Yugoslav Television between Conformity and Dissidence — Ideological Hybridity in Informational and Fiction Genres (1980–1995)

Jelušić, Jelena

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-sfrd-ap82

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Yugoslav Television between Conformity and Dissidence — Ideological Hybridity in Informational and Fiction Genres (1980–1995)

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Yugoslav wartime television news often conformed to the demands of the political regimes. Informed by this knowledge, scholars have argued that TV as a medium incited and legitimized the wars by fostering ethnonationalist ideologies. Using archival and textual analysis, this project examines how television reacted to the political constraints imposed on its programming in a variety of genres, through the lens of the postcolonial ideas about hybridity and third space. This perspective reveals a substantial body of work that satirized, criticized, and modeled oppositional readings of the regime-approved media texts. As this project shows, television was far more ideologically open than one would expect if the analysis focused only on the news.Over the fifteen years that this project covers, television has changed in response to political, economic, and technological transitions and stagnations. My project traces the products of this altered landscape from fictional to informational genres. It examines how Yugoslav television approached controversial political themes and modeled critical viewing practices. The chapter on media events situates this televisual landscape between the two poles of the cold war divide and examines how the Yugoslav position changed by the time the Bosnian War ended. Analyzing media events suggests that socialist and capitalist (whether public service or commercial) systems are not as different as they are sometimes presented but exist on a spectrum of ideological orientation. From the death of Tito in the communist one-party state to the wedding of Ceca and Arkan in the multi-party capitalist society, media events declined in their ideological openness. This chapter shows that not only do television systems and programs belong on a spectrum rather than a binary but shows that they are not inherently more attuned to professional standards because of their democratic contexts. News formats occupied the more conservative side of the spectrum, even though introducing narrative structure and self-reflexivity afforded the news varying degrees of ideological openness. Primetime shows, including sitcoms, crime shows, historical dramas, and mini-series, varied in terms of ideological openness and they illustrate how one show can occupy multiple positions on the ideological spectrum. Sometimes the shows accomplished this by conveying ambivalent views about political issues or by offering different interpretative possibilities depending on a viewer’s ability to decipher the coded language of the shows. Interpreting these codes required a non-heteronormative perspective through which the shows conveyed subversive ideas about politics and the Yugoslav situation. Experimental television and telefilm highlight the ideological and political potential of intertextual and self-referential representational practices invested in challenging the political status quo. This approach to the history of Yugoslav entertainment and informational genres carries dual significance. On one level, this project introduces a perspective on television’s sociopolitical and cultural role in the former Yugoslavia, informed by genres beyond the news. On a broader level, this project identifies the problems resulting from understanding television’s political potential as predetermined by the system in which it functions. This analysis of television through a postcolonial lens highlights the medium’s defamiliarizing potential for transnational and global television studies and highlights how studying fictional and informational programs together uncovers complexities and tensions that characterize television as an object of study and the methods used to analyze its content.

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