Interview: RATKO BOŽOVIC, culturologist
In this interview he talks about the influence of media on culture, about the current situation in the Serbian culture and the importance of passing legislation that will regulate this area. Also, attempts to answer the question where lays the importance of the active international dialogue for the culture of a country and from what should we go in solving accumulated problems.
Media continues to deform the face of the reality, the back is increasingly breaking up and it’s a reflection of the value system placed upside-down. Mass media battle with the profit and commerciality, not with the quality of the information provided. Information is merchandise - once more it has been proved, and the quality is again overrun by quantity.
Reality shows come one after another - one ends, another begins. The past drags its present, present kills the future. Past decade stand as the albatross above the too isolated cultural sky. At the end of last century, the ideological regression happened to us where the culture and politics merged to such an extent that it was impossible to separate them. Serbia has been waiting 17 years the Law on culture, which (should aim) aims to “the development supported by the system”, not the current vacuum of the state cultural model. At a time when politics like determinant has reached its maximum pervading every sphere of society, and culture has experienced a complete collapse, the only way to fight against lack of culture and the lack of information is - personal guerrilla war in the culture - says for WAVE magazineprofessor Dr. Ratko Božović, a sociologist of culture.
Reality shows come one after another - one ends, another begins. The past drags its present, present kills the future. Past decade stand as the albatross above the too isolated cultural sky. At the end of last century, the ideological regression happened to us where the culture and politics merged to such an extent that it was impossible to separate them. Serbia has been waiting 17 years the Law on culture, which (should aim) aims to “the development supported by the system”, not the current vacuum of the state cultural model. At a time when politics like determinant has reached its maximum pervading every sphere of society, and culture has experienced a complete collapse, the only way to fight against lack of culture and the lack of information is - personal guerrilla war in the culture - says for WAVE magazineprofessor Dr. Ratko Božović, a sociologist of culture.
In this interview he talks about the influence of media on culture, about the current situation in the Serbian culture and the importance of passing legislation that will regulate this area. Also, attempts to answer the question where lays the importance of the active international dialogue for the culture of a country and from what should we go in solving accumulated problems.
Global media are shown as one of the “offenders” for the stagnation and “kitchisation” of the Serbian society and culture. If we look reality shows that are almost on each, but always at least one television, and RTS 2 as the only program dedicated to the culture, where the cultural-scientific shows are frequently interrupted by the sessions of the National Assembly, it seems that our culture is at the last place.-
The goal is the cheapness of the program, the only argument to show the Latin-American series is that it is cheap. In that state it is not understood that this cheapness is the high expensiveness from the point of impact on the widest audience. That’s the exploitation of human time as the most important human asset. The populist maddening of the crowd is transferred from the political field to the media sphere. That is why we do not move anywhere, we remain where we were. When we look at communication with the global media, which does not tend to strengthen and establish a citizen and an open minded person, but emphasize the good entertainment, consumer society and consumer mentality, we have dominance of the show business superficiality and violence; there is no real relationship to human destiny, there is no search for meaning, because they don’t want a free man and citizen, but a consumer, then we, as provincials, accept everything uncritically. The global patterns of world media, we “rushed into” without distance and critical attitude. So the worldwide media phenomenon shapes our media sphere, too. Probably there are those who think that we will, in this manner, become a part of the world. This is sheer nonsense!
I think it would be good to get a little shaking of state media, which should create an active attitude and an active reality, and they are currently paralyzing it. On the contrary, they should encourage curiosity - which more quality program creates.
What words would you use, then, to describe the current situation in Serbian culture, if we take into account the uncritical individual, general flood of quasi-values and history, which inevitably affect the present?
- Our culture has been a long time at the some kind of crossroads and anomie, because we have become a society where violence, chaos, anarchy govern. We entered in the transition, in a situation in which the culture survives with great efforts, as marginalized value, because there where the battle is fought for the elementary existence, you can not count on the presence of normal lifestyle, which belongs to the culture. There is a relationship between material poverty and spiritual drought. People live in fear and anxiety, and that’s why they are not capable of immediate experience of culture. Here, governs a disorder in the lifestyle in which the policy determinates all - that’s why we have a reduction of the cultural field.
So, the situation in culture does not differ much from the situation in society. We live in a vacuum between the old system which is destroyed, and whose patterns are still present, and the inability to create a new scale of values. We had a historic catastrophe, sanctions, war, and everything that happened from the 90s onwards, it was opposite of the essence of culture. Culture cannot survive in cramped conditions, belligerency and extremism. The depersonalization of culture governs, and any adjustment to non-creation leads to doubts about the true value. Homogenization and the instrumentation of everything for the sake of politics resulted in a situation that culture has never been a prerequisite for everything else, as it should be. At the time of extreme crisis, the middle class was completely ruined, then raised a little from 2000, and is currently in stagnation. It is not a happy circumstance, because only through the middle layer the changes are reached.
You talk about the circumstances that have prevented the normal functioning and progress of culture. What are, actually, that “braudel” concepts that stop the transformation of a society?
- What is the worst, those are the concepts of long duration. I’ll mention just a few of them. First, the traditionalism. I do not think the tradition as a value, but the tradition as the flood of the past that should be left behind, defended and moved away from ideology, evaluated in the scientific manner and directed towards new values. In our country are also all prejudices together - all of them! Prejudice in relation to the nation - Nazism and ethnocentrism, by which all other nations are inferior. We talk about Islamic fundamentalism, and we haven’t noticed that there is an Orthodox fundamentalism. There is confusion in the understanding of racial issues, there is also anti-Semitism. Until recently, the attitude towards Roma people was inhumane.
Prejudices largely influenced on the political field to tilt too much toward the extreme right wing. The closed society in which we languished for years and showed the world forms of a drastic decline is suitable for them. So today we are in great backwardness and in the fogs of self-sufficiency. Protagonists of such a policy seem to have forgotten that the culture does not exist as an isolated value, and that it need to be compared with values in the world. In culture you cannot survive in closed national borders, and we live in isolation, which we loved as the warm form of life. This is a misunderstanding with one’s own personality and with others.
More than fifty years the state has not opened any of the galleries, seventeen years we have been waiting for the Law on the culture, and only one percent of the state budget is allocated for culture. How does it reflect?
- Firstly, we have a disturbance in the minds of people and in the heads of those who make decisions. They don’t want to realize that culture is a basic prerequisite for true transformation and emancipation. The thing is that they do not see culture as a precondition for everything else and that is why they opine like that. They experience it as a necessary evil, that’s why any of state galleries haven’t been open for so long - for them it unnecessary burden. We have to have a culture and the law on culture, and as soon as there is a wrong reasoning, we have, as a consequence, such a percentage of the budget which is predestinated for culture. There is this “logic” of negligence and misunderstanding of what culture is - and it is assumption of economic and any other development.
You were a member of the Federal Commission for cultural relations with foreign countries. What reflects the importance of active international dialogue for the culture of a country?
- It was a long time ago, but the fact that remained is that there is no culture without dialogue. If you want to recognize an environment as one that searches for values, you can find it out through dialogue within the community. That’s why I say that the self-sufficiency is opposite of the essence of culture. Therefore, the openness is the first assumption to compare, to see our picture in the mirror of others and to recognize ourselves there, because those are true bridges. I do not think that everything in the world is superior, but - let’s not provincially see our culture as the best in the world and have narcissism without foundation. I think that the fastest way to reach the world is right across and through the culture.
From which point should we start in solving the existing problems in the Serbian culture?
- I think that more presence and criticism of the public is needed. Criticism is an Achilles heel of our culture and it, at least intellectually, would have to put the culture in place that it belongs to. The revaluation of culture is needed, a fundamental change of values and place of the culture in terms of formation of civil life and civil society. Lying is the dominant status of the individual and collective existence. Bluffing and deception do not end. The truth is undesirable - there is the impression that it left somewhere and that its return is uncertain. There is no fundamental change - nor will it be until we gain the ability to confront our own truth.
I think it would be good to get a little shaking of state media, which should create an active attitude and an active reality, and they are currently paralyzing it. On the contrary, they should encourage curiosity - which more quality program creates.
What words would you use, then, to describe the current situation in Serbian culture, if we take into account the uncritical individual, general flood of quasi-values and history, which inevitably affect the present?
- Our culture has been a long time at the some kind of crossroads and anomie, because we have become a society where violence, chaos, anarchy govern. We entered in the transition, in a situation in which the culture survives with great efforts, as marginalized value, because there where the battle is fought for the elementary existence, you can not count on the presence of normal lifestyle, which belongs to the culture. There is a relationship between material poverty and spiritual drought. People live in fear and anxiety, and that’s why they are not capable of immediate experience of culture. Here, governs a disorder in the lifestyle in which the policy determinates all - that’s why we have a reduction of the cultural field.
So, the situation in culture does not differ much from the situation in society. We live in a vacuum between the old system which is destroyed, and whose patterns are still present, and the inability to create a new scale of values. We had a historic catastrophe, sanctions, war, and everything that happened from the 90s onwards, it was opposite of the essence of culture. Culture cannot survive in cramped conditions, belligerency and extremism. The depersonalization of culture governs, and any adjustment to non-creation leads to doubts about the true value. Homogenization and the instrumentation of everything for the sake of politics resulted in a situation that culture has never been a prerequisite for everything else, as it should be. At the time of extreme crisis, the middle class was completely ruined, then raised a little from 2000, and is currently in stagnation. It is not a happy circumstance, because only through the middle layer the changes are reached.
You talk about the circumstances that have prevented the normal functioning and progress of culture. What are, actually, that “braudel” concepts that stop the transformation of a society?
- What is the worst, those are the concepts of long duration. I’ll mention just a few of them. First, the traditionalism. I do not think the tradition as a value, but the tradition as the flood of the past that should be left behind, defended and moved away from ideology, evaluated in the scientific manner and directed towards new values. In our country are also all prejudices together - all of them! Prejudice in relation to the nation - Nazism and ethnocentrism, by which all other nations are inferior. We talk about Islamic fundamentalism, and we haven’t noticed that there is an Orthodox fundamentalism. There is confusion in the understanding of racial issues, there is also anti-Semitism. Until recently, the attitude towards Roma people was inhumane.
Prejudices largely influenced on the political field to tilt too much toward the extreme right wing. The closed society in which we languished for years and showed the world forms of a drastic decline is suitable for them. So today we are in great backwardness and in the fogs of self-sufficiency. Protagonists of such a policy seem to have forgotten that the culture does not exist as an isolated value, and that it need to be compared with values in the world. In culture you cannot survive in closed national borders, and we live in isolation, which we loved as the warm form of life. This is a misunderstanding with one’s own personality and with others.
More than fifty years the state has not opened any of the galleries, seventeen years we have been waiting for the Law on the culture, and only one percent of the state budget is allocated for culture. How does it reflect?
- Firstly, we have a disturbance in the minds of people and in the heads of those who make decisions. They don’t want to realize that culture is a basic prerequisite for true transformation and emancipation. The thing is that they do not see culture as a precondition for everything else and that is why they opine like that. They experience it as a necessary evil, that’s why any of state galleries haven’t been open for so long - for them it unnecessary burden. We have to have a culture and the law on culture, and as soon as there is a wrong reasoning, we have, as a consequence, such a percentage of the budget which is predestinated for culture. There is this “logic” of negligence and misunderstanding of what culture is - and it is assumption of economic and any other development.
You were a member of the Federal Commission for cultural relations with foreign countries. What reflects the importance of active international dialogue for the culture of a country?
- It was a long time ago, but the fact that remained is that there is no culture without dialogue. If you want to recognize an environment as one that searches for values, you can find it out through dialogue within the community. That’s why I say that the self-sufficiency is opposite of the essence of culture. Therefore, the openness is the first assumption to compare, to see our picture in the mirror of others and to recognize ourselves there, because those are true bridges. I do not think that everything in the world is superior, but - let’s not provincially see our culture as the best in the world and have narcissism without foundation. I think that the fastest way to reach the world is right across and through the culture.
From which point should we start in solving the existing problems in the Serbian culture?
- I think that more presence and criticism of the public is needed. Criticism is an Achilles heel of our culture and it, at least intellectually, would have to put the culture in place that it belongs to. The revaluation of culture is needed, a fundamental change of values and place of the culture in terms of formation of civil life and civil society. Lying is the dominant status of the individual and collective existence. Bluffing and deception do not end. The truth is undesirable - there is the impression that it left somewhere and that its return is uncertain. There is no fundamental change - nor will it be until we gain the ability to confront our own truth.
by Ivana Spasojevic
Нема коментара:
Постави коментар