Tatjana Rosic Ilic

TRANSGENDER IDENTITY IN SERBIAN CULTURE (1994-2015): GENDER

MELANCHOLY IN THE SOCIETY OF (MEDIA) SPECTACLE

Gender melancholy and gender norm

• Status of gender melancholy and cross-dressing (Butler) in the context of the society of media spectacle in which final satisfaction is found in the consumption of images

• Gender melancholy, according to Butler, has ambivalent political effects because it is associated with feelings of rage and anger, which are directed against the heteronormative order but, on the other hand, represents failure of the desire to fulfill the ideal heteronormative gender role which is hidden in transgender performativity.

Body and the Boundaries of the New World

• In her book Undoing gender Butler explores the case of transgender person David Reimer which was prominently displayed in the media, including a BBC documentary devoted to his life. In spite of the care of the media and medical institutions (and owing to their mistakes in the process of diagnosis what transgender identity should be) David took his life in June 2014 when he was 38 years old.

• In conclusion to her theoretical elaboration of the case, Butler stresses that David could not successfully “occupy a new world, since he is still, even within the syntax which brings about his “I,” still positioned somewhere between the norm and its failure. And he is, finally, neither one; he is the human in its anonymity, as that which we do not yet know how to name or that which sets a limit on all naming. And in that sense, he is the anonymous—and critical—condition of the human as it speaks itself at the limits of what we think we know.“

Why the Idea of the New World/Body is Important in Transgender Culture?

• Transgender identity is often seen as a possibility for construction and empowerment of new identity regimes; regimes which are hybrid and transgressed; utopian and dystopian at the same time

• Paradoxically these identity regimes are at the same time seen as regimes of the new freedom and regimes of the pre-determination/determinism, regimes which are in a way preconditioned by both their biological and psychological characteristics although these characteristics are overcome with the interventionistic nature of transgender identity seen, in the last consequence, as a result of advanced surgery and technology

Transgender Body and Representation

• One of the questions which Butler always poses again and again, in various forms and discourses, is what are the nature and the consequences of transgender identity/body representation considering the ambivalent nature of the new world which the transgender body should occupy while, on the other hand, always failing to succeed in this task, in empowerment of the new boundaries of the identity/body/world

• The question which is also raised within this context is the question of media representation of the transgender body as the body which should represent an allegory of freedom, on the one hand, and the allegory of predetermination of fate, on the other. Could such an identity range be covered in the media and in which way?

Representation of the transgender body in Serbian 90s media culture

• Zelimir Zilnik film Marble Ass (1994) first pointed out the transgender sub-cultural community and its representatives as part of everyday life of the Serbian capital.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFhEPBzCmAg

• Vjeran Miladinovic Merlinka

Marble Ass (1994)

Media Representation of the Transgendered Body as Subaltern Body

• Both the main protagonists of the Žilnik film, Merlinka and Sanela, experienced great media attention/popularity but were killed a few years later under unclear circumstances to date. The absence of a judicial process that would examine these two murders confirms the transgender community in Serbia during '90s of the last century has to have been marginalized, pushed back into anonymity and made absolutely subaltern for a while.

• Therefore it is not surprising that the transgender identity in the Serbian society during the past two decades most often represents an ambivalent media spectacle that, on the one hand, looks like a social provocation and political subversion, while, on the other, supports the process of tabloidization in Serbian culture as well as the renewal of patriarchal values, fixing in a way the existing identity regime.

New Representations of Transgendered Body in Serbian Media

• Two decades later, the Serbian media again demonstrates an increasing interest in the representation of the transgender identity: there is the case of major Helena whose announced sex change was accompanied by a large interest of the media in spring 2015, as well as the case of Dolf Pospis, former member of the National Formation, who in July 2015 also stated in the media the problems she has had since she had announced her decision to enter the process of gender reassignment.

Images of the Transgender Body in Serbian Media

Change versus predestination

• In both cases the media focus is put on the struggle between the desire for the new body/world and the past life of transgender persons connected for the social formations which are usually seen as rigid, closed, and not fond for any kind of identity regime change (such as the military or right-wing groups)

• The case of Andrej Pejic, a world top model of Balkan origin, who successfully passed through surgery transformation of sex is in a shadow in comparison with the first two cases which are strongly tied with the burden of a military past and long suffering/hiding in the closet of hyper-masculinity

Media Representation and Threats of Violence

• As in the case of the Žilnik film threats of violence, tacit or openly expressed, accompany media promotion of transgender people in Serbia. It seems that public opinion about the status and rights of transgender community has not changed much in relation to the 90's.

• Thus the question is whether this new media interest is inclusive, whether it leads to a new understanding of policy and advocacy of GMG in the Serbian media. To what extent new cases of transgender media exposure/outing can affect conservative public opinion; to what extent they can be seen as good practice of self-presentation and self-promotion that contribute to a better future of gender minority groups in Serbia.

Society of the Spectacle and Consumption of Images

• According to Debore the society of spectacle/mass media is the society in which everything becomes only and pure representation. The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images, says Debore. The number of transgender body images in contemporary Serbian media culture implies new social relationships which seems to ask articulation and ideological explanation.

• Does a transgender body become a new type of commodity which will be consumed by media audience and than forgotten, or, even, worse, destroyed and annihilated in a dystopian gesture? An could it be concluded based on this that there is something - considering the transgender body - which could neither be represented nor accepted within the symbolical order, as Butler has already stressed?

Abjection, alienation and media representations

• Is the media image of the transgender body in fact an image of alienation and abjection (to use the notion known from Kristeva) in the Serbian society of the spectacle in which the image of commodity/transgender body in fact is hiding its own failure of embodying the new identity regime as well as the violent context of social relationships within which the transgender body is produced/cut/shaped/imagined …? To what extent does gender melancholy in these images feed pain to society, trying to cure by this pain the society deprived of all empathy?

• Media interest for transgender persons in Serbia should be, therefore, carefully analyzed. And it could be seen as encouraging a process in understanding the inclusion of gender minority groups only if we remember irony as a specific strategy of self and media representation. Irony which is in a way other side of melancholy coin.

• …or…to go back to the iconic 70s…

DIVINE:SPECTACLE AS IRONY?