need to finally admit that they were more than a little misguided?
I saw the first few threads on mumsnet concerning this film. Lots of people (in fact the loudest voices) were declaring that it was art, and that it served a purpose, that it was to be separated from the reality of the atrocities in Yugoslavia, that it Definitely Wasn't Porn made in order to titillate people who get off on this type of thing... I remember how those loud voices drowned out the few of us who felt that defending this film was pushing the envelope.
I'd forgotten about that thread until just now when I was reading the point of view of a woman, Asja Armanda, who was actually in Yugoslavia during the genocide. Of course, she doesn't have the power of the AV directors, and so not many people will have heard her opinion (seeing as freedom of speech is only reserved for the powerful), but after reading it, I felt it was important to share it. This is what she says, and I think the Defenders of Free Speech (who, ironically, oppose anyone's opinion that does not match their own) should finally listen.
And by the way, she makes it clear that this is not really a Serb or Croat issue, it is a man v women issue (insofar as men were the ones committing the atrocities, and women were the main targets). The war was men against women:
"The film sets out to shock, and takes delight in the cruelty it shows. But the film also function as a vehicle for denying the reality of the sexual atrocities committed as part of Serbia's genocidal campaign, and for denying the reality of sexual atrocities in general. The film's director, Srdjan Spasojevic, recasts sexual atrocities as "art" and paints the perpetrators as "victims", claiming the film is political allegory about the 'molestation' "of the Serbian people by the Serbian government. For Spasojevic, the film is a cinematic victim statement as to the trauma of the perpetrators . An example is a graphic description of a man helping a woman to give birth to a baby girl whom he then rapes to death in what the director calls 'newborn porn', which for the director conveys Serbia's loss of innocence. A woman handcuffed to the bed is raped and then decapitated with a machete; the man continues to rape her as her body goes into rigor mortis, which is presented as a particular pleasure.
....However, A Serbian Film has also been hailed as 'subversive' and 'transgressive' in some film circles, being called 'intelligent', 'fantastic', 'brilliant', and one of the best films of 2010. It has been celebrated as 'art on display', as substance and therefore justifiably depraved.
The film premiered at the Novi Sad Film Festival in 2010, held at the Serbian National Theatre. This venue is near the concentration camps where many Serbs really did commit such atrocities, and whose audience likely has perpetrators in it, perhaps reliving their glory days, as rapists and murderes are known to do. The film has won other award, such as Best Screenplay at a 2010 Serbian film festival at Vrnjacka Banja, and is defended as free speech.
Think about what is happening here. A film portrays, as graphic entertainment, the distinctive manner in which genocide was carried out by this country, through sexual atrocities. The film is feted and praised. And these festivities are taking place near the very sites and mass graves of those crimes. In this rewriting of history, the only thing that the film does consider real about the sexual atrocities it portrays is how they represent the suffering of the perpetrators. In the film, it was not their victims who were raped to death but the rapists and those who, in various ways, covered up for them.
If people were having parties like this near the concentration camps where the Jews were murdered, nobody would buy it..
But in A Serbian Film we're only talking about women here... Not quite as important, not quite as human.