STUDIES
Subjectivity in New Croatian Film: A Narrative-Critical Approach
The author explains the film’s
subjectivity construction on the basis of the search for
identity hypothesis as the basic source of social meaning
in the modern globalised society. In the south-eastern
Europe, the notorious Balkans, subjectivity redefining,
acceptance of Otherness and burying limiting ideological
norms becomes necessity and reality in the post-war and
transitional period, says the author. This can be seen
on the example of films such as Witnesses (Svjedoci), by
Vinko Brešan, Sorry for Kung Fu (Oprosti za kung fu), by
Ognjen Sviličić, What Iva Recorded on October 21, 2003
(Što je Iva snimila 21. listopada 2003), by Tomislav Radić,
Two Players from the Bench (Dva igrača s klupe), by Dejan
Šorak, and What is a Man Without a Moustache? (Što je muškarac
bez brkova?), by Hrvoje Hribar. A narrative-critical approach
to these films understands the interdisciplinary project
which includes the relation between film and narratology,
so questions of subjectivity encompass the relation between
narration and film presentation in the first place, and
considering subjectivity production, this approach points
to interdependence between film and cultural theory.
The author explains problems that emerge when trying to define
the subject as a constantly produced and redefined category,
and in narrative film analysis, it should be distinguished
between the text, the story/ topic, and the plot levels:
narrative text is a text in which a certain agent tells a
story in a certain media... The story is the plot presented
in a certain way... the plot presupposes a series of events
experienced by the agents connected in a logical and chronological
order (according to Mieke Bal). Of course, subject positions
in film’s narrative texts are tightly connected to the questions
of gender, sexuality, nationality and race, and determining
these positions in the analysis of the stated Croatian films
presupposes an interdisciplinary project which causes disciplinary
borders’ pushing, in this case, between film studies and
narratology. The impossibility to sustain disciplinary borders
within liberal studies is possibly most evident precisely
in film studies and especially evident when we try to find
possibilities to conceptualize the film’s subjectivity constructions.
Saša Vojković |
