STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: (NON/MIS) ALLIANCES BETWEEN NATIONALISTS AND QUEERS

Abstract

In this paper we analyze activist tactics in two films from the post-Yugoslav region, Ahmed Imamović’s film Go West (2005) and Srđan Dragojević’s film Parada (The Parade 2011). Particularly, we focus on the alliances between male dominated society and homosexuality which contain a form of resistance to the dominant discourses of sexual and religious nationalisms in the region. Our claim is that a step-by-step approach but also sometimes really dubious tactics need to be adopted in order to be able to successfully penetrate into the heteronormative environment. We argue that setting up an alliance between the father figure and the gay figure in Bosnia and Herzegovina as presented in Go West is one of the tactics of the rhetoric of detournement from a common discourse of no alliances and a constant conflict between them. The idea of such alliance shows solidarity between nationalists and queer community. Similar alliances are addressed also in the case of Parada which presents an imaginary opportunity for queer activists who recruit xenophobic and nationalistic veterans to advance its cause. The film is a Trojan horse, adopting and perhaps advocating the use of indirect activist tactics, which are masked and hidden in the scenario and the aesthetics of the film. The stronger the xenophobic nationalist force from the outside, the stronger the resistance in the Trojan horse and the stronger is the feeling of their transnational historical connection embedded in “Brotherhood and Unity”.