Pop Culture Against the Machine
Anti-government protesters in Serbia carry banners that reference Yugoslav and American pop culture. Two of their peers set out to find out why.
With Milena Dragićević Šešić and Tatjana Nikolić (University of Arts, Belgrade).
Listen: “Pop Culture Against the Machine” (Episode #139)
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Transcript: “Pop Culture Against the Machine” (Episode #139)
PETER KORCHNAK: This and every other episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok, a member-supported global community and resource hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblok members make this podcast (and a whole lot more) accessible and freely available to all. Members can also listen to episodes ad-free and have access to extended and bonus episodes.
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PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, the show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your future doctor, Peter Korchnak.
The main story out of Serbia over the past two years has been the massive student-led anti-government protests. They’re happening in response to the collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad train station, on November 1st, 2024, which killed 16 people and injured a number of others. From initial commemorations for the victims, the protests escalated into a mass movement following the incident on November 24th, when regime-affiliated goons assaulted students and professors of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade during a daily silent tribute. My guests today were there that day. Subsequently, the students declared a work stoppage, and the protests spread to other universities and within months ultimately to the streets of hundreds of municipalities across Serbia.
The main demand of the protesters remains accountability for the tragedy, that the accident be properly investigated and those responsible prosecuted, as after initial government evasion and denials it emerged the recent train station renovation had been done in a highly irregular manner, with various violations of the permitting, oversight, and financing process.
The general thrust of the protests is against systemic corruption and government negligence. The people of Serbia have had enough, they simply want to live in a normal country whose institutions and structures work for them, not for the government or political party cronies, with the rule of law in place no matter who is in power. The protests have remained leaderless and nonpartisan, and the demands limited, which has been both praised and panned. On the one hand, the anti-corruption thrust of the protests lends them a society-wide appeal, but on the other, the general appeal potentially dilutes their political impact. The protests have also been marked by police and thug violence, the use of an illegal sonic weapon, arbitrary detention and persecutions, leading many activists to flee the country. I’ve met some of them.
After the initial daily and later frequent protests, all the way to the biggest one of them all, in fact the largest protest in Serbia’s history on March 15, 2025, which drew some 300,000 people, the protests have died down some. An early election, which the protesters came to demand as the protests wore on, has been called for October 25th; the students have submitted a list of nonpartisan candidates.
What does this have to do with Yugoslavia? It’s not just the fact that these protests are another instance in the tradition of protest in Serbia, from the 1960s to the 1990s to today. Or that the students generate protest discourses and decisions at plenums, grassroots meetings with collective, direct democracy elements originating in the socialist Yugoslav times.
Citizens at these demonstrations, protests, walks and marches and other gatherings express their views with signs and banners. Many of these signs reference the Yugoslav pop culture, but also American and global pop culture.
My guests today have dedicated their recent research project to these banners. I heard their presentation last April, at the international scientific conference, “Decolonization Strategies and Memory Work in Popular Culture”, which was part of the Association for Cultural Studies Institute hosted by the Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana.
Having attended nearly one hundred protests in 2024 and 2025, the researchers examined some 1,000 banners featuring film and TV-show quotes, popular music lyrics, cartoons and animated film characters, as well as various hybrids.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: We will never have a complete sample, I would say the most representative possible sample because we are doing things ad hoc as they are coming. But still, everything that we could acquire is so important, and if it is not recorded today, in a few months already it sounds like [an] old story, and people are not interested.
PETER KORCHNAK: Milena Dragićević Šešić is professor emerita at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, founder of UNESCO Chair in Interculturalism, Art Management, and Mediation, and former President of the University of Arts in Belgrade. She has authored 22 books and hundreds of articles on culture, art, and media. She was out in the streets as a student in the 1960s, she was there as a researcher in the 1990s, and she has been there as a professor over the last two years.
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: For this research, for the banners, we did not engage into dialog with the people bringing them, designing them, and bringing them in the protests, we were mostly relying on just capturing when we are in the street or scooping from digital platforms such as Protestografija, [a] very valuable online database of different type of banners. Professor Šešić collected a huge number of different banners, and then from that larger base, we just took those that we recognized as references from popular culture.
PETER KORCHNAK: Tatjana Nikolić is research associate at the Institute for Theatre, Film, Radio, and Culture of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: When you have such a massive amount of banners, I think that with lots of cases, through content analysis, through imagology, image analysis, and so on we can come up to the solution.
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PETER KORCHNAK: Beginning with the mass anti-Milošević demonstrations in the 1990s, most protests in Serbia have resembled a carnival. There’s all kinds of noise, singing, chanting, drumming, whistling. There’s the visuals, the banners we’re discussing, lights of all kinds, props of all kinds, people in costumes. There’s the tone of the banners and the chants, the general festive atmosphere, irony and sarcasm and parody, perhaps laughing through the tears, sometimes quite literal ones from the gas. There’s movement, walking and biking, movement that literally clashes with government-supporting anti-protesters attacking the protesters in order to stop them. In a sense, as Dragićević Šešić has noted elsewhere, protesters transform the streets into a stage.
The banners employ a wide range of forms and formats: photographs, photomontages, and collages often overlaid with lettering; drawings; and simple printed or handwritten slogans, featuring proverbs, quotes, paraphrases, or pithy opinions. Protesters make all kinds of banners but in their research, the team focused on a significant portion that featured pop culture references.
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: We focused on products of popular culture that can be connected to an author or a team of authors. So we included films, animated and acting films, TV shows, video games, cartoons, comics, and music. We did not include in this particular case, in our definition of popular culture, internet memes, for example, which of course is also popular culture, we didn’t include sports as a popular culture in this.
And then we clarified if a piece of popular culture or a product of popular culture is of domestic or foreign origin, let’s say. [The] majority were domestic, and in this domestic we also include regional or let’s say Yugoslav, ex-Yugoslav or Yugoslav cultural production during the period of former Yugoslavia until the 90s. So not just Serbian— because it is also very hard to, front he period of Yugoslavia, define what exactly is a product of Serbian origin in that period, of course. So we had the categories of domestic and foreign, and then we also try to do some little analysis of where these products come from in terms of foreign, is it Hollywood, let’s say, or what amount comes from maybe anime and manga, so Japanese popular culture, and so on.
A little bit more than half is coming from visual and film culture, and then the other half is coming from music. Visual culture means film, TV shows, comics, animated movies. So it’s a little bit more present than the music, and the music is again mostly local because of lyrics, of course.
PETER KORCHNAK: Both domestic and foreign, or global if you will, popular culture was represented, but again, as you might expect, most references were to domestic pop culture, which the researchers consider a “transgenerational cultural memory in Serbia”.
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: About two thirds of the banners were of references to local culture, popular culture products, so domestic, let’s say, so former Yugoslav and Serbian today, about two thirds. And one third referenced to let’s say international or foreign popular culture products.
Of course, these were also translated, and translation is a big part of this whole popular culture communication, of course. But still, it, on one side, shows that the banners are meant for internal communication.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: Landscape is very varied, diverse. Yes, of course, the predominance is the domestic ones. But it was always reworked, and I think that is something that I would stress. For example, the most famous rebel without a cause, which was reworked in “Woman rebel with a cause”. So you never even know, or you cannot expect in advance how and what kind, what group of people are going to come up with idea to rework.
For example, one same film which was called the Elusive Summer of ’68 has generated the largest number of references on protest banners.
PETER KORCHNAK: Varljivo leto ‘68 by Goran Paskaljević is a popular film, released in 1984, that takes place in the titular summer of 1968. It stars Slavko Štimac as a high school graduate pursuing a number of love interests against the backdrop of student demonstrations in Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities as well as across Europe. The invasion of Czechoslovakia bookends the film, whose title in fact references the Czech director Jiří Menzel’s 1968 film Rozmarné léto, Capricious Summer.
The researchers found that among Yugoslav-era quote-unquote Serbian film productions, Elusive Summer ‘68 inspired the largest number of references, as the events in its period are quite comparable to today. A frequent reference is to a quote attributed to Tito who publicly agreed with the student protesters.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: “Comrade Tito said students are right.” You would expect, okay, this is a little bit strange, they are now referring to Tito as the most positive guy in history and so on. But in fact it was also in a certain form ironic because it’s, what, 50 years later we are still people who expect the leader to say or to proclaim who is right or wrong, so it’s very ironical.
Or, for example, one phrase that might not be clear to anyone abroad: “Say good night to everyone here,” father is addressing the son. The son would respond like, “Why good night? It’s a nice day now,” – “But for you it’s a night, it’s a dead night.” And then this kind of response in our present situation is somehow very understandable. What kind of message it sends, although it in the film itself, it was the not important phrase, not memorable phrase, and so on. It’s just one of little bit funny, or humorous anecdotes, verbal anecdotes.
PETER KORCHNAK: “In the present context, this utterance is reappropriated as a message addressed to the holder of concentrated political power, in whose hands all institutional levers remain,” write Dragićević Šešić and Nikolić in a paper.
Other famous Yugoslav and Serbian films appearing on the protest signs and banners included Kad porastem biću kengur, Balkanski špijun, Profesionalac, and Ko to tamo peva. The banners reference these films’ ordinary anti-hero or the protagonist’s nemesis, whom they use as an extension or symbol of the Vučić regime and present in both critical and empathetic terms. They critique these character’s incompetence, obedience to power and propaganda, and hypocrisy, placing their movie quotes into the present context as criticism.
Then there’s the American pop culture.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: American popular culture was very much used in a sense of, you know, good heroes, for example, Batman.
PETER KORCHNAK: A prototypical hero fighting for justice, Batman-inspired slogans on protest banners included, “Students are Batman and Robin’s relatives!” and “Either institutions function, or Batman arrives” or ones showing Batman as saying, “I can’t tonight, I’m blockading!” and “I’m protecting students, I’m needed by the city!”
The use of foreign or global pop culture references demonstrated, quote, “the fully developed cosmopolitan horizons of popular culture,” write Dragićević Šešić and Nikolić.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: For example, Madonna. Madonna is a world reference. There was even one banner saying, “Madonna is from Republic of Srpska, if I am not wrong,” and so on. Minions, “Tonight we free the state”.
So there was a lot of reference of American popular culture, but I wouldn’t think that those who were making this reference[s] they were thinking about where it comes from. It’s just part of the global— that’s [the] advantage of American culture, that is perceived as the global culture, world culture, not as something when we discuss, for example, I don’t know, Hello Kitty, then people know that it comes originally from Japan, even if she pretends to be English and so on. I mean, those who are buyers and consumers of such products know.
But in most of the cases of American popular culture, unless it is patriotic American popular culture, Fourth of July or something, everything relates to corruption, a lot of references, and then in the subconscious of people from American movies can come up to the public without being aware that that’s maybe have root in American culture.
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: Some of the foreign films that were quoted in our banners are, for example, The Lord of the Rings, with this call for help and response, and this is in our version, local version it is, “Students are calling for help and citizens will reply. Gather the citizens.” So one of the references was that we also had Sparta, we had Lala Land, Run Lola Run, 300, we had [the] James Bond franchise, and so on. And in terms of series, some of the international references were Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul—
PETER KORCHNAK: “Not even Saul will save you.”
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: —Charmed, Doctor House, Friends, Two and a Half Men, and The Office, American Version.
PETER KORCHNAK: Then there were cartoons. Popeye, Bugs Bunny, various Disney characters, Scooby-Doo and his team, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Simpsons, the Minions.
One banner featured a sleepy SpongeBob and Patrick with the caption, “Rise up, don’t sleep.” Another, “The Scooby Doo team has solved the mystery: The problem is in the system.” Another, “Finding Nemo was easier than finding the documentation,” that is the paperwork for the train station reconstruction.
There were also quite a few banners with references to Asian pop culture, Hello Kitty, various manga and anime characters, and so on.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: Sometimes we didn’t even look at that to connect that in this sense to American or any other concrete cultures. So it’s connecting a lot of elements of world global culture throughout all of these messages.
PETER KORCHNAK: In all, Dragićević Šešić and Nikolić, write, quote “Within these cosmopolitan cultural horizons, questions of freedom, justice, heroism, and anti-heroism become mutually intelligible across generational divides.”
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: We can also mention some of the banners that are reflecting [the] international music scene. Maybe it is also interesting that there were banners referencing Pink Floyd, Rage Against the Machine, The Clash, and My Chemical Romance, with pretty funny and relevant banners. So, for example, “I should stay and you should go”, is again directed to the government, to the president, mostly meaning we don’t want to leave the country so that you can ruin it further, we don’t want to move away anymore, we want to stay here, young we young people, or we the citizens, and you as the president or as the government should go.
Then there was also “Teenagers scare the living shit out of me”. It was brought to the protest by a very young person, and it is also relevant because not only students were protesting and blocking the classes, but also high school students [in] the final year, they were willing to sacrifice their final year of high school and their enrollment into universities to join the protests. So the banner, “Teenagers scare the living shit out of me,” which is My Chemical Romance was also [a] really funny one.
And then it was also “Another brick in the wall”, of course, by Pink Floyd, “Leave us alone, you are just another shit on their wall”, and so on. And then Rage Against the Machine, of course, because we do see our government as a machine that we want to rage against.
PETER KORCHNAK: Banners appropriated pop cultural elements and adapted or subverted them into the present context, the realities or recent events on the ground in Serbia. A quote from a movie would be altered or paraphrased or made into a wordplay or some coded message that required some interpretation, all to critique something specific that happened in the country’s political scene. Less quotes, more references and often quite deep ones. Which of course makes translation particularly challenging as many slogans would require an entire explanation of what they mean, what they are referring to, along with an explanation of that.
For example, banners referencing the Oscars had to do with the fact that Serbian president Vučić’s code name among the Serbian criminal gangs is Oskar. The reference was also to the president’s own, often cringe performativity, as when he’d eat a sandwich on a plane or do a blind test of cola drinks.
In any case, the referentiality also lends these protests a prototypically postmodern character. And in a sense it also points to the clash of paradigms in the country, the protesters’s globalist cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and humanism vs the regime’s particularistic ethnonationalism and crony capitalism (government supporters banners feature folk heroes, saints, and military leaders, including the late war criminal Ratko Mladic).
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The main question we here on Remembering Yugoslavia always seek to answer is: why?
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: Our main hypothesis or the main idea in this research is that these banners serve to improve coherence of the local population against the regime to find this common ground because usually there is some, let’s say, significant knowledge of these popular culture products among the local communities, among the local population, and then this serves like a communication bridge, let’s say.
And then also at the same time, it serves to oppose the fear and the very negative image that the student movement and the protest in general were getting from the mainstream media and the regime. Because to be clear, [the] regime has named our protests and our students terrorist[s] and so many terrible words that impose fear into people that are following the narratives of the government and following mainstream media.
PETER KORCHNAK: As any authoritarian regime, the Vučić regime in Serbia uses a number of narrative strategies, rhetorical devices, and terms to delegitimize its opposition. The president himself has denounced the protesters’ tactics as originating in socialism, calling them communists. Belgrade nowadays is covered in graffiti calling the students terrorists, scum, blockaders, traitors, and so on.
In one sense, the signs and banners are one of the last remaining ways people can express their views in public.
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: They serve to present the protesters as not those who are wishing to destroy the city. You know when somebody is bringing the banners with SpongeBob and Patrick the Star—and all the characters from the SpongeBob SquarePants have been on many different banners—so when people are bringing SpongeBob, they are definitely not perceived by those who are passing by like terrorists, so you do present a little bit of a different image. Or if you are bringing Calimero, you know, with “This is justice”, or Finding Nemo, or Scooby Doo, or Dora the Explorer, etc.
PETER KORCHNAK: “The use of popular culture discourse functions as an attempt to overcome the artificial divisions within the population produced by the regime since its accession to power, and to establish a mode of communication that students perceive as readily intelligible to all citizens, irrespective of their political orientations,” write Dragićević Šešić and Nikolić.
The protests have been the most diverse and inclusive in Serbia’s history. Pretty much the only flag that appears is the flag of Serbia, the idea being to show the homegrown nature of the protests and the patriotism. Protesters say, we love the country but hate the state. One of the songs often heard and sung at the protests is “Zemlja,” (Country) by EKV, from 1987, with the opening line, “This is a country for us, this is a country for all of our people…”
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MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: If you can say that in ’68 it was relevant for the intellectuals, students, and intellectuals supporting students. Students wanted to attract the working class, but it was not possible. In ’96-’97, it was wider, but still it was urban protest, and throughout Serbia it was urban protest.
Now, the farmers, for example, have one of the crucial roles in the organization and even in the performativity of the walks throughout the city, coming with their tractors, coming with all what is their equipment and so on.
And then the banners from popular culture refer also to elements and narratives that are close to farmers, to different professions, and even professionals from social work, not to speak about teachers, IT engineers, and so on. There was a huge number of banners that are really written in a humoristic way, expressing why this concrete profession, for example, why biologists, medical doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, had to join the protest.
PETER KORCHNAK: The banners also served to establish and affirm, quote, “solidarity between citizens of all generations and the student movement, as well as between numerous professions that found ways to articulate, through protest signage, the importance of professional integrity.”
In addition to occupational solidarity, many banners expressed intergenerational solidarity. For example, “Grandma has woken up”; “Grannies to the blockades”; “Our grandchildren are not fools”; or one signed by “parents of graduating students” that said, “We are your backing vocals”.
MILENA DRAGIČEVIĆ ŠEŠIĆ: Geographically also, you could find something from Greenland till Australia. Especially when finally our diaspora have joined the movement. That was also the first time that diaspora was more active on the side of the protest than on the side of protecting the state, image of the state abroad.
TATJANA NIKOLIĆ: These banners and being humorous, being satirical, being very often hand drawn or handwritten, being funny sometimes, being full of this spite, they serve to oppose the fear and the hatred.
[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]
PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening.
All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself.
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Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. Interludes courtesy of Sticky Keys.
I am Peter Korchňak.
Ćao!
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Featured image: By my guests, a collage of photos of protest banners, as it appeared in their MEMPOP conference presentation.