eJournals Colloquia Germanica 51/1

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/31
2020
511

Reflexive Unmapping: The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017)

31
2020
Nora Gortcheva
This article situates Valeska Grisebach’s film Western (2017) within historical and current imaginaries of Eastern Europe in the German media. It argues that contrary to still persistent modes of rendering the region as a peripheral or in-between space marked by barbarity, criminality, and backwardness, Grisebach’s project offers a different take through reflexive unmapping. Thematically, formally, and stylistically, the film aims to unmake borders and hierarchies between a presumed civilized West and a “Wild East” and establish an empathic landscape of everyday encounters. Through ambiguity and reflexivity, Western explores the discontiguous nature of quotidian experience in a humanist attempt at humility, without attempting to resolve tensions or prescribing a dominant perspective.
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Reflexive Unmapping: The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) Nora Gortcheva Mount Holyoke College Abstract: This article situates Valeska Grisebach’s film Western (2017) within historical and current imaginaries of Eastern Europe in the German media� It argues that contrary to still persistent modes of rendering the region as a peripheral or in-between space marked by barbarity, criminality, and backwardness, Grisebach’s project offers a different take through reflexive unmapping . Thematically, formally, and stylistically, the film aims to unmake borders and hierarchies between a presumed civilized West and a “Wild East” and establish an empathic landscape of everyday encounters. Through ambiguity and reflexivity, Western explores the discontiguous nature of quotidian experience in a humanist attempt at humility, without attempting to resolve tensions or prescribing a dominant perspective� Keywords: Eastern Europe, Berlin School, Valeska Grisebach, Western Valeska Grisebach’s film Western (2017) follows German workers setting up camp in rural Bulgaria with the intention of building a hydroelectric power plant on EU funds. Due to water shortage and lack of material, construction is suspended and the film turns to a deliberate reflection of the everyday, as Germans and Bulgarians clash, forge friendships, or simply co-exist in parallel. Similar to Toni Erdmann (2016), another celebrated work by a fellow Berlin School director and collaborator, Maren Ade, 1 Western primarily takes place in Eastern Europe and captures the conflicts and attempts at nearing of its protagonists. In interviews, the film’s director, Valeska Grisebach, elaborates on the choice of location: ” “I started off by travelling between Bulgaria and Romania because the story drew me to Eastern Europe and also because of all the legends that sprung up there following the end of communism: the idea of the ‘Wild East’ or the feeling that that was some sort of vacuum or empty page at the time, even 76 Nora Gortcheva if things are already very different there now” (Lattimer n. pag.). The filmmaker specifically draws a parallel between her project - inspired by the Western as a genre - and a German fascination with the notion of a frontier� 2 Like Karl May, whose adventure novels took place in locations he never visited, 3 Grisebach envisioned the film in unfamiliar Eastern Europe - in “some kind of border area, which creates this sort of fantasy or idea of ‘wilderness’ - or a ‘fake wilderness’” (Cumming n� pag�)� Once in Bulgaria, however, she embarks on a journey beyond the legacy of post-communism or an imagined elsewhere but immersed instead in first-hand encounters. Exploring the South in particular, the director speculates with fascination about “[the] cultural mixing [that] has taken place there, between Bulgarians and Greeks, Turks, and Serbs” and is magically drawn to the region “where the warm wind blows up from Greece” and “which the Bulgarians themselves see as very mythical” (Lattimer n. pag.). The selection of the village of Petrelik and its surroundings at the Bulgarian-Greek border concludes her “wandering around and hoping to experience something” (Cumming n. pag.), because, as Grisebach notes, “I just came to the place and everything clicked” (Lattimer n. pag.). Grisebach proposes a vision of filmmaking as a physical and intellectual challenge, as the director faces “this combination or contrasts between an idea, fiction and then some kind of reality” (Cumming n. pag.). In the process, she emerges as a heroic figure, not unlike the explorer at a frontier, who confronts a mix of preconceptions and realities and finally recognizes a new land and its people and settles on an enriching quest. Such an attitude - as somewhat contentiously teased out from interviews - with its romanticizing of nature and wilderness, mystic adventure amidst noble savages, and self-discovery - might sound alarmingly orientalist� I would argue, however, that this reading - or rather misreading - of Grisebach’s motivation points to a core, if implicit, purpose of Western to challenge persistent modes of representing Eastern Europe in German culture� Thus, this article first considers the meaning of the “Wild East” from a historical perspective and briefly engages with current discussions of the concept. Instead of investing in clichés such as Eastern European poverty, misconduct, and backwardness, Western proposes a different take on the region through - what I describe as - reflexive unmapping . The film reverses narratives about Eastern Europeans travelling to Germany in need for work, social services, or with criminal intent, telling instead a story about Germans going East on a journey often marked by brutal machismo, ethnic conceit, and plain neoliberal conquest. More significantly, Western compellingly captures cinematic possibilities to reflect upon cross-cultural encounters, offering a nuanced take on the borderlands of Europe� In such unmapping , Germans and Bulgarians meet each other Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 77 differently. Space is not submitted to clear frontier hierarchies, and the Balkans, where the action takes place, are not merely a symbolic crossroad or a bridge between the good West and uncivilized East� Western invests instead in affective geographies which are often devoid of clear linguistic comprehension since characters rarely share a common language, but are nevertheless immersed in an embodied and shared experience. Through gaps, discontinuities, and deliberation - while the camera lingers, the narrative proceeds through ellipsis, and characters reflect rather than deliver a clear message or explain their psychological motivation - the film shapes an empathic landscape of encounter. Reflexive unmapping does not produce a navigable site plan or a decisive rendering of institutional frameworks, national merits, or personal shortcomings� Like other works associated with the Berlin School, Grisebach’s cinema is one invested in a realist “aesthetic of discovery” marked by “disentangled cinematic time” (Cook et al. 19, 20). Moreover, it is not only the characters who are compelled to encounter the unfamiliar but also the spectator, as “the distance between the audience and the image [is eliminated], drawing the viewer physically into the film world through affective responses rather than openly deconstructing the performative, representational aspect of a filmic text” (16). In both form and style, Western captures the uncertainty of everydayness, arresting quotidian experience between alienation and belonging in a humanist attempt at humility. Significantly, reflexive unmapping remains ambiguous in its utopian potential - it contains dispersed moments of nearing without resolving underlying tensions� In interviews, Grisebach evokes the “Wild East” after the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Eastern Block as an early reference for her project� A ZDF television documentary series has captured the conflictual nature of transition under the title Der wilde Osten - Aufbruch und Anarchie in der Wendezeit [Part I: The Wild East - Awakening and Anarchy during Re-unification , 2015] and Der wilde Osten - Konsumrausch und Abzocke in der Wendezeit [Part II: Consumption Frenzy and Rip-off , 2015]. Here, the “Wild East” corresponds to a particular imaginary of the Wendezeit as a lawless but exciting time, marked by unbound enthusiasm for consumption, short-lived lucrative opportunities, anarchic freedom, and danger� In a similar vein, popular historical accounts of the period associate the “Wild East” with a “society in upheaval,” detailing about dramatic changes in all spheres of life, most strikingly in economic and ideological terms with explosive and often opaque market developments and new freedoms in public and private life (Neubert 393—400). Yet, already in 1989/ 90 “dissonances” between East and West bring attention to glaring differences in mentality with lasting effects on society (400—03). 78 Nora Gortcheva In its application to the Wendezeit , the term “Wild East” implies an experiential watershed between two opposing civilizational realms� Given similar Cold War experiences, the conflation of Eastern Europe and East Germany is not surprising. Yet this composite “Wild East” also curiously emulates motifs from the 1800s and 1900s when Eastern Europe - a monolithic but indistinct whole - was seen “both as a dirty ‘Wild East’ marked by chaos and disorganization, and yet also as a land of tremendous future possibilities and potential for Germans” (Liulevicius 2). As Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius has noted, “what was at stake in [the] discourse about the East was actually a definition of German identity” which also explains why at various moments in history the broad term “the East” included “not only Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, the Czech lands, the Balkans, [but] even the eastern provinces of Germany itself” (4, 2). Its territorial diffusiveness captures well the leaps of imagination that made “the East” a labor of abstraction, or, in other words, “not a location, but a state of being: an alleged condition of disorganization or underdevelopment” which constantly seemed to threaten and at times consume Germany as an imagined project itself (3)� While Grisebach summons the ghost of the “Wild East” from the 1990s as a reference for Western , it is the imaginaries of the present that find greatest resonance in the film and add to its critical impact. In recent media coverage, Eastern Europe continues to be associated with backwardness and brutality, evoking foundational 1800s narratives about “an intrinsic eastern disorder, disease, dirt, a deep incapacity for self-rule, […] expressed in the allied phenomenon of despotism and slavery; sympathetic encounters; and the assertion of a particular German national calling or mission” (Liulevicius 44). The persistence of such stereotypes confirms what Pamela Ballinger has called “the recursive nature of easternisms and peripheries” as a limiting but recurring mode of establishing hierarchies between the East and West (Ballinger 3)� Indeed, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and NATO’s and the EU’s expansion eastwards one would imagine that Eastern Europe as a term, and the features associated with it, might have proven superfluous. Yet grand - and sometimes less significant - events on the European scene have periodically revived anxieties about the region. For example, newly minted EU-member states Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007 in what some German politicians ironically described as “Beitritt auf Krücken” [“entry on crutches”] (Fritz-Vannahme n� pag� ) , have been regularly featured in the media as the suspect origins of poverty, crime, and corruption� 4 The free movement of workers from the same countries, which came into effect in 2014, coincided with another round of heated debates about much dreaded “Armutsmigration” [“migration out of poverty”] or “Einwanderung in die Sozialsysteme” [“immigration into Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 79 the [German] welfare system”]. 5 As critics have noted, such discussions exploit economic fears among the broad public - not unlike those around the infamous figure of the Polish plumber in France and Great Britain 6 - and also represent insidious strategies of racializing minorities in general and promoting especially anti-Roma prejudice when it comes to coverage about Bulgaria and Romania� 7 During the “refugee crisis” of 2015, with rising chaos on the so-called “Balkan route” - which at the time ran from Greece through Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary or Croatia with the goal of reaching Western EU-member states - another Eastern European specter reminded of its persistence (Gille 285)� Instances of institutional or individual violence against refugees evoked a long history of barbarity - a familiar presence in discussions about the region� 8 In its aftermath, the overall hostility towards refugees and migrants in Eastern Europe - often accompanied by exclusionist policies such as closing borders or rejecting a refugee quota altogether - “[have] raised renewed doubts about eastern Europe’s Europeanness” and underscored its failings (286). Without condoning Eastern European resentments, one might also note the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and right-wing agitation in Western EU-member states (and elsewhere in the world), and observe that xenophobia and aggression are a broader European, and indeed global, ailment� Repeatedly, the Balkans - and Eastern Europe as an umbrella term - have been defined by their “transitionary status” between the West and the Orient, between Europe and Asia, “evok[ing] the image of a bridge or crossroads” (Todorova 15). The region presumably serves not only as a geographic but also discursive battlefield between (Western) civilization and (Eastern) barbarity in a perpetual state of “Europe’s internal other” (Dzenovska 300). 9 As Nicholas De Genova notes, the “Balkan route” has drawn attention anew to the region as “the most enduring Orientalized frontier” (De Genova 19). Not surprisingly, De Genova concludes that, “[t]he spatialized partitioning of Europe from its putative outside notably begins within Europe itself, where the borders of Europe and boundaries of European-ness have been reinstituted in the uneasy borderlands that extend eastward” (De Genova 18). The “Wild East” of the present thus continues to signify a transient but indeterminate space caught in a permanent condition of overcoming but not yet having overcome its otherness and suspended between opposing civilizational realms. Like the American “Wild West,” a myth that served different agendas depending on who envisioned it, the “Wild East” is a product of the imagination. But if the American frontier - especially as it was conceived of in the German context - is marked by nomadic romanticism, civilizational purpose, and pre-modern harmony with the natural world (Nolan 10—13), the “Wild East” from the 1800s to the present is rarely a placeholder for nostalgia or utopia and 80 Nora Gortcheva most frequently a distorted mirror of opposites. For example, the “Wild East” of the 1990s contained the ruins of what used to be the world behind the Iron Curtain; the “Wild East” of the present signifies a peripheral space of indeterminate status, somewhat European but mostly extraterritorial and extraneous. Its geographic reach is often ambiguous and might span the former German East, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans - all terms of outdated currency with a persistent, if uncertain, afterlife. The “Wild East” might fulfill conflicting purposes over time but its recurrence draws upon similar modes of negation� Yuliya Komska has critically named such enduring process of mapping - with its imposed hierarchies - “a cartographic mandate” and pointed out that the notions of betweenness and contiguity continue to limit both narratives about Eastern Europe and scholarly frameworks approaching the region (Kacandes and Komska 1—2). To reimagine a “Wild East” of a different kind then would mean to question not only such stereotypes but also the frameworks within which rethinking takes place - or to echo Komska’s proposal, one would need to unmap and search for discontiguities� Komska calls for reconceptualizing Eastern Europe “as an entity that is neither merely a ‘connecting bridge’ between its neighbors nor an ‘intermediate region’” (6). She exposes the limitations to exclusively applying a borderland paradigm to Eastern Europe which unjustly essentializes the region’s distinction as a periphery and overlooks the often violent and complex histories of shifting borders and traumatic neighborly encounters (3—4). In contrast to Komska’s resolute negation of the borderland, this article approaches unmapping - a process which is invariably and also about physical or imaginary territory - from the vantage point of a filmic encounter at borderlands� As I will make clear, Valeska Grisebach’s Western is by far not bound to “territorially limited engagements,” shaping instead a complex experiential geography of discontiguous encounters - German-Bulgarian, male-female, EU endowed-locally organized (Kacandes and Komska 4)� Echoing geographer Henk van Houtum’s dictum that “[t]he border makes and is made. Hence, a border is a verb,” I consider the unmaking of borders in film - thematically, formally, and stylistically - and read Western as an attempt to imagine a different sort of encounter, on a different sort of a map, shaped by a different kind of filmmaking approach (van Houtum 51)� Western (2017) includes some iconic elements: a symbolic frontier; a horse; a lone hero-construction worker, Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann); a compassionate local-provincial businessman, Adrian (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov); a villain of sorts - the foreman of the German crew, Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek); a shared love interest, Vyara (Vyara Borisova); and a final showdown. Yet, the film can Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 81 hardly be classified as a Western. Instead of being suggestive of a neo-Western of an eastern kind, the title of the film itself capitalizes on the ironies of misplacement. Grisebach calls the project “a dance with the [western]” and voices fascination with “a genre which tells so much about the construction of society” (Cumming n. pag.). 10 In particular, the filmmaker is concerned with the subject of “latent xenophobia” as part of German identity which, according to her, “manifests in a diffuse sense of power, of superiority” (“Ein Gespräch mit Valeska Grisebach” n. pag.). The choice of location on the Greek-Bulgarian border - and not in Germany itself - thus shifts the focus towards a broader EU and global neoliberal critique. The displacement stages a frontier of a distinctive kind - as Germans and Bulgarians confront each other with “two different perspectives in Europe […] and the thereby internalized notions about status (“Ein Gespräch mit Valeska Grisebach” n. pag.). The theme of alienation is inverted - it is the Germans who are foreign in this case, on an unfamiliar ground that challenges them to expose or overcome misconceptions. Invariably, such strategy allows for a dramatic escalation, as characters navigate between colonial fantasies about conquering the landscape, in Vincent’s case, and romantic self-reinvention, in Meinhard’s� Western evokes but does not delve into a fixed vision of the “Wild East,” mediating instead between mostly abstract modalities - in the most direct form, speculating on the region’s presumed backwardness, but most frequently capturing an existential sense of incomprehensibility. State borders are hardly present. The only exceptions are Grisebach’s explanations about the choice of location in interviews or allusions to World War II and to the current refugee situation in the film itself. References to the past underscore the status of the area as a borderland frequented by Germans. When the main character, Meinhard, first visits the nearby Bulgarian village, the locals excitedly tell stories of cultured and well-behaved German soldiers in World War II, who mounted lanterns on unmanned donkeys in the dark, thus tricking - and targeting - the Greek patrol on the other side of the border� 11 The recent realities at the border are evoked when Meinhard gets a ride with some Bulgarians - after being abandoned by his German colleagues - and one of the men in the car speculates about the dangers of walking around in the dark: “[T]his is a border zone. Are you not afraid? There are refugees! ” Yet, both past and present crises remain largely out of sight - mentioned but not delved into, and mostly lost in translation� Critical to the film are different kinds of borders and, more significantly, their unmaking. The German workers and Bulgarian locals constantly renegotiate spatial boundaries, challenging physical or mental limits, nearing or confronting each other. The nature of such encounters is rarely elaborated in clear national terms, although familiar stereotypes about “the Wild East” are not absent. 82 Nora Gortcheva According to Vincent, the foreman of the crew, the German workers are there to bring infrastructure - and thus civilization - to the region� As the workers hoist a German flag on the viewing platform at camp, they respond to a colleague’s concerned question, “Have you gone crazy! Did you think about the locals? ” with irony, “Yes, we are crazy, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, would we? ” and “[…] we have thought only about the locals, that’s why we are building them a hydroelectric power plant.” In another scene, Vincent drives with a few from the crew to return the provocation of village youth, who have earlier trespassed the camp, and the Germans mockingly describe the trip as “a journey through time, back to the past.” Such references exaggerate character types - especially the villain of sorts, Vincent, who most starkly incorporates a mixture of brutal masculinity, sense of ethnic superiority, and outright disrespect for the locals� He serves as the engine of conflict, struggling to symbolically conquer both the surrounding landscape and its people but ultimately failing� In one of the first open conflict scenes, the German crew rests on the riverbank, playing not always innocent pranks on each other when three Bulgarian women arrive on the other side of the river� In point-of-view pans, the camera captures the perspective of the men, visually adding tension to the mixed soundtrack of catcalls, cheers, and water bubbling� Catching the hat of one of the women - Vyara - after it is blown away in the water, Vincent challenges its owner to enter the stream and confront him. In a misplaced flirt that turns to violence, he presses the hat on Vyara’s head and submerges her in the water� Both her companions and the workers tensely stand up and watch on opposing riverbanks. The confrontation is mapped out in clearly split compositions with shots of midstream action as Vincent and Vyara accost each other, same level reaction shots of the women on one side, and low-angle shots of the men on the other. Finally, Vyara retrieves the hat, hurriedly escaping the stream and fleeing with her companions while the camera tracks in a long shot� One of the workers chuckles disapprovingly, “That was a bit harsh, wasn’t it? ” The scene aptly sets up tensions which the rest of the film will tackle, if not always resolve. The deliberate framing of the two riverbanks visually emphasizes the physical division between two sides, here clearly defined through a linguistic barrier, Bulgarian-German, but also through a gender division. The immediate confrontation takes place in the middle, as the stream establishes an unstable meeting point, a transient space of bodily proximity and danger. Point of view shots and camera perspective locate the gaze on the German side and underscore another conflict at stake - that between Vincent and Meinhard. The camera constantly reframes Meinhard in reaction shots, while he observes the mid-action and finally also gets up. The stylistic devices call attention to the unfolding conflict between the two men and main antagonists. Vincent (the fore- Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 83 man anti-hero) and Meinhard (the inscrutable hero) represent two competing types of masculinity: on the one hand, Vincent - assertive, arrogant, ready to resort to violence, and Meinhard - self-contained, reflective, eager to encounter the locals, and strike a friendship with them� The confrontation is also sexual. Vyara - the woman who loses her hat in the river and who is also the only one around to speak German - serves as a romantic interest for both men. Through sexuality, the two male characters appear more ambiguous. Vincent exposes his vulnerability when he - surprisingly and unsuccessfully - asks Vyara out on a date� In contrast, Meinhard asserts his masculinity by casually hooking up with her on the hills overlooking the village, marveling the view and reflecting on the meaning of homesickness. In earlier scenes, he similarly courts a different, older woman from the village, Veneta. His romantic escapades are not exactly predatory but enough to attract the attention of local men who punch him in the closing scene, challenging his initial self-identification - likely a fabrication - as an experienced killer-legionnaire. Significantly, the initial conflict scene at the river marks a shift in topographies� At the beginning, the spaces that Meinhard occupies are dominated by Vincent, defined by attempts at enclosure or expansion, and controlled by clear hierarchies and linguistic occupancy (i.e., German) - around the fire, at the table, at the viewing platform, or at the construction site. There is no sense of recognizing the landscape or of clear connections between spaces� Tension builds up around not knowing - as the workers worry about being observed in the dark - or around encountering locals but not being able to understand them� Meinhard fits in uneasily and acts as an observer rather than a member of the crew. After the scene at the river, he symbolically escapes, riding a horse that he finds near the camp. He enters the village and meets the locals on their terms, befriending a Bulgarian, Adrian, who serves as his substitute “brother.” Although communication rarely rests on linguistic clarity and is frequently marked by misunderstandings, Meinhard most effectively navigates between worlds. He is ushered into public and private spaces - the village square, the local bar, and a home - and gets involved in transactions that he rarely understands but tackles in solidarity with Adrian nevertheless, serving as his “bodyguard.” The unmapping in Western is affective and relational. The most striking moments in the film are those of proximity. Spaces and exchanges might remain unaccounted for and not fully comprehended but characters - and especially Meinhard and Adrian - connect in embodied acts of nearing that produce a common ground� In such encounters, Meinhard leaves an imprint and bears collective knowledge - literally, as he helps the locals build a water fountain, and symbolically, as he partakes in moments of reflection, drawing closer to 84 Nora Gortcheva the landscape or to a shared experience thereof. A good example is a scene in which Adrian shows Meinhard the location of the lever that controls water distribution in the region - information that proves critical and that the foreman Vincent exploits later in the film. Adrian and Meinhard head to an elevation nearby and observe the area from above (00: 47: 00-00: 48: 19)� In a point-of-view pan, the camera scans the scenic view and pauses on a rock formation that resembles a human profile. The next, closer shot of the two men captures Adrian facing Meinhard and announcing “surprise,” implying that the view is special, and Meinhard gesturing towards his chest in gratitude. Adrian goes on to explain in Bulgarian about the warlike energy of the face-shaped rock, although it remains unclear if his companion understands this additional information� Throughout, Meinhard sits elevated on a rock above Adrian but the composition does not overtly indicate a hierarchy� It is rather a visual reminder of Meinhard’s ritualistic empowerment since his gaze upon an anthropomorphized landscape - indeed, a landscape with a human face - is at once endowed with private knowledge and shared. This is both a masculine, conquering gaze - as Adrian’s tale suggests the elevation grants command over the landscape - and also an empathic gaze turned towards the moment of encounter when Adrian and Meinhard enjoy the view together� The scene is mirrored in Meinhard’s rendezvous and consumption scene with Vyara in which the two similarly sit on an elevation in the dark and marvel the view of the village in the distance. This time, Vyara sits slightly elevated on the slope. The point-of-view shot is static, there is no camera movement, and the spare soundtrack features crickets and brief dialogue lines - as she expresses her love for the view. The image is associated primarily with Vyara - she is the anchor of appreciation, while Meinhard appears bemused to identify homesickness as a relatable sentiment. Their flirt and coupling too are captured elliptically in short takes that are psychologically distancing� In contrast, the earlier scene with Adrian - while also brief - is curiously more intimate. The expansive pan of the landscape, Meinhard’s affective gesture, and steady reflection associated with a male gaze endow the latter with a sense of immediacy. The world of Western thus remains decisively masculine at its core, not exactly homoerotic but certainly fraternal� Such unmapping complies with male codes of sharing and desire, reminding us of core features of the classical Western too� 12 Western ’s unmapping is marked by insistent mirroring and doubling of characters - the two women/ potential romantic interests, Vyara and Veneta; the two German antagonists, Meinhard and Vincent; or the brotherly pair, Meinhard and Adrian -, but more importantly, of film form and style elements. The closing scene is a good example. It mirrors the earlier conflict scene at the river - only this time, both Vincent and Meinhard are on the same riverbank with the Bul- Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 85 garians and are guests at a village celebration. The stream again serves as a middle ground where a clash plays out - here, between Vincent and local men who are in possession of the German flag, presumably the one that disappeared from the camp. The foreman similarly reaches to and pushes one of the Bulgarians under water, only now the fight is rendered as a half-serious game amongst men. Vincent finally emerges triumphant from the water, having retrieved the flag, yet it remains unclear what the outcome of the emblematic showdown is and who the warring sides are� Although Vincent overcomes the Bulgarians, the looks he exchanges with Meinhard - in a shot/ reverse shot mode that is typical for a duel - point to a different center of conflict here. Vincent observes Meinhard trade pleasantries with Vyara at the river - a suggestive conquest for Meinhard - and later, without interfering, Vincent watches his adversary being punched by the Bulgarians in the parking lot - a displaced revenge of sorts� The final scene does not give a definite solution to the project of unmapping � Adrian symbolically saves Meinhard: an object of violence is traded back as Adrian returns the knife that Meinhard had previously given as a present to his nephew, insisting that the latter does not need it. At the same time, Adrian acknowledges the attack against Meinhard, affirming in Bulgarian, “It is like this in the villages, everything can happen” but also inquiring “What are you looking for here? ” The camera closely frames Meinhard and Adrian stare at each other in silence, as Adrian stands up, pats him on the shoulder, and walks off screen. The following panning shot with a static camera captures Meinhard head out in the darkness - a composition that reminds of Vincent’s final exit from the scene earlier. The next, closer pan, however, pictures Meinhard stop and return in direction of the village feast. The camera - now mobile - tracks behind his back in a long take while he reaches the dance floor. The closing shots are of him dancing alone amidst the crowd, looking at people around him who appear in soft focus. One might recognize some of the faces - Adrian, Veneta, and unnamed other characters from the village - but there is no indication of any active exchange between them and Meinhard. Is Meinhard the lone explorer who falls victim to his own benevolent but nevertheless fraught attempts to become part of a world he barely understands? Does Vincent prevail after all - retrieving the German flag and retreating to a space of power, associated with EU funds and heavy-duty machinery? Do Adrian and the rest of the Bulgarians merely serve as noble savages, crude but mostly hospitable, imbued with knowledge about nature but trapped in a primordial paradise? Western ’s unmapping relies on affective gestures and reflexive after-work but does not settle on new coordinates. Its message is one of reflection and temporary suspension, as the dichotomies between West and 86 Nora Gortcheva East are provincialized in the daily rituals of time flowing, of people coming, of people encountering each other, and of people going� Writing about Grisebach’s previous film Sehnsucht [ Longing , 2006], Catherine Wheatley has characterized the director’s process as “a ‘feminine’ or ‘benign’ form of reflexivity which allows the spectator an extended period of time to reflect upon the image and thus distances them from the action on screen” (Wheatley 145). Marco Abel has similarly focused on “radical affective shifts” between the documentary-like and melodramatic moments in Grisebach’s work (Abel 212), which “result […] in an intensification of the act of observing itself” (213). Abel also notes that Grisebach’s cinema “refuses the implicit or explicit truth claims inherent to the aesthetic of documentary or representational realism to delimit the realm of the sensible, the perceptible, as one defined by the pleasures of recognition” (214). The goal of such an approach, he insists, is for the viewer “to see again, to enact our regard for reality” (215). Western ’s reflexive unmapping most saliently contains that promise of seeing and regarding again. Not only a matter of thematic engagements or implicit counteractions to stereotypes about Eastern Europe, unmapping is significantly about a mode of filmmaking that allows for ambiguity and reflexive spectatorship� Here, it manifests in a form of cinema practice that contemplates without committing - or even attempting - a definitive rendering of the “Wild East” and of the realities that it captures. To return to Komska’s search for discontiguities - through forms of discontinuities in space and disconnectedness, Western serves as a prime example of such discontiguous practice. It follows the logic of reflection, contains the fragments of affective encounters and empathic landscapes, as misunderstandings and violence loom at the edge of the frame but never fully explode, and the film draws its impact from the texture of the everyday� Notes 1 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of sources in German are the author’s� Ade is listed as a producer for Western , and Grisebach as a script consultant for Toni Erdmann � 2 Kristin Kopp draws a connection between German colonial ambitions in the nineteenth century, frontier fantasies about the American “Wild West,” and the construction of a (Polish) “Wild East” as an attempt to agitate interest in eastward expansion. Kopp writes, “[i]f the American West was attractive to potential emigrants because they imagined it as a space where they could exercise free will and autonomous agency, or even because they entertained fantasies of proving their mettle against hostile ‘Indian’ forces, then map- Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 87 ping these potentialities onto eastern space enhanced its attractiveness” (Kopp 21). Kopp traces preunification discussions in the 1800s which specifically liken Poles to a non-European Naturvolk (primitive people), that is, similar to “Indians” and “noble savages” (22). 3 The connection between Eastern Europe and May’s fictitious American “Wild West” is quite literal when it comes to film adaptations of his work. For example, a popular 1960s West German franchise by the company Rialto, based on May’s stories about an imagined Apache hero Winnetou and his German friend Old Shatterhand, was shot on location in Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia (Bergfelder 181—204). Between 1965 and 1983, the East German DEFA shot Indianerfilme , some on location in Eastern Europe (Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania), which were meant as an ideological response to May’s popular adaptations in the West (Gemünden 243—45). 4 For example, Katharina Lampe has studied coverage about Bulgaria and Romania between January and March 2006 - leading to the anticipated official monitoring report by the European Commission in May 2006 - in two representative German newspapers, the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the left-leaning Die Tageszeitung (taz)� Analyzing recurring motifs, Lampe identifies “the construction of a threat scenario through Romanian and Bulgarian entry into the EU” and recognizes the following repeating motifs: threats to “the legal system (through corruption and criminality), safety (food safety, health because of open borders), and the future of EU institutions” (Lampe 54). Lampe also observes more negative and more frequent coverage of Romania (50), clustering of the two countries in one whole, and an overall focus on sensationalist accounts and clear-cut dichotomies between Western EU-states and Romania and Bulgaria (55). 5 Michael Lausberg argues that “the term ‘migration out of poverty’ and the presumably related ‘immigration into the welfare system’ misleadingly define in big parts the debate about immigration from Romania and Bulgaria” (Lausberg 243). He notes that according to official statistics worries about dependency on welfare are unfounded since Bulgarians and Romanians are in general financially well-placed and “of economic and social use” for Germany, especially given its much publicized need for skilled workers (142—45). Lausberg observes that the backlash against immigrants during EU expansion eastwards erupted amidst the political mainstream - and not from the right - and with the help of centrist politicians who “participated in the stigmatization of immigrants, [advancing and magnifying] the ethnicization of social [issues]” (97). 6 József Böröcz and Mahua Sarkar trace the debates about the “Polish plumber” in French and British media and conclude that, “[d]uring the entire peri- 88 Nora Gortcheva od from the formal ‘accession’ of the eight erstwhile-state-socialist states to the EU on May 1, 2004 (and the birth of the Polish Plumber in Paris later in the same year) to the ‘Brexit’ vote of June 23, 2016, the increasingly demonized figure of the East-European worker dominated discursive space about labor policy, social rights, and eventually, European Union membership” (Böröcz and Sarkar 311). They read such coverage as “’racial’ downgrading” of Eastern European migrants and, in turn, speculate that hostility against refugees and immigrants in Eastern Europe itself might be explained as a fraught “claim, once and for all, to essential, unquestionable whiteness” on the part of Eastern European governments and public (314)� 7 Lausberg notes that in German media, Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants are often “wrongly identified as primarily (Sinti and) Roma or ‘gypsies,’ and have fallen and are [still] falling victim to social marginalization because of antiziganist stereotypes” (Lausberg 97). Such processes complicate an already explosive situation in the two countries where discrimination against Roma is common and systemic (Lausberg 147—72). However, as Alyosxa Tudor reminds us, one should be careful to distinguish between migratization and racialization in such debates. To explain their effect, Tudor gives the following example: “Racism can work through migratising strategies, for example, when Black Europeans are asked where they ‘actually’ come from. However, there are also forms of migratisation that are not racist; for instance, when a white person is told that they have an ‘Eastern European’ accent. That kind of statement does not automatically construct the person as non-white” (Tudor, “Queering Migration Discourse” 31). Similarly, migratization and racialization are often intermingled but affect differently white Eastern Europeans and Roma minorities� White Eastern Europeans are discriminated primarily because of their migrant background, although they might face some effects of racialization - as Fatima El-Tayeb has observed, “[the] claim [of Eastern and Southern Europeans] to […] whiteness is more ambiguous than that of the Northwest of the continent” (El-Tayeb xiv). Yet, the labeling of all Romanians and Bulgarians in German media as Roma and especially the backlash against Western media in both countries - in an attempt to correct the power implications of such leveling - clearly indicates that Roma are constant subjects to racialization, both at home and abroad (Tudor, From [al'manja] with love 246—47). 8 Famously, Larry Wolff has noted that “[i]t was Western Europe that invented Eastern Europe as its complementary other half in the eighteenth century, the age of Enlightenment� It was also the Enlightenment, with its intellectual centers in Western Europe, that cultivated and appropriated to itself the new notion of ‘civilization,’ an eighteenth-century neologism, Reflexive Unmapping : The “Wild East” in Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017) 89 and civilization discovered its complement, within the same continent, in shadowed lands of backwardness, even barbarism� Such was the invention of Eastern Europe” (Wolff 4). 9 Dace Dzenovska gives an example from academic discussions in which “eastern Europeans [are depicted] as home-grown barbarians threatening to contaminate the European moral community” (Dzenovska 299). Echoing Maria Todorova’s and Larry Wolff’s canonic works that have traced similar conceptualizations historically, Dzenovska concludes that “despite complex and contentious debates on the ground, the politicized and moralized distinction between east and west that has long shaped perceptions about eastern Europe continues to be a convenient discursive tool for making sense of public and political reactions to the ‘refugee/ migrant crisis’ in east European member states of the European Union” (299). 10 Grisebach mentions well-known American Westerns such as My Darling Clementine ( John Ford, 1946), Winchester ’73 (Anthony Mann, 1950), High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959) as inspirations for Western � Classic Westerns evoke also familial memories, as she reminisces about watching them with her father as a child in West Berlin (Chan n� pag�)� 11 Numerous reviews of Western have referred to this scene as an indication of past trauma after presumed Nazi occupation of the region. However, such an interpretation is problematic since Bulgaria joined the Axis powers in 1941, remained a German ally until 1944, and hoped for territorial gains in Northern Greece and Macedonia� 12 Having grown up with a fascination for the male characters in classical Westerns, Grisebach voices eagerness to explore the topic in her own work and “[to] come closer to the lonely, exaggerated, often melancholic male figures from the western” (“Ein Gespräch mit Valeska Grisebach” n. pag.). Works Cited Abel, Marco� The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School � Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013� Ballinger, Pamela. “Recursive Easts, Shifting Peripheries: Whither Europe’s ‘Easts’ and ‘Peripheries’? ” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 31.1 (2017): 3—10. Bergfelder, Tim� International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s . NewYork/ Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005. 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