I recently watched the new action movie "Wolves". In my defense: I was sick and therefore unimaginative. However, I didn't fall for the combination of Brad Pitt and George Clooney doing typically "manly" things - walking around in leather jackets, driving fast cars and making egomaniacal quasi-ironic jokes. If it weren't for the depiction of "Albanians" and "Croats" and their rival mafias, I might have fallen asleep.
The Albanians enter the film as a group of big guys with guns; they eliminate them quickly, in less than a minute. On the other hand, Croats are shown in more detail, in a longer scene of a Croatian wedding.
The wedding, which will take place in a kitschy club, includes a lot of drinking, lots of dark-haired smiling men in bright suits, a short dialogue in Croatian between the character of the mobster, played by Zlatko Burić, and his movie daughter, accompanied by lively music. At one point, the men in bright suits hug each other and start dancing - jumping - in a circle, while shouting "hey hey hey". The game ends with one of the American brothers cursing in Croatian, or something that looks like Croatian.
The movie is absolutely easy to forget, but it shows something that is as old as Hollywood itself and should definitely not be ignored. After Hollywood stigmatized Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, Russians and others in its early films, Westerns, as well as action and crime films in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, it apparently decided that now openly stigmatizes people from the Balkans.
Albanians and Croats were chosen because they are not white or not white enough for Hollywood. What is considered not white enough has to do with either the history of colonialism or the history of communist regimes; and sometimes, as in the case of Albanians and Croats, their history fulfills both conditions.
If a community - such as Albanians, Croats, Slovenians or Macedonians - does not have a strong enough voice in the West, Hollywood can do whatever it wants with it.
I believe that Hollywood understands the history of the Balkans in the same way as the Canadian psychologist and conservative thinker Jordan Peterson. At an event in Ljubljana in 2018, he stated that it was his first lecture in a country that was once closed behind the Iron Curtain. In addition to being completely false - Slovenia was never behind the so-called Iron Curtain - Peterson's statement was symptomatic of Western perceptions of the history of communist and socialist systems. For the West, whose most effective megaphone is Hollywood, communism and socialism are synonymous with the Cold War and Stalinism.
Therefore, the history of Yugoslavia, the federation to which Slovenia once belonged, is rarely properly understood. Yugoslavia was socialist, but it was not Stalinist. In fact, Yugoslavia broke away from the Soviet sphere of influence in 1948 and became the founder of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, this does not matter to the American film industry, because communism and socialism are two phenomena that it simply loves to hate.
This ideological basis - as well as the Western belief that ex-communist countries are in the hands of criminals - facilitated and logically justified the portrayal of Albanians and Croats in the film "Wolves" as unpredictable savages, and therefore extremely dangerous terrorists/enemies/villains.
However, somewhere during this process, the selected ethnic groups had to be defined. Therefore, all available general prejudices about people from the Balkans, who are essentially Slavs, were collected and inserted into the script, costume design and set. In the eyes of Hollywood, Slavs are usually depicted as either crouching or wheeling, or loudly or melancholic drunk, or verbally or physically aggressive, and of course, hideously corrupt.
Moreover, in the film "Wolves", the stigmatized people are the people of the past, people with - once again flat - traditions. Namely, at their wedding, only men will dance in circles, the father will be a real patriarch, and the bride will be a fragile woman who needs to be protected. I'm glad that none of the wedding guests wave the Croatian flag; viewers are at least spared the prejudice that, in addition to all that, Slavs are essentially nationalists.
Don't get me wrong. It wasn't anger that made me watch "Wolves," it was wonder. It is not only a typical Hollywood product, but also a product that generously shows how Hollywood's neoliberal political correctness actually works.
The American film industry provides recognition and non-degrading representation only to those groups that have succeeded - through political or social activism - in positioning themselves on its Western map. They will then sell that representation back to those same communities and brag about their progressiveness and inclusiveness. If a community - such as Albanians, Croats, Slovenes or Macedonians - does not have a strong enough voice in the West, Hollywood can do whatever it wants with it. No one will hear the misrepresented community shouting.
Neoliberal political correctness is not an expression of critical thinking, but an expression of fear of not looking bad and alienating the audience, customers and voters. It is purely transactional and for Hollywood, we, the people of the Balkans, are not part of that transaction. If Hollywood's anti-propaganda wasn't so powerful, we could actually consider ourselves lucky. On the other hand, maybe we are really lucky. Perhaps because Hollywood hasn't pandered to us, we can still see the American film industry for what it really is.
The author is a Slovenian writer, editor and critic
Text taken from "The Guardian"
Translation: NB
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