Some reflections on nostalgia

So, a friend of mine mentioned some of my comments about socialist nostalgia in his blog. I was going to write him an e-mail to tell him that I think he is reading too much into my comments, but after some reflection, I'm not sure he is. There is a lot of reminiscing about socialism, and technically that's not the same as Yugoslavia, but the two are hard to separate. There is very popular show on one of the private networks Friday nights called Night School. Its so popular, that HRT1 (the flagship national TV network) is rumored to be negotiating to take it. Its an odd sort of improv show which is hard to explain, but the premise is that everyone is taking a night class. I was actually going to write something about it a couple of weeks ago because the show was talking about why Croatia needs to join the EU. It was actually a very funny backhanded critique (backhanded because it was so funny) of the pro-EU argument. The guy who plays the instructor (the star of the show) was explaining why Croatia had to join the EU and Bulgaria and Rumania didn't. His argument was that Croatia wasn't a "real country" and had to join the EU to achieve it's full potential, where are Rumania and Bulgaria were real countries that didn't need the EU to be fulfilled.

So, how does that relate to nostalgia? Well, on the wall behind the instructor's desk is usually a picture of Tito on the wall, just like in the "old days." But, just like Our Little Clinic, the show is set in the present, not the past. So, there is nostalgia all around. It pervades popular culture here, at least on TV. In fact, another private tv network is showing old Yugoslav films. Now, on a commercial level, it makes sense. They are cheap, and there is probably a large enough audience of people who will watch them just because they are a reminder of what thy used to watch growing up. I just watched the end of one which was about a brave group of partizan printers operating an illegal printing press in Beograd during the German occupation.

There is also a darker side to this (as if showing old communist propaganda films from the 50s wasn't dark enough). There is also a fair bit of Ustase stuff floating around too. Now, I'm not sure if you can call it nostalgia when people aren't actually old enough to remember what they are missing, but, none the less, there is a market for old Ustase stuff, and even some new stuff floating around the "old book" stores.