This just in: Sarajevo still destroyed
My favorite newspaper carried a story today from Sarajevo about “the difficulty to remain a cultural metropolis in peacetime” — certainly a promising subhead, given the temptation reporters habitually succumb to of portraying the city as a heroic survivor that’s definitely on the up and where so much is happening.
To me, it always looked much more like the Chetniks on the hills had succeeded in their mission to destroy Sarajevo.
The piece says that Sarajevo’s cultural life — the arts, literature, etc. — hasn’t reached the level of the pre-war years and perhaps not even that of the wartime period. It reports a burgeoning multimedia scene as the main hope for a revival of the city’s previous glory.
So far so good.
But a third of the article is given over to a home-made socio-economic analysis whose relevance for the topic is rather dubious. The author bemoans the fact that those lucky enough to have a job — salespersons, security guards — are subject to exploitation of the worst kind: long working hours, no job safety, low wages. He then says, “even though the concept of a Western-type leisure society hasn’t arrived here yet, the theaters, cinemas and concert halls are full and the many culture festivals extremely popular.”
The rest is mostly a dissertation into whether Ibro Spahic is a cool dude or just a waste of space. Too local to be of any interest to anyone outside Sarajevo, frankly.
And then (I was waiting for it) the mainstay of Sarajevo orthodoxy about this past decade: some guy saying it’s all the fault of the newcomers — you know, country folk who don’t know of the ways of a civilized city.
Gimme a break. Grow up.
Technorati Tags: Balkania
I get tired of the ‘it’s all those country people’s fault’ line too. Culture doesn’t do well if there is absolutely no money, and it doesn’t do well if people don’t do things like paint and write poems. Poems don’t cost money, but painting and sculpture and dance do cost something, they need special places. That’s something a few people from the countryside do not impact one way or another. I’m glad you said what you did!
Comment by Katja — May 15, 2005 @ 1:03 am
It *is* of course true, as a rule, that poor refugees from villages in Eastern Bosnia are not “contributing” much to culture either as consumers or as producers.
The same is true for your average Sarajevan. Going to a bookstore once in a while (without buying anything) doesn’t “contribute” either.
Most people just don’t care too much about what the theater is showing these days, or whether writer XYZ has a new book out, or what’s on at the National Gallery.
But what’s behind the Sarajevan attitude seems to be not just insensitivity towards the refugees and what they’ve been through and the conditions they have to endure today, but also the idea that whatever the situation may be, someone else is to blame for it. In this particular case it’s not the international community, the standard culprit, but the folks from the Drina.
Comment by Administrator — May 15, 2005 @ 8:45 am