M anchester, 23-25 May 2013 "Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism in European Media and Film: Rights, Responsibilities,

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 Lieu of 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 • Daniel Goulding, Liberated Cinema: The Yugoslav Experience, 1945-2001, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 (1985). • Pavle Levi, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. • Zarana Papic,“From State Socialism to State Nationalism: The Case of Serbia in Gender Perspective”, Refuge, vol. 14, no. 3, (1994). • Constantin Parvulescu, “Betrayed Promises: Politics and Sexual Revolution in the Films of Marta Meszaros, Milos Forman, and DusanMakavejev”, Camera Obscura, vol. 24, no. 2, (2009). • Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans – Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav SuccessorStates, University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UniversityPress, 1999. • Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997. • DubravkaZarkov, The Body Of War: Media Ethnicity and Gender in the Break-Up of Yugoslavia, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007.

12. Films • WR: MisterijeOrganizma (WR: Mysteries of the Organism) directed by DusanMakavejev, screenplay DusanMakavejev, cinematography by AleksandarPetkovic, PredragPopovic, running time: 85 Min, Yugoslavia, West Germany, 1971. • Vukovar: JednaPrica (VukovarPosteRestante) directed by BoroDraskovic, screenplay BoroDraskovic, MajaDraskovic, cinematography by AleksandarPetkovic, running time: 96 Min, FR Yugoslavia, 1994. • Dupe odMramora(Marble Ass) directed by ZelimirZilnik, screenplay ZelimirZilnik, cinematography by Miodrag Milosevic, running time: 87 Min, FR Yugoslavia,1995.