Serdar Somuncu: Reframing Integration through a Transnational Politics of Satire

Abstract

Following the success of Knobi Bonbon, the first Turkish German cabaret founded by Şinasi Dikmen and Muhsin Omurcu in 1985, Turkish German comedy has become standard fare on the German stage. Among the younger generation of Turkish German performers, Serdar Somuncu has distinguished himself through biting political satire targeting both German and Turkish societies and through his zealous engagement with the German past. Beginning with his Mein Kampf program in 1996, Somuncu developed a series of performances criticizing German Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the corrosive power of popular media, and failures of political leadership in Germany and Turkey. With escalating vehemence in his Hassprediger shows, Somuncu rails against the miasma of critical lassitude that renders the public susceptible to demagoguery, prejudice, and chauvinism and seeks to inoculate his audience against such influences by enacting a transnational politics of satire.

Turkish German Muslims and Comedy Entertainment

“…This meant content producers could make money off their copyright material and, eventually, form larger and more complex YouTube channel networks (Snickars and Vonderau, 2009). Another important factor to mention here is that YouTube content is usually prone to less regulation than state-run or even private broadcasting and other mainstream media (see the educational mandate for German state-run television in chapter three), which means that comedians like Serdar Somuncu can try their hand at different and perhaps less tame content than they present to mainstream audiences on broadcast television (Bower, 2012).…”