As the author Dr. Robert C. Thomas writes, Fear Eats the Soul “is a film of stairs and stares. Stares, because the entire film is made up of a series of looks: gazes that objectify, and trap, both the-one-being-looked-at and the one looking. These gazes are of such duration that they disturb and implicate the audience watching the film. Stairs, because we often see characters filmed behind staircases-or behind screens, railings, and staircases, simultaneously—often while being looked at, amplifying the objectification and policing of the characters. . In our first encounter on the stairs Emmi has returned to her apartment with Ali. As they walk up the stairs Emmi’s neighbour tells her she has the 3 Marks 50 she owes her through a grilled shutter in front of her door.
Emmi collects the change from her neighbour and the neighbour shares a brief stare with Ali as Emmi makes her way back up the stairs. Once Emmi has left, the neighbor rushes round to another neighbor’s apartment to tell her that Emmi has brought a foreigner into the building. “A black man? ” The neighbor asks “A real black man? to which she replies “Well, not that black but pretty dark. “. The theme of racial prejudice is central in Fear Eats the Soul. Emmi is ostracized by her neighbours, co-workers and family for having relations with Ali a Moroccan immigrant. It would seem from this exchange, the ‘darker’ you are the more ostracized you become. In many respects Fear Eats the Soul serves as a metaphor for the ‘new Germany’ that wants to sweep racism under the carpet even though it still exists. There is also the physical division in the form of a screen that separates the neighbour from Emmi and Ali.
Fassbinder attempts to limit the frame with doors and walls and reducing our view of the couple. Perhaps this is to show the restrictive nature of the world that Emmi and Ali inhabit. They are literally shut out by society for being different and not adhering to social norms. In another scene on the stairs her neighbours confront her about cleaning the staircase. “We’ve spoken to everyone in the house and they all agree”. “About what? “, Emmi asks. “About the dirt in the house lately”, responds another neighbor.
‘We’ve all agreed that you’ll have to clean twice a month. . “Me? Why? We’ve had our system for years. “, responds Emmi. “Yes, but the situation has changed radically. “, says another neighbor clearly referencing Ali. “With people like that in the house, dirt takes over. “. In this exchange the prejudice they hold towards Ali is perhaps more understated than in other parts of the film. But this prejudice is upheld when the people around Emmi and Ali want something from them. Emmi’s children want her to look after their small children for free and so they accept her into the family fold again.
In another instance the shopkeeper who had once refused to serve Ali because of the fact that he didn’t speak ‘proper German’ changes his tune when his convenience store is threatened by the dominance of the larger supermarkets, And then Emmi’s co-workers attempt to form an alliance with her after ostracizing her because their salaries are threatened by an influx of cheaper labour from abroad, exemplified by the new worker from Yugoslavia. “The change in people’s behavior is thus effected by their realization that it does not pay to act on one’s prejudices”.
People’s first reaction it seems is to be absolutely explicit and emphatic in their expression of racism. And then when they need something they hide it. It is not that they come to love Ali, its that they hide it. “Ali and Emmi suffer from ostracism because of a liaison that is considered a breach of decorum. But the way it presents itself to the couple is as a contradiction: they cannot be ‘seen together, because there is no social space (work, leisure, family) in which they are not objects of aggressive, hostile, disapproving gazes (neighbours, hop-keepers, bartenders, Emmi’s sons and daughters-in-law).
Yet conversely, they discover that they cannot exist without being seen by others, for when they are alone, their own mutually sustaining gaze proves to be insufficient to confer on them or confirm in them a sense of identity – that delicate balance between their social, their sexual and their ethnic selves, in the interplay between sameness and difference, self and other. . However Fassbinder’s portrayal of Emmi’s plight does not offer a simple solution to the issue of equality. In the scene on the stairs after having ostracized her from the group Emmi’s coworkers tell her that one of their colleagues has been fired for stealing and has been replaced with a foreign worker from Yugoslavia.
The women physically distance themselves from the foreign worker and don’t invite her to join their conversation and Emmi joins them. In doing this Fassbinder creates a duality in Emmi. As well as being ostracized herself she also ostracizes others. This is perhaps a nod to the complexity of prejudice in Germany. One can appear to present themselves in one way but in truth they really just share the same prejudice views as ‘everyone else’.