Bosnia and Herzegovina on Screen: Self-Orientalism in Jasmila Žbanić’s Film Quo Vadis, Aida?

Abstract

This paper examines the contemporary meanings and functions of self-Orientalism in the Bosnian context by analyzing Jasmila Žbanić’s film, Quo Vadis, Aida (2020). The issue of self-Orientalism entails a double intrigue at the individual and collective levels: first, why Bosnian cultural producers (the ‘Orientalized’) replicate Orientalism; and second, why Orientalism, in its various forms, proliferates in Balkans despite the region’s own marginalized position. Examining Quo Vadis Aida both within Bosnian’s specific context and as part of a global phenomenon of cinematic self-Orientalism or autoexoticism, this paper argues that the film self-Orientalizes in an effort to meet contemporary viewers’ expectations for facile resolutions to imperialist Orientalism, as well as to improve the film’s marketability with Western audiences. Applying Laura Doyle’s framework of ‘inter-imperiality’ we examine how Quo Vadis, Aida ‘writes back’ to multiple empires by tracing Orientalism’s trajectories – from Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian and modern-day Holland – and by weaving the lingering effects of imperialism from before the arrival Ottomans to Bosnia in Middle Ages to the present. The paper argues that the film reveals the extent of globalist anxiety that motivates producers’ artistic imagination and reflects colonial phantasies that promote stereotyped representation of the Balkans.

Keywords:

• Self-orientalism
• re-orientalism
• autoexoticism
• inter-imperiality
• Jasmila Žbanić
• Balkans
• film

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The authors have received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1 The author refers to the hierarchies of eastern European otherness in contrast to a progressive European world.

2 One exception is the Srebrenica mayor (played by Ervin Bravo).

3 An exception of this representation is a dream sequence involving the only scene in the film that highlights eroticism and enjoyment, which is explored through the veil of smoking.