'DEEP STATE REVENGE WROUGHT UPON US NOW' - Crnobrnja on Musk, Twitter, Tito, Brena, Konstrakta! 'TITO A MAN OF THOUSAND FACES'

If there is someone with an extensive knowledge of the media and cultural scene of Serbia, it is Stanko Crnobrnja – a film and television director, producer and scriptwriter, as well as a full professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications. His curriculum vitae states that he has worked on over 1,500 television shows, such as Nedeljno Popodne (Sunday Afternoon), Petkom U 22 (Fridays At 10pm), and Beograd Noću (Belgrade By Night), and numerous TV serials and three feature films. The latter include Hajde Da Se Volimo (Let's Fall In Love), a film featuring a stellar performance by singer Lepa Brena. In addition, Crnobrnja has founded a number of regional television channels.

In his interview with Kurir, Crnobrnja analyses the current situation in the media and culture, and looks back on a part of his career.

I would like to open this conversation with a question that you yourself pose in your column: Will the generations who have grown up inextricably linked to digital tools, smartphones, social media, cryptocurrencies, video games, electronic surveillance, genetic engineering, silicone implant beauties, deadly pandemics, millions of people migrating, large-scale war destruction, debt bondage, artificial intelligence, synthetic food, energy shortage, and climate disasters be able to create a new world in which people live in peace and prosperity?

"That is the million-dollar question. Still, the answer is YES, unless the old, embittered, greedy, and decrepit powerful people around the world take the whole planet six feet under in the meantime, in a nuclear apocalypse. In many ways, the youth of today is the last generation to have both a duty and an outside chance of saving the planet from the madness that has swept over it. It's a do-or-die sort of situation regarding the future of civilization, and this young generation is already taking up the challenge and starting to resolve it."

You are a professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications. What are young people like really? Should we be concerned about the future? What key advice do you give them regarding the media, and what do you tell them about life in general?

"As in any other time, young people are full of hope and life. The 21^st-century generations are taken aback by the extent to which the 20^th-century generations have managed to spoil and jeopardize a small and beautiful blue planet, which – like a blue sapphire – span around the universe with a high likelihood of being a unique cosmic miracle of beauty and harmony. As for the media and life, I share with my students at the beginning two game-changing truths discovered by Marshall McLuhan: firstly, the media are extensions of our senses, and electronic media are direct extensions of our brains. Nowadays, they are infinitely so. Secondly, the medium is the message, i.e. the meaning of the media does not lie in the message but in the effect it has on the existing social order. Twitter has changed the world, and will change it even more now that it's owned by Musk. Moreover, Facebook, if it were a state, it would be a state with the biggest population in the world. And, in addition, the wise words of George Bernard Shaw – ' Lost time is never found again'. As for the future, the young people of Germany declared loud and clear in the middle of the pandemic, 'We don't want money, we want the future!' I think that's how most young people around the world feel today."

Why have deep states all across the developed world zeroed in on the free internet?

"The internet is a watershed in free communication between people. Humanity waited and wished for it for thousands of years. When the freedom of the internet spread across the planet, it jeopardized, even swept over, those who used to be the 'owners and guardians' of the truth and authority, like a tsunami. Deep states had been just that for centuries. What we're seeing now is the revenge of the deep states and their frantic attempt to retain absolute control over the truth and the society as a whole – from culture to business, from health to movement, from the freedom of speech and thought to innovation and spirituality."

You brought up Twitter and Facebook a moment ago. Nowadays, Netflix is very popular, but could it be that it too is on its way to ruin?

"After fifteen years of being ahead in terms of its streaming offer, Netflix still has 222 million subscribers. However, it is no longer alone in the market, the competitors have become stronger, and one of the laws of the capitalist market is at play now – nothing lasts forever. For the first time in the last ten years, subscribers are leaving Netflix en masse. The first six months of the year alone will see three million such cases. Netflix, which has been described as everything it isn't – and it is not live TV, or sports on television, or scheduled dates and times of premieres, or programming with ads – will be very much like good old television in the new business model. There will be programming, but it will be interrupted by commercials. Multiple users will no longer be able to use a single subscription. Massive investments in original programming will have to be reduced. An exclusive series which was to be produced by Meghan Markle has just been cancelled. Netflix will cut the cloth to suit the purse and, in order to make progress over the long haul, it will have to find a powerful partner as well. Yet another merger in the world of media mega-companies."

On Serbia's media scene

'The government should not have pulled out from the media'

Was the government wrong to decide to pull out from media ownership? We have found ourselves in a situation where Serbia is the only country in the region, in Europe even, which does not have a state, national news agency.

"The media laws passed back in 2014 proclaimed the 'ousting' of the state from the media. That was a result of a years-long foreign and domestic lobbying and an act of losing all common sense. No government pulls out of the media that it owns or influences. In this country, these nonsensical laws have resulted in a situation where the majority of the 2,000 registered media outlets in Serbia depend on government money, which is provided in co-financing competitions. These competitions have turned into a corruption mechanism through which a privileged few get the lion's share of the state subsidies, and the majority gets scraps, just enough to survive. The collateral damage of this sort of thinking was the abolishing of the state news agency, founded back in 1943 and considered internationally for decades as one of the highest-quality ones. No one shoots themselves in the foot like we do."

Why are reality shows and quizzes so popular in Serbia?

"People like to be voyeurs, or Peeping Toms, as we used to say, and watch other, unknown people in their endless back-and-forth, drama, cheating, arguments, and hates. When they watch these people, they feel superior because they're not in such humiliating, often vulgar situations. But, at the same time, they feel content because they can unreservedly and anonymously – to their hearts' content – support, hate, like, follow, gossip, or tell stories about the 'heroes' parading in the reality TV world for years. On the other hand, people are in a sort of awe of TV quizzes, but they are also very curious about the 'TV' individuals who are capable, smart, quick, and sharp, and win without anyone's help, pitted against their equals. It's the sort of power that's unattainable, but also irresistible, for most viewers."

How did your collaboration with Lepa Brena on the film Let's Fall In Love come about? What was it like working with her?

"The then manager of the band Slatki Greh (Sweet Sin), the amazing Raka Đokić, suggested that we collaborate. Sadly, he has long since passed away, but he was a producer and manager of exceptional talents, winning ideas, and great courage. Musicals are rare in our film industry. I liked the idea of making a musical – not just one, as it turned out – with such a great producer as Raka Đokić. Brena has always been an amazing professional. Focused, prepared to take on the most demanding challenges of long shoots, hard-working, responsible, young, and full of positive energy."

Why did you dress Oliver Mandić up as a woman, put makeup on him, and brought him to the TV show Belgrade By Night in the 1980s? Was that an act of provocation, courage, or….?

"I've been asked what that was for years. People have remembered Belgrade By Night for decades, a show that I intentionally used to point out that television wasn't only what had been shown before. Belgrade By Night was the first primetime pop-rock TV show in Europe. Oliver's great music allowed me to develop a fantastic story that I told using a new television language. I mastered that language by combining my previous artistic engagements with photography, film, television, and multimedia. It was a joy to make, with a crew of dedicated, exceptional creators from TV Belgrade, who were in their prime at just that point, and were ready for a creative move of that sort."

Your father is Bogdan Crnobrnja, who was a close associate, i.e. the President of the SFRY Josip Broz's general secretary. What did your father tell you about Tito? What was he actually like? Despite various theories, you don't question Tito's origins and his official biography?

"All the revolutionaries from my father's generation that I'd met adhered to an unwritten rule. This rule was that you said nothing about the people and the organization. It had been adopted back during the pre-war underground fight, when comrades didn't give away their comrades' names even under brutal torture. In the time of peace, as victors, they naturally had their personal opinions about the movement and their comrades. Tito had long been an absolute authority. What I was able to see for myself when I was very young was that Tito was an extremely ambitious, perfectly organized, and resourceful professional revolutionary, with a taste for women, tobacco, and alcohol. Essentially a loner, cautious, communicative, curious, capable, tough, sharp, and cunning. The only answer my father gave me was that Tito was indeed that man, and not the person from the many theories of him as a planted Russian agent, a child of this or that Austro-Hungarian aristocrat born out of wedlock, a mystical member of secret societies, and so on, and so forth. Yes, Tito was a man of a thousand faces, especially until the moment he won in the revolution and gained international recognition. As a larger-than-life guy, he knew how to pass himself off as a great player and was seen that way too, as evidenced by his funeral. However, he didn't have the strength to retire at the peak of his powers. He proclaimed himself a lifelong leader and faced his sins during the last years of his life, in the form of weaklings that he had surrounded himself with. He didn't have the strength to stop them from tearing apart his greatest achievement – the common state of South Slavs, Yugoslavia."

On Serbia's Eurovision representative

'Konstrakta has great chances'

We are having this conversation just before the Eurovision Song Contest. Over the course of your career, you have been involved, among other things, in a number of music festivals, including Yugovision and Beovision. How would you rate Konstrakta's chances at the Eurovision Contest?

"Konstrakta has great chances. Even if she doesn't win, she's already left quite a powerful impression all across the Eurovision universe, which is truly a world in and of itself, with a multimillion-strong population. The voting has always been Eurovision's weak link. I don't know who the main competitors are, but with SMS votes cast by the viewers, unexpected developments are possible."

Boban Karović

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