Andjela Padejski

Cinema & Media Studies major

   2020 Thesis Project in Cinema & Media Studies   

Myth, ideology, identity, and storytelling are mechanisms we use to organize society and craft hierarchies. Yet, what happens when these dominant narratives are switched; when the American Dream is no longer a compelling story? In my work, I expore the moment of transition between dominant ideologies. I look at how they are expressed in visual culture and entertainment and how the seemingly immaterial defines our politics and material realities. Through a mix of appropriated footage, pre-recorded performance, and ethnographic interviews, I aim to ask questions about the myths that were recently erased and the current ones that are in their place. Furthermore, I wish to show how representation in these narratives affects the lives of marginalized populations.

Exploited by Images

video, installation, performance

In Dušan Makavejev's 1971 film, W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, Milena, an empowered Marxist, demands: "Death to male fascism, freedom to female people." The line is a play on the motto of the Yugoslav resistance during WWII and captures the film's relationship between community politics and sexuality. Makavejev, a dissident Yugoslav filmmakers, shows the potential of sexual liberation and female emancipation while juxtaposing it with traditional, patriarchal values that Yugoslavia was attempting to eliminate. Women in Yugoslavia enjoyed legislative protection and were seen as equal under the law. However, as in other state socialist countries at the time, they shared their worker identity with that of motherhood. Nevertheless, the Yugoslav woman had agency outside of the home and benefitted from job opportunities, free higher education, government childcare, and access to contraception and abortion.

Having been born in Belgrade in 1998 during the Kosovo war, I hardly knew about the earlier status of women in Yugoslavia until I commenced research for this project. After the disintegration of Yugoslavia female identity throughout the Balkans transformed in only a few years. In Serbia, the loudspeaker of the new regime was the entertainment industry, which quickly replaced the aesthetics and values of communism with neo-traditional ones. The process of re-patriarchization, along with capitalist and neoliberal influences, created a new hyper-feminine identity for the Balkan woman which lacked any trace of the formerly emancipated Yugoslav worker-mother.

The emergence of a new genre of music in the early 1990s, turbo-folk, has directed the development of cultural aesthetics as well as morals and values in the last three decades. Turbo-folk is characterized by the mix of sounds from Serbian folk music and sounds of pop, rock, and electronic music. It is important to note that prior to the Balkan conflicts, folk music lived primarily in marginal and mostly rural spaces. However, with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, these sounds entered the mainstream. The aesthetics of turbo-folk glorify vulgarity, excess, materialism, toxic masculinity, crime, violence, and drugs. In a way, although a local product, turbo-folk represented the values of brutal individualism of newly important global capitalism.

Performers, who not only created this genre of music but also managed production studios and new television channels, had, and continued to have, political affiliations. Politicians and entertainment industry leaders work within the same ideological frame. The most notable example is that of Ceca Ražnatović, the most famous and popular singer in the Balkans, and also the wife of the late Arkan, a paramilitary leader, war criminal, and the "underworld boss of Slobodan Milosevic's murder squad." Although Arkan was charged with a number of war crimes in Croatia during the Balkan wars, Ceca's music is as much a part of Zagreb's soundscape as it is of Belgrade's.

Today, three decades after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the melismatic voices that characterize turbo-folk are still heard in much of the mainstream music in the Balkans. However, turbo-folk has lost its ideological framing. Whereas in the early days, one who listened to turbo-folk also aligned with the oppressive regime and could thus be easily spotted, nowadays there is less of a binary division. Liberals and conservatives, feminists and traditionalists alike all come together for Ceca's concerts. And yet, it is the identities of women that have gotten increasingly sexualized and whose place in the public sphere, along with other marginalized groups, remains disempowered. Thus, this brings to question: why do individuals who create this public sphere, and are also members of oppressed groups, perpetuate the system which is oppressive to themselves?

One answer, which speaks to a global trend, marks these individuals are no longer belonging to their respective marginalized groups, once they climb to a privileged spot in society. Although they can claim to have made progress for others like them or paved the way, in neoliberal capitalism progress stays at the level of the individual. Entertainment industries across nations have created spaces for people who could not rise to wealth and status in other industries. Post-war Serbia and its entertainment industry are reduced examples of this phenomenon. As women lost the support of the state and were barred from opportunities, becoming a singer seemed to be one of the few ways to ensure financial stability. I wanted to explore the real-life choices of these women and see how they identify agency and voice issues that concern them within the constraints of the hyperfeminine, nationalist, entertainment industry.

In my video installation, I aim to create an experience that captures the choices women in the Balkans face today and calls into question the models of feminism and empowerment forced upon us by neoliberal elites. The installation will include three channels, with the central channel dwarfing the other two in size. The central channel begins with a sequence at Belgrade's new train station and continues with a train ride in a train left over from the socialist era. During the train ride, excerpts from a documentary about female Yugoslav soldiers are heard as you're viewing the horizon of southern Serbia. Meanwhile, the other two channels are displaying slightly jittery images of two sculptures from the museum of Yugoslavia which are personifications of the railroad. Quickly, you're transported into a new luxury development in Belgrade where I speak to Sandra, a popular singer across the Balkans. The interview takes on an ethnographic form as the other two channels have the gazes of another sculpture from Yugoslav times. The goal here is to contrast the hyper-femininity of Sandra and the feminist and patriotic nature of the sculptures on the other channels. The following sequence includes documentary footage of another singer and her entourage at a music festival, where we witness the status-quo of the Balkans.

The installation will also include a pre-recorded performance. In the central channel, I will stand with a piece of plywood above my head, much like the women in the Yugoslav sculpture, as other women on my left and right side are placing plaster-cast cinder blocks on the plywood. This process will continue until I collapse under the weight of the blocks. The central channel will focus on my figure, with the left and right channels showing the other women going up the ladders. This process is mean to signify the progress of individual women and its impact on the continuing oppression and exploitation on women around the world.

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