My Big Fat Balkan Warlord Wedding

ENG 201
14 September 2010

My Big Fat Balkan Warlord Wedding

    The 1998 essay “Balkan Wedding Revisited: Multiple Messages of Filmed Nuptuals” (sic), Dina Iordanova is taken from a thesis paper at the Centre for Mass Communication Research at the University of Leicester (published in 2000 by the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota). The essay compares two actual weddings which took place in the Balkans between 1992 and 1995 with several depictions of weddings depicted in feature films.

    The first of the actual weddings is infamous for being, according to the essay, a trigger event for the Siege of Sarajevo, while the second is infamous for being a much-hyped and gaudily-priced filmed wedding between a Serbian “turbo-folk” singer and an accused Bosnian Serb militia warlord. As for the feature film weddings mentions, in a short span, 19 films are mentioned, including one that offers a fictionalized account of the wedding which allegedly sparked the 44-month Siege of Sarajevo. She places these 21 different weddings within the context of how various societies view weddings, to what degree of cultural important is placed upon them, the role of the women in the wedding, and who are the couples involved—be they characters in a film, real-life people, or, in the case of the militia warlord and his folk singer wife, where the line of demarcation can be drawn as to how that distinction can be made.

    The opening of the essay has a sorrowed, almost nihilistic tone, as a brief account is offered of a Serbian wedding in Sarajevo in May 1992 in which a Muslim fired into the wedding party and the father of the groom was killed. A cursory overview and a few details are related of the siege itself when the tone and subject dramatically shifts to the 1995 “wedding of the century” between wanted war criminal Arkan and the folk-singer Ceca. It is described as “showcasing a wealth of peasant and urban wedding folklore,” and then a lengthly footnote follows which explains the term and cultural placement of the Serbian indigenous musical genre “turbo-folk” (Iordanova 2).  This lavish wedding was filmed and aired on Belgrade television at the time, and Iordanova outlines the growing trend of filmed weddings around the world. This becomes the lead-in for the next shift in subject of the essay to the use of cultural weddings in feature films from around the world.

    Of the 19 films mentioned in the next part of the essay, 10 countries are represented from the United States to Japan, with the majority being among the Balkan states. These films are detailed in varying degrees, with the focus being primarily on one of four Bulgarian films included in the account.

    The section of the thesis concludes with a simple account of some archetypal symbols which can be found in weddings, and the cultural place women have within them. The statement is made that “the wedding becomes a gendered metaphor of the Balkan plea for equality, in which Balkans are seen as a bride under the control of a domineering groom,” and that “the idealized image of the bride it is there not to please but to project insecurity and endurance...”  But then, in a sudden switch to contrast that statement, it is noted that in the case of Arkan and his popular singer bride is “exactly the opposite—an over-the-top demonstration of confident self-determination” (Iordanova 7).

    The tone shifts from the beginning of the essay to the end of it. Whereas it began detached, with, as was stated previously, grim and sorrowful elements, it becomes more journalistic as it details the weddings in feature films. By the concluding point of the essay—this section of the longer dissertation—the voice has become direct and forthright, all-but-unrecognizable from the grim depictions shown at the outset. It is a remarkably accomplished piece of writing that undoubtedly served the author well in her academic career.

Works Cited

Iordanova, Dina. “Balkan Wedding Revisited: Multiple Messages of Filmed Nuptuals.” Thesis. Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, 1998. Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota. 2000. Print.


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