BAJA I DRUGOVI DERVIŠA SUŠIĆA - POKUŠAJ RAZBIJANJA KANONSKOGA KULTURNOMEMORIJSKOGA MAKROMODELA NA PRIMJERU RATNOG TEATRA
BAJA I DRUGOVI BY DERVIŠ SUŠIĆ - AN ATTEMPT TO DISPERSE THE CANONICAL MACRO-MODEL OF CULTURAL MEMORY- THE CASE OF WAR THEATRE

Summary/Abstract: The play Baja i drugovi is a comedy in three acts with elements of the vaudeville. This play is at the same time Sušić’s attempt to disperse the canonical macro-model of cultural memory by means of (partisan) war theatre. Partisan theatres were being founded within all district and municipal boards of the People’s Liberation Movement (NOB) whose primary goal was to “educate the masses” in the spirit of the People’s Liberation Movement (NOB). The cultural policy at the time, and the theatre as well, was expected to boost the number of consumers of culture, to emancipate ignorant and illiterate masses and strive towards focusing their energy to the benefit of further social and political awareness-raising with the aim of reaching canonical aesthetic-ethical single-mindedness. By using the counterpoint, a modern dramatic device, and by juxtaposing the tragical and the comical, throughout this play, which is mostly permeated with elements of comedy, Sušić maintains a tragic note by introducing the characters of Baja and Pisac, which will culminate at the end of the play in Baja’s death and Pisac’s psychological demise. However, even though the play unfolds towards a resolution, it unexpectedly and in a slightly ironic way changes the pattern present until a point when it suddenly turns bleak and brings us to a tragic end, which, after all, leaves us, in an imperatively ironical way, filled with cathartic ideological optimism that mocks the inevitable ideological optimism of single-mindedness.

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