European Languages and Societies Commons^™

Made In Germany: Integration As Inside Joke In The Ethno-Comedy Of Kaya Yanar And Bülent Ceylan, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

As the largest “foreign” population in Germany, Turkish immigrants have been the primary target for concerns about integration and the impact of immigration on German culture. Since the founding of the first Turkish German cabaret in 1985 by Şinasi Dikmen and Muhsin Omurca, the misconceptions and one-sided expectations associated with integration have been played, parodied, and satirized by Turkish German performers. As producers of contemporary ethno-comedy, Kaya Yanar and Bülent Ceylan appeal to mass audiences with a new approach, inverting questions of integration by creating communities through laughter in which audiences are at once in on the joke and its …