The Hunger for Touch: Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation

Şebnem Nazlı Karalı; George Karpathakis

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Chapter 8 The Hunger for Touch

Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation

In: Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World

Authors:

Şebnem Nazlı Karalı

Şebnem Nazlı Karalı
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George Karpathakis

George Karpathakis
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 269–295

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_010

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has furthered the experience and awareness of cinematic sensations as the restrictions redefine our relation to eros. Selecting Fatih Akin’s 2004 film titled Gegen die Wand (Head-On), this chapter explores the use of the sensory, the affect, and the erotic in the film’s cinematography and how it is relevant to our time. Akin encourages embodied affective responses in the viewer, bypassing the potential socio-political fallout as he presents a love story between unlikely lovers. The selected scenes examine Akin’s filmmaking techniques, which give the viewer an experience of sensation beyond what is seen, placing Head-On in the cinema of sensation. The social and cultural repression, and the emotional responses raised in the film are not only still present and amplified, but are now coupled with the pressures of the pandemic. Thinking along the new normal, the analysis suggests that the pandemic, having suppressed intimacy, has increased the hunger for touch, the longing for interpersonal and intimate touch, making us aware of the absence of eros. The cinema of sensation is rekindled in the time of COVID-19, leaving its mark on the ongoing future of cinema.

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Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World

Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal

Series: Critical Studies Online, Volume: 42 and Critical Studies, Volume: 42

Cover Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004549388

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 11 Sep 2023

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Front Matter

Part 1 Beyond Repression: Defying the Moral Codes of 21st Century Authoritarianism

Part 2 Beyond Sex: Embodying Pleasure and Sexuality in Times of Social Distancing

Part 3 Beyond Gender: Challenging Patriarchal and Heteronormative Sex Education through Alternative Pornography

Part 4 Beyond the Senses: Immersing into Self-Exploration through Visual and Plastic Arts

Part 5 Beyond the Ego: Embracing the Spiritual Possibilities of Desire

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Chapter 8 The Hunger for Touch

Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation

Abstract

Citation Info

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Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World

Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal

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