Director: Uros Tomic, Writer Pavle Vuckovic, music and animation: LoOney
(thx Sasha for sending the link)
Hm, I still don’t know exactly what to think about this.
First of all, I like that the authors are clearly implying about governments involvement in hiding Ratko Mladic. Bold and provocative statement coming from a sitcom, wouldn’t you agree?
On the other hand, though, is it ethical to portray a mass murderer as what seems to be pretty loveable and funny character? Maybe not. But I am pretty sure that this wasn’t the intention of the makers – it just turned out that way. This is the reason why the pilot you just saw was refused by all the TV stations in Serbia, and some of them actualy said that the show might hurt some of the viewers feelings. The only thing they didn’t say is which part of viewers, those who support Mladic or those who don’t.
Would you watch a sitcom with Ratko Mladic as the main character?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
So, this wasnt broadcast anywhere? As a comedy, it is not much, though it is not as offensive as Klopka and similar political broadcasts that go on pretty much every day.
Unfortunately everyone uses informations from PRESS newspaper and they kinda never published my exactly spoken words. So when they wrote that “the show might hurt some of the viewers feelings” the whole sentence was “the show might hurt some of the viewers feelings (either people who love him or don’t) but modern television program allows such extremes since reality tv and south park pushed boundaries”. I personally think that “Kid nation” (American reality show) is much more scary than this piece of work. I had a blast doing animation sequence where you can actually see that he is not an angel opposed to part with actors.
I chose to write about this here, since there is no place to speak on this subject anywhere else.
Hey Looney, glad you dropped by
I forgot to credit you above but now it’s corrected.
I saw what you said about comparing it to South park, still, I don’t know if that comparison is in order. SP also has it’s limits when it comes of ridiculing subjects that happened only recently. Even I think they went too far when they inserted Stewe Irvin into an episode just a couple of weeks after he died. What I’m trying to say is that Ratko Mladic is still fresh history to these regions and making (even unintentionaly) a benign character out of him is, in my eyes, at least, a clumsy move.
The animation I have nothing against, quite the contrary, even the acting, the camera and directing are great for me.
My thoughts exactly; way too early for something like this, although I appreciate the attempt to introduce the insinuation (of government’s involvement ) into the mainstream. If we want to intellectualize the issue by humanizing such (euphemistically speaking) controversial character – we better make sure we have the required distance and a stable society that can offset potential problems something like this would produce. We are not even close to that. South Park – sure, but in a society full of powerful watchdogs that will guide the discussion. Provocation is only as good as the public discussion it stimulates, and I just can’t see who would be there to stir the outburst of anger and hatred in the right ( or at least less malignant) direction. The other thing is – I just don’t think the nature of this topic is suitable for a sitcom. A drama maybe, movie or something… Also, there’s no identifiable “point of view” in the pilot. It’s not a documentary, it’s a creative interpretation, so there has to be a point of view, otherwise it makes no sense. And finally, I don’t think we even need to go into the international PR nightmare this would create, and all those things that we are just too ill-equipped to deal with at this time.
As for Victor’s question – I wouldn’t watch this sitcom. I wouldn’t see the point.
The last scene, where Mladic makes fun of one of the roomates for doing yoga is extra funny after the fact, taking into account that Karadzic was posing as some sort of alternate eastern-religious practitioner at the time that this was shot.