Serbian writer Jasmina Tesanovic has just written a new piece called “Ideally Bad, or, The Banality of Her Badness.” It tells the story of last night’s concert by Serbian turbo-folk star Ceca. Ceca is the widow of the Milosevic-era war-criminal Raznatovic, and she goes about in public adorned in kewelry looted from the victims of war atrocities. She is a Serbian ultra-nationalist whose fame is both nauseating and ill-deserved, and Tesanovic’s account of her concerts is scathing, brutal, and brilliant:
Ideally Bad, or, The Banality of Her Badness
Belgrade 17 June, 2005
There is no excuse for going to Ceca’s concert
(“Ideally Bad”) but I found one: I took a foreigner
with me. I am trembling with shame while the local
crowd of Ceca fans is flooding down to the confluence
of the rivers of Danube and Sava. The concert is
occurring next to the big, ugly monument that Mira
Markovic built to celebrate the NATO raids. In the
name of the Serbian people, this monument is
inscribed. Well, NOT IN MY NAME.
I am glumly studying this host of young people merrily
walking to see their evil pop-idol. They are SO young,
our children from some years ago, the so called war
children. These war kids are high school kids
today… Do they remember anything of the wars, of
the crimes and massive looting done in their names by
their turbo folk icon?… Do they know that Ceca
robbed them of their future?
The widow of Raznatovic has big new tits, extended
meaty lips, and is dressed in her usual flowing white
robes. She sings the old hits about bad men she
loves who treat a woman like a dog. The kids know
every word, and sing along. The most famous turbo
folk star in the region, Ceca is an eighteen-year
veteran, highly popular even in the neighboring areas
where her husband and his paramilitary troops looted
and killed her listeners.
Many years ago, when I first wrote of Ceca, I
described her as a victim: she was already a pop star
when Arkan married her, and the poor little thing was
only half his age. I naturally imagined that Arkan was
abusing her fame and beauty for his military
nationalist goals. Then Ceca became a mature
Serbian-nationalist queen, wearing a huge cross and
ardently singing of Jesus. Around her neck hung
fancy necklaces stolen from refugees or victims. One
such necklace, a particularly choice piece of
war-loot, was even identified live on a TV show as
she wore it. The ranks of Balkan war criminals are
lavishly jewelled with such Lady Macbeths.
Nevertheless, our children are thoroughly hooked to
this lousy, aggressive, victimist celebration of
Serbian male power. The marvelling foreigner and I
were the oldest ones in this crowd last night, perhaps
half a million fans, maybe more. The massive stacks
of amplifiers were audible for kilometers around. The
police were rolling in big buses and trucks, manning
all the bridges, in full force around the concert
site.
I wonder what trouble the police expected, for the
concert crowd was one of the tamest I have seen in
Belgrade. It was a high school rally, really. These
poverty-stricken kids were in rubber sandals and cheap
little summer tops and shorts. They didn’t even have
lighters, for the security people snatched these out
of their pockets and dumped them on the ground.
My foreigner naturally expected to see the legendary
Balkan temptress surrounded by shaven-headed,
heavily-armed gangs of paramilitary Arkan Tigers in
uniforms and secret-police jeeps, so he looked quite
chagrinned at today’s reality. This is a low key
show, not badly staged, yet bland and boring. She
generously sings for hours on end with scarcely a
pause to change gowns, but, remote and tiny on her
distant, glittering stage, she often sounds as if she
is phoning in her performance. The crowd knows every
word of her hits, and she frequently stops singing to
hold out her microphone and let them do the work. I
notice husky young guys singing in the female gender,
so as to mimic every word of their idol.
In the middle of the concert, she thanks her fans
for their unfailing support during her many troubles,
then bursts in tears as they supportively chant her
name… This widowed mother of two has certainly
known her woes: her husband was publicly murdered
right in front of her favorite boutique. She also
spent a spell in prison because of collaborating with
the paramilitary criminal gangs. She started her
concert by quoting the late Slobodan Milosevic, when
he addressed his own crowds in his heyday: I LOVE YOU
TOO.
Still, this is not that old Milosevic crowd of
aggressive and vengeful middle-aged Communists. These
kids drink mostly Coca-Cola, not even beers, and just
jump around. The security at the entrance has
deprived them of every conceivable weapon, patting
them down and dumping pens, lighters, anything made of
metal.
So when the singer asks the crowd to light candles
for her, this proves impossible. The police move fast
from one edge of her crowd to another, as if fully
expecting mayhem to burst out. Nothing happens. The
densely jammed crowd of standing teens moves from a
sentimental mood, toward boredom, toward overcrowded
suffocation, and at last toward some vague, general
humiliation. Surprisingly large numbers of her fans
seem to be leaving early. The concert is sponsored by
Volkwagen, broadcast by TV Pink and is echoing across
Belgrade, but it is numbing the crowd. Even if she
were trying, which she isn’t, it would be hard work to
whip up any storm of patriotism here. Montenegro has
seceded. Then came that hellish 6 to zero defeat from
Argentina in the World Cup soccer game. The Macbeth
signs and portents just aren’t on her side.
The widow is in good voice, goes through her
usual motions and hasn’t put on weight, but the
strength has drained from her scene. These kids don’t
have any turbo-folk look; punk, or metal, or techno,
or ethno, those would probably suit them just as
well. They scarcely bother to rhythmical chant
‘Serbia’ or point the three-finger salutes.
Ceca has always idolized Madonna, supposedly
using Madonna’s show trailer and Madonna’s make-up
artist, but any Madonna concert would have been vastly
better organized than this. Madonna is not a
small-time local war-looter like Ceca but a ruthlessly
organized global capitalist, so Madonna would have
sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of Madonna
merchandise to such an adoring crowd. These Ceca fans
get nothing much from her: no chairs, no place to
stand, no T-shirts, nothing but tough security,
badly-printed 500-dinar Ceca CDs and maybe some
mineral water. Even her band improves when Ceca
leaves the stage for a moment: these skilled rock
musicians and gypsy players lay down some pretty hot
rhythms when Ceca is not around to narcotize them with
her monotonous laments.
My friends are furious at me for buying the
tickets and going to see Ceca. They hate the sight
of Serbia in denial and resent the fact that the
world takes a lot more interest in a glamorous
criminal gangster-moll than they do in us, the
others… I have one small satisfaction, because my
foreigner is bored and visibly disappointed. He’s
openly questioning everything he thought he knew about
the big bad Balkans. What is this really all about,
he is asking me loudly?
Some years ago, I refused to take a foreign
journalist to one of Ceca’s concerts. I was so
offended that he asked that I even refused to speak to
him. I had to consider him a kind of accomplice…
Then I fought with my feminist girlfriends,
defending the many Serbian girls who identify with
Ceca as born female victims. Last night, though, I
managed to patch these two contradictory attitudes
without bursting. I sincerely hope she sings her
laments from a jail cell, some day… Then, I may
even applaud.