Page - 63 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

63 conVerting Kebab and currency into community liberals will be moved to reject the racialization of identity that led to the conflict in the first place. Moreover, the debate will provide fodder that continues to stoke the flames. Just as the new arrivals in contemporary German culture- clash films such as Willkommen bei den Hartmanns are no long- er Turkish but African, the protagonists in contemporary Vien- nese culture-clash comedies are no longer Iranian but Turkish, and culturally Turkish but not particularly pious. Indeed, they are no more religious than their Austrian counterparts. When the daughter takes to wearing a hijab in the second Kebab film, she does so not out of religious conviction but rather to upset her parents, and even her Turkish grandfather, who insists on his grandson’s circumcision and strongly encourages his grand- children to speak Turkish, finds her wardrobe ridiculous. Simi- larly, in Die Freischwimmerin the swimmer’s decision to don religious apparel is motivated by her father’s death and is not a sign of religious conviction but of mourning. Despite their secularism and fluent German, the characters in Austrian culture-clash films are nevertheless presented as Turkish and not Turkish-Austrian, something that would in any case be difficult in terms of accent as the protagonists are played by Turkish-German actors. The Turkish presence in Germany is substantially different than in its Catholic neighbor and not only for religious reasons. As the Kebab films underscore by naming the Viennese coffeeshop Prinz Eugen after Eugene von Savoy, the Habsburg leader famed for his decisive victories in the early seventeenth century over the Ottoman Turks during the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Turks were historically Aus- tria’s greatest threat. The portrait of the Prince even comes to life in Kebab mit Alles and offers the Austrian coffeeshop owner strategic counsel in his campaign against “the Turk” before be- ing dismissed on what for the coffeeshop owner is a humorous note — as a “französischer Poof” (“French fag”), while in the follow-up Kebab extra scharf!, he remains in the portrait and is unceremoniously covered up with a portrait of Atatürk for the plot-driving visit of the Turkish wife’s father.