tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5577490778732005247.post7559847239865728252..comments2010-10-26T18:18:40.867-07:00Jamie S. Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10574127694740978803noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5577490778732005247.post-54044436831070740102010-10-26T18:18:40.867-07:002010-10-26T18:18:40.867-07:00“Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” by Rainer Werner Fassbinder provides an elaborate analysis of human proneness for ethnic prejudices. Fassbinder himself plays the role of a right wing lout who needs prejudices to aggrandize himself in order to feel he is worthy part of a greatest nation (Germany) and a greatest political system (Democracy). Fassbinder’s protagonist is poor, uneducated in liberal arts and doesn’t have any particular achievements. For him to feel superior over other people is the only way to feel himself as somebody, to have self-respect and be proud of his existence. Special attention Fassbinder pays to the analysis of two aspects of any ethnic prejudice: directly hateful (repressive), and with an economic face (exploitative), and how each of them injures in its own way the soul of its victims. Also Fassbinder focuses on people’s unconscious use of human sexuality as a compensation for psychological trauma as a result of non-recognition of a common humanity in individuals and groups targeted by ethnic prejudices. The analysis of the relationships between Ali and Emmy and between Ali and a bar owner gives Fassbinder an opportunity to represent two kinds of love between a man and a woman: love based on psychological wholeness with a sexual component, and love based on the emotional need to have a sexual relationship as a compensation for a lack of social or personal non- or under-recognition. Contrary to the opinion of many critics, “Ali” is not a weepy but a serious research by the way of ascetic dramatization into common psychological roots of xenophobia in social and personal relations. Please, visit: www.actingoutpolitics.com - to read essays about films by Godard, Bunuel, Bergman, Bresson, Resnais, Kurosawa, Pasolini, Alain Tanner, Bertolucci and Cavani (with analysis of shots from the films).cinebughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18386075177018131868noreply@blogger.com