ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author wants to explore the politics of migration, love and law. Fassbinder explores an issue that he re-examined in later films: identity is not something real covered under surfaces, but it is inaccessible if the surfaces don't allow for it. Salem can't cope with his emasculation which is illustrated by the fact that he 'only' can get Emmi or Barbara. Fassbinder portrays the law not as a purely repressive force, although he makes one reference to the threat of physical violence. Law is depicted as an ideological phenomenon more than as a source of repression in the literal sense. Fassbinder has been criticized vehemently because, according to his critics, he depicted a world of oppression without possibilities of resistance. There is one way out for the bodies of Emmi and Salem, that are represented in a way that seems to be despairing.
