Strange Girl's (1962) love ideology: the promise of modernity and failure of emancipation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article explores Jovan Živanović's youth melodrama Čudna devojka/Strange Girl (1962). I discuss why a particular genre configuration (melodrama qua coming-of-age story) becomes notably relevant in the time of Yugoslav conflict between socialist economic reforms and patriarchal/paternalist social patterns, and how Živanović's film responds to this concern. Reading the film through this genre configuration illustrates the unfair world of Yugoslav socialism, where the only way for the young heroine to be integrated is to renounce her mondain emancipatory practices. I argue that love, which drives the action in the film, resides on the idea of sacrifice which transforms the young heroine from emancipated modern girl into a working wife and mother. The film's love ideology is thus explained through the larger sociocultural context of Yugoslav self-management reform, and the beginning of a genuine consumerist society. The two opposing tendencies, which also transformed into Yugoslav intergenerational and intra-social clashes of the time, are interpreted as the ideological background of the heroine's patriarchal maturation in a socialist society.