“Always this disgusting sex.” On reading the reviews of Jan Bonny’s *Winter Fairy Tale*
After going to the movies yesterday and subsequently reading the arts and culture reviews, I found myself pondering—or rather, through the shared pondering and discussion after the film with my companionsSilvia BahlandSebastian Köthe, without whom this text would never have been written.
We saw“Wintermärchen’by Jan Bonny. The film—highly relevant and, in the best sense of the word, hard to sit through—tells the story of a racially motivated, terrorist trio; one is immediately reminded of theNSU. What makes the film unique and controversial is that it focuses primarily on two forces: hate, violence, and murder on the one hand, and sex on the other. I don’t want to write any further about the film itself, but ratherabout howthe film and this seemingly hard-to-bear connection have been discussed.
[spoiler alert]
The arts and culture reviews give the impression that emphasizing one’s own outrage and revulsion is a necessary conclusion that viewers must draw when sex and terrorist violence are presented together. And this is despite the fact that, if you look closely, the portrayal of sex in*Wintermärchen* works differently from the callous, hardcore sex scenes in other neo-Nazi films. In contrast, the explicit scenes in Jan Bonny’s film look surprisingly “normal.” Normal = no steel-hard bodies; the fumbling seemsclumsy(“Ouch!”); there’s insecurity, jealousy, envy; it seems bored—then, to spice things up, erotic fantasies are shared with the partner, as if the tip had come from*Glamour*.
During one such “wish round,” he confides to his partner that he’d love to watch her get it on with another man.Ta-da!—like a genie, the third man suddenly appears to snatch his buddy’s girlfriend right from under his nose for a quickie. So it goes back and forth—she with him, she with the other guy, he with him—and in the end, all three together. And it’s precisely this final “unifying” scene à la Tom Tykwer that needs to be discussed in more detail, because apparently none of the reviewers really paid close attention to it.
What we see in the explicit scenes: cunnilingus, the cowgirl position, the missionary position, and anal penetration of the men. What wedon’tsee, but might expect based on some reviews: BDSM aesthetics and practices or classic depictions of power imbalances (for example, the woman doesn’t performdeepthroat, there are nocumshotsto the face, and no Nazi slogans are shouted during sex). When the reviews describe the sex scenes as being too intense, the worst part is actually when the men try to make a move on the woman when she’s not in the mood and she has to shout “No, leave me alone!” several times—but the line isn’t actually crossed, even if the repetition is frequent enough. And the fact that, while sharing her sexual fantasies, the woman uses the N-word when she says who she’d like to sleep with—but you wouldn’t expect her to use any other language either!
In any case, they mainly go out to kill senselessly and spread their hateful slogans in bars.
The final threesome is surprising—even despite everything—because of how tenderly and relaxed everyone is with one another. Something completely different unfolds here compared to the brutal scenes of violence. After the woman initially flees from the men’s same-sex sex—which she had previously provoked in them—it ultimately ceases to be a problem. On the contrary, she watches curiously as he gives him a blowjob; then she’s invited to join them on the mattress, and she cautiously joins in. One of them has sex with her and is suddenly surprised. She laughs heartily and asks if he came; he has to admit, somewhat embarrassed, that it took him by surprise. They laugh—it’s no problem. Hey, then the other guy just keeps fucking, and the one who came early leans back, relaxed, and gazes lovingly at the couple. In the end, they all cuddle together, taking turns deciding who gets to lie in the middle.
In all the other scenes, let's not forget, they're unbearable.
And this is what the arts section writes:
"Unnecessarily long and constantly recurring disgusting sex scenes" (NZZ). “Absolutely hideous,” “boundlessly hideous,” “Here, fucking and the execution of migrants merge into a repulsive outlet for base instincts.” (Spiegel Online)
“But he [Bonny] shows the endless sex scenes so relentlessly that they become mere poses; at some point, they just get tiresome. By the time the three of them are constantly rolling around in the sheets at the end, the supposed shock value has long since worn off. Sex and violence—yeah, we get it.” (Zeit Online) Why are the scenes reduced to nothing more than a mere shock effect? Has the author now seen through something here, “understood” it? Then it continues: “Above all, one would gladly do without the numerous scenes featuring copulating bodies in ever-changing pairings—Becky with Tommi, Becky with Maik, Tommi with Maik, and finally all of them together.” Honestly, and without the ironic tone of a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know: Why would one want to do without them? Why is this sex something unbearable? Because Nazis aren’t allowed to have sex? Because the connection between sex and violence is unbearable (why?)? Because violent Nazis can’t have tender sex per se? Because sex shatters the narrative cinema—both as a spectacle and in its redundancy? Answers to these questions could reveal fascinating insights into the film’s aesthetic strategies and choices; the prerequisite, however, is to first stick to a descriptive analysis of what the film actually shows and not immediately accept one’s own initial reflexes in interpreting and evaluating it without question.
"While the explanation of NSU right-wing extremism in terms of hate, sex, and sadomasochism does align with certain thoroughly convincing theories of fascism, the film isn't even remotely a German 'Salo.'" (SWR2) As I said, there was no sadomasochism. And why can sex and fascism only be accepted in the context of Sade’s excessive aesthetics of torture?
The oft-cited triad “sex, booze, murder”(SZ)or “Fucking, killing, drinking—one thing leads to another” (Tagesspiegel)—Zeit Onlinetakes it a step further in its headline, “Fucking, killing, drinking, fighting”—implies that everything takes place on the same level, with similar qualities, even though the sex depicted here stands out, especially in the final scene. This is a trivialization that refuses to look more closely.
You don’t have to like the sex scenes or the whole movie at all; the juxtaposition of tenderness and triviality on the one hand and right-wing extremism on the other is unsettling, and you find yourself wondering what this production is trying to achieve, but you can only reflect on that if you don’t imagine combat boots(swr.de) that none of the protagonists are actually wearing. When we mock things for being in poor taste, we overlook exciting possibilities for interpretation. Doesn’t sexuality, by its very nature, have a fascinating relationship with violence? Isn’t there a latent violence inherent in the sexual, and doesn’t sex also serve as a mechanism for rejection:
“Love & Violence: Processes that reveal what one had been doing allalong: sexuality […], used towork throughthe unresolved violence trapped within one’s own bodies; this, too, was part of the attempt at liberation; and where ‘liberation’ increasingly failed to materialize, violence increasingly resurfaced…” (Klaus Theweleit: Salting & Desalting. Changes in the Sexual Fantasies of a Generation) Do the protagonists take refuge in their—always comical—sexual acts in order to transform killing? It would certainly be worth thinking about.
Ultimately, what comes across most clearly in the reviews is a sense of being overwhelmed—a desire not to have to look. But why do depictions of racist violence seem more acceptable than sexuality that is hardly specifically Nazi in nature?
Ultimately, I still don’t fully understand what it means that the neo-Nazis in this film have sex the way they do and commit murder the way they do. However, the only way to discover what significant forces are at play here is to look closely and confront the ambiguities.
