New Frontiers
Post-Irony, Memetic Propaganda and Alt-Right Appropriation of Turbofolk: Orientalism and the Militarization of Balkan Identity in Digital Spaces
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Tris Swisher
This paper explores the song "Karadžić, Lead Your Serbs" by Željko Grmuša and its associated propaganda meme known as Remove Kebab or Serbia Strong; analyzing its function through the lens of sincerity, satire, and a return to sincerity, particularly regarding the ironic use in Balkan communities versus appropriation by right-wing ideologies. Initially sincere, the song promoted violence, ethnic nationalism and distorted historical narratives from the Yugoslav Wars. The ironic use serves as a means of reconciliation, combining misguided national pride and self-deprecating humor to critique, while simultaneously still coping with the recent past. The song’s return to sincerity extends from parodying Islamophobia in strategy gaming communities Hearts of Iron IV, disrupting communications after the Chicago police radio was hijacked during a riot, and the song being quoted in the manifesto for the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019. The paper then critiques the return to sincerity as a manifestation of Orientalism, exoticizing Balkan culture as a backward or primitive society, often glorifying the aggressive, militaristic, and hyper masculine stereotypes, and romanticizing traditional values associated with ethnic purity. The oversimplification of Balkan inner-ethnic relations is easily adaptable in alt right rhetoric as it legitimizes xenophobic attitudes, reinforces cultural superiority, and creates the necessity of defending one's homeland against perceived threats.
World Upside Down: Early Modern "Crossing" Rituals and the Carnivalesque
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
James Seth
My paper focuses on early modern “crossing the line" rituals, initiation ceremonies signifying the ship’s crossing the equator or a similar oceanic threshold. This ritual is arguably the most theatrical event aboard ship. A senior officer becomes "Neptune," while other male seafarers cross-dress and become the sea god’s “consort” of mermaids. During this ceremony, novice sailors are often drenched in seawater (“sea baptized”), and put through a gauntlet of difficult, demeaning, or disgusting tasks, in what Anita Gonzalez describes as “a hazing ritual with prescribed dramatic personae.” I use Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival to engage with historical examples of "crossing" rituals detailed in archival documents from English, French, and Iberian sources from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. I am particularly interested in commercial and exploratory voyages with international and multilingual crews and not exclusively naval voyages. I use a cultural studies methodology to draw parallels between the world of carnival on land and that which existed and thrived at sea. While accounts of "crossing" rituals may seem like proverbial footnotes on intense journeys, these performances evoke important questions about the culture and sociology of shipboard life, the ritual preparations of voyages, and the way that seafarers survived treacherous waters in carnivalesque fashion, subverting many social and behavioral norms while laughing at death.
