Śmietnik socjalistycznej nowoczesności w filmach jugosłowiańskiej czarnej fali
A dump of socialist modernity in Yugoslav Black Wave films

Author(s): Patrycjusz Pająk
Subject(s): Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The article concerns the image of social and material poverty in the Yugoslav (mainly Serbian) films of the Black Wave of the 1960s and early 70s in the context of defects of the socialist modernization in Yugoslavia. It begins with justifying the usefulness of the dump metaphor in describing the phenomena characterizing modern civilization and being considered incompatible with the ideas that guide it, and at the same time constituting an inalienable side product of modernization of civilization. A special case is the communist modernization, because its radicalism ultimately brings the opposite effect to the planned one. Instead of removing from the social and material reality all phenomena considered ideologically undesirable, the communists disseminate them. A civilizational dump occupies considerable space also in the socialist Yugoslavia, which the local authorities downplay or conceal. In opposition to them, the directors of the Black Wave expose the ugly side of Yugoslavian reality by using naturalist poetics. They highlight the low standard of living of workers and farmers, poverty, unemployment, the growth of social margin, degradation of the natural environment. Such thematic orientation of their work can be interpreted as an expression of disappointment with the flawed implementation of Marxist ideology by Yugoslav communists who, in this way, have betrayed this ideology.

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