On Populist Pop Culture: Ethno as the Contemporary Political Ideology in Serbia Research Article Irena Šentevska Independent researcher and curator based in Belgrade
[email protected] http://www.suedosteuropa.uni-graz.at/cse/en/sentevska Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 2015, 3(2), 87-106 Contemporary Southeastern Europe is an online, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal that publishes original, scholarly, and policy-oriented research on issues relevant to societies in Southeastern Europe. For more information, please contact us at
[email protected] or visit our website at www.contemporarysee.org On Populist Pop Culture: ethno as the contemporary political ideology in Serbia Irena Šentevska This study attempts to shift the debate of the contemporary facets of populist ideologies from the realm of institutional politics to the realm of everyday life, popular culture, media and “invented traditions”. My intention is to demonstrate how these realms generate new sources and voices of populism, often downplayed in the academic debates on the subject. The paper stems from comprehensive research on discourses of identity (re)construction in post-Yugoslav Serbia as communicated in pop- cultural media forms (specifically, music videos of all genres), in which I used a sample of 4733 music videos produced between 1980 and 2010 (and later). In this paper, I have chosen to focus on the case of the charity campaign Podignimo Stupove and its music video output. The campaign was launched as a pop-cultural initiative to help the restoration of the 12th century monastery Đurđevi Stupovi in Stari Ras, a site of utmost historical significance and value for the national culture.