Page - 77 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

77 conVerting Kebab and currency into community depicted as single or without known partners. Moreover, non- human elements subject to violence and requiring care, such as the cat and Disko’s vintage vehicle, are important members of the community. Strikingly, none of the characters in Planet Ottakring are pic- tured in inadequate abodes, although many are immigrants in- debted to a local loan shark, something that contrasts with the culture-clash comedies, which tend to work in references to how inadequate the housing of immigrants is. The swimmer in Die Freischwimmerin is introduced to us as she trips over a skate- board on her way out of the ill-lit hallway of the dingy building her fatherless family lives in, while the Turkish restauranteur in the Kebab films has bought the entire building together with the restaurant space on the main floor and in the first film is repeat- edly called upon by his immigrant tenants to fix problems with the plumbing. What Planet Ottakring emphasizes is the differ- ence in the size and opulence of dwellings, for example between Sammy’s grandfather’s modest cottage and Frau Jahn’s luxuri- ous villa, underscoring the heterogeneity of the neighborhood’s housing stock. Gentrification, however, is for the most part a non-topic in Planet Ottakring, something that fits a larger pattern of denial that both New York and Berlin also experienced, in the 1970s and 1990s respectively (Kadi 2016). While Vienna’s much vaunt- ed reputation for social housing is commonly seen as buttressing the city against gentrification, the gentrification debate in Vien- na is shrouded in myth, as Justin Kadi has shown, particularly “Mythos 1: Der soziale Wohnbau in Wien hat Gentrifizierung weitgehend verhindert” [“Myth 1: social housing in Vienna has to a great extent prevented gentrification”]; Ottakring may have a “vergleichsweise größeres Angebot an Sozialwohnungen” [“a comparatively large offering of social housing”] (Kadi), but at 35% there are still considerable private rentals and ownership, something one also sees when one considers the regeneration of the housing stock that Ottakring has undergone: “72% of the renovated houses since 2000 were subsidised which means a set