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ABSTRACT
The article explores Jovan Živanović's youth melodrama Čudna devojka/Strange Girl (1962). I discuss why a particular genre configuration (melodrama qua coming-of-age story) becomes notably relevant in the time of Yugoslav conflict between socialist economic reforms and patriarchal/paternalist social patterns, and how Živanović's film responds to this concern. Reading the film through this genre configuration illustrates the unfair world of Yugoslav socialism, where the only way for the young heroine to be integrated is to renounce her mondain emancipatory practices. I argue that love, which drives the action in the film, resides on the idea of sacrifice which transforms the young heroine from emancipated modern girl into a working wife and mother. The film's love ideology is thus explained through the larger sociocultural context of Yugoslav self-management reform, and the beginning of a genuine consumerist society. The two opposing tendencies, which also transformed into Yugoslav intergenerational and intra-social clashes of the time, are interpreted as the ideological background of the heroine's patriarchal maturation in a socialist society.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The first act established the socialist self-management paradigm which soon extended to all institutional levels, becoming the main principle of the liberalization of Yugoslav social, economic and cultural policies. The second marked the beginning of a genuine consumerist society (Duda Citation2010, 17). In the period after the self-management was introduced, ‘consumerism was alleged to be the origin of a whole host of social evil, and yet at the same time the pronounced emphasis on increased living standards was also often treated as a desirable and natural aim of state policy, a just reward for the working class’ (Patterson Citation2011, 253).
2. His opus counts seven documentaries, one short and eleven featured films. I am here listing his works chronologically. Prvi letovi (1948), Ljudi iz zadruge (1950), U slavu Njegoša (1951), Požar na selu (1953), Zorka (1953), Vratio se u zavičaj (1955), Nikad nisi sam (1955), Zenica (1957), Te noći (1958), Beogradski sajam (1960), Čudna devojka (1962), Verführung am Meer (1963), Gorki deo reke (1965), Slučaj banjalučke gimnazije (1965), Kako su se voleli Romeo i Julija (1966), Uzrok smrti ne pominjati (1968), I Bog stvori kafansku pevačicu (1972), Naivko (1975), Radio Vihor zove Anđeliju (1979).
3. Skrzypek's report refers to more than 20 surveys conducted among Yugoslav students, aged from 14 to 24, in the period from 1956 to 1963.
4. Yugoslav cinema in the 1960s started showing interest in student youth, as opposed to earlier film periods when young people appeared as either young Partisans, youth brigadiers, adventurous children or high-school students. Four films which were focusing on older adolescents, i.e. the students, and were made before the advent of Strange Girl were Love and Fashion (1960), Superfluous (1960), Igre na skelama/Scaffolding Games (Srećko Weygand, 1961) and Nočni izlet/Night Excursion (Mirko Grobler, 1961). The first one uses University students to glorify the westernized urban life in Belgrade, the second portrays them as a juxtaposition to the rural youth in labour brigades, the third ascribes utter cynicism and disinterest in real life matters to Zagreb University students, while the last one pivots around a youthful prank at a party and consequences of their supposedly innocent games.