engleski

Metastases of Craoatian Reality. Discourseon Fascization: the 2006Novel by Alen Bović and the 2009 Film by Branko Schmidt

Since Croatia’s establishment as sovereign state, the national cinema has abounded in film adaptations of both Croatian and foreign literature. However, in most cases the adaptations are marked by a kind of historical and thematic distance from literary sources, as well as from the reality to which a literary work refers. The distance was achieved, on the one hand, in the chronological sense, and, on the other hand, through the neutralization of any kind of ideational actuality of literary subjects raised. However, Alen Bović’s two novels Metastases (2006) and Vegetarian Cannibal (2010) have changed this. The two novels seem marginal at first, but upon close reading, it becomes clear that they accurately represent Croatian society and its metamorphoses. The paper identifies these metamorphoses as the appearance of fascist tendencies in certain parts of the Croatian mental and societal landscape. The paper aims to provoke a discussion about these tendencies in Croatian society and identify the reasons for their occurrence. For this purpose, both Bović’s novel and Schmidt’s movie serve as a case study for this line of argumentation. The highly subjective nature of the paper seems to be the only possible approach to the topic, which requires deconstructing the sacralisation of many historical facts from our recent past. While the paper points at the differences between the novel and the film, the topic of adaptation is treated from the viewpoint of social and philosophical analysis. Metastases in Croatian artistic, sociocultural, but mostly in political public space should create an impulse for catharsis and for a final attempt to defend the Mind and Spirit, and also humanity in the times that are unfavourable for critical and philosophical thinking. Indeed, what could be the purpose of our Being if not to read, write, think, and watch movies about such things? Metastases in the “wilderness of Croatian reality” are urging us to do just that.

Branko Schmidt, Metastases, Alen Bović, Croatian film, fascization, neoNazism, humanity, critical thinking, philosophical thinking.

Tekst je bitno skracena/digestirana vezija rada Metastaze hrvatske zbiljnosti. Diskurs o fašizaciji