There is a circuit between the self and others,
Merleau-Ponty, Signs
a Communion of Black Saints
Turbofolk is a combustion of the people
Rambo Amadeus, Oprem dobro
Discursive murmur is persistent, but it is itself prone to symptoms of electoral disease and consequently somehow tasteless. It seems to leave the impression of vain adrenaline that is present, but it is still just an expression of what one wants to cover up, i.e. mere benignity. The billboard grotesques give visuals, and the dusty music notebook was once again the source for the notes of this phonia of promises. In a word, the same thing emerged as usual – the election muses spoke the language of standard election recipe. However, the bitter tears of criticism should not be shed. Such election customs have their audience because, simply put, Croatian local politics is not just Zagreb. The place of action of our politics are not primarily social networks, nor is a critical awareness of the urban people the fundamental feature of domestic politics.
Removing the analytically short-sighted pink glasses of centeredness on the country’s capital, this comment touches on what is in every sense the antipode to the boredom of electoral sameness. For this purpose, we have to go south where the political landscape is far different. If we listen to the sweet sounds of the election routine upstairs, we will hear the bleating of lambs downstairs. Up there, we are talking about the Sunday brunch gathering of spouses, grandmothers, grandfathers and rosy nephews with neat please-here you go-thank you repertoire, while down here, it is about the more messy cousin-godfather customs, drinking homemade (young) wine, greasy lips and cheeks endowed with all of the poetic richness of available swearing repertoire. Up there, the unicorns are drinking from the fountains, and down here, we have livestock carcasses by the river. Of course, we are talking about Vlajland, a place inhabited by hillbillies and picturesque newcomers, in short, the Strange Others.
Richard, one of the main characters created by the performer Enio Meštrović, evolved politically in such a milieu. Bearded and unkempt, of pronounced rural style, cunning and witty, his character credibly conveys the image of a hinterland farmer. After several less successful Meštrović’s election campaigns, Richard has become, as journalists would have it, a real Internet sensation. Most of his performances, beneath a layer of authentic humor, actually emit painfully serious and thoughtful lines that merge into a coherent critical thread concerning his surroundings. However, Meštrović succeeded only with Richard, who, in addition to virtual fame, has also acquired real fame. Richard came to life within the people. He did it in a unique way. He succeeded because he threw in front of the people what the people love the most – the people themselves, as the only remaining opium of the people. And this love is greater because it is personified by Richard, as a kind of people’s character who puts the people in a position of safe distance. That is, the people prefer to recognize themselves in the figure of someone else because it also means that the character takes upon himself every ridicule or reproach that can be addressed to them. We are dealing with a kind of collective mirror that takes responsibility for what it depicts. At the same time, Richard is an object that brings smiles to faces because it shows the people exactly as they are – which usually isn’t very popular thing to do – but he is an object that, in addition to providing comfort to the folk with the image of someone else, always shows the other one. That is, he is an object of the character of the people, acting like a mirror while, at the same time, no one believes to be personally reflected in that mirror. More precisely, Richard is like an object that always more faithfully mirrors the one next to us.
On the one hand, it would be wrong to reduce Richard to the character of a clown, troll or a fool on duty, or to call him a populist on the other. More precisely, his style may be populist (people, lamb, and money), but that is just the façade of his goal, which is more or less genuinely democratic. In fact, Meštrović aims for "opening of the space", that is, he wants to enable democratic subjectivization for others, i.e. for those who are outside the space covered by the existing order. It is, in analogy with Rancière, pushing of the boundaries that the order establishes within the limits of what is allowed. Therefore, Richard is a species of turbofolk, but his type of turbofolk is one with a preconceived notion of democratic modernization. Richard wants to make a real participatory space out of a corner for limited subjectivization. It should be noted here that Richard could not exist without Enio, who had to be exactly like he is. Beneath Richard’s negligent appearance there must have been a disappointed devoted dreamer akin to Vlado Gotovac – an Enio who, despite everything, still believes in Godot’s arrival.
What remains to be seen is whether Richard will be able to move away from the turbofolk that he stylistically embodies. More precisely, it remains to be seen whether the audience will be able to move away from the futile consumption of Meštrović’s humor. Only the future will show whether the people of Zadar are ready to accept the grotesque as it is – a starting point for cogitation and reflection – and thus the first step in the direction of moving away from the existing order. Judging by the extras that are regularly present in the background of Meštrović’s sketches and performances – the anonymous mass that, while enjoying the comfort of a pole position in a cafe, does not get beyond empty wonderment – the answer is hardly optimistic for Meštrović.
