Posted on 05/09/2002 2:05:29 PM PDT by joan
May 9, 2002
Images Worth a Thousand Lies
Balkans In Popular Culture
Given the pervasiveness of mass entertainment in the United States, and the dominance of US-made entertainment in the world markets, one should not underestimate the impact American popular culture has on world events. History may be written by government-paid scholars and crooked journalists, but its vastly simplified form is burned into the minds of the masses through movies and television.
Prejudice vs. Prejudice
For example, the image of Arabs as terrorists has long been a staple of Hollywood fare, so ubiquitous during the 1980s that cult classics such as Back to the Future and E.T. featured terrorist plot elements or references. Muslim terrorism was also the key element in the early 1990s techno-thriller books, such as Larry Bond's Enemy Within or Tom Clancy's Sum of All Fears.
In 1998, Edward Zwick (Glory, Courage Under Fire) made The Siege, an exceptional drama dealing with a series of deadly terrorist attacks by Islamic militants in New York, and the horrific assault on civil liberties by the US government that followed. It was eerily prescient, given what would occur on Black Tuesday 2001 and afterwards. Yet the film was immediately protested by Arab-American advocacy groups. They had become so used to images in popular culture that depicted Muslims solely as terrorists, they attacked Zwick's film without even seeing it. A film that was fair to Arabs, for a change – especially compared to, say, James Cameron's True Lies (1994) – was thus subject to controversy and boycotts. So alleged prejudice was fought with unjustified prejudice, and (not surprisingly) prejudice won.
Had there not been so many images of Muslims as terrorists in the popular culture, the American Arabs may not have reacted to The Siege with a knee-jerk rejection. Had the lessons of The Siege been taken even halfway seriously, September 11 might not have happened. Fate, as always, plays cruel tricks on those who mock it.
Through The Looking-Glass
During the 1990s, with the wars in the former Yugoslavia all over the headlines, the entertainment business rushed to cash in on the mysterious carnage on the other side of the world. Added to images of Arab terrorists were now images of Balkans terrorists – as it happens, almost exclusively Serbs. Real events that were first misrepresented in the press, then embellished by pundits, now became embellished again by professional purveyors of illusions. Through books, movies and TV shows, the Balkans that never was came alive in the minds of American audiences…
Nonexistent Nukes
Before Nicole Kidman could have a tragic love affair in Moulin Rouge, she first had to save Manhattan – with George Clooney's help – from a Serb with a backpack nuke in Peacemaker (1997). The villain was no less than a member of the Bosnian Serb parliament, who first killed a colleague to ensure he'd have a spot on the New York-bound delegation. His motive? Vengeance on the UN, because snipers killed his family and the peacekeepers had done nothing to help.
One doesn't have to know much about the Balkans to see the problem. First of all, Bosnian Serbs never had nuclear weapons, nor is there any evidence that they tried to obtain them. Secondly, the motive ascribed to the "terrorist" was bogus. Bosnian Serbs never expected the UN to help – the Muslims did. And it's not as if Bosnian Serbs didn't have real grievances against the UN and the Empire; they did help their enemies, after all – sometimes, as it turns out, through some real terrorists. But one should never let accuracy get in the way of a good story, right?
The Bosnian Serb nuclear-smuggling angle was revisited by a UPN series Seven Days (1998-2001), as its time-traveling hero fought Serbs who sought to purchase some weapons-grade plutonium from domestic US terrorists. Seven Days went back to Bosnia in one more episode, to rescue American hostages from evil Serbs.
To Bomb And Judge
Most frequent visitor to Bosnia has certainly been the CBS hit drama, JAG (Judge Advocate General). One of the first episodes saw the indomitable lawyer-pilot Harmon Rabb Jr. going on a bombing raid over Bosnia. Afterwards, he helped rescue US pilots, went on to bomb Kosovo, and even rescued US intelligence operatives from the Serb-paid Italian Mafia...
One episode has Commander Rabb defending an overzealous fellow pilot, who bombed Russian peacekeepers thinking they were Serbs committing atrocities. Indeed, the pilot claims he saw atrocities before, and vowed not to let them happen again. Even as a flight of fancy, this is too much. Never have any atrocities been witnessed by any US or NATO personnel, let alone pilots. They were more apt at committing them, as bombed-out trains, bridges, schools, hospitals, marketplaces and TV stations testify throughout Serbia.
Only someone completely ignorant of the Yugoslav Army could assume that it uses the same troop carriers as the Russians. It doesn't, thus making the key plot point completely moot. Furthermore, no Yugoslav (or Serb) troops were in Kosovo by the time the "peacekeepers" showed up. There were few Serb civilians left, for that matter. The only atrocities NATO's occupation troops witnessed – and did nothing to stop – were those of the Albanian KLA. It is, of course, never mentioned. Might complicate things, you see…
The Man With Two Wrong Names
Such colossal blunders are more the rule than an exception in TV-land. Fox's hit "real-time" series 24 features Dennis Hopper as villain Victor Drazen, accused of atrocities in Kosovo. Of course, everyone knows there were mass atrocities in Kosovo, even though none have ever been established as anything more than fanciful speculation. But it is surely a supreme irony that Fox's "Serbian terrorist/warlord" has a Croatian name, and an impossible one at that.
Drazen, as reality would have it, is a Croatian given name, not a surname. Like "Bob" in the US. Actually, there's a higher probability to run into someone with the last name of "Bob" in the US than anyone in the Balkans being surnamed "Drazen." And of course, Victor (or Viktor, as Croats would write it) is Latin for "winner," and thus pretty popular among the Catholic Croatians. So, not only did they give poor Dennis Hopper the wrong surname, they also gave him the wrong name and the wrong ethnicity! To be that ignorant takes more than talent; it takes effort…
Here is another interesting question: why are Serb villains routinely played by non-Serbs? In all the above examples, in all the examples still to follow, and in quite a few others, the Serb villains are always played by someone else. Perhaps Serb actors – unlike their political leaders – still have some dignity.
Rescues From Truth
Among the most mendacious sub-genres dealing with the Balkans is The Rescue. It was used as a plot point for 1997's Welcome to Sarajevo, supposed to be an indictment of journalists who practiced indifference in the face of murder. In reality, it was the "advocacy journalism" – not indifference – that made the Bosnian War so dirty, with suffering and death deliberately provoked with the purpose of feeding Western cameras. This is not the only cliché Welcome to Sarajevo peddles shamelessly: there are massacres and "concentration camps" as well. Finally, the focus of one reporter's crusade – a young orphan he fights to rescue from the besieged city despite the policy banning all evacuations – is a Muslim. Yet the real girl, on whose story the movie is (very) loosely based, was a Serb.
Perhaps the greatest offender, however, is 2001's Behind Enemy Lines. A pathetic dreg of recycled propaganda, it tries to put a touch of Hollywood on the most embarrassing story of Lt. Scott O'Grady. The results are predictably atrocious.
In the summer of 1995, O'Grady's F-16 was shot down by a missile while he scouted Bosnian Serb positions for the planned NATO bombing campaign. He ejected, hid in the mountains for several days and was retrieved by a company of Marines, without interference. Losing a multi-million dollar aircraft to an obsolete missile system in broad daylight, trekking in the mountains of Western Bosnia for a few days, then getting airlifted out by a company of Marines is not particularly heroic. It became so when the US government needed heroes to shut up critics of its Balkans intervention.
Point is, O'Grady's real story was a yawner, even when embellished by the military and the press. So Hollywood came up with a new one. This time, the "hero" was a navigator, who survived while his pilot was brutally murdered by psychotic Serbs (unsurprisingly, again played by non-Serbs). He then had to make a run for his life, through a hail of bullets, fireballs, landmine pellets and multiple explosions, to be rescued by a maverick commanding officer. Oh, and did anyone mention he was a "witness to Serb atrocities" (not that again!) and brought back evidence to that effect?
The real O'Grady was shot down a hundred miles away from any war zone, and nowhere near the places alleged to have seen atrocities. Yet at the end, Behind Enemy Lines claims that the retrieved "evidence" was used at war crimes trials! Knowing the ways of the Hague Inquisition, taking evidence from movie scripts might not be that unusual, but still…
The Solitude of Truth
To properly document all the instances of grossly distorted Balkans realities in just the US popular culture would take a lot of time, effort and money. These are just some of the more conspicuous examples. Finding other, more accurate depictions is much easier; there are almost none.
One notable exception is Ralph Peters' novella, There Is No War in Melnica. Standing out in the otherwise bland Combat anthology (vol. 3) edited by Stephen Coonts, the novella describes the grisly character of the chaos in Bosnia, with misrepresented atrocities and staged executions for the sake of provoking a foreign military intervention.
Peters was in Bosnia, unlike most screenwriters and their producers, so that could be partially responsible for his accuracy. However, as many other Westerners have also been in the region, yet chose to tell lies and half-truths instead, the bulk of the credit should really go to Peters himself: a small, solitary voice of truth amongst the roaring sea of foolish lies. Truth, after all, is often more interesting than fiction.
But fiction, especially bad fiction, is so much easier to produce.
The real girl that the story is based on is named Natasha - "Natasha's Story" by Michael Nicholson. "Natasha" is not a Muslim name. It makes you wonder if the movie switched the ethnic identity of other victims or villains. And so the plight of a Serb orphan was used to demonize the Serbs.
http://www.le.ac.uk/cmcr/di4/Sarajevo.html
Miramax's strong marketing muscle was put in motion by Harvey Weinstein and engaged people like Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to Bosnia, with publicizing the movie. Before its release the film even screened at the White House where Bill Clinton was said to have seen the film seated alongside Natasha Nicholson, the Bosnian girl portrayed in the film.
Top Ten Reasons for being a Serb
1. You are not a Croat.
2. Basketball team.
3. You can choose between several war criminals in Presidential elections.
4. You can enjoy the positive media coverage of your country when abroad.
5. You can fight 600 year-old battles against the Turks and their domestic collaborators, be convinced that it's happening right now, and not be entirely wrong.
6. You can always go to Greece and Cyprus and fear nothing.
7. Grilled meat and slivovitz.
8. You get to drink slivovitz and eat grilled meat even when under economic sanctions.
9. You are the only European country which will be bombed by NATO.
10. Every now and then you get to fly to the Hague at someone else's expense.
-----
Top ten reasons for being a Croat:
1. You're not a serb
2. Soccer team.
3. You get to pretend that your language is different from Serbian, although it's really not.
4. Dubrovnik.
5. You get to dream about independent Croatia.
6. Every now and then you get to sing "Danke, Danke, Deutschland," and continue to dream about independent Croatia.
7. You have a thousand-year culture of which no one has heard.
8. You have a democratically elected President who is not ashamed of being a Croat.
9. The glorious World War Two past.
10.You have a thousand-year culture....
-----
Top ten reasons for being Bosnian:
1. You can get asylum anywhere except in Serbia.
2. You can pretend that your state exists.
3. Kebab.
4. You can pretend that Sarajevo is a really cosmopolitan European city when you know that it is not.
5. Great kebab.
6. You can be visited by Francois Mitterand, Bernard Henry-Levy, Susan Sontag, and Bill Clinton and it still doesn't make a difference.
7. Free round-trip to any Moslem country.
8. You get to be bombed by a psychiatrist.
9. You can fly your flag in the UN but nowhere else.
10. Foreigners give you money and don't ask any questions.
-----
Top ten reasons for being Slovenian.
1. You can speak the beautiful Slovene language and know that no one cares except you.
2. You can feel superior to all former Yugoslavs.
3. You can drink after work.
4. You can pretend to live on the "sunny side of the Alps," although you know it's not that sunny.
5. You can pretend that you are as good as any German while secretly enjoying the fact that you are a Slav.
6. Good relations with Italy and Austria.
7. You can afford to be Yugo-nostalgic.
8. You can marry a Slovene and have Slovene children who speak Slovene.
9. You don't have to be ashamed when abroad.
10. No one bothers you because no one really cares.
-----
Top ten reasons for being Macedonian.
1. You can call yourself Macedonian and not get killed by a Bulgarian, Greek, Serb or Albanian.
2. Fresh tomatoes, watermelon and tobacco.
3.You can pretend you are a descendant of Alexander the Great and piss off the Greeks.
4.You get to be sad and suffer while listening to folk music.
5. Good relations with your neighbors, especially Greeks and Albanians.
6. American soldiers on your territory.
7. You get to call your country The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
8. Fresh tomatoes, watermelon, and tobacco.
9. You can successfully pretend your language is not Bulgarian.
10. Everyone is interested in the stability of your country except your neighbors.
-----
Top ten reasons for being Montenegrin.
1. You can be proud of your heroic past and not being conquered by the Turks for 500 years.
2. You can sing epic songs about your heroic past and not being conquered by the Turks for 500 years.
3. You can think of Russia as your Mother, although Russia does not know you are her son.
4. You can combine orthodoxy with Stalinism with love of Russia and still think that you are better and more progressive than the Serbs.
5. Goat cheese, grilled lamb, and grappa.
6. You get to kill at least one person in a vendetta and defend your honor.
7. If you are a woman you can kill your husband and everyone knows why you did it.
8. You can smuggle cigarettes to Italy and live like a king.
9. You don't have to work even when you have to.
10. You don't have to work.... -----
Top ten reasons for being Albanian.
1. You can always swim to Italy.
2. You can choose between a president who stole your whole income, one who killed all your relatives, or go fight the Serbs in Kosovo.
3. You can be proud of being from "the land of the eagle."
4. You can always swim to Italy.
5. You can take weapons from any army garrison and defend your honor.
6. You can get killed in a vendetta and be remembered as the hero of the family.
7. You get to be called the poorest country in Europe.
8. You can live in the ecologically cleanest country in Europe.
9. You can always swim to Italy.
10. You are proud of being "from the land of the eagle."
-----
Top ten reasons for being a Yugoslav:
1. You can be proud that you are neither a Serb, nor a Croat, nor a Slovene, nor a Bosnian, nor a Macedonian, nor Montenegrin, nor an Albanian, although you are one or move of the above.
2. You don't have to feel bad about being "Yugo-nostalgic."
3. You can have a husband/wife from any part of Yugoslavia and still feel like the country never fell apart, especially if you are abroad.
4. You get to listen to Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, and even Albanian music and feel that it's quite OK.
5. You don't have to be ashamed of your Titoist past.
6. You can sing Partisan songs from World War Two or rock-and-roll from the 1980's.
7. You get to be cosmopolitan and spit on all the nationalists.
8. You get to be researched by foreign sociologists interested in your identity.
9. You are invited to speak about Yugoslavia at conferences abroad.
10.You are a good candidate for a Soros stipend.
Thanks white trash redneck.
However, they safeguarded the Orhtodox patriarchy and are true Serbs in every respect. In fact, as many Montenegrins live in Serbia as in Montenergo. Scratch any prominent (not necessarily brilliant or positive) character in Serbia's history and -- for a tribe that's ten times smaller than all of Serbdom put together -- these people have made a major impact on the Serb culture, and history. Be it Vuk Stefanovich Karadzhich (the idiot reformer of the language), or his namesake, Radovan -- the accused war criminal and ex-Bosnian Serb Republic's president; be it Miloshevich, Slobo -- the Serbian (Serbiyanats), or his brother -- the Montenegrin (Tsernogorats), be it Zhel'ko Razhnatovich, aka Arkan, or Milovan Djilas, the self-described Serb from Montenegro, or that wonderful prince-priest, Petar Petrovich Nyegosh, or the most Serb or all Montenegrins -- King Nikola I(whose famous phrase summed it all: "all Montenegrins are Serbs, but not all Serbs are Montenegrins!"), the Serb history is full of Montenegrins, just as the plush suburb of Dedinye in Belgrade is. They are the Texans of Serbdom.
This is the best line in the text.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.