Ervin Malakaj, "Anders als Die Andern" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
Released in 1919, "Anders als die Andern" (Different from the Others) stunned audiences with its straightforward depiction of queer love. Supporters celebrated the film\u2019s moving storyline, while conservative detractors succeeded in prohibiting public screenings. Banned and partially destroyed after the rise of Nazism, the film was lost until the 1970s and only about one-third of its original footage is preserved today.\nDirected by Richard Oswald and co-written by Oswald and the renowned sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, "Anders als die Andern" is a remarkable artifact of cinema culture connected to the vibrant pre-Stonewall homosexual rights movement of early-twentieth-century Germany. The film makes a strong case for the normalization of homosexuality and for its decriminalization, but the central melodrama still finds its characters undone by their public outing. Ervin Malakaj sees the film\u2019s portrayal of the pain of living life queerly as generating a complex emotional identification in modern spectators, even those living in apparently friendlier circumstances. There is a strange comfort in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles, and Malakaj recuperates "Anders als die Andern"\u2019s mournful cinema as an essential element of its endurance, treating the film\u2019s melancholia both as a valuable feeling in and of itself and as a springboard to engage in an intergenerational queer struggle.\nOver a century after the film\u2019s release,\xa0Anders als die Andern\xa0(McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)\xa0serves as a stark reminder of how hostile the world can be to queer people, but also as an object lesson in how to find sustenance and social connection in tragic narratives.\nErvin Malakaj is associate professor of German studies at the University of British Columbia.\nArmanc Yildiz\xa0is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University. He received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Harvard University, with a secondary degree in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. He is also the founder of\xa0Academics Write, where he supports scholars in their writing projects as a writing coach and developmental editor.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies