Review of Gurbetçi Şaban
This film mainly mentions immigration effect on society and specifically, it touches on what kind of cultural conflicts occurs when Turkish people live there and how they get over culture shock. Protagonist Şaban is a poor and wretch man traveling to Germany to find a job and earn money. He is also gracious and pure in a hearth. He falls in love with Bahar who is traveling to Germany too on the same bus. In a short span of time, Şaban will marry to Bahar. After coming to German and looking for a job, one day he encounters a man offering a good job to him. He accepts the job but his German boss Hans who is a supporter of Adolf Hitler is so bully and racist that he makes them work in very hard conditions. Şaban's lover Bahar studies in the same factory also. Hans misbehaved her too and wants to take Bahar as a maid for his family. Şaban gets mad for this situation and decides to take revenge from Germans. Şaban is poor and pure in heart as well as he is a smart and fox man so he decides to get so many children supports from German government by using the opportunity of the same name and surnames which is 'Şaban Yıldız'. Thanks to the amount of this money he thinks an extra job for him. He starts with buying a cow then he expands his business, on the other hand, Hans loses money due to gambling. After a while, Şaban becomes a rich businessman and takes the opportunity of teaching to Germans a big life lesson. Seeing how Hans is in tough times, Şaban offers him to be a shareholder. Then, he starts to do everything that Germans did before. After finishing summary of the film, I want to mention stereotypical images, ideas and certain behaviors regarding both Germans and Turks perspectives by the way of analyzing three important characters; Main character Şaban is successfully adapted to German culture even though he sometimes allegories to it because he is obviously misbehaved or overcharged by Germans that's why he sometimes calls them as a 'giaour'. To be honest, I justified him most of the time because he is expat there and it is normal that he can think little bit nationalistic in terms of environment. Also, I observed that main aim of Şaban is to help Turks in Hans's factory because he is so cruel to Turks. Apart from this Şaban generalizes 'real man has only sons' ironically most of his kids are girls. Second character Hans behaves Turks as if they were a slave to the German government. Also, he does not even give their salary they deserve and moreover, Hans called people as stupid because Germans regard that Turks are lowerclassman. Stereotypical idea of Germans is Turks are generally stupid people. In the movie Germans think that Turks can only work for them, they don't have the ability to guide in Germans' business because they don't have enough money to do that also most of the workers don't have residence permit so Germans use this weakness for the benefit of them. Third character Bahar stays in a very crowded and multi-cultural home which has so many social problems before marrying to Şaban. For instance, Algerian and Greeks and Turkish stay in the same home Thus, so many problems occur like fighting for even toilet's turn. Bahar's stereotypical idea is that Greek women are generally vixenish because she lives and stays with them by seeing their behaviors and altitudes and Greeks women are generally fighting or shouting each other. To sum up, I can infer that there are acculturation and cultural transmission between German and Turkish cultures but not in volunteer way. Both sides try to impose their culture uneasily. For instance, replacing Adolf's picture with Atatürk's and changing Germans' food habits in the factory with Turkish foods. These are all can be given as examples.
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