<nettime> Arkan or Nirvana

[ivo.scoric@bbs.thing.net (ivo@reporters.net)]

From: Toronto Star January 21, 2000
CULT OF ARKAN SOURCE OF HOPE TO RAVAGED SERBS
by Paul Watson

"Things have changed a bit in Arkan's old neighbourhood over the 
decades since he left home. Graffiti artists have spray-painted 
nearby walls in homage to other idols, former Bosnian Serb leader 
Radovan Karadzic and rock bands like Nirvana. Karadzic, like 
Arkan, has been indicted on war crimes charges.

The basketball court outside the elementary school looks as old,
and weary, as the neighbourhood itself. The rims have no nets and
the painted backboards are peeling, but the kids who shoot hoops 
there dream of playing in America.

One of them is an 18-year-old nicknamed Velja, whose pantheon 
includes NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal - and Arkan."

-------
Comment:

It is indeed interesting that while on one hand the Serbs view the 
U.S. as an enemy nation who bombed them and defeated them, 
they still have a dream of playing in America. I guess it leaves 
many a cultural anthropologist speechless to see how effortlessly 
the young Serbs mix the American vacuous popular culture 
(Shaquille and Nirvana) with the blood-stained moribund epic 
characters like Arkan and Karadzic: how can they have both as 
their idols? Don't they get confused about their values?

"The basketball court outside the elementary school looks as old,
and weary, as the neighbourhood itself. The rims have no nets and
the painted backboards are peeling, but the kids who shoot hoops 
there dream of playing in America." - this can apply to an inner city 
neighborhood of Harlem on Manhattan in the middle of New York 
city, U.S.A., barely a home-run away from some of the richest 
housing on the planet (just swap "America" with "NBA", since they 
already are in America), as well as to the impoverished 
neighborhood of New Belgrade, Serbia, Balkans (the middle of 
Europe?). It is true: the school on 106th and Park has a weary old 
basketball court with rims with no nets and peeling paint from the 
blackboards (there is a sticker on them: 'just say no' [to drugs]), 
and there are always (black and hispanic) kids shooting hoops 
there - even late at night; having the same dream Velja has.

Nirvana is viewed as a rebel band worldwide. When it came out 
with the loud, outrageous Teen Spirit on MTV with all those girls in 
dresses with red "A" [for anarchy] on their chests, and instantly 
pushed Michael Jackson multi-million establishment Thriller project 
right of the charts, every teenager in spirit around the planet 
embraced it as an anthem. And that is what Arkan was: a rebel. 
Somebody who left home early on and went to the world, get by, 
made himself, had his own way - the perfect life from teenage 
perspective. The only difference, of course, is that Kurt Cobain was 
a designed rebel, a product of the Hollywood entertainment 
industry, while Arkan was a real rebel, what they would call in the 
Balkans a few centuries ago "hajduk." And he was not a morally 
positive one at that. Under the glamour of rebellion, that he earned 
while leading the Belgrade Red Star soccer fans [Delije], and 
running stealing and smuggling rings around Europe, his followers 
and admirers didn't see, didn't question his connections to the 
regime, they did not know, did not care to know, that he was a 
plaincloth cop all that time, a hit-man for Yugoslav secret police, a 
designated person to do the dirty job. Following him, they did not 
end up chanting and moshing to the tune of a rock band, but 
killing, maiming and torturing innocent people who were in the way 
of political expansion of a shrewd, murderous regime.

While both Kurt and Arkan ended up with a bullet in their head, 
their stories were vastly different. Kurt's philosophy was not to hurt 
others, and Arkan's philosophy was hurting others. Yet, on the 
surface they were both angry, anti-establishment icons. And that's 
what sells as pop - both in the U.S. and in Serbia: the surface 
image of an information. Maybe that made Kurt place a bullet in his 
head, who knows. When a girl was raped in the U.S. in 1991 by 
two guys singing the lyrics of Nirvana's song "Polly", Kurt called 
them "two wastes of sperm and eggs" and wrote in the preface to 
Niravana's album The Incesticide: "I have a hard time carrying on 
knowing there are plankton like that in our audience" He would 
have a hard time comprehending why should be an idol to 
somebody conducting systematic, mass rapes. Arkan became a 
liability to a regime that fed him and made him what he was. His 
purpose expired with the loss of Kosovo to Kosovars. With no 
place to send him, he was just a potential trouble. So, he got sent 
to Hell.

Of course, since this is Balkans, there must be some dark irony 
involved, doesn't it? The youth in New Belgrade that sprayed grafitti 
"Arkan" and "Nirvana" might have not known that, might have not 
cared to know that while Arkan lead his paramilitaries in the killing, 
looting, raping rampage in Bosnia, Nirvana held two benefit 
concerts (San Francisco and Los Angeles) for the raped women, 
victims of Arkan in Bosnia. On top of that, the second guy in 
Nirvana, the bass player, Krist Novoselic is a child of Croatian 
immigrants. Nirvana was wildly popular in Croatia in 1991. It was a 
huge disappointment for many fans when the management decided 
it was too dangerous for Nirvana to include Croatia - a war zone at 
the time - in its European tour. In divided city of Pakrac (West 
Slavonia) a youth club dedicated to peaceful reconciliation between 
Serbs and Croats, decided to call itself Nirvana, and when Kurt 
shot himself, kids sent Krist letters and drawings and stuff.  I 
wonder would he (most grafitti artists are guys) drop Arkan or 
Nirvana, should have he been confronted with such a revelation.

ivo



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