Valentina and Emir
Valentina Hasan: Ken Lee
Who is Valentina Hasan? Valentina Hasan is a Bulgarian who auditioned for Bulgarian Idol in February 2008. She told the jury that she was going to sing the Mariah Carey song “Ken Lee” (the song’s real name being “Without You”[1]). Valentina Hasan, a stumpy young woman in a cheap peach satin dress and glammy make-up, bravely sang the song in a completely unrecognizable language. To the jury’s snippy question about the language in which she was singing (as if Henry Higgins himself had appointed them!), Valentina, taken aback that they didn’t know, replied: “English.”[2] A video clip with Valentina Hasan’s appearance started doing the rounds on the Internet, and a regional war erupted on chat-forums soon thereafter. Bulgarian commentators distanced themselves from Valentina, claiming that she was Turkish, or maybe a Gypsy, but certainly not Bulgarian; the Macedonians and Turks jumped in and accused the Bulgarians of racism; the Greeks defended the Bulgarians and accused the Macedonians of themselves being “Gypsies” and having stolen the name Macedonia for their non-existent state. These anonymous outbursts, nationalist and racist, soon descended into a tedious Balkan soap opera that was comprehensible only to Bulgarians, Macedonians, Greeks, Turks, Serbs, and Roma. While all this was going on, a million-strong global audience watched “Ken Lee.” Within a month the clip had four million hits and Mariah Carey had tipped her hat to her Bulgarian imitator on French television. Valentina Hasan’s unexpected popularity forced the Bulgarian producers to invite her back for a repeat performance. Dolled up like a real star this time, Valentina sang the song in a slightly more comprehensible English, but to the audience’s delight performed the chorus in her mangled English as she had the first time. On their feet and holding hands, the audience joined Valentina for the chorus of “Ken Lee.” By the first half of May 2008 the video clip had thirteen million hits. Then a hit remix appeared. To this day Internet forums are full of people trying to imitate Valentina Hasan’s unique brand of English.
Valentina Hasan became much more that an ordinary karaoke singer. For a brief moment this anonymous young woman was a “princess.” A Bulgarian, whose appearance, figure, voice, and English had the jury rolling its eyes, won an unprecedented moral victory. Millions of YouTube viewers ruled in her favor.
Emir Kusturica: Drvengrad
Emir Kusturica is a Yugoslav film director with a deserved international reputation. On a hill called Mećavnik in southwestern Serbia, Kusturica has built his own town called Drvengrad or “Kustendorf.”[3] Drvengrad really has tongues talking. Few people in the world get to build their own Graceland, Neverland, or Brioni, and very rare indeed are those who get to raise a pyramid to themselves in their own lifetimes.
On a trip to Serbia in April 2009 a friend talked me into visiting Drvengrad. Built on the crest of a hill and with its own gate, Drvengrad is just like a medieval village, but visitors need to buy an entry ticket. Everything is made of wood, the ground covered in wooden decking, the scattered wooden houses connected by flights of wooden stairs. The houses themselves are perfect examples of wooden architecture. In Drvengrad there is a movie theatre named after Stanley Kubrick, a swimming pool, a cake shop, two or three restaurants, a souvenir shop (in which the only DVDs and CDs on sale are Kusturica’s films and their Goran Bregović-composed soundtracks), a library with a reading room, and an art gallery. The streets are named after Kusturica’s idols, including Matija Bećković (a Serbian poet and member of the Milošević-era political elite), Ivo Andrić, Bruce Lee, Charlie Chaplin, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Maradona, Nikita Mikhalkov, and Jim Jarmusch. The restaurants and cake shop are named after Ivo Andrić characters or works (for example, “Aska and the Wolf” and “At Ćorkan’s”). I don’t think any of the street names are permanent; they change on Kusturica’s whim. All the signs are written in Cyrillic, so the names are lost to many visitors.
Kusturica has successfully managed to become not only the owner of a “feudal estate” built on protected public land, but also the director of a national park. He is both a private landowner and a high-ranking public servant. Expensive “ranger” jeeps line the car park. The uniformed park rangers look like a cross between bodyguards, security guards, and the “rangers” one sees in American films. Kusturica’s transport fleet also has a helicopter, which is often seen flying above the local peasants and Drvengrad’s many visitors. At the foot of the hill lie the renovated Jatare railway station and an excellent restaurant. With Kusturica’s helicopter nervously buzzing overhead, destroying the idyllic rural silence, my friend and I could barely exchange a word, let alone take a mouthful of our meals in peace. Kusturica has also put a short abandoned railway line into service. He doesn’t own the tracks, but they work for him. The train is a typical tourist attraction, and over a one-hour journey travelers complete a “figure 8” and enjoy the untouched beauty of the surroundings.
The peasants who live as neighbors to this modern and modish feudal estate complain about Kusturica. As soon as he finished building an entire village out of wood, in his capacity as director of the national park Kusturica banned the peasants from felling trees for firewood or building wooden houses like his own. “With the forests I safeguard, I am part of the oxygen you breathe” is what he told them. At least that’s what the Serbian papers reported. Others worship him, saying he’s “brought tourism” to a God-forsaken region and employed many locals to help build and maintain his “dream.” A friend recently crossed the border between Republika Srpska (the Serbian part of Bosnia) and Serbia proper and apparently had to pay a special toll for passage through Drvengrad National Park. The customs officers weren’t able to explain whether this little “tax” was enshrined in national law, a local council regulation, or a tithe payable to Kusturica himself.
There are a fair few things about Drvengrad that remain unclear, but Kusturica was obviously gifted his estate by the Serbian authorities. He publicly supported Milošević and passionately supported Vojislav Koštunica, effectively making him a supporter of the entire Serbian nationalist political and “entrepreneurial” elite. Kusturica has assets and revenue that directors of a similar international status can only dream of. At the same time he incessantly mouths off about liberalism being the scourge of the earth, and that art, honor, and spirituality matter, not money (woe is us when the market becomes the measure of all values!), railing against globalization, and publicly urging a return to nature. Judging by the earthworks and foundations being prepared for new houses, Drvengrad is set to expand down towards the foot of the hill.
As a true auteur Kusturica has played with concepts of the authentic and the fake. Not far from Drvengrad lies the museum village of Sirogojno, which was well-known in the former Yugoslavia and overseen by leading ethnologists. The village is home to many authentic wooden houses, an excellent souvenir shop (with carefully crafted replicas of village implements), and a restaurant with a modest selection of local dishes. Under the leadership of a number of fashion designers, the women of Sirogojno have for decades won international acclaim for their decorative sweaters, which are hand-knitted from local wool, and a special museum documents how the sweaters have made their way as far as Japan. Sirogojno has been deserted since Kusturica built Drvengrad. Today even school trips skip Sirogojno and head straight for Drvengrad. So the kids will get a sense of “authentic” village architecture.
Kusturica is a capricious ruler. Drvengrad has a prison, a little joke to amuse visitors I guess. The time I visited a painting of George W. Bush’s head hung behind the metal bars on the prison’s wooden doors. A glance at Bush’s head prompted a fleeting smile, and then an immediate feeling of unease. It occurred to me that, depending on Kusturica’s mood, anyone could (and can) end up there. The village has its own painter-in-residence, a full-time employee who works on the various wooden surfaces, changing details per Kusturica’s instructions. I assume there isn’t a special advisory board to decide on whom to symbolically imprison.
