Mateja Sin c ic PhD candidate IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca (Italy)

1. Women under (Domi) nation: The Manipulationof Gender Imageryin Former Yugoslavia (Makavejev’s, Draskovic’s and Zilnik’s film contributions) Manchester, 23-25 May 2013"Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism in European Media and Film: Rights, Responsibilities, Representations" MatejaSincic PhD candidate IMTInstitute for Advanced Studies Lucca (Italy)

2. Outline • Research Question • Gendered Symbolism: from Supra Nationalism to Super Nationalism • From Sexual Freedom to Rape and Alienation: Makavejev (WR: The Mysteries of the Organism, 1971) Draskovic(VukovarPosteRestante, 1994) Zilnik (Marble Ass, 1995) • In Lieu of a Conclusion

3. Research Question • How the passage from a supra national idea, embodied in Yugoslavia’s “brotherhood and unity” to a super nationalistic one, depicted in the aggressive purity of the ethnosin the Nineties, affected the creation and manipulation of gender imagery? • How and to what extent the success of nationalism was linked to the repression of sexuality and gender inequality?

4. Gendered Symbolism: from Supra Nationalism to Super Nationalism • The Yugoslav system: progressive legal rights for women but no gender equality (Ramet, S 1999) • The outbreak of the 1990s wars marked a stronger political marginalization of women (Kesic, O 1999) • Influential role of the aggressive, nationalist male elites • Women’s bodies became everybody's business (Kesic, V 2003) • “Women as icons of nationhood, to be elevated and defended, or, denigrated and disgraced” (Enloe, C 1990)

5. Gendered Symbolism: from Supra Nationalism to Super Nationalism • Gender and nationalism are strongly correlated: distinction between “us” and “them” (Yuval Davis, N 1997) • Women as “objectified others” (Papic, Z 1994) • Women: symbols of national purity • The purity of ethnical reproduction: vital for the existence of the nation (Kligman and Gal, 2000) • An assault of women’s bodies: assault on the nation (Mostov, J 2000) • Women under hiber-nation rather than domi-nation?

6. Gendered Symbolism: from Supra Nationalism to Super Nationalism Nationalism and gender imagery: • Construction of nationalistic propaganda: women as symbols of national purity • Need for national diversification: women as symbolical boundaries of the nation • Nationalism escalates in warfare: women as material borders of the nations

7. From Sexual Freedom to Rape and Alienation:Makavejev’s, Draskovic’s and Zilnik’s contributions “WR: MisterijeOrganizma” (WR: The Mysteries of the Organism, 1971) • Socialism , “must not exclude human sensual pleasures from its programme” • Praying for equality and free love, “only by liberating both love and labour can we create a self-regulating worker’s society” • On Hitler’s picture: “Look at these women, those stupid cows, those slaves. They love (...) honour (...) and obey authority” • Challenging the centre and the traditional structures of power, the emancipated women dies (Parvulescu, C 2009)

8. From Sexual Freedom to Rape and Alienation:Makavejev’s, Draskovic’s and Zilnik’s contributions “Vukovar,JednaPrica” (VukovarPosteRestante, 1994) • Amplification of the dimension of the “other” • Top-down manipulations which destroy everything, even love • “We're no longer fat or thin, smart or mysterious; we're either Croats or Serbs” • A raped Croat or Serb woman stood for a raped Croatia or Serbia (Kesic, V 2003) • “Vukovar is becoming a graveyard” • Sudden amnesia: from “brotherhood and unity” to violence and rape

9. From Sexual Freedom to Rape and Alienation:Makavejev’s, Draskovic’s and Zilnik’s contributions “Dupe odMramora” (Marble Ass, 1995) • Transgender: Zilnik emphasizes the constructed nature of gender identities (Moss, K 2008) • Merlinka’s mission: women’s protection and “Balkan pacification” • “People from the battlefields brought fridges, Mercedeses and gold while my Johnny brought home a destroyed cupboard” • Merlinka: “Me a whore? I'm a nurse, a saint. I've saved a lot of young girls of being raped” • High societal costs of war: collective alienation and individual despair

10. In Lieuof a Conclusion • Somehow fifty years of socialist emancipation simply vanished as an integral part of the male-centered nationalistic projects. • Women still have to decide if they really want a solution, a way out. Or, they will choose, yet again, hiber-nation and domi-nation over activation?

11. Main Sources • Enloe, C. (1990), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press. • Goulding, D. (2003), Liberated Cinema: The Yugoslav Experience, 1945-2001, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. • Levi, P. (2007), Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema, Stanford: Stanford University Press. • Mayer, T. (2000), Gender Ironies of Nationalism – Sexing the Nation, London and New York: Routledge. • Yuval-Davis, N.(1997), Gender & Nation,London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi:Sage Publications. • Ramet, S. (1999), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans: Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States, University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UniversityPress. • Zarkov, D. (2007), The Body Of War: Media Ethnicity and Gender in the Break-Up of Yugoslavia, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

12. Films • WR:MisterijeOrganizma (WR: Mysteries of the Organism) produced by DusanMakavejev, directed by DusanMakavejev, SvetozarUdovicki, screenplay DusanMakavejev, camera (color, Black and White), PegaPopovic, AleksandarPetkovic, running time: 85 Min, 1971. • Vukovar: JednaPrica, (VukovarPosteRestante), produced by Danka MuzdekaMandzuka, directed by Bora Draskovic, screenplay MajaDraskovic, Bora Draskovic, camera (color), AleksanderPetkovic, running time: 96 Min, 1994. • Dupe odMramora(Marble Ass)produced by Miodrag Milosevic, directed by ZelimirZilnik, screenplay ZelimirZilnik, camera (color), Miodrag Milosevic, running time: 86 Min, 1995.