LETTERS TO THE EDITOR You are not alone! Call 030 787 5188 or 01803-AA HELP Meetings in English www.alcoholics-anonymous-berlin.de Workshops taught by artists since 2011. Update.indd 1 06/10/16 13:01 • DRAWING • BOTANICAL • WATERCOLOR • MIXED-MEDIA • PAINTING • ANATOMY • LINOCUT • CUSTOM Check out our website for upcoming summer workshops! Letters to the editor This month: our cinema trailer featuring Berlin personality Rummelsnuff and an article in our April Brazil issue offend two readers. “I don’t want to be a Berliner any more.” Guten Tag, I would like to get my opinion about your trailer off of my chest. I love black humour and sarcasm but this video won’t increase your circulation – I assume that is the point of running it. As a Berliner I feel pretty bad when I see this commercial. If the tourists, immigrants and temporary residents are supposed to see and hear Berliners like that, then I don’t want to be a Berliner any more. With that appearance, Berliners can maybe work as a bouncer for dubious clubs, but he doesn’t represent me. Thank you for your attention. — Sincerely, Peter “Does this not look slightly racist to you?” Dear <strong>Exberliner</strong>, I am Brazilian, a Berlin resident and reader of your magazine. I bought April’s edition yesterday to have it as Sunday reading and to my surprise most of it is about ‘Brazil in Berlin’. So far so good, but then I reached page 18. There’s a two-page story called “Why I married my German wife”. It’s about four Brazilian guys that shamelessly fool their respective German wives with lies and betrayals in order to get German citizenship. Before I even start, let’s do a short analysis of the illustration that was published with the story: A dark-skinned man portrayed as the chesthair-out-of-shirt Latino stereotype sneaks a passport out of the pocket of a white skinned woman. Does this not look slightly racist to you? With his other hand he holds a ring. A true gold digger act performed by a darked-skinned male against a white-skinned female. No need to say this already started out on the wrong foot. You want to know if marrying a German person for a visa is worth it? Well, how about opening the scope a little and talking about a whole new wave of marriages that are impulsed by visas, performed by an innumerous number of non-European nationalities coming together with European nationalities, motivated by love, friendship, political points of view or even money? Off the top of my head I can give you at least five examples of this kind of marriage that would make an exciting, diverse story with no need to offend a nationality. Do you even realise how this one-sided story touches Brazilian people? People that struggle for acceptance in a foreign country? How this offends our culture and specially touches the reputation of Brazilian immigrants? Why didn’t you hear other stories? This piece reinforces a bad stereotype and it’s offensive. I hope <strong>Exberliner</strong> is capable of an apology, for these miserable, miserable pages. — Roberta Dear Roberta, The article in question wasn’t supposed to portray “Brazilian people”, how or why they marry, or who does or does not marry for citizenship. Its scope was a lot more humble and limited: under the tag ‘confession’, we ran a rather anecdotal story of four friends from Brazil who happen to share the same story of love and deception – at least in the way they all boasted marrying their German girlfriends for a visa. Granted, the story is pretty one-dimensional – as told from the men’s perspective. Granted, “marrying for a visa” isn’t a Brazilian thing. It just happened that these four were Brazilian, that Alice Klar knew them (and in some cases their wives!) and that they were willing to talk to us (although anonymously). As for the illustration, you’re totally right: the guy (intentionally) does look like the cliché ‘Latin lover’, a cliché used and abused by the men of the story. The German women allegedly fell for just that – and all the exoticism that comes with it. As for the ‘passport stealing’ – it’s obviously a visual metaphor. It’s a barter: the women get to marry a dream lover, the men get to solve their visa problem. Who’s the cheater, who’s the cheated? As the story shows, some of the men end up falling into their own trap. All in all, we thought that the material made for a quite universally entertaining story; a story that tells us more about the quirks of the human psyche than it does about one nationality or another. This is the way you read it. It’s not the way we intended it. This was only one story in a 15-page Brazil special. We also portrayed six talented Brazilians who call Berlin home and wrote at length about Brazilian food, culture and places. Some readers enjoyed it, including some fellow Brazilians. You didn’t – and we’re sorry for that. Let us just assure you that we never meant to offend you or other Brazilians. If you found this article upsetting, we can only apologise. — <strong>Exberliner</strong> team www.berlindrawingroom.com 52 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
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