[noemon]

Have you watched this film?

What is your take away from it?

I have raised this subject previously in the past as this film has been of particular interest to me.

I first watched it in Greece over 20 years ago when the Yugoslav wars were still fresh.

Slavoz Zizek dubbed "the most dangerous philosopher in the west" dubbed the film "the most dangerous film of all time".

I will kick start the thread with this essay on the film and the acrimonious relationship between the 2:

Neighbors
Where do Emir Kusturica and Slavoj Žižek meet in Underground (1995)?
VOL. 13 (JANUARY 2012) BY MORITZ PFEIFER

For those whose outstretched lawns do not make them feel as though they are living on an island, a neighbor usually lives close by. But even when the people next door pop up in multitudes, meaning that they are above, below, and next to one’s own dwelling, they usually remain unnoticed. Who constantly thinks about friendly egg-lending Mrs. Jones from 4A when she makes one feel as though one is home alone? Some neighbors though still tend to become noticeable as they gradually metamorphose into trampling elephants, second rate rock-stars, when they go on an onion soup diet or decide to move their furniture around at 3 am. Everyone has their own stories of how the feeling to be the king of one’s castle has to surrender to the tolerant policies of urban democracy. Even friendly egg-lending Mrs. Jones from 4A can be objectified to a despicable nuisance. She then loses her good qualities and is sanctioned through the depersonalized title ‘neighbor.’ The appellation ‘neighbor’ builds a home for abreactional release. It overwrites the human qualities of the people next door with the unpleasant feelings lodging in one’s own four walls. This is the neighbor’s trap: it makes one think that one’s civilized diners are lullabies compared to the full blown parties of the ‘neighbors.’

The Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica and the Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek are neighbors. This has not always been such. They were flatmates, so to speak, until the housing policies of their country – Yugoslavia – changed and an ideological wall started running through their Commune giving each of them a different address. Žižek was the first to file a complaint, because he was annoyed by one of the films his neighbor made, not long after the separation.

In 1995, at the end of the Bosnian war, Emir Kusturica finished Underground, a confusing survey of Yugoslavia’s twentieth century history. Underground is pervaded by a mixture of cynical desperation and apocalyptic hedonism. It is centered around the triangular relationship between two half-baked bandits, Blacky and Marko, and their mistress Natalija. The following essay tries to reread Kusturica’s film with the critique of Slavoj Žižek. First, I will outline his critique which reproves the film for being apolitical, claiming that it portrays an unreflected fascination for violence. Second, I will give a reinterpretation of this critique with the help of Žižek’s philosophy itself, and lastly I will argue that Žižek’s philosophy and Kusturica’s film have more in common than they (or at least Žižek) wants to admit.

Western Gaze

Žižek’s central point against Underground, is that the film sustains violent forms of politics through the disguise of apolitical poetry. For Žižek, Kusturica’s film wants to be innocent and free of ideological bias by simply manifesting unrestrained joy. Who wouldn’t understand the profound need for comedy after half a decade of day-to-day bloodshed? The downside of this apolitical attitude, however, is that there is no way for indifferent fun to escape responsibility. Not to have a political attitude is still a choice and in every choice survives a moral standpoint. For Žižek, the problem is not whether Kusturica’s film can be read as pro-Serbian propaganda or not, which was the claim of various critics. The real problem is that it refuses to be read as anything politically specific at all. In comparison to European politics though, the film is only a harmless copycat, as detached neutrality has become the hallmark of interventional politics and impartiality the dominant Western attitude towards their self-destructive neighbors.

The controversial bulk of debates Kusturica’s film triggered seem to prove Žižek’s point. From Alain Fienkelkraut’s claim that the film is Serbian brainwashing, André Glucksmann praising the film as an anti-totalitarian manifesto, to the scholarly accounts of Dina Iordanova et al. considering that the film is not so much for something as against something, against nationalism, corruption, mafianism etc. – the film’s readings are as inconsistent as the film itself. Indeed, it is impossible to tell whether to sympathize with Blacky and Marko or whether to despise them. Maybe everybody is victim and perpetrator at once, and surely nobody in this film actually does anything good. But while this conclusion helps benevolent academics to accept the film as a critique of the bad guys it portrays, Žižek’s argument seems to disagree. Being against something is too weak of a proposition. Being against murder is not the same as being for life. Above all, it doesn’t specify what kind of murder one is against – against ethnic cleansing or against killing the people that are engaged in ethnic cleansing, or both?

According to Žižek, this “inconsistency” reflects the same problem that the West had in making sense of the Bosnian War. Instead of identifying Serbian aggression as the outset of the war, Western politicians tried to resolve the conflict by stating that “all sides are equally to blame.”1 The NATO and the UN couldn’t clearly define their enemy, which led to humanitarian failures, for example when, in 1995, UN forces disarmed Bosnian soldiers in order to protect them in a ‘safe zone’ near the town of Srebrenica, thus making it easy for nearby Serbian military to kill them. Kusturica’s film thus not only reflects the odd political discourse of Western politics, but in not being Western itself, uncritically complies with it. Most of all, the film mirrors the (perverted) fascination the West has, watching other people execute themselves:

The main obstacle to peace in ex-Yugoslavia is not “archaic ethnic passions”, but the gaze of Europe fascinated by the spectacle of these passions.2

For Žižek, proclaiming neutrality in times of conflict is the ultimate tactic of the distant observer who secretly enjoys seeing other people’s horrors. The (perverted) observer stages these horrors. The paradox is that he passively participates without having to interfere, while actively profiting from a performance he does not want to end.

The Logic of Subversion

There are several problems with Žižek’s arguments against Underground. The first and most obvious one is that it is unclear why it would be impossible for Kusturica’s film to consciously stage the perverted “gaze” at the center of Žižek’s criticism. This would follow the standard argument that everything an artwork can provoke a posteriori, is in someway inherent to the artwork itself. The “Western gaze,” passively enjoying decades of massacre and warfare, could then no longer be seen as the film’s unconscious identification with that gaze, but could likely prove the artwork’s reflective version of it. But if it is possible for the gaze to reside within the work itself, there still remains one question: how do we know that it is conscious or not?

Žižek doesn’t ask that question, as he presumes that Kusturica’s film “unknowingly” reflects the position of those who enjoy the excessive destruction of post-Yugoslavia. In another part of The Plague of Fantasies, however, where parts of his critique against Underground can be found, Žižek seems to have a different opinion. There, in an analysis on the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber and the film Dune, he speaks of the “logic of subversion” as the possibility for an artwork to disobey what it displays through “inconsistency.” Up to this point, “undecidability”and “inconsistency” have been the major point of critique in Žižek’s argument against Underground, as the film didn’t invest in a clear definition of the aggressors responsible for the Bosnian Wars. But now, all of a sudden, these very characteristics of inconsistency are used to exemplify dimensions of subversive imitation. So instead of saying that being unable to define the authority through which one expresses oneself (for Underground the “Western gaze”), Žižek now argues that the display of that very authority “in all its inconsistency”3 has a subversive effect. How?

The argument of subversive inconsistency is based on the assumption that the confrontation of some accepted truth with its inherent falsity, might uncover lies, but doesn’t help anyone to come to terms with more fundamental truths of denial, self-aversion, bad conscious, etc. Žižek’s philosophical mission, of course, is not to search for truth, but for the fantasies that make truth possible. So instead of blinding oneself with the belief that a lie is truly false (i.e. that it never existed), the real task is not to display its “true” meaning, but to make visible the fantasy that sustains the lie. To take an example from Underground: there would be no point in discovering that the slaves working for Marko in the “underground” are actually not working for Tito’s “liberation” of Yugoslavia, which is precisely what happens in the end of the film, when one of them, Marko’s brother Ivan, is told that World War II is over, that Tito is dead, etc. In order to truly understand Ivan’s situation it would be more useful to ask : what made Ivan believe in the different reality in the first place?

Thus Ivan’s alter ego, the ape that accompanies him, tells us more about this fantasy than the “moment of truth,” when he finds out who kept him in the cellar for forty years. But the crucial point of subversive inconsistency is that the ape alone cannot provide insight into the self-enslaving fantasy Ivan is a victim of. This is why exaggeration in itself is not necessarily subversive. The emblem of Marko’s arms trade also figures the image of an ape, so there would be no point in “imitating” the same exaggerations the authority that keeps him locked in also uses.4 In the end, Ivan regresses into this phantasmic exaggeration, practically turning into an ape (later in the film, we can even see Ivan on a tree). So the only possibility for Ivan to become aware of this fantasy would be to change his subject-position, and identify with something radically different. If, for example, he would identify with Blacky’s “liberating” aspirations (who is also kept underground), while at the same time assuming the position of the ape, the inconsistency of being a “locked-in liberator” would make him aware of his phantasmic bond. (Ironically, the ape goes through this process, using the tank to break free). The same goes for Blacky. If Blacky could identify with the ape, thinking at the same time that he is a real revolutionary, he might be able to drop his phantasmic revolutionary zeal. To become inconsistent, is to establish the proper distance towards oneself and others from where it is possible to change. Thus Ivan’s problem is not that he doesn’t know the truth about the authority who keeps him a cage (Tito’s Yugoslavia, or Marko’s criminal organization). It is his own personality he is unaware of.

If Žižek’s argument on subversive inconsistency applies, “undecidability” would be Kusturica’s only choice to bring to light the underlying fantasy of the “the Western gaze.” Žižek’s critique of the “Western gaze” applies to the Bosnian War, which takes place at the end of Kusturica’s film. It is not hard to find explicit inconsistency in these scenes, for example when two French UN-soldiers mediate between Marko, who has become a war profiteer, and an arms dealer. The French UN-soldiers say:

“Restez tranquille. Les Serbes tuent les Croates, les Croates tuent les Serbes. N’ayez pas peur.” (Stay calm. The Serbs kill the Croats, the Croats kill the Serbs. Don’t be afraid.)

So here is the voice of Žižek’s phantasmic kernel: the West’s incapability to find someone responsible for the war (“les Serbes tuent les Croates, les Croates tuent les Serbes”) as well as their awkward joviality in front of massacres (“restez tranquille,” “n’ayez pas peur”). But the advice “restez tranquille” is a tautology, since nobody is panicking as bombs fall and dead bodies cover the wartorn landscape. Indeed, both Blacky and Marko are as “calm” and “fearless” as one can be. Marko advises the arms dealer not to scream and to talk in a “civilized way” and Blacky acts as though he is invincible. Both characters are obvious exaggerations of what Žižek calls Balkanism: identity clichés such as seeing the Serb as “invincible Warriors.”5 Just a couple of moments later, another UN-soldier asks Blacky on what side and for whom he is fighting, trying to stop him from sending prisoners of war into a “well.” But Blacky refuses to identify with any of the terms the soldier uses (Ustasha, Chetnik, partisan), simply saying that he is Petar Popara Blacky. The “inconsistency” of the UN-soldiers is thus displayed. It is precisely the undecided position of at once calmly watching a war for the mere pleasure of watching (“restez tranquille”), trying to find nationalistic “reasons” for the war (“what are you?”) and trying to end it (“I protest sir!”).

Ironically then, what Blacky says to the UN soldier is true: “comrade.” Like allies, they are both involved in the same paradoxical phantasmic chain: the UN-soldiers protesting while comfortably watching, the Ustashas-Chetniks-partisans each constructing their national identity while passionately destroying it. “Inconsistency” is again displayed here, as one and the same person occupies multiple inconsistent meanings. The only obstacle that keeps these characters from subverting their position, is that they are not able to identify with these inconsistent meanings. Does not the refusal of the UN-soldier in accepting Blacky’s address, and Blacky refusal to be called “sir,” reveal the mutual identity they both repress? Both Blacky and the UN-officer seek symbolic justification for what Žižek would call “interpassive” aggression. So while they might stay consistent in front of themselves, it is impossible not to notice these contradictions for the spectator. In that sense, Kusturica’s film is subversive in Žižek’s sense of the term. The “perverted” gaze of the West that Žižek defined as one of the war’s main problems is revealed precisely through means of contradicting identificatory positions.

Until now, this interpretation of Undergound has only taken into consideration themes from the film’s plot and characters to show that most of the things Žižek considered as lacking in Underground, can very well be found. The other half of Žižek’s critique is a formal one. Kusturica’s film is full of references, irony and other postmodern stylistic devices. The problem with such an aesthetic is that it refuses true identification with a cause. Irony and most of all remakes or retakes of already existing films are, in a way, the expressive means of someone who doesn’t want to risk his or her own sweat and blood. With this criticism (form follows function) Žižek can return to the Bosnian War and his conception of the Western pervert who prefers to keep a distance, all the while pretending that he is actually involved.

The problem of subversive inconsistency, is of course, that it can only work via reference to already existing (subjective) structures. It has already been shown, that a fantasy can only be displayed if the subject caught in that fantasy is able to distance himself from his own position within that fantasy. The very mechanism of subversive inconsistency is thus that of self-distance. The UN-soldier can only perceive himself as “a pervert” (provided that this is the case) if he is able to distance himself from the “fantasy” that he is there to help. In other words, he would have to accept being a “comrade” (i.e. with an already existing subjective structure) who, like Blacky, enjoys watching people being send into a well (which his comrades in the scene before do for him).

Self-distance does therefore not necessarily neutralize true moral engagement. Is not the moment in that the subject perceives his own inconsistency also his only opportunity to choose: to continue to believe in the fantasy or to subvert from an inconsistent (distanciated) subject-position?

Neighbors

As stylistic devices, self-reference and distanciation are therefore only phantasmic when they repeat themselves invariably, when they remain consistent in regards of their own identificatory position. A good example for this kind of repetition can be seen in a scene in the last part of the film, where Kusturica plays the role of an arms dealer, selling weapons to Marko who has become a war profiteer. This scene recalls Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun, where the director also has the cameo of a smuggler. The only point of the scene in Kusturica’s film, except to show that Marko is still trying to gain profit from no matter what historical constellation, is to pay tribute to Fassbinder. It works as a kind of citational simile. Citational similes are very common in everyday language, for example when in a dialog, one is suddenly reminded of some scene from popular culture, as from films, comic books or TV-shows. Everybody who has excessively followed one or more TV-shows, knows that it turns many real-life experiences into deja-vus, where the present has a hard time to exists without involuntary allusions to past fictional counterparts.

So I would agree with Žižek that citationality and referentiality are somehow less conscious stimulating experiences. If one can only see the world in self-same variations, things like change, subversion, shift or simply just doubt seem impossible. The political implication of this argument is clear: on the one hand, it is impossible to see things from a different perspective, on the other hand, it is impossible to take the full responsibility for one’s own doings. It is important to note, however, that the so-called process of self-distance, admired in works that dispute authorship, and acknowledge the fact most writing is inspired in some way or another – collage, pastiche, mosaic –, is in reality not distanciating at all. Why would anybody call images and sentences structured in x-is-like-y grammar, where x is what one wants to say, and y is what someone else already said, distanciating when they are built upon likeness, not difference? The word distance is irritating. Repetition is the process of returning to something already heard. Citational similes repeat, they don’t alter.

Ironically though, Žižek is the master of citational similes. No philosopher likes the word “like” as much as Žižek, and no philosopher draws as much on pop cultural references to illustrate complex philosophical arguments (of Marx, Hegel or Lacan). The point of these references, however, is not so much to subvert an already existing theoretical thought but to make philosophy applicable, and to show that it has quite a lot in common with everyday life. Without a doubt, no argument can get by without illustration, and maybe the hard-to-follow-because-too-theoretical schools (of Derrida & Co) might be one of the reason for philosophers like Žižek to have reintroduced the example as a rhetoric device. More than often though, these examples have a lot in common with the theory-dropping of his predecessors. Žižek’s never ending examples also try to look at an argument from every possible point of view without producing a real perspective shift. This paradox of the so called self-distanciating reference that never changes its position can be very well observed in Žižek’s overabundant use of the expression “in other words” (ie. Plague of Fantasies, pp. 30,32). The irony is of course that there is nothing ‘other’ following these words. Žižek, even though fond of Hegel, is not the least concerned with the most basic concept of dialectics, as his associative reminiscences never have enough courage to produce an antithesis.

“This is like the old joke…” is one of Žižek’s preferred citational interventions. Everyone who has read some of his works probably knows this or similar cuts, where a train of thought gets re-explained through a well-known witticism. The same technique can be observed in Underground. Kusturica said that “in Underground, that when you translate jokes [into cinema] exactly as they are told by people, it is very effective.”6 Kusturica, like Žižek constantly uses jokes, proverbs or common expressions to illustrate plot and characters. Ivan’s ape, and his own apish behavior (Majmun!) are examples for this. “Even the famous finale, inclusive of all its grand metaphors about Yugoslavia’s break-up and isolation, is nothing else but the visual translation of the street-wise comment: ‘Our land crumbled!’ (‘Pukla nam zemlja!’).7

So this is where Kusturica and Žižek meet. Žižek’s complaint about Kusturica’s citational fuck-fest (“drinking-eating-singing-fornicating”) can be sent back to his own referential chamber from where he tears the illustrative noise that accompanies his writing. Žižek and Kusturica are thus like neighbors, quick in moaning about the other’s annoying flaws, and blind about the fact those that others could ever be disturbed by their own behavior. Indeed, Žižek’s formal critique against Underground perfectly applies to his own philosophical manners. Thus either Žižek’s argument on distance is flawed or he has to be considered apolitical himself. If one decides that not everything that is happening in Underground can be reduced to a gratuitous bulk of repeating citations, then one also has to recognize Žižek’s excursions into Hollywood as providing some insight beyond the tautological. If, on the other hand, one accepts Žižek’s premise that there is some kind of loss of involvement/awareness at stake in using figures of speech external to one’s own expressive sphere, then one cannot just oversee that Žižek’s own philosophical writing is full of these figures of speech, of citational similes.

Distance is crucial to an awareness-based experience, and the so-called distance perceived in citational variations has, in fact, more in common with solipsism and staying in one’s own four walls than with alienation or insight. Politically speaking, there seems to be no harm in identifying with an aggressor – and as a result, experience some sort of distance towards one’s own non-aggressive identity. As long as one doesn’t turn into the aggressor, identification remains crucial for the capacity to know/become aware of what an aggressor is. In a similar way, there is also no harm in looking for ever more variations of one’s own non-aggressive position, thus strengthening one’s own position, not moving away from it. I think it is obvious that Underground explores both of these possibilities. But most of the time, things are not as black and white. One can be subversive, ie. become completely distanced towards something, and yet still over-identify with it. Loyalty only makes sense through change. It was Lacan who famously insisted upon being called a Freudian…

Fantasies are not always “unknowingly” portrayed. Most of the fantasies in Underground are pretty straight-forward, and on top of that repeatedly varied. In the scene with the UN-soldier, Kusturica’s film dealt very explicitly with the fantasy that Žižek thought to reside in the deepest spheres of the filmmaker’s soul. To look for fantasies is not immune to turn itself into a fantasy. The neighbor’s trap becomes a fantasy, when one starts to hear music, imagining wild parties next door although the suspected neighbor is actually on vacation.

[Odiseizam]

@noemon and whats Your take away? it seam that offering critic to Zizeks stance is some agreement with the critic!? Zizek is just maybe too bemused how his neighbours praise this film so he engaged himself in bashing mode just to thwart any future underground talk in his presence, definetly he is not so stupid not to see that the main plot is Manipulation, Kosturica as bosnian with pro-yugoslav mindset was thinking how to portray the new nationalism that was on rise in ex-yu-republics, predominately to revert if possible the serb nationalism that was not still officially institutionalized i.e. Serbia stayed long after the dissolution of ex-titos-Yu in Yugoslavia [1] the plot could be seen also vice'versa i.e. everyone ehot out Serbia still stayed in Yugoslavia, but as could be seen from the emirs comments its obvious that is antinationalistic motive behind the movie, maybe antielitist protest to milosevic reign and the constant war reality in '90s where all world moved on but Serbia stayed still hostage to YNA after all think exactly coz that Serbia didnt went imideatly independent i.e. so it would keep the arms of YNA instead sharing it with rest ex-yu-republics ...

Manipulation has always been Kusturica's topic.
...
Manipulation is a primordial idea in the film: how to convince people to do what they are expected to do, how to decipher that a lie gives the illusion of reality. Underground is undeniably connected to my feelings for the lost country, but it is also a film that has a more general dimension.
...
My movie is precisely rising up against every form of propaganda, against every political government that uses propaganda, against manipulation. After all, in Belgrade, the reactions were very diverse. Some saw an anti-Serbian film in my movie because the heroes are not extremely good Serbs. However, certain intellectuals treated me as pro-Serbian.
...
http://www.yurope.com/yuqwest/SIGs/film/filmovi/kusturica.3.html

think now what has left from the movie is the soundtrack, those song are still dominant wedding party titles not just in Serbia but whole ex-yu, now even with greater exaltation coz coke or speedball aperitifs! as I can see its becoming greek hype too ...

https://youtu.be/bhhWKBwMFXk

https://youtu.be/V5mW-Fwh93M

https://youtu.be/0At5gQAF1Vw

[noemon]

The film is absolutely outrageous, it makes you cry and laugh at the same time. It is one my favourite films of all time. Extremely powerful, very symbolic.

I think Blackie is Serbia, Marko is Croatia and the girl can be many things.

Yugoslavia perhaps or even Bosnia. I have not watched the film in some time now but I listen to the soundtrack and Bregovic's music in general often.

I have always wanted to hear Yugoslavian interpretations of the film.

[Odiseizam]

hm maybe I am wrong, maybe Kosturica was then in nationalistic mood, yet as plot gives You room to interpret whether the manipulation is about all ex-yu or just Serbia, knowing that its filmed later when Croatia is already independent its obvious that is serbian topic in question, so it could be seen as pronationalistic or proyugoslavian topic depending who would put where in the story ...

yeah the soundtrack is balkan brass manifesto of the previous bregovic gypsy ethno crossovers, but cant find interview how those lyrics were coined, and whether they workt on them together ... but think what is legacy is the Kalashnjikov piece that now is probably third world anthem among rebels, so from music aspect the end result would be loosen cheerful violent propaganda ...

https://gypsy-music.net/fr/releases/releases-a-z/190-goran-bregovic-music-inspired-and-taken-from-underground-album-info

https://youtu.be/yZcO4B5kDu8

[Odiseizam]

when one will take the artistic vibe of both emirK and goranB as balkan blueprint, even just ex-yu one i.e. western balkans, its obvious that altho they are talented in respect of their craftsmanship in their arts, stil misusing the gypsy tone at best they are opportunists that altho are promotors of the Roma existence here, stil they are offending their tradition in extra blatant way, eventually ridiculing all ex-yu people like forgotten and left behind by their destiny, but doing it so through the gypsy tone that is more than racist i.e. commercialized latent racism wrapped in loosen artistic manner on which even decades later people will cheer through the underground ost as I said sadly but on weddings too, for them what matters is the melody after all [1] simply he have stolen the gipsy misfortune and presented it as artistic one, what many do, but deep in it is irony of exploitation one ethnic group for own gains, maybe if wasnt for the movie I would take different stance, but in package like this, to me is almost as kalashnikov premise in La vita è bella !

I dont blame them it was twilight time that asked the Roma True Vibe to resurface somehow i.e. their Brass Bands are indeed electrifying and boost refreshing happiness even in twilight zone, making their way out not just to balkan and european audience by this Underground package by goranB and emirK was maybe cymatic need for many if not all balkan people, Emir&Goran were just unintentional catalisators , altho they are just exponents of the past ex-yu transition when first they found way how to profit, people wanted capitalism so they got it, but after all in all the dull atmosphere coz the last balkan wars somehow pointed that someone had have long time miserable life as community or ethnicity that the rest started to felt it just recently, in a way showed them hey Life Goes On look to the Roma they cheer and love life despite they dont have nothing ...

Those capitalizing most on the type of Romani music promoted in the Guca Festival are, of course, Emir Kusturica and Goran Bregovic. Both men are much debated and highly controversial figures, particularly within the former Yugoslav region where they are admired and loathed at the same time. Both are, for example, applauded for international success in their respective fields of artistry but simultaneously denounced “for promoting a version of the Balkans that corroborates centuries–old stereotypes” (Markovic 2013, pp. 8–9). Relatedly, both men are praised as the artists who have helped revive widespread interest in the rich music–cultural heritage of the region.

However, at the same time, they are accused of adjusting it to a decidedly Western sensibility and thus of trivializing it for their personal advantage, economic and otherwise. Kusturica and Bregovic are additionally thanked for having opened the door to numerous musicians from the Balkans, above all to Serbia’s Romani brass bands. Then again, there is simultaneously a gnawing sense that the latter are left with little space for creative maneuvering due to the audience’s already formed expectations about Balkan images and sounds (see Markovic 2013).18

Furthermore, some of Goran Bregovic’s greatest hits, namely, “Kalašnjikov” Kalashnikov]
and “Mesecina” [Moonlight], are appropriated tunes from such Serbian Romani musicians as Boban Markovic, Slobodan Salijevic, and Šaban Bajramovic (Babic 2004, pp. 239–41; Markovic 2013, pp. 146–51). According to their testimonies, the cooperation with Bregovic left them with a bitter taste in their mouth (see also Ðor ¯devic: 10 September 2014 interview; Silverman 2012, pp. 275–76). As noted by Markovic (2013, p. 147), a specialist in Bregovic’s music, “[e]ven if they were acknowledged as authors or paid a one-off fee for collaborating on the CD production (as is standard practice in recording business), some artists felt deceived, as they were never paid royalties for the countless live performances subsequently given by Bregovic.” However, there is surely more to the grievances of Romani musicians than the simple sense of economic injustice. As Romani trumpet player Slobodan Salijevic (in Babic 2004, p. 240) stated once, “[a]t the end of the day, it is Goran Bregovic that travels [and plays] around the world, [while] the Salijevics are nowhere. There is no single mention of them.”
Clearly, matters such as popularity, artistic prestige, and credibility seem to carry just as much weight in these disputes

...

In defense against public charges of Romani exploitation, Bregovic presents himself and behaves as if he is one of them or at least as if he is on their side. As Markovic (ibid., p. 230) observes, “his identification with Gypsies ( ... ) span[s] from joyful camaraderie to overt physical transformation into a prototypical dark–skinned Gypsy.” Moreover, Bregovic deploys the Gypsy voice and image for many purposes—to
justify his ethically dubious compositional techniques (recycling and collage), to explain his multi-sited “nomadic” living caused by the recent Yugoslav wars, and to claim authenticity in the presentation of his Balkan Beat production and his stage persona (ibid.).

Kusturica (in Živanovic 2011) defends himself in a similar manner, by declaring the Romani world to be an integral part of his childhood experience as well as of who he is today. In his own words: “And where else am I supposed to draw energy and disperse
[my creative] doubts but in a world that I know and love!? I grew up alongside a Romani settlement, became friends with Gypsies, and already as a kid, got to know their music. I was living out the life from my movies” (ibid., p. 6).

The blurred lines between the Balkan nations and the region’s Romani minority in Bregovic’s and Kusturica’s artistic work seem to correspond with the ambivalent feelings with which Romani people are received by the Serb population in general. Just as elsewhere in Europe and the world beyond, Serbia’s Romanies occupy a continuum between extreme disparaging and romanticizing (Hancock 2007; Silverman 2012; Živkovic 2001). The label “Gypsy” accordingly carries contradictory meanings. Within the Yugoslav/post-Yugoslav context, the term is often used pejoratively and in a recursive manner (similar to the term “Balkan”), operating thereby “as a metonymic signifier for
everything that is considered to be a weaker, debased item in dichotomies” (Živkovic 2001, p. 89; see also van de Port 1999). This is the reason why a substantial segment of the Serbian public blames Kusturica and Bregovic for creating abroad an apparently misleading image of Serbs as Gypsies (cf. Imre 2005; Jansen 2001). Disclosed here is nothing less than scorn for the Romani minority, whose status as racialized Others in Serbian society has been duly noted and already discussed in terms of the ever-present polarization between the Guca Festival’s “white” and “black” brass bands.
...
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/9/2/52/pdf

[noemon]

hm maybe I am wrong, maybe Kosturica was then in nationalistic mood, yet as plot gives You room to interpret whether the manipulation is about all ex-yu or just Serbia, knowing that its filmed later when Croatia is already independent its obvious that is serbian topic in question, so it could be seen as pronationalistic or proyugoslavian topic depending who would put where in the story ...

If Blackie is Serbia and Marko is Croatia, then Kusturica is saying that Serbia is crazy, Croatia hypocritical and Natalija whom they share(probably Yugoslavia) is a femme fatale.

when one will take the artistic vibe of both emirK and goranB as balkan blueprint, even just ex-yu one i.e. western balkans, its obvious that altho they are talented in respect of their craftsmanship in their arts, stil misusing the gypsy tone at best they are opportunists that altho are promotors of the Roma existence here, stil they are offending their tradition in extra blatant way,

Gypsy Romani people in Greece that I know personally are very proud and happy of Bregovic popularising their music.

I think you are just setting yourself up to post more victimisation stuff about yourself & Slavomacedonia.

He duels, he brawls, he helps cows to give birth ... and he makes films
Serbian director Emir Kusturica talks to Fiachra Gibbons about politics, his art - and the war

When he's not brawling on the streets of Belgrade with men who make Arkan look like Mary Poppins, challenging people to duels, or playing in Serbian rock bands, Emir Kusturica is winning the Palme D'Or at Cannes.

No other director has ever won it twice, not even Fellini. Kusturica idolises, maybe even fancies himself as a Fellini. But the pudgy little Italian would never have had the balls to be Emir Kusturica.

Few would. It is no exaggeration to say that a lot of people would like to see the maker of Underground and The Time Of The Gyspies dead. He is, in fact, lucky to be alive. In 1993 he challenged Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Radical party, now part of Milosevic's government, to a duel. He said it should be in the heart of Belgrade, at high noon, with the weapon of his choosing. Seselj refused, saying he "he didn't want to be accused of the murder of an artist". Two years later he punched Nebojsa Pajkic, leader of the equally bloodcurdling New Serbian Right movement, to the ground. Pajkic's wife battered Kusturica with her handbag, a gift from her "dear friend" Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs who is now wanted for war crimes.

The feuds do not end with his political opponents. Many have been with former friends. "Kusturica is the greatest traitor to Bosnia," one told me. Another said he was a "war criminal, a Chetnik arselicker, a puppet of Milosevic... It makes me puke to think of him." The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy even made a film to attack him. "You will not find anyone in Sarajevo with a good word for him," he said.

I did. Several actually. All spoke of his courage, his integrity and his temper. "He is no one's puppet, least of all Milosevic's," said a former colleague from Sarajevo TV. "People who say that are blind with hatred. He has always gone his own way. He has a powerful sense of humour. You know, it is so sharp it frightens, that's why he makes enemies."

The survivors of his exhausting shoots are equally divided. "Emir kills himself for his films. And if you work for him he will kill you too." He has had at least one breakdown; more a burn-out actually, during the making of his brilliant but shambolic American debut, Arizona Dreams. Kusturica is a man perpetually on the point of combustion.

We met the day Nato bombed the convoys of Kosovan refugees and blamed it on the Serbs. I toyed for a moment with the idea of not mentioning the war when he barrelled in, a great bearded bear with a half-chewed cigar sticking out of his mouth like a Balkan Castro. You can see him carrying a Kalashnikov as easily as a camera until you look into his eyes. They are the largest, softest, brown eyes I've ever seen on a man. There is something sad and very vulnerable in them. If I were a woman, I'd have gone weak at the knees.

So tell me, how does it feel to belong to the most hated nation on earth - after the English, of course. A plate smashed on to the floor behind us. He didn't laugh. Instead his head dropped into his hands. "Terrible, terrible, terrible! I think this might be the end of the world, you know. Tell me, why bomb bridges?

"Listen, my heart cannot resist these Albanian refugees, the pictures of fathers, mothers and crying kids, but I also had my heart broken watching Serbian refugees leaving Croatia. Nearly half a million of them were kicked out of Knin and Krajina, with American backing, in one weekend. And do you know what Le Monde called it? 'Self-motivated ethnic cleansing'. There is a human level here that is being ignored.

"It is incredible. Nato didn't help the Albanians and they have only strengthened Milosevic. This Robin Fook. Who is this Robin Gook?... 'We don't want your Serb crocodile tears about the attack on the convoys,' he was saying on the news today. The English nation are a gentle nation, whom I greatly admire, but this man is a small, hairy muppet. How can you let him represent you?"

I tell him that despite his gnomic looks, Cook is considered a Casanova. "You mean women want to have sex with him? How could they take him into their beds? What kind of women have you in England? I would rather go with a goat." And he laughs his great soft laugh. "I'm sorry, I do not mean to be disrespectful," and he waves his hand like an apologetic pasha.

Kusturica is a former Sarajevan rocker and TV satirist, of mixed Serb and Muslim blood, who clings to forlorn hope of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Kusturica is embarrassed by his reputation, but unapologetic. "I am very impulsive and very stupid sometimes, but I am very clean." He's not just passionate - there is a generosity of thought and spirit about him.

"My son [a pop star, who played at the concerts in Belgrade to defy the bombing] is now a big Serb because of Nato, but there is not the blood of one nation of Yugoslavia that does not flow through him. The stupid thing is that Serbia is the only one which is multi-ethnic. Most of the rest are ethnically-cleansed mini-states. Not a single Serb survives in Croatia. And now the cowboys are killing us. Nearly 40%, you know, are not Serbs - Croats, Hungarians, Muslims, Greeks."

I say there are a lot less Albanians now. "That is Milosevic. Serbia is not Milosevic, although Nato are now turning him into a saint. The west have made him into this Orwellian character and they try to play Orwellian games with him. But Milosevic can only play at being a Slav, or a peasant. They are turning him into Tito who stood up to Stalin in 1948. And, of course, we have this problem in us that we like resisting. The Serbs are not a nation of murderers. They have contributed so much to western culture; Nobel prizes, five world champion basketball teams, and what about the physicist Nikola Tesla? His work on the ionosphere made it possible for Cruise missiles now to drop on Belgrade.

"You know, I have a friend, Milo Djukanovic [the president of Montenegro], who we democrats have great hopes of against Milosevic, but the bombs have minimised him. But you know the cowboys, they must win. I was reading an article by an American Democratic senator who said the war was a big mistake, it should never have happened - but we must win!

"I live in Normandy, and the next day I was helping a cow give birth. She couldn't do it herself. I had to pull it out. I wondered what kind of world is it that a cow has to be helped to do the most natural thing. Are we like that cow that we cannot think for ourselves any more? All we are are good receptors to the new religion of Hollywood and CNN. I am very scared. And I don't know if I can stay here and pay taxes for bombs to be dropped on my son."

We are in the darkened corner of an empty room at the back of Paris's oldest Jewish restaurant. Portraits of long-dead rabbis and their beards stare out of the gloom, reproaching us. I wonder for a while if he is trying to draw down the mantle of the Holocaust on his own people.

But does Kusturica have a people any more? "You don't know what the war did to a mixed family like mine. I started moving towards Serbia when I felt my country, Yugoslavia, was being taken away from me. My feeling of nationality was not as strong as those around me who were attaching themselves to these absurb new entities... And, of course, I could not speak Bosnian," he drawls. Bosnian, like Croat, is an artificial creation, presently being "purified" of anything that smacks of the old Serbo-Croat. The mortar attack on the marketplace in Sarajevo was the turning point for him. Kusturica claims it was self-inflicted to bring the west into the war. "I rang one of my friends and he said, 'I don't know who is worse, the Serbs shelling us from the mountains, or the Muslims defending us.' It was like we were tearing out our limbs as well as our brains."

Which is why his "betrayal" is so bitterly felt in his home town and why he will always be seen by some as a lackey of Belgrade. "I am not trying to say I'm a genius, but Underground was the strongest attack there has been on Milosevic. It is about a man who locks his friends in a cellar for 40 years and convinces them that the war is still going on. He uses them, but they still think he is a great guy. And this was shown in every cinema in Serbia."

It is to the gypsies he now feels his greatest attachment. "They are the most despised and the free-est people of all. They are hated equally by everybody, yet they have no prejudices themselves. They call their kids after communists and after John F Kennedy. They are medieval but they have mobile phones. I love them, they hold my heart."

Gypsies feature in several of his films, including the latest, a rip-roaring comedy called Black Cat, White Cat. Again, he has been attacked for making a comedy while Milosevic was still in power. I loved it. So did Guardian critic Jonathan Romney. "Every time it slacks for a second someone throws in a goat and several geese," Romney said. Or someone tries unsuccessfuly to hang themselves - a motif of his work. Why? "I had a teacher in Prague who told me you tell a good movie from a bad one by the fact that in good ones every character looks like they are running out of gravity. I thought, why don't I really make people levitate, like Chagall?" he says, pointing to the nodding rabbis. "That is why maybe I'm a troublemaker making movies, because each shot has to be for me an original. It murders me."


In the flesh, he is like one of his wild heroes, only more so - part god, part peasant, part philosopher. Throw in the psychopath and he'd be the perfect well-rounded Slav, as he might say. And it is the Slav mind that really worries him. The Russian one in particular. "I am shit scared where this will all end. As Bismark says, Italy always betrays and Russia always comes late. Russia to me is now like a beggar. In one hand it has nuclear weapons, in the other a begging bowl. If it all blows, it will be from an irrational thing."

When I bring up his most recent feud, with the Serb director Goran Paskalgevic, thunder breaks over his face and he looks like all of the great Slav bogeymen rolled into one, from Rasputin to Ivan the Terrible. It is only then that I notice the scar twitch under his right eye. Paskalgevic claims Kusturica tried to stop his film Powderkeg, about a day in the life of Belgrade, from being shown at the Venice Film Festival. Kusturica admits to a bit of gamesmanship but says this was "only after he started attacking me at every turn, accusing me of being a mouthpiece of Milosevic just to get attention for himself. I did not try to stop his film. I simply told the producer we shared that he would have to choose between me and that jerk in future.

"You know, the world is full of assholes. Paskalgevic is one. Here in France we have Bernard-Henri Levy. He is a vulture. He is now somewhere safe near Kosovo being a 'witness'. I think he was dying to be a witness at Clinton's meeting with Lewinsky in the Oval Office."

The girl from Renault wants him to wind up. He's making an advert. "I have to live. My films don't make a lot of money and since the war I have a lot of people to support." He doesn't want to go. Two thoughts have been bothering him. "You know, with the billions they have spent on the war so far they could have taken every Albanian and Serb in Kosovo to the Bahamas, and they could have listened to some reggae, sang, drank, fucked and be happy. Our industry and economy could have been rebuilt and everyone would have kissed each other." Then his head drops into his hands again. "Kosovo is where the Battle Of the Field Of The Blackbirds happened. The Serbs sacrificed themselves to save Europe from the Turks. It was inconclusive, and many lives were lost on both sides. I fear this will happen again."

He gets up and gives out a sigh: "I am never going to make another interview. And I feel with the war I should not make another film." I tell him he has threatened that before but still came back for more. I tell him I can't wait to see his new film - which he has yet to start - DM Thomas's sprawling White Hotel, from Dennis Potter's script. "But I'm serious this time," he says, looking genuinely hurt. "Remember the next time you go to war," he says finally, stretching out his shovel of a hand to me, "please get a better looking foreign minister."

And he sticks his stogie back in his mouth and smiles the cheesiest grin. "And the next time you want someone to write against me in the Guardian, let me do it. I am my best enemy."

Emir Kusturica is hated by 2 individuals with a passion by Slavoz Zizek and Bernard Henry Levy.

‘Oofff, ŽIŽEK!’ he roars. ‘Žižek comes from Slovenia, a country with no philosophical tradition’. This is evidence, in his eyes, of political correctness gone mad. Žižek, according to Kusturica, is only popular due to his YouTube-friendly rants. ‘This is what you need in the west, always somebody modern… but there is nothing underneath.’ Besides, he's got be a crank, insists Kusturica, ‘he says my movie is the worst movie ever made on the planet! How can [my films] be the worst in the world when there are Bernard-Henri Lévy’s movies? Even if I accept my movies are the worst movies in the world, there is Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is for sure worse.’ I laugh in agreement.

When he was invited by Turkey to be a judge in the Antalya festival, this happened:

The criticism of Kusturica was started by an organization called the Turkish-Bosnian Cultural Federation as soon as Kusturica was announced as a jury member.[81] Turkish media reported that Kusturica repeatedly downplayed the number of people killed and the rape of Muslim women during the war.[80] The daily newspaper Milliyet said Kusturica denied the allegations.[80]

Kusturica later commented on the incident:
I did receive a sincere apology from the mayor of Antalya Mustafa Akaydın over what happened. Essentially, I became collateral damage in the ongoing political fight between the central powers from the ruling coalition in Istanbul and the municipal authorities in Antalya where the local power is held by a social-democrat party. But regardless of everything, this is completely unacceptable on a basic level – when you're an invited guest somewhere, your hosts simply cannot behave in this manner. And this run-in I had was with a part of Turkish society, the part that consists of highly-evolved primates. I am not a politician and I'm not obliged to comment on and dissect every crime or genocide around the world. And then I got very angry and I told them if they're so sensitive about genocide it would be much better for them to publicly condemn the genocide they committed against the Armenian people, before having a go at me with accusatory statements. I clearly condemned the crimes in Bosnia, but the 'problem' is that I condemned the crimes committed by all sides, which makes me incompatible with the strategy they have for Bosnia.[84]