We live in an overwhelming present. Our identities are as fractious and fluid as the multi-device, multi-tab newsfeed that now provides our primary access point to reality.
Metaphors, fables and myths have more power than ever and the collective atmosphere is marked by despair and disintegration. Marina Warner I have always been struck by your extraordinary powers of observation, as is everyone who reads you likewise.
How did that affect the former Yugoslavia? I mean, is it very Americanised? American culture occupied the consciousness, imagination and the tastes of Yugoslav consumers very early on. In , her film Bathing Beauty played in Yugoslav cinemas and from then on Yugoslav cinemas were flooded with Hollywood movies.
Ninotchka is said to have sabotaged the results of the Italian general election, when there was a big chance that the Communists would win. Greta Garbo played the titular role in Ninotchka , a Soviet envoy seduced by the West while on assignment in Paris. We, at least my generation, were not fed hard ideology, but soft and seductive products: I remember Cheddar cheese, powdered milk and Hollywood movies from my earliest childhood.
I realised that much, much later. Going with my mother to the cinema in my early childhood โ because there were no other attractions for children at that time, not even dolls โ gave me much more then I am able to articulate. MW What one catches from this kind of memory is that this was a happier time; your work now is marked by a kind of melancholia.
