

Immigrant (O metanastis) (1965) by Nestoras Matsas deconstructs completely the image of the Greek immigrant of America who returns wealthy and succesfull. To the Ship (Mehri to ploio) (1967) by Alexis Damianos is about a highlander who leaves his village and heads to the town and harbor where he will embark for Australia. In Grammata apo tin Ameriki

(Letters from America )(1972) by Lakis Papasthatis there is a voice-over narration through letters of a Greek immigrant in the United States to his family in Greece, reconstructing the conditions of immigrants in America in the beginning of the 20th century. In Okey file (1974) by Marios Retsilas, things do not seem so easy for the Greek Giorgos who immigrates to New

York trying to become a successful singer. Rembetiko (1983) by Costas Ferris narrates the story of a group of Rembetes, singers and musicians in the beginning of the 20th century.

Through the eyes of its female singer protagonist Marika, who, beginning from Smyrna, travels in Greece and even up to the States in Chicago, unravel the main points in the history of Greece. The Photo (I Fotografia) (1986) by Nikos Papatakis is about a young furrier who emigrates to France. Landscape in the Mist (Topio stin Omichli) (1988) by Theo

235 Angelopoulos is a road movie about two children searching for their father who is supposed to live in Germany. Ulysses’ Gaze (To vlemma tou Odyssea) (1995) by Theo Angelopoulos is about a Greek exile filmmaker in the United States who returns to his native Ptolemais,

Greece, and discovers a rare film. In Valkanizater (1997) by Sotiris Goritsas, two friends from a small Greek town travel to Bulgaria and Switzerland, hoping that they can gain money from the difference in foreign exchange rates. Bussiness in the Balkans (Biznes sta Valkania)

(1997) by Vassilis Boudouris is a comedy about new opportunities for making money in the

“strange” place of the Balkans. A Touch of Spice (Politiki Kouzina) (2003) by Tassos

Boulmetis is a story about a young Greek boy growing up in Istanbul with his grandfather who teaches him the secrets of cooking. The film Brides (Nyfes) (2004) by Pandelis Voulgaris deals also with the topic of migration but at a much earlier time, in 1922, when young women were sent from Greece to America as mail order brides. The Weeping Meadow (To livadi pou dakryzei) (2004) by Theo Angelopoulos is about some Greek refugees from Odessa arriving somewhere near Thessaloniki in 1919 while The Dust of Time (I skoni tou hronou) (2008) by the same director is about an American film director of Greek ancestry who is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy, Germany,

Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada and the USA. The Greek road movie Magic Hour (2011) by

Costas Kapakas is about two people wandering across the Greek landscape during the era of the economic crisis trying to find logic in the irrational. Man at Sea (2011) by Constantinne

Giannaris refers to the migration issue exploring the relationships between the Greek “hosts” and migrants while on a ship. Worlds Apart (Enas Allos Kosmos) (2015) by Christopher

Papakaliatis consists of three separate narratives each following a love story between a foreigner and a Greek. Amerika square (Plateia Amerikis) (2016) by Yannis Sakaridis addresses in a very touching way the immigration problem along with the crisis in contemporary Athens.

236

Films about the Migration of Albanians in Greece

Greece, during its modern history was traditionally regarded both as a tourist destination and as a developing country that has experienced several times the need to send away large parts of its population as immigrants. However, during the years of wealth and prosperity, Greece acquired for the first time another role, the one of the host country for populations from poorer neighbouring countries, from former communist regions and even from some Asian countries. It is interesting to note at this point that the number of non-Greek nationals in Greece in the first decade of the new century accounted for about 9 per cent of the total resident population, a figure which, strikingly, is very similar to the percentage of Greeks who emigrated to Central Europe and America after the Second World War. The vast majority of these immigrants were Albanians who populated Greece and changed the demographics to a large extent, along with social, financial, cultural and racial consequences. Plausibly, several films emerged dealing with this issue. According to Vrasidas Karalis,

The invisible people at the margins gained their visibility at the moment when

all projects that inspired previous generations collapsed, especially projects

that privileged the political and existential adventure of Greek citizens in

search of meaning and self-definition. (241)

Most of the films depict the hardships and racism immigrants face from the Greeks.

The words of the director Sotiris Goritsas are very illustrative

The subject of forced exile, the subject of the “foreigner” is, I think, closely

tied to modern Greek history. Only this time we’ve found ourselves on the

other side, not with the “foreigner”, but as the host to the “foreigner”. And it

appears that we’ve quickly forgotten our previous life, our past suffering, our

identity. (Alexiou)

237 In fact, if only the Greeks knew that the graffiti in Omonoia, Athens in 1993, stating

“Today’s Albanians are yesterday’s Greeks in Germany” would become reality again during the future years when the financial crisis in Greece would force Greeks to immigrate once more.

Racist reactions can be better understood, however, in the context of the more general observation that contact with new immigrants in today’s Fortress Europe results in a tendency to reinforce perceptions about the cultural homogeneity of the host population.

Of especial interest is the distinction between the new immigrant and the Greek returnee (from Northern Epirus or from Pontus in Soviet Union). Dimitris Papanikolaou in his article “Repatriation on Screen: National Culture and the Immigrant Other since the 1990s” draws the attention to this distinction as presented in the films Eternity and a Day (Mia

Aioniotita kai mia Mera) and From the Edge of the City (Apo tin Akri tis Polis): the distinction “between the “repatriate Voreioipeirotis” and the “clandestine Albanian immigrant” in the first case, and between the “returning Pontios” and the “Rossopontios” in the second” ( Tziovas 259).

The Suspended Step of the Stork (To Meteoro Vima tou Pelargou) (1991) by Theo

Angelopoulos discusses borders and migration. The film constitutes a meditation about the inhumanity of borders. The film From the Snow (Ap’to hioni) (1993) by Sotiris Goritsas follows a few men from Albania as they travel to Greece looking for a better life in Athens.

Mirupafshim (1997) by Giorgos Korras and Hristos Voupouras deals with the friendship between a Greek and three illegal Albanias. In Eternity and a Day (Mia Aioniotita kai mia

Mera) (1998), Theo Angelopoulos explores the phenomenon of migration in Greece through the relationship of a writer and a young boy from Albania. The topic of Albanian and of

Greek descent Russian immigrants in Greece is revisited by other Greek filmmakers as well, like Constantine Giannaris in his film From the Edge of the City (Apo tin Akri tis Polis)

(1998); the film is about a young group of teenage ethnic Greeks from the Black Sea who

238 have returned to Greece after the demise of the USSR. The film Hostage (Omiros) (2005) by the same director is inspired by the real-life story of a bus hijacking in Northern Greece and explores the sensitive issue of Greek-Albanian relations. Plato’s Academy (Akadimia

Platonos) (2009) by Filippos Tsitos deals with Greek-Albanian relation and identity. In Agon

(2012) by Robert Budina two Albanian brothers migrate to Greece and try to integrate into their host country. Xenia (2014) by Panos H. Koutras is about two young Albanians searching for their Greek father.

Films about Immigrants in the US

Most of the recently produced films that deal with immigrants in the United States pose the issue of fear and threat that the US white American citizens feel towards coloured immigrants. Although it could be argued that there has always been a distance and separation between white American citizens and immigrants, such a fact became enriched with feelings of hatred and threat after the events of the 9/11. Certainly the phrases of the Bush administration reflect this attitude; “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world” (Bush “Statement”) and “Our enemies believed America was weak and materialistic, that we would splinter in fear and selfishness. They were as wrong as they are evil” (Bush “President delivers”). The events of the 9/11 triggered a series of questions that “haunt US relationships both between self and other and within the self” (Weber 2) and concern “traditional strategies of domestication” and

“discourses of nationalism, which are always primarily discourses of home” and about marking “our private space from theirs” (Weber 163). Such topics regarding relationships with the Other as well issues of home are posed in most of the following films.

Stroszek (1977) by Werner Herzog deals with immigration from Germany to the US.

In Avalon (1990) by Barry Levinson, a Polish-Jewish family comes to the USA at the

239 beginning of the Twentieth Century. In My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) by Joel Zwick, a young Greek woman living in the United States falls in love with a non-Greek American; issues of nationality and culture become prominent. House of Sand and Fog (2003) by Vadim

Perelman, deals with the conflicts between an Indian family and a young American girl, regarding the ownership of a house. In The Terminal (2004) by Steven Spielberg, Viktor

Navorski from an East European country, in his wish to travel to New York finds himself stuck in JFK airport due to strict border policies. Crash (2004) by Paul Haggis deals with racial issues in Los Angeles. Land of Plenty (2004) by Wim Wenders investigates the rise of fear towards Muslims in America after the events of the 9.11. Man Push Cart (2005) by

Ramin Bahrani depicts the life of a Pakistani selling coffee from his push cart on the streets of Manhattan. In Chop Shop (2007) by Ramin Bahrani Alejandro, an orphan struggles to make a better life on the outskirts of Queens, New York. The Visitor (2007) by Tom

McCarthy addresses the issue of illegal residence in the US; Tarek, a Syrian illegal immigrant living in New York with his girlfriend Zainab from Senegal, gets deported back to his country. Interracial relationships as well as issues of migration are posed in Goodbye Solo

(2008) by Ramin Bahrani when an African guy married to a Mexican wife develops a friendly relationship with a senior white American. Gran Torino (2008) by Clint Eastwood poses racial issues as they arise in a neighborhood. New York I love you (2008) like Paris, je t’ aime

(2006), constituted by many shorts by various directors, pose also racial and national issues among love stories. Here and There (2009) by Darko Lungulov deals with immigration from

Serbia to the US, and the reverse. In Learning to Drive (2014) by Isabel Coixet, Wendy, when experiencing her marriage collapsing, decides to finally learn to drive with an Indian Sikh instructor. The film could be considered a kind of reverse story from Driving Miss Daisy

(1989) by Bruce Beresford showing the growing relationship between an old Jewish woman who is no longer able to drive and her African-American chauffeur in the American South.

Shelter (2014) by Paul Bettany is about white Hannah and black Tahir who fall in love while

240 homeless on the streets of New York. In My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016) by Kirk Jones,

Toula and Ian are facing marital problems while also having to deal with yet another Greek wedding - this time, even bigger and fatter.

Immigration in and from Asian Countries

In migration films in Asia a major issue is the relocation to another bigger city due to poverty and in search for work. An important analyst of globalization, Mike Davis, argues in his book Planet of Slums that the “emergence of polycentric urban systems without clear rural/urban boundaries” — that is, megacities of slums — is a direct result of the indicators of globalization, especially the restructuring of Third World economies by the IMF

(International Monetary Fund), that had as a consequence the collapse of the social services and led millions of workers to migrate (Zaniello 4).

City of Joy (1992) by Roland Joffe depicts the need of a family to relocate from a small village in India to Calcutta due to financial hardships. Metro Manila (2013) by Sean

Ellis discusses internal immigration in Philippines from the impoverished province to the megacity of Manila. The Rocket (2013) by Kim Mordaunt is about a boy who leads his family and two new friends through Laos to find a new home.

241 Road Movies Regarding Identity Issues

The road movie’s aim, along with the exploration of other places and meeting new people, is the confrontation with one’s deeper self.

Recent Road Movies Focusing rather on Self-Exploration

Traveling plays a very important role in the formation of someone’s identity or alternatively helps someone to escape of his current identity temporarily or even permanently.

Such a topic that draws back to the beginnings of the road movie genre, becomes especially prominent in contemporary road movies as well, as the identity issue is a very controversial one nowadays. Several authors have commented on the relative and transformative character of the identity; Zygmunt Bauman, for example, describes the liquidization of contemporary identity process, Ulrich Beck speacks of “individualization”, a post-traditional process in which people have to make choices about their identities, while Anthony Giddens refers to

“reflexivity”, as a kind of continuous flow through which identities are made, remade and transformed. Anthony Elliot has written about a “new individualism” which dictates self- reinvention and instant identity changes (Elliot xii). Since modernity generates movement, dispersal and fragmentation, correspondingly, the self or personality is also under change.

Several contemporary films depict the need for identity shifts and explorations and even more, express a concern about this new individualism as some times high-speed society masks the growth of “privatized worlds”. Elliot and Lemert speaking about “isolated privatism” are concerned about the ways in which people increasingly are seeking personal solutions to social problems, referring to “self-absorption at the expense of social bonds” (60-

61). Such a topic is traceable in some of the following films or the beneficial social and intimate closeness a road trip can bring to co-travelers.

242 Eversmile, New Jersey (1989) by Carlos Sorin is about a traveling dentist who traverses South America on his motorcycle. Bagdad Café (1987) by Percy Adlon is about a

German woman ending up in a desolate motel. The action taking place in a hotel is reminiscent of Mystery Train (1989) by Jim Jarmusch about three interconnected stories in a

Memphis hotel. Until the End of the World (1991) by Wim Wenders is a sci-fi road movie taking place in many parts of the globe. Casa de Lava (1994) by Pedro Costa is about the journey of an immigrant worker and a nurse back to his home in Cape Verde. Beyond

Rangoon (1995) is about an American woman’s trip to Burma and the experience of the turbulent political situation. In And Your Mother Too (Y Tu Mama Tambien) (2001) by

Alfonso Cuaron, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman in Mexico embark on a road trip. In Intimate Stories (Historias Minimas) (2002) by Carlos Sorin, three people and a baby set off on separate journeys, along the same road. Twentynine Palms (2003) by Bruno

Dumont, deals with a road trip from Los Angeles to California desert. Lost in Translation

(2003) by Sofia Coppola deals with a random encounter in Tokyo. The World (Shijie) (2004) by Jia Zhang-ke takes place in the theme park “The World” in China. The Motorcycle Diaries

(Diarios de Motocicleta) (2004) by Walter Salles narrates the motorcycle road trip of Che

Guevara. In Congorama (2006) by Philippe Falardeau, an eccentric Belgian inventor travels to Québec to search for his family. In Old Joy (2006) by Kelly Reichardt, two friends embark on a camping trip in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. In The Missimg Star (La stella che non ce)

(2006) by Gianni Amelio, the Italian Vincenzo travels to China and learns much about the country, as well as about himself. In Terra Estrangeira (2006) by Walter Salles, a young

Brazilian leaves his country to go to Portugal. Into the Wild (2007) by Sean Penn is about a student who abandons civilization and hitchhikes to Alaska. The Darjeeling Limited (2007) by Wes Anderson deals with a bonding trip to India between three brothers. Wendy and Lucy

(2008) by Kelly Reichardt is a road movie dealing with harsh financial situations. The Limits of Control (2009) by Jim Jarmusch is a road movie with criminal content. In Mamouth (2010)

243 by Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, a retiree embarks on a journey and battles to obtain his rightfully due pension. Las Acacias (2011) by Pablo Giorgelli deals with a relationship that develops along the way from Paraguay to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Loneliest Planet

(2011) by Julia Loktev deals with an engaged couple’s backpacking trip in the Caucasus

Mountains. The film Locke (2013) by Steven Knight is about certain problems a successful businessman and family man has to face, and all this while he is driving alone, during the whole film. Slow West (2015) by John Maclean is about a young Scottish man who travels across America. In After Words (2015) by Juan Feldman, an American woman travels to

Costa Rica and she rediscovers the happiness of life. The Trilogy of films Before Sunrise

(1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) by Richard Linklater depicts the life of a couple (an American guy and a French woman) when they first meet in Vienna, when they reunite again after nine years in Paris, and finally when they travel as a couple with their kids in Greece. Mississippi Grind (2015) by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck Gerry is a road movie about gambling. Queen of the desert (2015) by Werner Herzog is a chronicle of

Gertrude Bell’s life, a life devoted to traveling and exploring. In Transsiberian (2008) by

Brad Anderson, an American couple finds the danger when travelling from China to Moscow.

Road Movies about People with Special Needs

As a more specific case of the previous arguments regarding contemporary identity, there are also films that combine the theme of the road movie and identity exploration, but specifically to people with special needs.

Homer and Eddie (1989) by Andrey Konchalovskiy is a road movie about the growing relationship between a mentally disabled man and a sociopath. The Station Agent (2003) by

Tom McCarthy explores the friendship between a man with dwarfism, a chatty hot dog seller and a woman. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris refers to a

244 road trip about a beauty pageant. The Road Within (2014) by Gren Wells narrates the relationship between a young man with Tourette's Syndrome, an anorexic girl and a guy with obsessesive-compulsive disorder during a road trip.

Road Movies about Seniors

An important part of the identity formation process is the acceptance of aging and the idea of the forthcoming death. Not few films adopting the format of the road movie and travel in general, address the issue of aging and one’s own rethinking of the whole life, as well as the changing relationship with children. Old age, as a step before death which is considered as a taboo in modern society, is a stage of a last chance to live before the ultimate withdrawal. In opposition to earlier times, death is in contemporary society a part of the interior aspect of the individual (Waraschinski and Lemert 255). As modernity is bound with the aspect of continuous progress, at the level of individual identity, necessitates a denial of death. Death became “a guilty secret, clandenstine and unmentionable” (Waraschinski and Lemert 260).

Contemporary films, however, by dealing with such issues draw attention to the fact that dying old is a “good death” as someone has lived his life to the fullest.

In The Straight Story (1999) by David Lynch, an old man makes a long journey to meet his ill brother. In About Schmidt (2002) by Alexander Payne, a senior man embarks on a journey to visit his daughter. The Bucket List (2007) by Rob Reiner deals with two men’s last desires before they die of cancer. Everybody’s Fine (2009) by Kirk Jones is about a widower who decides to embark on a road trip to visit his children. The Way (2010) by Emilio Estevez deals with a father, who, having lost his son, decides to walk the “El camino de Santiago”. In

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) by John Madden, British seniors in pension travel to

India. In Nebraska (2013) by Alexander Payne, an aging father makes the trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim a prize. A Walk in the Woods (2015) by

245 Ken Kwapis is about a senior travel writer who decides to hike the Appalachian Trail with an old friend.

Queer Road Movies

The road movie genre, as a genre that celebrates the self-exploration as well as the relationship with the “Other”, can serve very well as a canvas for gender-related issues and explorations. Several road movies deal with characters who are gay, lesbian or even transsexual. Identity is relative and fluid in terms of gender, as well; in fact queer theorists argue that

identities are always multiple or at best composites with literally an infinite

number of ways in which “identity-components” (e.g. sexual orientation, race,

class, nationality, gender, age, able-ness) can intersect or combine. Any

specific identity construction, moreover, is arbitrary, unstable, and

exclusionary. (Seidman 92)

Furthermore, “identities are never fixed or stable, not only because they elicit otherness but because they are occasions of continuing social struggle” (Seidman 136). An important advocate regarding the relativity and fluidity of gender is Judith Butler; she suggests “troubling gender” by questioning the opposition of the categories feminine and masculine (6). The most prominent example is that of the drag, a man who dresses and acts in a feminine way, subverting thus the binary opoosition.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) by Stephan Elliot is about two drag queens and a transsexual who travel across the desert. Butterfly Kiss (1995) by Michael

Winterbottom deals with the relationship of two lesbians on the road. In Boys Don’t Cry

(1999) by Kimberly Peirce, the female Teena Brandon adopts the male identity and searches for love. In Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), a transsexual punk-rock girl from East Berlin

246 tours the U.S. In Transamerica (2005) by Duncan Tucker, a transsexual begins a trip to find her son in New York. Brokeback Mountain (2005) by Ang Lee is about the love between two cowboys.

Films about Roma

Issues of identity and habituation arise of cource in films dealing with Roma

(Gypsies); the Roma have inherently hybrid, transnational identities as they live on the road and wander constantly. Goran Gocic argues that “the Gypsies are Europe’s extreme vision of marginality” and that they “have remained one of the few mysterious, unspoken currencies of cinema, concentrated around identifiable stereotypes” (93). Dina Iordanova, goes even further into drawing parallels between the Gypsies’ marginality to society and the Balkans’ peripheral character to Europe; as the Roma “appear to mainstream society - marginal and poorly adapted but likeable for their vigour and non-traditional exuberant attitude - so the

Balkans (would like to) appear to Europe” (215). Films dealing with Gypsies and travelling include the following ones.

Time of the Gypsies (Dom za vesanje) (1988) by Emir Kusturica includes journeying, as the young Romany Perhan seduced by the quick-cash world of crime travels from the area around

Sarajevo to Italy. Gadjo Dilo (1997) by Tony Gatlif is about Stéphane, a young French man from Paris who travels to Romania, and eventually gets involved in the life of Roma.

Culinary Road Movies

Sideways (2004) by Alexander Payne is a wine-tasting road movie in California. A trip with wine and culinary experiences takes place also in The Trip (2010) by Michael

Winterbottom. Culinary besides to racial and national differences are presented in The

247 hundred-foot journey (2014) by Lasse Hallstom, when an Indian family opens an Indian restaurant in France. Chef (2014) by Jon Favreau is about a chef who decides to open a food truck in order to come closer to his family.

Films about Travels in Time and Space

Recent Films about Mobility and Migration Referring to Older Times

It has to be noted that there is a number of quite recent films that, instead of representing the burning topic of migration in the contemporary era, represent migration in earlier times, drawing thus parallels and addressing the same topic through an indirect way.

Kalogeras, in his analysis of contemporary films dealing with migration in past eras Brides

(Nyfes) (2004) by Pantelis Voulgaris and Nuovomondo (2006) by Emanuele Crialese, states:

In the wake of massive immigration from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa to

Greece, Italy and the EU in general, I believe that these two mainstream films

respond by conflating past immigration to the US with recent immigration to

“Fortress Europe”; while they sensitize their audiences to the possible

historical and economic parallels between the two, they also meditate on the

crisis of identity (American, European) that such migrations precipitated.

(Kalogeras, “Entering” 81)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) by Joel and Ethan Coen is a road movie set in the

1930s inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. Nuovomondo (2006) by Emanuele Crialese is about

Italian immigration to the US at the beginning of the 20th century. Les femmes du 6e etage

(The Women on the 6th floor) (2010) by Philippe Le Guay poses issues of nationality and class in 1960s Paris. The tendency of recent films revisiting the road movie genre is confirmed as well by the remake of the classic road novel by Jack Kerouac On the Road (2012) by Walter

248 Salles. The Immigrant (2013) by James Gray is about an immigrant woman in 1921 in New

York. The Cut (2014) by Fatih Akin, employing the road movie genre, narrates the story of a man in 1915 who survives the Armenian genocide but loses his family and later embarks on a journey to find his daughters. Brooklyn (2015) narrates the story of a young Irish immigrant girl in 1950s Brooklyn.

Multi-protagonist Films Taking Place in Various Countries and Continents

A number of films have been produced during the last years consisting of various stories taking place in different countries around the world transmitting thus in a globalized context the humanitarian message that people, no matter of which cultural, linguistic, racial, national, religious and social background, are the same when it comes to basics. This shows that as the media and films can “otherize” cultures, they can also promote multicultural messages. As Ella Shohat and Robert Stam argue,

if dominant cinema has historically caricatured distant civilizations, the media

today are more multicentered, with the power not only to offer countervailing

representations but also to open up parallel spaces for symbiotic multicultural

transformation. (7)

Night on Earth (1991) by Jim Jarmusch constits of five different stories of cab drivers in American and European cities, taking place during the same night. Um Filme Falado

(2003) by Manoel de Oliveira is a film taking place in various cities and could be considered as a celebration of knowledge and openness towards cultures and civilizations. All the

Invisible Children (2005) by various directors and with the support of “Unesco” and

“Programma Alimentare Mondiale” is a sensitivization film consisting of seven different stories about children around the world who suffer. La gran final (2006) by Gerardo Olivares oscillates between tradition and modernity, as well as globalization; the film shows three

249 different tribes from three different continents, during their attempt to watch the FIFA World

Cup of football on television. Babel (2006) by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu concerns four interlocking stories taking place in different continents: America (U.S. and Mexico), Africa

(Morocco) and Asia (Japan). On the Way to School (2013) by Pascal Plisson, with the support of the humanitarian organizations “Unesco” and “Aide et Action”, is about four children living in different countries around the world but having a common point: they have to cover tremendously long distances to reach their school. Human (2015) by Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a collection of stories from all over the world offering an insight on what it means to be human.

Films about Racial and Colonial Issues in Australia, America and Africa

Eurocentrism and the importance of the Western civilization is so much stressed and embedded in daily life that even subconsciously the “Other” cultures are pushed away to the background. European colonialism and its still evidently tracable consequences are left most of the times unnoticed. In Ella Shohat’s and Robert Stam’s words, “the residual traces of centuries of axiomatic European domination inform the general culture, the everyday language, and the media, engendering a fictious sense of the innate superiority of European- derived cultures and peoples” (1). Several films dealing with such issues of colonialism and exploitation draw the attention to that fact that still pervades contemporary life.

250

Early Films about Racial Issues in Australia

As Anthony Moran mentions, “indigenous identity also has its roots in earlier forms of globalization, namely imperialism and colonialism, without which the concept of indigeneity

[…] would not exist (347). Aboriginalism, several times includes

coercive, often romanticized academic constructions of the indigenous other,

historically and in the present, as well as popular understandings of indigenous

peoples evident in everyday life (for example stereotypes, stories and images

passed down as folklore, local history), films, television, fiction and art. (353)

Some of the following films deal with such romanticized aspects of “pagan” rituals in the life of Aboriginals.

Relationships between native Aboriginals and whites in Australia is the topic of films like Walkabout (1971) by Nicolas Roeg; two young English siblings meet a native Australian boy on "walkabout", a ritual separation from his tribe. In The Last Wave (1977) by Peter Weir a Sydney lawyer defends five Aborigines in a ritualized taboo murder. Where the green ants dream (Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen) (1984) by Werner Herzog deals with the conflicts between an Australian mining company that wants to exploit the land and some aborigines who explain that this is the place where the green ants dream. Utu (1984) by Geoff Murphy refers to the struggle of the native Maori in the 1860s against the British colonizers.

Recent Films about Racial Issues in Australia

There are several recent films set in Australia during the decolonization period posing problematic relationships between indigenous people and the former colonizers; despite the formers’ independence and freedom, according to Anthony Moran, “indigenous peoples were those left behind in states where they (with some exceptions) became minorities encompassed

251 by surrounding societies and dominated by other more powerful ethnic groups and nations”

(348).

The critique of Aboriginalism - which draws on Edward Said’s notion of

“Orientalism” - involves the idea that settler states […] create and impose a

compliant “Aboriginal” identity that can be negociated with and ruled. The

state decides who is and is not Aboriginal, and uses these categorizations to

decide what rights will be granted and/or denied to indigenous people. (Moran

353)

Once Were Warriors (1994) by Lee Tamahori, deals with the racial and social problems a Maori family faces. The Tracker (2002) by Rolf de Heer refers back to 1922 and explores racial issues when a native Australian man is accused of murdering a white woman.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) by Philip Noyce explores issues of colonialism against native aboriginals. Beneath Clouds (2002) by Ivan Sen depicts the relationship between Lena, a light-skinned daughter of an Aboriginal mother and Irish father and Vaughn, a Murri boy, during a common journey. Samson and Delilah (2009) by Warwick Thornton presents the problems of two aboriginal teenagers, Samson and Delilah who are treated as outcasts.

Tracker (2010) by Ian Sharp deals with the search of an accused man who eventually proves to be innocent. Mad Bastards (2010) by Brendan Fletcher revolves around TJ’s quest to find the son he ’s never known. In Charlie’s Country (2013) by Rolf de Heer, the Aboriginal

Charlie can’t accept being assimilated or living like how white Australians impose. A road movie set in Australia, as well, and posing issues of race difference between a white

Australian and a Japanese, in this case, is Japanese Story (2003) by Sue Brooks.

252

Films about Racial Issues in the US

Issues regarding the African race are very prominent in films set in the USA, where the assimilation and equality topic is still under question even not so openly in all the cases. In a Eurocentric society, “the paired terms “Black” and “White” easily lend themselves to the

Manicheanisms of good/evil; matter/spirit; devil/angel” (Shohat and Stam 22). There have been many attempts “to call for a move from a terminology based on color and race to one based on culture; to speak not of Blacks and Whites, for example, but rather of African-

Americans and European-Americans (Shohat and Stam 22). Several films depict exactly this struggle to overcome the boundaries of colour that unfortunately still exist.

The Defiant Ones (1958) by Stanley Kramer narrates the story of two escaped convicts, a white and a black. Black Like Me (1964) by Carl Lerner is based on the true story of a white reporter who temporarily darkened his skin in order to experience how it is to be black. Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967) by Stanley Kramer, introduces the issue of interracial marriage. In Watermelon Man (1970) by Melvin Van Peebles a racist white man has huge problems in accepting his new identity when he becomes a black man due to a tunning machine. In Soul Man (1986) by Steve Miner, a whealthy white teen poses as a black man to receive a scholarship. In True Identity (1991) by Charles Lane, on the other hand, an

African-American man disguises himself as a white man. Jungle Fever (1991) by Spike Lee explores the consequences of an interracial afair. Grand Canyon (1991) by Lawrence Kasdan, a multi-protagonist film, focuses on a friendship of two men from different races. In Made in

America (1993) by Richard Benjamin, a young black woman discovers that her father is white. Issues of race are also posed in Black or White (2014) by Mike Binder. Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele addresses intensely the racial issue simultaneously in an ironic and scary way.

There is also a group of films focusing on American gangs. Colors (1988) by Dennis

Hopper depicts the persecution of gang violence in the streets of East Los Angeles. Boyz n the

253 Hood (1991) by John Singleton shows gang life in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles. South

Central (1992) by Stephen Milburn Anderson is about a black guy who tries to prevent his son following the gang life. In Menace II Society (1993) by the Hughes Brothers, a young street hustler attempts to escape the ghetto. American History X (1998) by Tony Kaye explores the neo-Nazi skinhead attitude towards blacks. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005) by Jim

Sheridan is the story of the famous rap singer 50 Cent. Chi-Raq (2015) by Spike Lee is a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, set in a black ghetto in Chicago.

Films about Indigenous People Exploitation in South America

The topic of exploitation in South America is addressed in several films and is of cource interconnected to the issue of Eurocentrism and its supposed superiority. Furthermore, issues of morality and religion play also a very important role in the perception of the “Other” and in this case in the Native Americans. In the words of Jules Harmand, as quoted by Ella

Shohat and Robert Stam, “the basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but our moral superiority”. Thus, native Americans were called “beasts” and “savages” because white Europeans were expropriating their land (18).

Aguirre, Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes) (1972) by Werner Herzog is about a

Spaniard named Aguirre and his search of El Dorado in the 16th century. Iracema-Uma

Transa Amazonica (1975) by Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna addresses the problems in the region of the Transamazonic Road. Fitzcarraldo (1982) by Werner Herzog is about an obsessed opera lover who wants to build an opera in the jungle. The Emerald Forest (1985) by John Boorman, based on a true story, is about the son of the engineer Bill Markham who gets abducted by an aboriginal tribe on the edge of the rain forest in Brazil. The Mission

254 (1986) by Roland Joffe is about 18th century Spanish Jesuits trying to protect a remote South

American Indian tribe. The Mosquito Coast (1986) by Peter Weir refers to an American who rejects the western life style and relocates with his family in the middle of the jungle. In The

Forbidden Dance (1990) by Greydon Clarke, a princess in the Amazon rain forests tries to fight a company that wants to destroy the forests. At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991) by

Hector Babenco is about a couple of missionaries sent to the jungles of South America to convert the Indians. The biography of Columbus in 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) by

Ridley Scott presents not only the discovery of Americas but also the effect this had on the indigenous people. The New World (2005) by Terrence Malick is about the English occupation of Virginia, and the relationship between the English and the natives; specifically it is about a love story between Captain Smith and the Indian Pocahontas.

Issues of racial conflict among natives and whites appear as well in films about

Indians like in Bird Watchers (La terra degli uomini rossi) (2008) by Marco Bechis. The topic of indigenous people claiming their rights and the public acess to water is presented in Even the Rain (Tambien la Iluvia) (2010) by Iciar Bollain. Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente) (2015) by Ciro Guerra is the story of the relationship between an Amazonian shaman and two scientists who search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant. Issues of race and colonization arise in the film.

Issues of Race and Dislocation in Early Films Set in Africa

Our world, so far at least, is undoubtedly Eurocentric (a term to describe Western civilization) and so much embedded in everyday life that the traces of European dominion in the past centuries have created a plasmatic sense of superiority of European-derived cultures.

As Ella Shohat and Robert Stam mention, Eurocentrism “maps the world in a cartography that centralizes and augments Europe while literally “belittling” Africa” (2). There are a number

255 of films especially produced which “use” an African background in order to make the

Westerner’s stories more excotisized and appealing.

Moi, un noir (1958) by Jean Rouche refers to the hardships Nigerian immigrants face in Ivory Coast in order to earn a living. A film juxtaposing tradition (a traveling bushman) and the contemporary consumer world (a bottle of Coca-cola as a symbol) is The Gods Must be Crazy (1980) by Jamie Uys. Out of Africa (1985) by Sydney Pollack refers to the 20th- century colonial Kenya. Chocolat (1988) by Claire Denis narrates the return of a young

French woman to West Africa and her memories as a child in colonial Cameroon. Africa functions as a travelling background for the American artist couple who travel through Africa, searching for new experiences in The Sheltering Sky (1990) by Bernardo Bertolucci. Issues of race and migration are also posed in Besieged (L’assedio) (1998) by the same director in a relationship between an African woman and an eccentric English pianist. Life on Earth (La vie sur terre) (1998) by Abderrahmane Sissako juxtaposes Europe to Africa. Africa is the setting also in Beau travail (1999) by Claire Denis about the memories of an ex-Foreign

Legion officer.

Issues of Race, Dislocation end Exploitation in Recent Films Set in Africa

Opposed to older films, recent films dealing with migration and other issues related to exploitation of Africa are more sensitive, enough to avoid an obvious Western perspective; they rather sympathize more with the oppressed’s point of view.

In Waiting for Happiness (Heremakono) (2002) by Abderrahmane Sissako, the sea coast of Mauritania functions as a transit town for those who want to go to Europe. Local costumes are juxtaposed with the desire for progress and technology. 14 Kilometros (2007) by

Gerardo Olivares, narrates the journey and difficulties of three young people from Africa,

Mali, in their attempt to reach Spain and Europe. Harragas (2009) by Merzak Allouache

256 refers to the refugees, “harragas” who try to get from Africa to Europe. Venus noire (2010) by

Abdellatif Kechiche is about the story of Saartjes Baartman, a Black domestic who, following her boss to Europe, is exhibited as a curiosity in humiliating shows. Nairobi Half Life (2012) by David “Tosh” Gitonga discusses a young boy’s migration from the province of Kenya to

Nairobi and the difficulties he has to face. Mediterranea (2015) by Jonas Carpignano follows two men during their dangerous journey from Africa to an Italy full of hostility and violence.

Les chevaliers blancs (2015) by Joachim Lafosse stands critically towards the humanitarian operations of European NGO’s in Africa.

Issues of Race and Slavery in Films about or Set in Africa

Racist behavior and slavery in Africa are issues organically connected to

Eurocentrism, responsible for the abuse and exploitation of other people and lands just by claiming superiority.

“Eurocentrism minimizes the West’s oppressive practices by regarding them as contigent, accidental, exceptional. Colonialism, slave-trading, and imperialism are not seen as fundamental catalysts of the West’s dis-proportionate power” (Shohat and Stam 3).

Recently produced films draw the attention to such facts, especially as far as Africa, the most “unfortunate” continent is concerned.

Black and White in Color (La victoire en chantant) (1976) by Jean-Jacques Annaud refers to the French colonial rule in Africa. Zulu Dawn (1979) by Douglas Hickox refers to the battle of Isandlwana, a war between the Zulu tribe and British colonials. Coup de Torchon

(1981) by Bertrand Tavernier depicts life in Africa under the French rule. In Cobra Verde

(1987) by Werner Herzog, the feared bandit Cobra Verde is hired by a plantation owner in

Brazil to supervise his slaves and then is sent to Africa to negotiate slaves. Camp de Thiaroye

(1987) by Ousmane Sembene raises issues of colonialism and exploitation. Mountains of the

257 Moon (1990) by Bob Rafelson refers to a British expedition in Africa. Amistad (1997) by

Steven Spielberg is about a cargo of African slaves in a ship sailing from Cuba to the US in

1839. In my Country (2004) by John Boorman concerns the question of whether the deep wounds of Apartheid can be healed through reconciliation. Red Dust (2004) by Tom Hooper deals with The Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. Beyond the Gates (2005) by

Michael Caton-Jones refers to the war between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda as well as the involvement of the West. The film Desert Flower (2009) by Sherry Hormann touches upon the horrible practice of female genital mutilation in Africa. White Material (2009) by

Claire Denis explores racial and civil conflicts in Africa when a white French family tries to save its coffee plantation. Africa’s bad condition, in terms of war and poverty in this case, is also depicted in A screaming man (Un home qui crie) (2010) by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.

Problems caused to African people due to local wars, such as slave trade even nowadays, is depicted in I am slave (2010) by Gabriel Range, based on the real-life experiences of Mende

Nazer. The First Grader (2010) by Justin Chadwick revolves around the life of a senior

Kenyan man who fought against the British colonialism in his youth and now wants to go to school as a last chance. Django Unchained (2012) by Quentin Tarantino is a kind of a remake of Django (1966) by Sergio Corbucci. Django Unchained is about a freed slave who tries to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. The topic of black slavery is revisited in recent films like 12 Years a Slave (2013) by Steve McQueen. The Retrieval

(2013) by Chris Eska is set at the end of the US Civil War when bounty hunters were looking for escaped slaves. Beasts of No Nation (2015) by Cary Joji Fukunaga, follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in Africa. Guldkysten (2015) by

Daniel Dencik refers to the slave trade and brutalities in Gold Coast, Africa.

258 Films about Exploitation and Profiting in Relation to Mobility

One of the most prominent activities of exploitation in regard to mobility is trafficking with its broader meaning. Trafficking can include “the illegal traffic of children; the exploitation of illegal immigrant labour forces […] and the illegal trade of body parts and organs” (Brown et al. 2). Unquestionably trafficking is considered as a side effect of globalization. There are reported to be 27 million slaves in the world today “although some estimates claim that there are as many as 200 million, a figure that, if at all accurate, suggests the enormous size of this “industry”, an industry that is pan-global (or transnational) and more often than not criminal” (Brown at al. 3).

Films about Illegal Migrant Smuggling

Organically connected to illegal migrancy is the profitable job of the smugglers, who earn their living by exploiting the migrants. However, despite the monstrous qualities that the smugglers are attributed with, it should be acknowledged that several times, traffickers themselves, like refugees, are the victims of globalization and the New Europe (Loshitzky

24). The smugglers seem to be the products of sociopolitical changes like privatization, the decline of social services and unemployment. The inhuman immigration and asylum policy of the “liberal” Western European states is of the same significance as the exploitation of traffickers (Loshitzy 24).

In The Promise (La Promesse) (1996) by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Igor and his father are making a living by renting apartments to illegal immigrants who work illegally in

Belgium. The topic of illegal smuggling and especially of illegal work and exploitation by a woman in the UK is prominent in Ken Loach’s film It’s a Free World (2007).

259

Films about Trafficking

Tragically, there are also the cases of persons whose undocumented migration takes place against their own wills. According to the U.S. government, there are between 800,000 and 900,000 such victims of human trafficking every year (Goldin and Reinert 166). The victims are either kidnapped or given misleading information about well paid jobs and then are kept imprisoned and denied access to authorities who would be able to assist.

Lilya 4ever (2002) by Lukas Moodysson deals with the trafficking of a young and innocent girl from Estonia to Sweden, fantasizing about a better life. Promised Land (2004) by Amos Gitai tells the story of a group of young Estonian girls smuggled through Egypt to work as prostitutes in Israel. Human Trafficking (2005) by Christian Duguay is a multi- protagonist film presenting the problem of trafficking in various parts of the world like in East

European countries, the Philippines and the United States. The same topic of illegal sex trafficking from Mexico to the US is dealt with in Trade (2007) by Marco Kreuzpaintner. In

Cargo (2011) by Yan Vizinberg, a young Russian woman is smuggled into America while an

Egyptian transporter is hired to drive her from the Mexican border to New York City; an unlikely bond however transforms them and threatens to change the traffickers’ plans. Trade of Innocents (2012) by Christopher M. Bessette sheds light into the sex trade of young girls in

Cambodia revealing how difficult is to fight against such practices as the corrupt government is part of such a trade. In Eden (2012) by Megan Griffiths, a young Korean-American girl, abducted and led into prostitution, is forced to co-operate with her traffickers as the only hope for her survival.

260

Films of Mobility about Drugs, Oil, Pharmaceuticals and Corruption

A number of films involving border crossing and mobility in the global scale address serious world prolems of contemporary times, such as drugs, which of course serve usually for the profit of Western countries by exploiting people and resources of the so called underdeveloped countries.

“Dependency theory” (Latin America), “underdevelopment theory” (Africa),

and “world systems theory” argue that a hierarchical global system controlled

by metropolitan capitalist countries and their multinational corporations

simultaneously generates both the wealth of the First World and the poverty of

the Third World as the opposite faces of the same coin. (Shohat and Stam 17)

As Shohat and Stam mention, “according to the UN statistics, the First World, although it comprises only one-fifth of the world’s population, enjoys 60 per cent of a global wealth drawn in substantial measure from the Third World (27).

Traffic (2000) by Steven Soderbergh deals with the issue of drug trading. Maria Full of Grace (2004) by Joshua Marston narrates the story of young Maria from Colombia who accepts to work as a drug mule, flying to the USA in order to earn money. Syriana (2005) by

Stephen Gaghan is a political film about the oil industry. The Constant Gardener (2005) by

Fernando Meirelles deals with corporate corruption. The film Blood Diamond (2006) by

Edward Zwick draws the attention to the problems in Africa and its exploitation by the western world and specifically America regarding the diamond trade. Savages (2012) by

Oliver Stone deals with the topic of drugs like El Nino (2014) by Daniel Monzon.

Films about Sex Tourism

According to Thanh-Dam, sex tourism consists of a series of links that “can be conceptualized as one between a legally marginalized form of commoditization (sexual

261 services) within a national industry (entertainment), essentially dependent on, but with a dynamic function in, an international industry [travel]” (Ryan and Hall x).Tourism as a form of escape within the contemporary capitalist system offers the re-evaluation of self identification along with the get-away time from “normal” life. The holiday retains the promise of identity confirmation and renewal. Sex tourism furthermore enriches this experience with sensual pleasure and sense of superiority. Although both tourists and prostitutes are marginal and luminal, the former enjoy a socially sanctioned and economically empowered marginality while the latter are degraded to a stigmatized and unprivileged one

(Ryan and Hall 1). According to Siddarth Kara

Sex trafficking is one of the ugliest cotemporary actualizations of global

capitalism because it was directly produced by the harmful inequities spread

by economic globalization: deepening on rural poverty, increased economic

disenfranchisement of the poor, the net extraction of wealth and resources

from poor economies into richer ones, and the broad-based erosion of real

human freedoms across the developing world. (4)

Several films dealing with this topic reveal the unequal power relations.

Heading South (Vers le Sud) (2005) by Laurent Cantet is about western female tourists in the 1980s Haiti. Issues of child sex prostitution in Thailand are posed among others in

Mammoth (2009) by Lukas Moodysson. Paradise: Love (2012) by Ulrich Seidl deals with the search for love in Kenya by European women. In Teddy Bear (2012) the topic of love-finding in Thailand is prominent. Eastern Boys (2013) by Robin Campillo is about young boys from

East European countries prostituting themselves in the Gare du Nord train station in Paris.

262

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Badlands. Dir. Terrence Malick. Perf. Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates. Warner

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Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette ). Dir. Vittorio De Sica. Perf. Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo

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Blade Runner. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young. The Ladd

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Bobby. Dir. Emilio Estevez. Perf. Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone. The

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Bordertown. Dir. Gregory Nava. Perf. Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas, Maya Zapata.

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Born in East L.A. Dir. Cheech Marin. Perf. Cheech Marin, Daniel Stern, Paul Rogriguez.

Clear Type,1987.

263 Cache. Dir. Michael Haneke. Perf. Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou. Les

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Cargo. Dir. Yan Vizinberg. Perf. Natasha Rinis, Sayed Badreya. Persona Films, 2011.

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Code 46. Dir. Michael Winterbottom. Perf. Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri. BBC,

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Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Perf. Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Thandie Newton. Bob Yari

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Detour. Edgar G. Ulmer. Perf. Tom Neal, Ann Savage. PRC, 1945.

Distant Lights (Lichter ). Dir. Hans-Christian Schmid. Perf. Andrzej Gorak, Anna

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Drugstore Cowboy. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Perf. Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch. Avenue

Pictures,1989.

264 Easy Rider. Dennis Hopper. Perf. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson. Pando

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Eden Is West (Eden a l’ Ouest). Dir. Costa-Gavras. Perf. Riccardo Scamarcio, Odysseas

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El Mariachi. Dir. Robert Rodriguez. Perf. Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez. Columbia

Pictures Corporation, Los Hooligans Productions, 1993.

Fast Food Nation. Dir. Richard Linklater. Perf. Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis, Catalina Sandino

Moreno. Fox Searchlight Pictures, BBC, HanWay Films, etc., 2006. Film.

Felicia’s Journey. Dir. Atom Egoyan. Perf. Bob Hoskins, Arsinee Khanjian. Alliance Atlantis

Communications, etc.,1999.

Five Easy Pieces. Dir. Bob Rafelson. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Karen Black. BBS Productions,

Columbia Pictures Corporation, etc., 1970.

Free Zone. Dir. Amos Gitai. Perf. Natalie Portman, Hana Laslo, Hiam Abbass. Agav Films,

Canal +, etc., 2005.

Get on the Bus. Dir. Spike Lee. Perf. Ossie Davis, Charles S. Dutton. Columbia Pictures, 15

Black Men,1996.

Grand Hotel. Dir. Edmund Goulding. Perf.Greta Garbo, John Barrymore. MGM, 1932.

Guests of Hotel Astoria. Dir. Reza Allamehzadeh. Perf. Shohreh Aghdashloo, Marshall

Manesh, Mohsen Marzban.International Home Cinema, 1989.

Hotel. Dir. Richard Quine. Perf. Rod Taylor, Catherine Spaak. Warner Bros., 1967.

Hotel Berlin. Dir.Peter Godfrey. Perf. Faye Emerson, Helmut Dantine. Warner Bros., 1945.

Human Trafficking. Dir. Christian Duguay. Perf. Lynne Adams, Zoe Aggeliki. For Sale

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I am Joaquin. Dir. Luis Valdez. Perf. Luis Valdez,1969.

Import/Export. Dir. Ulrich Seidl. Perf. Ekateryna Rak. Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion GmbH,

ZDF, ORF, etc., 2007.

265 Insignificant Things (Cosas Insignificantes). Dir.Andrea Martinez Crowther. Perf. Jonathan

Bravo,Regina De Los Cobos. Manga Films, Tequila Gang, Warner Bros., 2008.

In the Course of Time or Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit). Dir. Wim Wenders. Perf.

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In This World. Dir. Michael Winterbottom. Perf. Jamal Udin Torabi, Enayatullah. The Film

Consortium, BBC etc., 2002.

Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages. Dir. D.W. Griffith. Perf. Lillian Gish,

Douglas Fairbanks. Triangle Film Corporation, Wark Producing, 1916.

Journey of Hope (Reise der Hoffnung ). Dir. Xavier Koller. Perf.Necmettin Cobanoglu, Nur

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Lamerica. Dir. Gianni Amelio. Perf. Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido. Alia Film, Rai 1, etc.,

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La Strada. Dir. Federico Fellini. Perf. Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina. Ponti- De Laurentiis

Cinematographica,1954.

Le Havre. Dir. Aki Kaurismaki. Perf. Andre Wilms, Blondin Miguel. Pyramide Productions,

etc. 2011.

Life Is Al You Get (Das Leben ist eine Baustelle). Dir.Wolfgang Becker. Perf. Christiane Paul,

Jurgen Vogel. Arte, X-Filme Creative Pool, WDR, 1997.

Lilya 4-Ever. Dir. Lukas Moodysson. Perf. Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Boguchariskiy.

Memfis Film, SFI, etc., 2002.

Lost Highway. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette.October Films, Lost

Highway Productions LLC, 1997.

Lost in Translation. Dir. Sofia Coppola. Perf. Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson. Focus

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Lost, Lost, Lost. Dir. John Mekas. Perf. Peter Beard, Ed Emshwiller. n.g.1976.

266 Mammoth. Dir. Lukas Moodysson. Perf. Gael Garcia Bernal, Michelle Williams, Marife

Necesito. Memfis Film, etc., 2009.

Measures of Distance. Dir. Mona Hatoum. Western Front.1988.

Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano.

Newmarket Capital Group,etc.,2000. Film.

My Own Private Idaho. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Perf. River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves. New Line

Cinema,1991.

Mystery Train. Dir. Jim Jarmusch. Perf. Masatoshi Nagase, Yuki Kudo. JVC Entertainment

Networks, Mystery Train,1989.

My Sweet Home. Dir. Filippos Tsitos. Perf. Harvey Friedman, Nadja Uhl. DFFB, ERT, ZDF

etc.,2001.

News from Home. Dir. Chantal Akerman. Perf. Chantal Akerman.INA, ZDF, etc., 1977.

New York I Love You. Dir. Fatih Akin etc. Perf. Shia LaBeouf, Natalie Portman. Vivendi

Entertainment etc.,2008.

Night on Earth. Dir. Jim Jarmush. Perf. Winona Ryder, Gena Rowlands. JVC Entertainment

Networks, etc., 1991.

Night Shapes (Nachtgestalten ). Dir. Andreas Dresen. Perf. Myriam Abbas, Dominique

Horwitz, Oliver Breite. Arte, MDR, ORB, SFB, 1999.

Nostalgia (Nostalghia ).Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky.Perf. Oleg Yankofskiy, Erland Josephson. Rai

2, Sovinfilm, etc.,1983.

Oldboy. Dir. Chan-wook Park. Perf. Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yu. Egg Films, Show East. 2003.

Paris je t’aime. Dir. Olivier Assayas etc. Perf. Juliette Binoche etc. Victoires International,

Canal + etc., 2006.

Paris, Texas. Dir. Wim Wenders. Perf. Harry Dean Stanton, Nasstasja Kinski. Road Movies

Filmproduktion, etc.,1984.

267 Pretty Woman. Dir. Garry Marshall, Perf. Richard Gere, Julia Roberts. Touchstone

Pictures,1990.

Promised Land. Dir. Amos Gitai. Perf. Rosamund Pike, Diana Bespechni, Hanna Schygulla.

Agav Hafakot, MP Productions, 2004.

Red Desert (Il deserto rosso). Dir.Michelangelo Antonioni. Perf. Monica Vitti, Richard

Harris, Carlo Chionetti. Film Duemila, etc.,1964.

Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt). Dir. Tom Tykwer. Perf. Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu,

Herbert Knaup. Arte, X-Filme Creative Pool, WDR, 1998.

Sacrifice (Offret ).Dir.Andrei Tarkovsky. Perf. Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood.SFI, etc.,

1986.

Salaam Bombay! Dir. Mira Nair. Perf. Shafiq Syed, Hansa Vithal, Chanda Sharma. Cadrage,

NFDC, etc.,1988.

Sex Traffic. Dir. David Yates. Perf. Len Cariou. CBC, Big Motion Pictures, 2004.

Schindler’s List. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley.

Universal Pictures, 1993.

Shun Li and the Poet (Io sono Li). Dir. Andrea Segre. Perf. Tao Zhao, Rade Serbedzija,

Jolefilm, etc., 2011.

Sin Nombre. Dir. Cary Fukunaga. Perf. Paulina Gaitan, Marco Antonio Aguirre, Leonardo

Alonso. Canana, Creando Films, Primary Productions, 2009.

Sleep Dealer. Dir. Alex Rivera. Perf. Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas, Luis Fernando Pena.

Likely Story, This Is That Productions, 2008.

Smoke Signals. Dir. Chris Eyre. Perf. Adam Beach, Evan Adams. Shadow Catcher

Entertainment,1998.

Stand and Deliver. Dir. Ramon Menendez. Perf. Edward James Olmos, Estelle Harris.

American Playhouse, Warner Bros., Olmos Productions, 1987.

268 Stranger than Paradise. Dir. Jim Jarmusch. Perf. John Lurie, Eszter Balint. Cinesthesia

Productions, ZDF,1984.

Syriana. Dir. Stephen Gaghan. Perf. George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet. Warner

Bros. etc., 2005.

The Bus (Otobus ). Dir. Tunc Okan. Perf. Tunc Okan, Tuncel Kurtiz, Bjorn Gedda. Helios

Films, PAN Film, Promete Film,1977.

The Grapes of Wrath. Dir. John Ford. Perf. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell. Twentieth Century

Fox, 1940.

The Hatred (La Haine). Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz. Perf. Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde, Said

Taghmaoui.Canal +etc., 1995.

Thelma and Louise. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel.

Pathe, MGM, etc., 1991.

The Immigrant. Dir. Charles Chaplin. Perf. Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance. Lone Star

Corporation, 1917.

The Journey (El Viaje ). Dir. Fernando E. Solanas. Perf. Walter Quiroz, Soledad Alfaro,

Cinesur, IMCINE, etc., 1992.

The Missing Star (La Stella Che non C’e ). Dir. Gianni Amelio. Perf. Sergio Castellitto, Ling

Tai. Rai Cinema, Cattleya etc., 2006.

The North (El Norte).Dir. Gregory Nava. Perf. Zaide Silvia Gutierrez, David Villalpando.

American Playhouse, etc.,1983.

The Road (Yol). Dir. Yilmaz Guney. Perf. Tarik Akan, Serif Sezer. Guney Film, Cactus Film,

FR2, SRG,1982.

The Road to Guantanamo. Dir. Michael Winterbottom. Perf. Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun. Film

4, Revolution Films, Screen West Midlands, 2006.

The Sixth Sense. Dir. M. Night Shyamalan. Perf. Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni

Collette. Hollywood Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment, etc., 1999.

269 The South (Sur). Dir. Fernando E. Solanas. Susu Pecoraro, Miguel Angel Sola. Canal +,

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The Terminal. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta

Jones.DreamWorks.2004.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Dir. Tommy Lee Jones. Perf. Tommy Lee Jones,

Barry Pepper, Dwight Yoakam. EuropaCorp, The Javelina Film Company, 2005.

The World (Shijie ). Dir. Zhangke Jia. Perf. Tao Zhao, Taishen Cheng. Office Kitano etc.,

2004.

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her. Dir. Rodrigo Garcia. Perf. Glenn Close,

Cameron Diaz, Calista Flockhart. Franchise Pictures, 2000.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing. Dir. Jill Sprecher. Perf. Alan Arkin, John Turturro,

Matthew McConaughey. Stonelock Pictures, Single Cell Pictures, etc., 2001.

Time of the Gypsies (Dom Za Vesanje). Dir. Emir Kusturica. Perf. Davor Dujmovic, Bora

Todorovic, Ljubica Adzovic. Forum Sarajevo, etc., 1988.

To Sleep with Anger. Dir. Charles Burnett. Perf. Danny Glover, Paul Butler. SVS Films,1990.

Trade. Dir. Marco Kreuzpaintner. Perf. Kevin Kline, Kathleen Gati. Lionsgate, etc., 2007.

Trade of Innocents. Dir. Christopher Bessette.Perf. Dermot Mulroney, Mira Sorvino, Dean

River Productions, Thai Occidental Productions, 2012.

Traffic. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Perf. Michael Douglas, Benicio del Toro, Catherine Zeta-

Jones. The Bedford Falls Company, Compulsion Inc., 2000.

Two-Lane Blacktop. Dir. Monte Hellman. Perf. James Taylor, Universal Pictures, Michael

Laughlin Enterprises,1971.

Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna). Dir. Patricia Riggen. Perf. Eugenio Derbez, Kate

del Castillo, Adrian Alonso. Creando Films, Fidecine, etc., 2007.

Wedding in Galilee. Dir. Michel Khleifi. Perf. Mohamad Ali El Akili, Bushra Karaman.

Marisa Films, ZDF, CNC, LPA.1987.

270 Weekend. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne. Comacico etc.,1967.

Weekend at the Waldorf. Dir. Robert Z. Leonard. Perf. Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner.MGM,

1945.

Who’s Singing Over There? (Ko to tamo peva). Dir. Slobodan Sijan. Perf. Pavle Vuisic,

Dragan Nikolic. Centar Film, 1980.

Wild at Heart. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe. Propaganda

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Biographical Note

Kynthia Arvanitidi has completed her undergraduate studies in Philosophy and Education at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (second best student in the 1st and 3rd year) by having also spent a semester as an Erasmus exchange student at the Ruhr University of

Bochum and by having also participated in the Summer Academy at the Eberhard-Karls

University in Tuebingen as a DAAD scholarship recipient. She has fulfilled a MA in Film

Studies at the University of Essex as a Michelis Foundation scholarship recipient. She has worked as a private tutor in Greek and English and has also worked as a teacher assistant in

English for a year at the secondary education in Austria. Her motivation to pursue further studies was initiated by her participation as a scholarship recipient in the Summer School

“Study Abroad in Greece” in Nafplion organized by Harvard University. Her doctoral thesis pursued in the Department of American Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki concerns the depiction of mobility and migration in contemporary films of the 21st century.

During her PhD studies she has taught the courses “Computer Literacy and Research Skills” and “Introduction to the Research Paper” at the Department of English Language and

Literature to undergraduate students. She also conducted research at the Humboldt University of Berlin for six months as an I.K.Y. (State Scholarships Foundation) scholarship recipient participating in the international research co-operation on Cosmopolitan Film Cultures and the weekly lecture series on Border Studies. Additionally, she has participated in the Summer

Program by the Ruhr University of Bochum entitled “Europe-dialogue”. She has taken part in several conferences and European projects. Her research interests include films, mobility and migration theories in cinema, globalization, road movies, ethnic and identity studies.