The TV series Normal People (2020) is based on the 2018 novel of the same name by the young Irish writer Sally Rooney. The book achieved tremendous popularity, particularly among younger audiences – ...so-called millennials – and the TV series only added new layers of popularity and identification. The success of both of these works can be explained by the skillful way in which Rooney has managed to link and intertwine the romance between the protagonists with the social context in which it is set, thus depicting the generational experience of growing up with the consequences of ay social and economic crisis. This is something that young people could identify with, not only in Ireland but also in other societies affected by the economic crisis which began in 2008, and to which many new crises have since been added (the latest one being the health crisis due to the pandemic), while many earlier ones still reverberate in people’s experiences. Seeking to examine how the globally broadcast TV series Normal People has resonated with the local reception context and viewers’ experiences, in this paper I focus on the aspect of reception of this series by its audience in Serbia, aiming to shed light on the dimension of "viewer enjoyment" in viewing practice and to address the question of the importance of this aspect of "watching TV" for the understanding of the meaning and social impact of television texts. It turned out that the initial idea of collecting material for analysis through an open invitation to participate in online research, with an essay response to the question about the reasons why they enjoyed watching the show (or not), was flawed, as the response rate was lower than expected, which resulted in the empirical "thinning" of the research, but also provided an opportunity to consider some of the problems in qualitative (online) research on contemporary issues and media texts. Exploring these methodological and epistemological problems unexpectedly became an important part of the paper, alongside the research results. The research itself pointed to a new type of viewer, namely, expert viewers, who have become experts through being active in complex technological environments in which they watch TV content, and which they use to inform themselves about it. In addition, the results indicate that the practice of bingeing, linked to the intensification of enjoyment and identification of female viewers, is very widespread. Finally, the most important themes mentioned in their comments were the themes of gender relations/sexuality and the questions of class and social inequality, along with mental health. A "symptomatic reading" of the comments of Normal People’s female viewers in Serbia reveals shared concerns and anxieties in dealing with a rapidly changing world, which is constantly being faced with crises – past ones, current ones, those that have just subsided or those that are yet to come, creating a new sense of "collective fragility", individual, economic or political.
The object of analysis is a TV-series "Theatre at home", which had a long TV-life (three seasons in 1970ies and two in 1980ies) and was one of the most popular series in the socialist Yugoslavia. ...The series covers daily life in an ordinary Yugoslav family, based in Belgrade, and the plot is built around the humorously articulated tensions and conflicts between the main protagonist and his mother in law who lives with him, his wife and their son. The material analysed includes the episodes of the three seasons broadcasted during the seventies (1972, 1973, 1975), written sources (newspaper articles about the TV show and its main protagonists and archival documents related to the author of the show Novak Novak) and secondary literature related to the development of Yugoslav RTV. Relying on theoretical and methodological propositions of Lilla Abu Lughod on the relationship between production, distribution and consumption of TV-serials and broader processes as building of a nation, modernization or urbanization, I try to show how the TV-series "Theatre at home" simultaneously described and proscribed how the socialist modern life in Yugoslavia should look like, thus serving as an implicit tool of social pedagogy. At the same time, it offered an opportunity for the audience-consumers-citizens to engage with the "real" achievements and manifestations of the socialist modernity represented in the series, which thus came to be continuously re-evaluated and historically situated.
Ever since television became institutionalized in socialist Yugoslavia in the late 1950’s, it was closely associated with the idea of a “new life” in socialist society. As a new technology, as a ...modern object in the socialist household, and as a medium which enabled the transmission of desirable content for creating socialist citizens and shaping models of socialist “culturality” and entertainment, television represents a prime terrain for studying the transformations of culture and society in the latter half of the 20th century in Yugoslavia, as well as in the rest of Europe and the world. The paper is mostly based a number of key sources, memoirs, which speak of the history of television in Yugoslavia from the point of view of creators and a wider circle of experts who were involved in it. In this paper I will attempt to shed some light on the dynamics of the process of introducing television into Yugoslavian society, the perplexities, confusions and tensions which this new technology – simultaneously the product and the mediator of modernity – brought with it. Special attention is given to the relationship between television as technology and television as a medium of mass communication, which permanently marked the beginnings of television in Yugoslavia with the tension between “tech” and “programming”, as well as to the role of television in everyday life.
In the spring of 2008, after Heineken bought the major stake in “Pančevačka pivara” (Pančevo brewery) from Efes, and thus became its owner, the corporation shut down production in the Pančevo ...factory, fired all remaining workers save for a few managers, and soon after halted production of the only remaining brand of “Pančevačka pivara” which was named after the brewery’s mid-nineteenth century founder – Weifert. Thus, after more than 150 years of beer production in Weifert’s brewery, and more than 280 years after beer first started to be produced in Pančevo, the town is left without a significant industrial capacity and one of its key cultural and identity symbols. What should be cause for concern for researchers is the huge discrepancy between the decades-long endeavor to traditionalize the brewery and the culture of beer consumption and utilize them in the representation of the town as an industry center as well as a multicultural environment with an urban sensibility and significant Habsburg heritage, and the complete silence which followed the closing of the brewery and is still there, four years after the factory shut down. The paper examines how the deep, uncomfortable silence which has enveloped these events, the absence of any kind of public debate on the issue as well as the lack of any kind of articulated unofficial discourse about this loss can be interpreted. Starting from the assumption that any way of speaking is simultaneously a way of not speaking, I will examine the social dynamics of the reverse process in a specific social, economic, political and cultural context. In other words, what is the role of social non-remembrance and what can be gleaned from this non-speaking, repressing, intentional oblivion?
The TV series Normal People (2020) is based on the 2018 novel of the same name by the young Irish writer Sally Rooney. The book achieved tremendous popularity, particularly among younger audiences – ...so-called millennials – and the TV series only added new layers of popularity and identification. The success of both of these works can be explained by the skillful way in which Rooney has managed to link and intertwine the romance between the protagonists with the social context in which it is set, thus depicting the generational experience of growing up with the consequences of ay social and economic crisis. This is something that young people could identify with, not only in Ireland but also in other societies affected by the economic crisis which began in 2008, and to which many new crises have since been added (the latest one being the health crisis due to the pandemic), while many earlier ones still reverberate in people’s experiences. Seeking to examine how the globally broadcast TV series Normal People has resonated with the local reception context and viewers’ experiences, in this paper I focus on the aspect of reception of this series by its audience in Serbia, aiming to shed light on the dimension of "viewer enjoyment" in viewing practice and to address the question of the importance of this aspect of "watching TV" for the understanding of the meaning and social impact of television texts. It turned out that the initial idea of collecting material for analysis through an open invitation to participate in online research, with an essay response to the question about the reasons why they enjoyed watching the show (or not), was flawed, as the response rate was lower than expected, which resulted in the empirical "thinning" of the research, but also provided an opportunity to consider some of the problems in qualitative (online) research on contemporary issues and media texts. Exploring these methodological and epistemological problems unexpectedly became an important part of the paper, alongside the research results. The research itself pointed to a new type of viewer, namely, expert viewers, who have become experts through being active in complex technological environments in which they watch TV content, and which they use to inform themselves about it. In addition, the results indicate that the practice of bingeing, linked to the intensification of enjoyment and identification of female viewers, is very widespread. Finally, the most important themes mentioned in their comments were the themes of gender relations/sexuality and the questions of class and social inequality, along with mental health. A "symptomatic reading" of the comments of Normal People’s female viewers in Serbia reveals shared concerns and anxieties in dealing with a rapidly changing world, which is constantly being faced with crises – past ones, current ones, those that have just subsided or those that are yet to come, creating a new sense of "collective fragility", individual, economic or political.
Rijaliti šou "Veliki brat" predstavlja metaforu transformacije savremenih medija u pravcu njihove komercijalizacije i primata koji se daje zabavi u odnosu na klasične informativne i obrazovne ...sadržaje, što se u Srbiji dešava u kontekstu post-socijalističke transformacije. Hiperkomercijalni karakter VB je proizvod delovanja nove rukovodeće ideje u medijskoj sferi, a to je da se njihova uspešnost meri isključivo prema kriterijumu gledanosti. U svim verzijama Velikog brata ("obični" i VIP), okosnicu rijaliti programa čine dva elementa: fenomen nadzora i princip komercijalnosti programa. U ovom radu želele smo da te dve teme – nadzor i komercijalizaciju – povežemo kroz koncepte “panoptikona”/“sinoptikona“ i “gledanosti”, pokazujući u analizi da novoustoličeni kriterijum “gledanosti” direktno zavisi od situacije u kojoj se nalaze gledaoci ovog rijaliti formata, situacije u kojoj “njih mnogo gleda i odlučuje o sudbini njih malo”. Analiziraćemo načine na koji se nastoji uticati na gledanost u samoj proizvodnji rijalitija, kroz intervencije i usmeravanje radnje koje vrši produkcijski tim, ali i recepciju rijalitija na specijalizovanim forumima. U ovom drugom slučaju, sprovedena je netografija recepcije VIP VB 2013, uzimajući u obzir diskusije na forumu i praćenje video snimaka na jutjubu. Na osnovu toga izdvojile smo najgledanije momente u rijalitiju, i sagledale razloge zbog kojih su pojedini događaji i/ili njihovi akteri zavredeli posebnu pažnju među gledaocima, povećavajući gledanost rijalitija, ali i multiplicirajući komercijalni efekat kroz učešće gledalaca na različitim medijskim platformama (sajtovi, forumi, internet glasanje i sl.).
This paper is based on a study of a local beer factory, located in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, which recently went through the privatization process. At the end of 2003, the Pančevo Brewery ...was taken over by Efes Group, thus becoming the most western operation in the process of Efes spreading across the European market. Although it is customary to conceptualize privatization as a purely economic issue, research of the privatization of such a local company by a large international producer provided us with an opportunity to observe, analyze and interpret various ways in which economy and culture inter-reacted, and became mutually dependent. The field of economic change was observed as a space of cultural transformation, where business, organizational and working cultures of "socialism" and "capitalism" met and influenced each other, both on institutional and personal levels. Different notions of "culture" that illustrate the increasing "culturalization" of economy at the turn of the century were singled out. Particular attention was paid to socialism as a legacy, operating through narrative and residual practices. At the same time, this legacy was an obstacle for desired change as well as a source for sustaining a sense of personal worth among employees faced with the approaching hegemonic narrative of "capitalism triumphant".
Television represented the transformative technology in the 20th century, and it has also served as a major social and cultural force for modernization after World War II, on both sides of the Iron ...Curtain. In socialist countries television was closely connected with future-oriented ideology, and aimed to provide the democratization of knowledge, promotion of socialist values and development of socialist citizenry. The beginning of TV broadcast in socialist Yugoslavia in 1958 gave way to the gradual development of TV culture during the sixties and seventies, the overall impact of which on the subjectivities and everyday lives of the viewers was undeniable. The aim of this paper is to briefly outline the context in which television culture in socialist Yugoslavia emerged and achieved momentum, pinpointing two periods: the penetration of TV into small places and villages during the sixties and the socio-cultural influence and ramifications of the broadcast of "Peyton Place" in the early seventies.
Television represented the transformative technology in the 20th century, and it has also served as a major social and cultural force for modernization after World War II, on both sides of the Iron ...Curtain. In socialist countries television was closely connected with future-oriented ideology, and aimed to provide the democratization of knowledge, promotion of socialist values and development of socialist citizenry. The beginning of TV broadcast in socialist Yugoslavia in 1958 gave way to the gradual development of TV culture during the sixties and seventies, the overall impact of which on the subjectivities and everyday lives of the viewers was undeniable. The aim of this paper is to briefly outline the context in which television culture in socialist Yugoslavia emerged and achieved momentum, pinpointing two periods: the penetration of TV into small places and villages during the sixties and the socio-cultural influence and ramifications of the broadcast of "Peyton Place" in the early seventies.
The number of infected from COVID-19 rose once more, heading towards its second peak in the first wave of the epidemic. The latest information, revealed by an independent news portal, claims that the ...authorities have been hiding the real number of the infected and deceased from the beginning and that those numbers are two to three times higher than officially reported. Suspicion is growing--there is an overwhelming distrust in every institution and every official body in charge of handling of the epidemic. Here, Erdei shares his experience during the Covid-19 lockdown in Serbia.
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