/ 1968
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POPULAR CULTURE AND ETHICS – CASE STUDIES OF THE TV SHOWS THE WIRE AND TREME

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Thanks to a specific form of distribution, popular culture has potential to present complicated and ethically relevant issues to the widest audience. When someone like David Simon appears in the field of popular culture, and through an artistically challenging process asks essential questions regarding inequality and social justice, claiming collective moral responsibility of the public institutions, we see that this narrative opens many different issues. By telling stories about the contemporary American society and its flaws, Simon claims collective institutional responsibility. Based on an analysis of two TV shows, The Wire and Treme, we will discuss ethics of the institutions, individuals and policies.

/ 1968
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ΚΑΛΟΚΑΓΑΘΙΑ ΑND THE AESTHETIC NORMS OF CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD

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The author examines the intertwining notions of “beautiful” and “good” by analyzing the aesthetic and moral standards of contemporary popular culture, represented by the general cultural paradigm of “Hollywood”, understood not only as a filmmaking school, but also as a symbol of global commercial values and aesthetics in general. Hollywood is perceived as conservative regarding the modernist (and contemporary) trend of “separating aesthetics from morals”, insisting on a strong parallelism and correlation between the physical beauty of the protagonist and the morality of his/her actions. This correlation and its applications are actively used in political and ideological propaganda, usually serving the imperialist interests of the American economic and political oligarchy, but is also – especially in the case of artistically best and critically most acclaimed films – often openly subversive toward the values and the political ideology of the USA and Western society in general. The author examines a few examples of moral controversies stemming from the Hollywood paradigms of beauty, as seen in the Game of Thrones TV series, while maintaining that Hollywood aesthetics seems to be more permanent and immutable than the Hollywood ethics, confirming the ancient philosophical paradigm of καλοκαγαθία.

/ 1968
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ТΗΕ ETHICAL FUNCTION OF POETRY IN LYCURGUS’ SPEECH AGAINST LEOCRATES

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In this paper, on the example of Lycurgus’ speech Against Leocrates, we shall discuss the role and the function of quotations from Greek poetry in his forensic oratory. According to some contemporary critics of Lycurgus’ work, his rhetoric is a kind of anthology of patriotic attitudes, in which a large part of his defense is based on emphasizing his moral principles rather than presenting precise and formed legal arguments. The basic hypothesis of this research is that Lycurgus’ selection of passages chosen from Greek poets were mostly reflection of his own patriotic zeal and true moral beliefs. The aim of our paper is also to inquire into the use of poetry in the orator’s education and training but also into his knowledge and appreciation of the rhetoricians and their audience in the polis of Athens.

/ 1968
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THE IDEAL OF BEAUTY AND THE SUBJECTIVE UNIVERSALITY: MORALITY IN KANT’S AESTHETICS

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This paper considers the position of the relationship between the moral, the good, the beautiful and the arts in Kant’s aesthetics. Its main assumption is that this relationship, which is very important for Kant, is not self-evident for a subjectivist understanding of the aesthetics phenomena and problems, and that its assertion implies a sort of reconceptualizing of the traditional understanding of the relationship between the good and the beautiful. The analysis offered in this paper aims to investigate the problem of subjective universality and sensus communis in Kant’s understanding as a horizon which provides a backdrop for such re-conceptualization.

/ 1968
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ETHICAL CHOICES AND LIMIT SITUATIONS IN THE STORIES BY ANTONIJE ISAKOVIĆ

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The paper focuses on the achievements of Antonije Isaković, who is often seen as the Serbian successor of such renowned storytellers as Maupassant, Chekhov and Hemingway, owing to his terse, hardboiled style which imposes strict rules of reticence and emphasizes reliance on indeterminacy. The prose style of plain but powerful words and simple but artfully structured syntax tackles many delicate moral and ethical issues. The language which is carefully stripped of any misleading ornaments, replete with symbolism and functioning referentially to describe an event or object with symbolic implications fits into Karl Jaspers’ concept of a limit situation (Grenzsituation) – a situation in which events and moments test the characters’ moral strength and ethical priorities. Choosing to achieve small-scale, concentrated effects rather than construct majestic sentences, Isaković depicts a hero who is frail, alienated and confused, whose undaunted masculinity is larger than life, but also a hero who is prone to errors and falls into a world impossible to handle and control. The prevailing mood of danger and disenchantment seems to go along perfectly with the artistic form of a short story that requires a focus on the turning point in the character’s life and chooses to dwell on a particular moment of crisis, climax or change.

/ 1968
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TOWARDS NEW FORMS OF COLLECTIVITY

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In the context of “great divides” in which the Belgrade cultural scene reproduces the existing social relations, what is evident is the vast fragmentation and focus on different, more or less, convincing attempts of individual entities to sustain themselves and consolidate regardless, and perhaps even precisely because, of the weakening of the others. Such induced relations resulted in a high degree of disunity; the situation has been radicalised and at this point even maintains the system from which it sprung. In perseverance of many independent organisations we have come to negate the self-organisation in its very domain. Thus, the question of what a self-organized cultural scene is, gets consequently replaced by its conditional form: What could it be? Why should it exist? What would it aim for? On which principles should it function? Can we even begin to imagine it? What would it look like if we tried? Many artists and cultural workers have answered these questions aiming at articulating a new construct. Their answers, along with the analysis of overlapping and differences, were used as a starting point for the analysis in which the focus is on the questioning of the needs of involved participants, as well possible models for self-organized cultural scene in Belgrade.

/ 1968
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NEW REALISM IN SERBIAN FILM

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The aim of this study was to verify the hypothesis that in the Serbian cinematography in the period from 2010 to 2014 a new film movement was created for which the most adequate title is the New Realism. As a case study we used the films Tilva Ros (2010, Nikola Ležaić), Clip (2012, Maja Miloš) and Barbarians (2014, Ivan Ikić). As a result of analysis, thematic similarities were found in the production, in treatment of the subject and the language of all three films. These similarities are reflected in the turnaround of the production necessity towards a new film expression that is focused on dealing with the trauma of growing up in Serbia and (self) destructiveness as a response. All three stories were presented in a realistic manner, using loosening of the boundaries of fiction and reality in the service of enhancing the edge of social criticism. New Realism is also characterized by the minimalist stories with deep penetration into the intimate world of their heroes. On the basis of these results, a working hypothesis has been accepted and the identified similarities were denoted as characteristics of a new film movement.

/ 1968
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ETHICS AND JUSTICE OF EPICURUS

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The paper gives us a short notice of Epicurean ethics analysed from a contemporary perspective, considering formal conditions under which it is an ethical theory. Assuming that, at least partially, his theory meets the requirements set by modern theorists, our further consideration is a somewhat inconsistent connection between the individual and the egotistic conceptions of ethics on the one side, and a kind of social contract on the other side. Epicurus argued that such an agreement must be respected if we want to ensure proper functioning of people in а community. It seems to us that the conduct of our own lives relaying solely on personal preferences and enjoyment excludes any need for consideration of social circumstances. Insisting on acceptance and respect of the agreement among individuals tells us, in addition to ensuring coexistence, that the Epicurean ethics is not purely individualistic and that the requirements for its hedonism are limited precisely by one such agreement. However, (underdeveloped and incomplete) contractarianism formulated in this way, although tempting, is not sufficient to ensure a complete and universal respect of prescribed norms and rules.

/ 1968
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DIALECTICS OF THE BODY – FEMINIZATION OF THE FILM LANGUAGE

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Film as a language system, selecting and crossing certain elements, uses special connotations and forms its own meanings. Female body on the film, however, can be viewed and studied as a specific platform within the cinematic language through which new and different meanings can be read and also communicated as relationships between them. For decades have art theorists speculated about a possible feminist film language, as a new cinematic language that would open and set free а space for the representation of the female subject outside the socially coded form. Is such a discursive space in the area of film as a media possible, and what has the art of cinema offered to date these are the questions answered in this study. A particular research challenge is the issue of the inability of the feminist representation of the subject in the movie as a stereotyped signifying system. The autonomy of art as a practice framed in terms of ideological discourse production is reorganized and transformed thanks to the influence of materialist approach to semiotics – a concept which involves erasing established social differences and transformation of signifying structures in language. Post-structuralist theories of the twentieth century, including “Semiotics” by Julia Kristeva, launched a revision of the study and interpretation of the film, with a special contribution to the feminist studies of images, linking semiotic with the female, trying to reach out to the language independent symbolic structures and oppressive, eroticized view of the female body. What both these theoretical streams are trying to signify is a field in which a woman appears as a signifier of the female subject, regardless of the dominant masculine discourse in the visual field of communication: the one that constructs the view, the subject and the object and the language itself. Such examples can be found among the directors of primarily surrealist, experimental and feminist films, such as Men Rey, Cocteau, Maya Deren, Lora Malvi, or contemporary ones like David Lynch, Lars von Trier and Wim Wenders, whose poetics examine the limits of operation of such a language using a variety of art approaches and technologies, giving priority to the extension of the semiotics into a symbolically established reality.

/ 1968
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ANIKA AND THE BIG OTHER

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According to Lacan (1996), “the big Other” (le grand Autre) is a world of language where the self is constituted. It is often a space of empty signifiers in which the subject, deprived of any solid reference and radically decentred with endless slips of the “symbolic order”, is caught in the narcissistic reflections of the mirror, dispersed and totally overcome by the very force of desire. Lacan believes that desire can be satisfied only with active engagement with “the big Other”, in a “successful” interpersonal communication which is only possible in rare flash-like moments. This communicative situation is, hence, conceived as a location where desire can be satisfied, but also as a process of division, a necessary excuse which covers up an endless search for the missing object. Accordingly, based on Lacan’s theoretical postulates, the paper analyses the functioning of the discourse of love, and the strategies of constituting the intimate self in the imperial social orders. By interpreting “full” and “empty” speech in Andrić’s novella Anika’s Times (1931), the paper attempts to show the ways in which the self, torn between desire for and deficiency of the Ottoman “big Other”, is realised.