URBAN RITUALS: THREE ESSAYS ON URBAN FOLKLORE

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SOCIO-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF DANCE

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The paper entitled Socio-Cultural Features of the Dance: Sociological Research of the Youth, is the result of the empirical research in the form of poll conducted among the young population. Crucial objective was to scrutinize opinions and attitudes of youth regarding their dancing preferences and habits, as well as their understanding of many features and dimensions of dance. The latter is contextualized as an activity and content of leisure, with predominantly positive influence on youth; its crucial function being entertainment, amusement, and recreation. The study depicts the pluralism of dance and its multidimensional contents. That is to say that the dance as a sociological and culturological phenomenon is conceived as a communication channel, sport activity, form of dance and entertainment, primal and ancient art, social motive of socializing, and a specific form of healing.

GRAFFITI OR STREET ART

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To describe drawings or paintings on the walls we use different words like: graffiti, street art, tags, murals… But what do these words really mean? To explain these terms, primarily graffiti and street art, we will check different definitions in order to find which one can explain best what graffiti stand for. We will look at concepts of some critics of graffiti and street art, just to show their ways of representing these terms, showing how different they can be and, at the same time, how right they can all be, because graffiti and street art offer a lot of space for discussion. Also, in order to understand them, we need to know how they are made and in which techniques, because this holds the key for their further comprehension.

VALJEVO IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY

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The aim of this paper is to study the development of the identity of the City of Valjevo. The research has covered the historical development of the city as well as external influences on it. Among these are some of the larger cities located near Valjevo, such as Belgrade. The paper has emphasized what is immanent and characteristic of the city itself, as well as the manner in which Valjevo differs from other cities in its surroundings, recognizing some important historical aspects of its development, institutions and people. In the end, a forecast of further development (progress, reversal or stagnation) is made, including a review of the resources that the city and its surroundings possess.

MEMORY ARCHIVING IN FILMS MEMENTO (2000) AND INCEPTION (2012)

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The main aim of this paper is determining how personal memory archive has influenced the identity of characters in the films Memento and Inception. The above mentioned films, both directed by Christopher Nolan, belong to popular Hollywood production dealing with the subject of memory, offering various examples of semiotisation of archived memories. The main character of the film Memento deals with a series of mnemonics that help him create a personal archive of a suppressed trauma that motivates revenge, while in the movie Inception, the feeling of guilt is a generator of memory archiving. This paper will show that, in these so-called mind-game films, as defined by Thomas Elsaesser, the dysfunctional and irrational semiotisation of archived memories disturbs the psychological and individual stability of these characters, thus affecting their identity.

CORRUPTED TRAGEDY, ALIENATED UTOPIA

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This paper examines certain dialectic of deviance, not just in the sense of its positive role in the moral conflicts that characterize social progress, but also as nonconformist phenomena that sooner or later becomes commodified. The film Easy Rider can be used as a theoretical tool in order to analyze the individualistic and social aspects of counterculture, with a focus on repressive, de-sublimated practices that invert the meaning of freedom, justice and equality. The paper questions whether the counterculture, in spite of the initial celebration of apostasy and social experiments, eventually ended up being integrated within the system by becoming a mask of social domination itself. Ideological contradictions of Easy Rider show the aesthetic and asocial nature of the countercultural identity, which has culminated in the pathological production of authenticity in capitalism. Instead of alternative, solidaristic community, there is yet again atomistic conception of society. The second part of the paper considers the possibility of abandoning capitalist society. The search for ancorpy was violently suppressed in the film, but in reality the counterculture’s most radical elements were discarded or watered down, in order to sell it as a market product. The paper concludes that the postmodernist cultural Left has neglected the class conflict and focused on the extension of minority rights while the neoliberal deterioration of social rights was in progress. The film anticipates a contemporary social condition, a different kind of ideological hegemony, where the conflict occurs within the subordinated class, among different factions, leaving the power center untouched. Popular culture has lost its utopian dimension, while deviation has acquired a specific capitalist function.

PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF ROMA LANGUAGE AND ITS ALPHABET

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BETH KEVAROTH – HOUSE OF THE DEAD

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The Jewish Diaspora has begun back in the classical era with the conquests of the Roman Empire, and has never finished. Since this period, Jews have been populating the Balkan countries. In Serbia, this is particularly characteristic of a later period – the Middle Ages and the New Age, when Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews began to inhabit Serbian cities and towns. Jews were a peaceful urban population, skilled tradesmen and craftsmen, educated people with relatively developed business relationships overseas. Although they have lived for centuries in a different environment, Jews preserved their specific ethnic and religious identity. The Jewish religion is Judaism, and their unconditional respect for the Torah and the Talmud has resulted in preserving essential foundations of the whole system of Jewish customs, rules and regulations, which defined their life in the broadest sense. Therefore Jewish religious and traditional beliefs are universal for all Jews, wherever they live. In Serbia, as in all other countries, Jews have fitted into the environment and shared the fate of their neighbors, but in cultural, religious and traditional terms, they have been a world in itself. The Jewish mourning rites represent a very complex ritual system with a special place in human minds. The “Beth Kevaroth – House of The Dead” is an article about Jewish customs regarding death and burial, based on which one can look at a specific, essentially different culture than the culture of Serbs and other Christian communities, despite some similarities in procedures and even some ideas.