Entre Les Mur

The films Entre les Murs(The Class) and Angst Essen Seele Auf(Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) both address the insincerity of social conformity and the systemic failure which results in physical, mental, and intellectual suffering of those deemed to be outsiders. Within this system even the best intentioned actors take part in social violence against the Other. Both the teacher M. Marin, in Entre Les Murs, and Emmi, in Ali, exhibit the best of all possible intentions, yet they succumb to the the roles of oppressor and perpetrator of social violence. The immigrants are not passive victims in the process, both the students and Ali adopt different survival mechanisms — both of which fail. Ali adopts an agreeable passivity to his condition, always

doing as he is prompted. This is futile as his condition begins to eat him from the inside in the form of a stomach ulcer. The students adopt a different approach and resist their situation at every turn, but this too is for not as it results in one student’s expulsion, and the loss of economic opportunity for the other students. Both of these films illustrate the the futility of working within an assimilationist system — even with the most sincere of liberal good intentions — and how the Other is not incorporated but destroyed regardless of their compliance or resistance.
The director of Ali, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, was an anarchist.

This influenced his critical view of ‘the system’ and its overbearing influence on those within its reach. Ali:Fear Eats the Soul depicts its characters as nearly entirely subject to the arbitrary actions and perceptions of German society. Ali himself is pavlovian in his responses to outside stimulus and this is seen with remarkable clarity near the end of the film with his last dance with Emmi at the bar. Fassbinder’s anarchist sentiments may also have contributed to Ali’s passivity in the face of social violence. As an outsider himself Fassbinder’s personal perspective contributed to the strength of his film in capturing the struggles of an

outsider.
Ali did nothing without a prompt. His first action in the film, the dance with Emmi, was a dare from his friends at the bar. His marriage to Emmi comes only as a result of her prompting. Ali is compliant with his station in life, a station he concisely states as, “German master. Arab dog.” He does nothing to challenge that status and in marriage becomes more of a plaything or pet for Emmi than a loving husband. This is clear in Emmi’s introduction of him to her family, where after saying his real name she says, “I call him Ali,” and in her showing of of him off as a piece of exotic eroticism to her friends after she is reaccepted by German society. Outwardly Ali resists none of these slights to his self or his culture — even remaining outwardly calm when Emmi informed him she would not learn to cook couscous as it was not German food.
Ali’s negativity is focused inward. As a result of his outward compliance the violent resistance is directed at himself rather than at German society or his direct oppressors, and he shows a fair amount of harmful and self-destructive behaviors. The most egregious violation of his own well being is his constant drinking; before marrying Emmi he tells the audience through her that he was nearly always drunk. He seeks to escape the world he inhabits by hiding his problematic thoughts rather than resisting his problematic surroundings. Ali also has a loveless fair with the barmaid at the immigrant bar he frequents. The whole scene is depicted as if Ali were preforming a duty, something he owed the barmaid for preparing couscous for him. This culminates in his sobbing and wriggling in pain outside of Emmi’s door, and her subsequent closing of the door on him. Ali is also being physically tortured from within by a stomach ulcer caused by the stress of the guest worker’s life. He is informed that the ulcer will return without fail every six months, symbolic of the monotonous malaise he had and continued to consent to thought the film.
Ali is almost never seen alone in the film, and when he is he is nude. The nudity is symbolic of the complete bareness of his existence. He is nothing without somebody else on screen to tell him how to behave. With nobody to persuade in the shower Ali allows his act to falter and then fall completely. In what for most would be a relaxing escape, a shower, he is shown to be just as tired, and alone, and uncomfortable, as he is internally when eating dinner, having sex, or working as a mechanic. His discontent is seen clearly in his facial expression and body language — outside the shower he hides his feelings as he hides his body. As Emmi told him in their first encounter; ‘where light suits, they make you look happier.’ He steps out of the shower and he puts on his light colored suit to maintain the illusion of pleasantness. This scene is undercut by the gaze of Emmi through the mirror. Even at his most vulnerable Ali was unable to completely escape being objectified by another.
In another bathroom scene Ali is again seen in a mirror. This time he is truly alone, under only his own gaze in the mirror. In this moment we see his true thoughts about himself as he repeatedly slaps himself in the face. He is ashamed of himself and has lost self-respect. Even in this scene his facial expression remains stoic as he strikes himself. This scene encapsulates the complete destruction of Ali as an autonomous self and his transition to an animatronic existence.
In his own eyes and in the eyes of those around him he has completely transfigured into a pavlovian ‘in-put out-put’ machine. When “The Black Gypsy” begins to play on the juke box Ali, affectless, abruptly moves to begin dancing with Emmi. It is not something he had any desire to do, merely a response to a stimulus.
The students of Entre les Murs suffer the same fate as Ali in this respect.

While they outwardly rebel, where he had adopted a passive acceptance of his position, they to do little more than respond to systemic stimulus. The malcontents may feel that their rebellion grants them social agency, but this is shown to be illusionary as the students do little more than conform to their teachers’ expectations. The students are interactively passive in their resistance — they believe they are active in resisting but are actually passively complying with the systems expectations of them. This is exceptionally clear in the case of Solemon’s expulsion, he believes that through silence and noncompliance he is exercising his social-agency; but within the system he is on the well worn track of the dissident student. His teacher’s foresee and plan for is dispensary hearing, his expulsion is all but predetermined — not one hearing had concluded without one. It is the system itself, and not ones compliance or residence within it, that creates the

problem.
The students engage in this illusionary resistance elsewhere as well. One student refuses to read a passage when ordered to by M. Marin. Esmeralda is constantly challenging the authority of him as well. But in the staff meeting all these acts of residence are shown to be bricks in the wall, part of the monotonous grind for the teachers, as certain as the sunrise. M. Marin calls it the consequence of their poor intellectual capabilities, or cries for attention.