{"id":32826,"date":"2013-08-14T06:06:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T06:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32826"},"modified":"2013-08-14T06:06:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T06:06:00","slug":"blackness-in-germany-locating-%e2%80%9crace%e2%80%9d-in-johannes-schaaf%e2%80%99s-1986-film-adaptation-of-michael-ende%e2%80%99s-fantasy-novel-momo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32826","title":{"rendered":"Blackness in Germany: Locating \u201cRace\u201d in Johannes Schaaf\u2019s 1986 Film Adaptation of Michael Ende\u2019s Fantasy Novel Momo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackness in Germany: Locating \u201cRace\u201d in Johannes Schaaf\u2019s 1986 Film Adaptation of Michael Ende\u2019s Fantasy Novel<\/em> Momo<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Focus on German Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 19<\/a> (2012)
\npages 133-148<\/p>\n

Benjamin Nickl<\/strong>
\nGeorgetown University<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Ende\u2019s<\/a> 1973 fantasy novel, Momo<\/a><\/em> first became popular in West Germany. Decades later, the book remained successful in the unified Republic. Intended as a piece of alternative literature for children, the story advocates resistance to consumerism, capitalism, and the time bind, in which free market economies situate members of the working population. The novel\u2019s protagonist is the titular character, a small girl named \u201cMomo.\u201d She fights her adversaries, the \u201cGray Agents,\u201d who are sent by the \u201cTimesaving Bank\u201d to steal mankind\u2019s unused time and use it to sustain their lives. What allows for Momo\u2019s resistance to the time-thieves is her state of innocence, a natural purity which prevents the young heroine from falling prey to Western civilization\u2019s dogma of capitalism.<\/p>\n

Ende\u2019s original text, which is now in its 47th edition, never explicitly connects Momo as a symbol of pristine nature to non-white notions of race. However, the cinematic adaptation does exactly that. Cast in the role of Momo, then eleven-year-old Afro-German actress Radost Bokel<\/a> was the visibly \u201cexoticized\u201d female lead. Her race set Bokel apart from her white cast members in the German-Italian production. Director Johannes Schaaf<\/a> chose to define Momo<\/em> in the context of a racial discourse to construct knowledge about otherness as ethnic difference. I read this as an exclusion of ethnic minorities in Germany, underscored by German film\u2019s long tradition of nationalism based on ethnic affiliation.<\/p>\n

Schaaf\u2019s adaptation perpetuates a racial bias, which occupies a large part of the country\u2019s ethnic history. The film exemplifies the projection of identities on the black body and performative manifestations of (black) identity, which were authored by a white majority despite the actual presence of individuals who identify as black. In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, \u201cbecoming black\u201d was a widespread phenomenon in West Germany. In the wake of the nation\u2019s politicized student movement in 1968 (\u201c68\u2019er Studentenbewegung\u201d), a great part of the white population imagined \u201cblackness\u201d as a way to express (national-political) innocence and justified anger over being the victim of capitalist rule. White people appropriated racial features of the black body, which they believed was unrightfully oppressed by the establishment; hence they made claims to socio-cultural aspects of both Afro-German and Afro-American identity. Especially the German youth expressed their white afrophilia in terms of fierce socio-politic engagement and wide circulation of cultural products branded as \u201cAfroblack\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blackness in Germany: Locating \u201cRace\u201d in Johannes Schaaf\u2019s 1986 Film Adaptation of Michael Ende\u2019s Fantasy Novel Momo Focus on German Studies Volume 19 (2012) pages 133-148 Benjamin Nickl Georgetown University Michael Ende\u2019s 1973 fantasy novel, Momo first became popular in West Germany. Decades later, the book remained successful in the unified Republic. Intended as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,1196,8],"tags":[3228,15419,15418,2948,15417,15420,15421],"class_list":["post-32826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-europe","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-afro-germans","tag-benjamin-nickl","tag-focus-on-german-studies","tag-germany","tag-michael-ende","tag-momo","tag-radost-bokel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}