Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture by Vedrana Veličković

Author:Vedrana Veličković
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137537928
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

In particular, Entropa managed to disturb and offend one of the EU’s most recent members, Bulgaria , which was notoriously represented as a system of squat toilets, a familiar piece of the Ottoman legacy throughout the Balkans and a contentious site in both Eastern and Western imagination, as noted in chapter “It’s a Free World:​ Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Media and Film”. So when Bulgarian officials complained and Bulgaria’s place was consequently covered with a black cloth it became another absent member next to the United Kingdom , although, as Zigelyte importantly points out, “the mode of absence of these two countries is significantly different”, and particularly now in the post-Brexit context. 18 The use of stereotypes can be seen as a deliberate strategic act—that is, “instead of representing, Entropa poses questions on representation and asks how and why certain ideas of Europe take shape”. 19 In Other words, this is not only about whether a country is represented through more appealing images such as a box of chocolates, but about how these values come to be attached to certain countries, regions, and people . In this regard, Entropa can be read as a piece of ‘writing back ’ to Balkanist stereotypes specifically, and one which demands ways of seeing beyond what is present or absent from the modelling kit. Its deliberate focus on the partial and the fragmentary—the representation of each EU country through a single stereotype —opens up a gap that urgently demands to be filled. Thus Entropa invites us to move beyond seeing Bulgaria , through a single image, as EU’s backward and poor member signified by the image of an outdated toilet. Rather, I would suggest, it creates a space to decode its ostensibly didactic message by encouraging us to unearth the diverse history of the Balkans beneath a simplified and reductive image of a squat toilet. At the same time, it allows a rethinking of the complex reasons of various forms of postcommunist dysfunction (such as rampant corruption, a criminalized oligarchy, closing all channels of political participation and actively promoting savage capitalism , as usefully explained by Igor Štiks) as well as highlighting EU’s paternalistic and neo-colonial attitude towards its new and aspiring members (such as a focus on stability rather than on improving the standards of living, the imposition of harsh neoliberal measures under false humanitarianism). 20 As I show later in the chapter, Kassabova’s memoir can be read as operating precisely within this framework.

In the lively tradition of Czech satire, the film Czech Dream raises similar questions of absence and presence. It opens by juxtaposing jarring images of people queuing up in front of empty shops in 1972 with footage of the 1989 Velvet Revolution and more recent images of people practically trampling over each Other and falling over metal barriers to be first through the doors of a newly opened hypermarket. Once inside they obediently push their shopping trolleys. From the outset, the two student directors create a powerful and uncanny image:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.