The Brain Drain of Love:
Media Affects and the Demographic Crisis in
Post–1989 Urban Bulgaria
Name: Valentina Krasimirova Dencheva Mobile: +316 12 23 05 57
E-mail: valentina.dencheva95@gmail.com Student Number: 12273449
Title of the Thesis: The Brain Drain of Love: Media Affects and the Demographic Crisis in Post– 1989 Urban Bulgaria
Date of Completion: 22June 2020 Word Count: 22 228
Supervisor: Sudeep Dasgupta Second Reader: Joke Hermes
Programme: Media Studies Research Masters Institution: University of Amsterdam
Dedication of the project:
From Beast (Zvyar, Звяр), a rap album by Matthew Stoyanov, Jluch (Жлъч), 2020. (Translated verbatim with the allowance of the artist by the author).
Bulgaria is a lovely environment for the nutrition of disappointment from the humanly, which just never seems to arrive here. It is here for a bit, but the daily winners are mainly the petty interest, the bargain, the hollow gaze & the struggle for instinctive survival.
The people in this country leave themselves to be suppressed by the feeling that they are living in a zoo, which is turning into a jungle.
And yes, the former regime was the zoo, the present was supposed to be the jungle.
Unfortunately, the limits of the terrarium continue to exist simultaneously with our predatory bestiality for one another, which is the only well-taken-care-of thing here.
We have taken the worst from the old and the worst from the new.
The feeling, that everything around us is crumbling down, sinking and shrinking, but still continues to function AGAINST and DESPITE us, terrifies us.
And in the terror we inhabit the most elementary position – the one of fighting for survival beasts.
This project, similarly to Matthew’s album, is dedicated to many Bulgarians’ refusal to be equalized to “stray dogs”, as he puts it. It is dedicated to contemporary young Bulgarians who survive, fight and succeed in living through the jungle of post-socialism despite the regime functioning against them. Just like the modern-day Mowglis, as journalist Martin Karbovsky would phrase it, the people to whom this project is devoted, manage to navigate the narrow paths of this jungle for their own benefit – that is, the one of their loved ones, the one of their nuclear families. This thesis is written for and because of them and their refusal to back down in the face of the injustices of the European jungle, called Bulgaria.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Introduction: Positive Affects, Negative Demographic Trends and Media Detachment in
Post-1989 Bulgaria ... 1
1.1 Introduction ... 1
1.2 Chapter Overview ... 3
Chapter 2 – Living “In-between” Systems: Post-Socialism and Contemporary Bulgarian Society ... 5
2.1 The Transition as Demographic Decline and Psychological Anomie ... 6
2.1.1 Socialism and the Shaping of a Fraudulent Democracy ... 7
2.1.2 Population Flight ... 9
2.1.3 Political Stasis: the Old as the New ... 10
2.1.4 Manifestations of Anomie ... 12
2.2 The Transition’s Effects as Brain Drain and Negative Freedom ... 13
2.2.1 Negative Freedom ... 15
Chapter 3 – Screening the “Non-system”: Critical Media Representations of the Post-Socialist Context . 17 3.1 The Modern Bulgarian Mediascape ... 17
3.2 Televised Discourses in Popular Culture: Post-Socialism as Cynicism in Karbovsky’s Second Plan ... 21
3.2.1 The Vanishing Bulgaria and the Communist Heritage: Demographics 1: Collapse (2018) ... 21
3.2.2 The Ministers in the Institution of Humanity, the Dysfunctional State and the Future of Bulgaria: If there shall be Bulgaria (2019) ... 26
3.3 Cinematic Representations: Post-Socialism as Fiction in Post-1989 Bulgarian Cinema ... 30
3.3.1 The Homeland (Heimat) and Ethno Identity in pre-EU Bulgaria: Mila from Mars (2004) ... 32
3.3.2 Immorality, Migration, Initiative and the Power of Love in the Early Transition: Tilt (2011) ... 37
Chapter 4 – Family and the “Good Life” in the “State of Queues”: Affective Economies and Media Diets of the Transition Generation ... 43
4.1 The Affects of the Transition Generation ... 43
4.2 Emotion as the Social Force of Binding and Affective Economies ... 45
4.3 Positive and Negative Affects and their Productivity ... 46
4.4 The Economies of Post-Socialist Affect and the Media Diets Connected to them ... 48
4.4.1 Familial Emotions of Positivity & Negative Memories of the Early Transition’s Environment of Immorality ... 49
4.4.2 Late Transitional Affects & the Inequality Gap ... 51
4.4.3 Post-Socialist Media Diets ... 52
4.5 Standards of Normalcy & Demographic Flight in the Context of Institutional Instability ... 54
4.6 Family & Love Values in the ‘Waiting Room’ of Europe ... 57
Chapter 5 – Conclusion: The Brain Drain of Love & Further Research ... 60
5.1 Conclusion ... 60
5.2 Further Research ... 61
Works Cited ... 63
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Chapter 1 – Introduction: Positive Affects, Negative Demographic Trends
and Media Detachment in Post-1989 Bulgaria
1.1 Introduction
In 2016, a campaign of the kind that was supposed to stimulate birth rates appeared in the Bulgarian mediascape. Showmen turned producers, Ivan Hristov and Andrey Arnaudov, promoted their Do it Now (Направи го сега, Napravi go sega) initiative as an educational and informational model for combatting the country’s demographic crisis. Formally, the campaign involves an active solution to the “gradual loss of Bulgarian DNA” (DNK – ДНК, Движение за Национална Кауза, Movement for National Cause’s YouTube channel, 2018). The campaign was thought of by its creators as an “active solution” to Bulgaria’s suffering demographic. However, it caused a social backlash because its approach to fertility, maternity, fraternity and child-rearing turned out to be problematic and inappropriate.
After answering a few subjective questions about the future of Bulgaria and uploading an ultrasound picture of their anticipated baby, every participating couple stands the chance of winning a “DNA package” – a one-year supply of baby foods, clothes, cosmetics, paediatric help, diapers and accessories worth 6000lvs (~3000euros). Even though the campaign runs for the fourth consecutive year, many young Bulgarians deem its pseudo-patriotic mannerism for demographic stimulation offensive and infantile (Ivanova, 2019). Ivanova has pointed out that this is because the campaign’s discourse turns the demographic problem of the post-socialist state into a game of attractiveness, macho potency and happy grandmas (2019).
Following the images of the campaign’s promotional materials in Figure 1 – “Cup C without silicone”, “Fraternity makes you much more attractive”, “Your mum will be happier to receive a grandchild rather than a new frying pan”, “Selfies with kids gather more likes” – the superficiality of this attempt to tackle a serious problem becomes evident. Turning the topic of having a child into an appeal for some sort of social popularity boost, as if the rearing of babies is all about uploading selfies with them on Facebook, the campaign undervalues the real characteristics of parenthood, such as responsibility, care, financial stability, the provision and sustenance of happiness and love.
The further absurdity of this fertility promotion lays in the contemporary socio- economic context of the Bulgarian state which is experiencing a severe demographic decline
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not because people do not want to have babies, but because they do not want to rear them in the Bulgarian conditions of bureaucratic chaos, healthcare instability and educational let-down.
The “gradual loss of Bulgarian DNA” is indeed a pressing contemporary issue and one that this thesis is mainly concerned with, but its media tackling in the form of a funny and ‘sexy’ gamification of parenting is definitely not its solution. By playfully and inappropriately addressing Bulgaria’s demographic problem, the campaign offends the sensibilities of many young and intelligent Bulgarians who are more likely to further postpone the birth of a child exactly because of the Do it Now imperative. The campaign’s essence includes the three main relevant issues that this thesis is researching: 1) the demographic crisis of post-1989 Bulgaria, 2) the media approach to social representation(s) in a post-socialist context, and 3) the lived experience and decision-making for the sustenance of relationships and families of young urban Bulgarian couples. Arnaudov and Hristov’s campaign demonstrates the relevance of the aforementioned themes because it deals with them in the same wrong manner as both media and government do. Bulgaria does need a demographic policy to tackle its melting population, but the irresponsible
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1: Advertisements of the "Do it Figure 1: Do it Now campaign slogans 2019
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conceiving of unready young people for the sake of bigger breasts is a morally questionable approach.
Inspired by the problematic anecdote of the aforementioned media campaign, this thesis follows a research interest in the media representations of Bulgarian post-socialism and its corresponding demographic crisis. As such, it researches the characteristics of the historical period of the Bulgarian Transition, which spans from the fall of communism in 1989 until today. The main research question the thesis aims to answer is: how do young Bulgarians emotionally relate to the social crisis of the post-socialist Transition and its media representations?
Moreover, following this main question, the second Chapter of the thesis is concerned with unravelling the sub-question of what are the crucial characteristics of post-socialist Bulgaria, particularly around emigration, which structure the country’s contemporary social sensitivities. The third Chapter tackles the sub-questions of how do media representations give form to the Bulgarian crisis and in what ways do some of the critical outlets propose to resist the politico-economic plight of the state. Lastly, the fourth Chapter gives response to the sub-question of what are the affective dimensions to which young Bulgarians relate both the crisis and its mediated forms.
The thesis relies on textual analysis of four critical media objects - two TV episodes of a documentary-like show and two fiction films - and insights gathered through interviews with a representative sample of 13 members of the so-called Transition generation - people born in the 80s’. Based on this work, the thesis argues that in the context of spiritual malaise (Trifonova, 2011) that the Transition generates, the factors that help young urban people balance the structural Bulgarian plight are the positive affects of support, care and love found in the nuclear environment of one’s long-term relationship with a partner and their family.
1.2 Chapter Overview
The methodology of this thesis is based onto the research into “the felt impact of everyday life” (Stewart and Lewis, 2015) of post-socialist urban Bulgaria, its structural constraints for young professionals and parents based in the capital city of Sofia and their respective affects towards the country’s socio-economic state and media content outputs. Relevant methods of research are stated in each specific Chapter.
The second Chapter of the study consists of a socio-anthropological overview of the Transition period of Bulgaria, starting with the 1989 politico-economic reforms and still
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ongoing today. It relies on political and sociological theories about the specificities of the Transition from state socialism to liberal democracy and their underlying (negative) effects onto the demographics of the country and social sensitivities of its contemporary citizens. As such, the Chapter methodologically serves as a detailed contextualization for the better understanding of Bulgarian post-socialism as a “non-system” (Stark, 1991) – the incompatible combination of communist and capitalist traits.
The third Chapter starts by introducing the characteristics of the transitioning mediascape of Bulgaria and its corresponding drawbacks as a newly democratic system of information. It then goes on to give concrete (counter) examples from this mediascape, which unlike most other productions, critically assess the current Bulgarian sociality. For this purpose, the Chapter analyses one TV show by contradictory journalist Martin Karbovsky – Second Plan (Vtori Plan, Втори План, 2016-ongoing) – and two fiction films – Mila from Mars (Mila ot Mars, Мила от Марс, 2004) and Tilt (Тилт, 2011) – that all deal with the representation of post-socialist Bulgarian family, love, demographics and transitioning issues such as political corruption, bureaucratic dysfunctionality and the incompatibility between totalitarian mindsets and neoliberal freedoms. On the methodological side, all of this is achieved through textual analysis of the aforementioned media objects and their specific discourses, aesthetics and cinematic allegories.
The fourth Chapter concerns the analysis and thematisation of ethnographic data, gathered via the conduction of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 13 representatives of the Transition generation – Bulgarians born in the 1980s and grown up during the Early Transition period of the 1990s and early 2000s. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and translated from Bulgarian by the author and then patternized into relevant sections relating to the topics of Transition, media and family-related affects. By doing so, the Chapter uses qualitative research methodology to analyse what people feel in the context of Bulgarian modern democratization. Moreover, supported by a theory section on the power of affect/emotion as a socially binding force that has the potential to generate communities (Ahmed, 2004a, b, 2008), the last Chapter empirically proves the thesis’ argument. Namely that, the negative affects towards the Bulgarian state’s dysfunctionality, institutional instability, demographic flight, transitioning plight and mass media content is made liveable and bearable through the generation of positive affects of love, care and support in the nuclear framework of the family.
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Chapter 2 – Living “In-between” Systems: Post-Socialism and
Contemporary Bulgarian Society
“If there are any lingering doubts as to whether [Bulgaria’s] unexpected and rapid transition from Communism to a “social market economy” has been a time of shock for the general public, they should be dispelled by the region’s demographic trends.” - Eberstadt, 1994:149
If you walk down the streets of Sofia or, for a matter of fact, any other small or big Bulgarian city, you can often stumble upon the so-called “street obituaries” that the close ones of deceased people hang around on trees, bus stops, street lamps, shop windows or walls. These sheets of paper serve as a memoriam of loved ones and normally include a portrait and a short poem to express feelings of grief that inevitably accompany the terminal loss of a family member or friend. Nationally, the street obituary is considered a Bulgarian phenomenon (because of its absence in other European states) that seems to affect passers-by by causing feelings of disturbance, unease and sadness. Philosopher Ivan Slavov categorized this cultural mania with public death reminders as emanation of bad taste and ugliness (Karaboeva, 2009). In his book The Kitsch Spectre, he writes, “we roam in city walls of obituaries as if we dwell in the ghostly world of the living and the dead!” (Slavov, 126, author’s translation from Bulgarian).
Following Slavov’s critique on these press advertisements of human death as representations of the ‘outdated’ ways in which Bulgarian deal with (lethal) demise, it seems intuitive to me as a Bulgarian citizen that the ubiquity of street obituaries can be read symbolically for another, even more overarching national phenomenon – the severe demographic decline. On the level of emotional affect, these printed media materially represent the broader context of post-socialist Bulgarian Transition – the (terminal) loss of people.
However, instead of presenting a negative narrative about the population meltdown of an EU member-state, I will analyse the specificities of Bulgaria's demographic situation over the last three decades. By doing this, I will address why it seems so symbolic to me, as a cultural insider, that media such as the street obituary can indirectly represent its deteriorating state since the critical moment of regime change in 1989.
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2.1 The Transition as Demographic Decline and Psychological Anomie
The last official Census of 2011 points that since 2001 the population of Bulgaria has decreased by 564,331 people, with an average yearly decrease rate of 0.7% (NSI, 2011). It is also noted that one third or 31.1% of this decrease is due to outer migration (emigration) from the country that amounts to 175,244 people in total. The other two thirds of the decrease are accounted to the negative population growth – i.e. Bulgaria has a death rate higher than its birth rate (with a total demise of 389,087 people as of 01.02.2011). More recent information demonstrates that the total number of Bulgarian citizens has dropped by approximately 369,000 people in the scope of just eight years – from 7,369,431 in 2011 to 7,000,039 in 2019 (Eurostat, 2019). Statistically, this means that the Bulgarian population is generally expected to continue its decline stably (but steeply). With a negative growth rate of -0.65, Bulgaria ranks 228th out of 237 countries in the population growth global rankings (CIA World Factbook,
2020). Moreover, Bulgaria scores third in the world in terms of crude death rate (preceded only by Lesotho and Lithuania) with a rate of 14.6 as the average annual number of deaths per 1000 people (ibid). The current demographic projections predict that with such tempos by 2050 the population will drop to 5,423,867 people, which means that the country will keep on losing roughly 50,000 citizens per year (World Population Review, 2020) – roughly losing the population of a middle-sized town annually. Nowadays, there are 6.9 million Bulgarians in 2020, while 30 years ago in 1989 there were around 8.9 million (NSI, 2018). Considering that throughout these past three decades in which the population decreased by about two million, the country has not been experiencing war and/or immense natural disasters (which are normally the perpetrators of such big population declines), I want to unravel some of the main specificities as to why an EU member-state during peacetime is undergoing such a disastrous demographic meltdown.
What has been causing the demographic crisis of post-socialist Bulgaria is known as the politico-historical period of Transition1 (Prehod, Преход). With the change from
centralized state controlled economy and distribution of social aid to free market economy, all former Eastern Bloc countries underwent a period of social, economic, political shock. The demographic trends of steep birth rate decline and statistical data of high levels of emigration quantitatively prove the qualitative socio-psychological influences of this shock (Eberstadt,
1 The term will be capitalized only when I refer to the Bulgarian Transition as the name of the specific period in time, starting on 10th of November 1989, with the fall of the communist Party and Todor Zhivkov’s government, and still currently ongoing.
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1994). The Bulgarian Transition has caused human-felt struggles that are both visible and traceable through the declining demographics of the country. In what follows, I will outline some of the main reasons why the experiences of post-socialism have caused Bulgarian population to shrink so drastically.
2.1.1 Socialism and the Shaping of a Fraudulent Democracy
Before delving into the detailed analysis of the Transition, which caused the organized fleeing of thousands, it is necessary to briefly discuss some of the main specificities of the preceding system. State socialism indisputably moulded the ways in which, after 10 November 1989, democratic reforms have been implemented. For 45 years, the totalitarian system acted as the “nervous system” (Stark, 1991) of the state and thus controlled every aspect of society. This is why after it collapsed, the Bulgarian population, alongside all other Eastern European nations, experienced high levels of social disorientation and detachment known also as social anomie (Crossman, 2019). The formal political departure of absolute control over most aspects of life permitted the wave of new liberal opportunities, such as private businesses, to turn into criminal schemes, illegal bargains of privatization and even racketeering behaviours. Communism’s firm grip over social life, media discourse and family structure was shaping the mentality of Bulgarians for so long that after it was gone, many actors privileged personalist and instrumentalist schemes over genuine realizations of capitalist economic potential (Kleyman, 2014). Thus, the phenomenon of scheming was predisposed to occur because of how communism unfolded through the five decades before. It is important to outline that state socialism’s collapse was due to its inner inconsistencies, which proved to be practically incompatible with its utopian ideology. Even though the Transition possesses its own discrepancies, most of them stem from totalitarianism’s inherent discrepancies. Given temporal and spatial constraints, I will hereby summarise some of the elements that help understanding how communism worked and why it failed.
The first discrepancy of state socialism was its culture of ubiquitous employment provision for each member of society, which created fruitful conditions for frauds and schemes. This is because in the so-called socialist “economy of shortage” no good, material or product was ever enough in terms of production, distribution and consumption (Verdery, 1996). Hence, socialism's fragility begins with “the system of centralized planning, which the centre neither adequately planned nor controlled” (Verdery, 20). Because of shortages and subsequent hoardings, the work of procuring generated networks of cosy relations among economic
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managers and their bureaucrats, clerks and customers. As a response to this corrupted behaviour, an oppositional cult of nonwork – in which workers would imitate the Party bosses and try to do as little as possible for their pay check – emerged. In this sense, socialism’s production management and its shortages generated a split between “us” and “them”, workers and Party leaders, “founded on a lively consciousness that “they” are exploiting “us” (ibid, 23). This consciousness was one of the main traits of socialism that undermined the power of the regime’s totality. During this time, the popular colloquial Bulgarian phrase “they pretend that they are paying us, we pretend that we are working” (те се правят, че ни плащат, ние се правим, че работим) appeared. In short, socialism’s economy of shortage was the birthplace of corruption and the nurturing ground of an ongoing culture of nepotism and clientelism in governmental and administrative spheres, business and media.
Secondly, Bulgarian employment culture, by comparison much worse maintained by today’s democratically elected government, was combined with the so-called state paternalism that in its extreme form included a system of surveillance as a form of totalitarian management. The State Security service (Durzhavna Sigurnost, Държавна Сигурност), the Bulgarian equivalent of the KGB, alongside its networks of informers and collaborators, was instrumentalizing all kinds of information in order to frame citizens who (seemingly) opposed the regime’s rules. Additionally, the culture of donos (донос) – literally, “slander” – incentivised citizens to denounce each other for falling out of line with communist propaganda. On one side, the state’s paternalistic approach to organizing society had a positive impact in the form of economic productivity, free state healthcare and education and income stability (albeit at a low level), and a sense of security, certainty and stability. On the other hand, the paternalistic surveillance and propaganda was so involved in people’s personal affairs that it rendered them dishonest, suspicious and mischievous. Despite its claim that it would take care of everyone's needs - cheap food, jobs, medical care, affordable housing, education and welfare - the Benevolent Father Party only encouraged people to express needs it could fulfil. This turned citizens into docile subjects “discouraged from taking the initiative that would enable them to fill these needs on their own” (Verdery, 25). The propagandistic manipulation of people’s desires resulted in their inability to take things in their own hands during the Transition period – especially when it came to politics.
I would argue that the dichotomy of social affects created by socialist paternalism contributed to the general divergence of communist ideology from what the totalitarian regime felt like in practice. Furthermore, the duality of paternalism played a crucial role in the formation of post-communist sensibilities towards the freshly realized liberations that
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democracy’s advent brought about. The later section on the Transition as negative freedom (Fromm, 1969) will elaborate more on that. For now, it is important to outline that through absolute control over everything, from elections to consumption habits and even private life, communism did provide some sort of equal (low-levelled) welfare for everyone. Thus, people lived in family environments, which were relatively stable – from both a basic economic provision and a mental perspective. On the family side, the shaping of mentality, values and norms of behaviour was later, after 1989, much more concentrated within the family since the state was out of this business with the end of communism. Whereas this gave more personal freedom to post-socialist actors, it also allowed for the disrespect and distrust in institutional power which was ruling over life for four and a half decades beforehand. Hence, the combination of democratic freedom and state disrespect resulted in a very ineffective Transition.
Concisely, it is this complex mixture of communist socio-political traits that predisposed, moulded and nurtured the specific development of the Transition’s affordances that came after 1989. The departure of the all-controlling Party shocked and excited the population, and left equally as many feeling hopeful as with a confused value system. This triggered a socio-psychological wave of anomic behaviours that further led thousands to flee the context of politico-economic chaos that overwhelmed Bulgaria’s fraudulent democratic environment.
2.1.2 Population Flight
The Bulgarian (de)population has been influenced by three main trends: 1) a high mortality rate, 2) a negative reproductive rate, and 3) growing emigration. These three demographic variables are affected and moulded by larger socioeconomic forces and ills stemming from the shock caused by the epochal political changes. Firstly, since the start of the Transition, Bulgaria has experienced a rising fear of its survival as a nation due to its aging population. With an extremely high dependency ratio –retirees/dependents (and children) to working-age population ratio– of 55.32% (IndexMundi, 2018), the already troubled Bulgarian national insurance system signals to be under threat of bankruptcy. Stagnant living standards, low incomes, high poverty rates, unemployment, growing social inequality, environmental pollution, and a healthcare crisis that “has resulted in untreated disease and early death, especially among the elderly and the poor” (Vassilev, 15) are just few of the reasons why mortality rates have gone up since 1989. Secondly, Bulgaria has had the lowest total fertility
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rate (TFR) ever recorded in the history of European peacetime (Vassilev, 2004). With a death rate higher than the birth rate and an excess mortality of close to 50,000 people each year, the effects of this demographic crisis can be calamitous, given the small size of the population. Moreover, people marry much less (compared to their parental generation), which further undercuts the prospects of increasing fertility rates. The one-child family has become the norm (Staykova, 2004). Population decrease is “a direct result of the economic distress [of the Transition]” (Vassilev, 19). The process works both ways: economic distress causes demographic decline, but with more people fleeing the country for “greener pastures abroad” and less people building families and raising children, the economic distress is perpetuated. Bulgaria’s population haemorrhage, similar to ones in countries scourged by natural disaster, war or famine, poses the question about the concrete reasons behind this so-called economic distress so omnipresent in the population.
2.1.3 Political Stasis: the Old as the New
All along, the Transition of the European ‘Wild East’ to an ‘established democracy’ has been an elite-driven process (Bozoki, 2002). In theory, it was supposed to be led by experts and intelligentsia elites who would push it towards rapid, effective and functional implementation. In reality, however, the regime change has been driven by the same old nomenklatura elites of the past instead of political and economic experts. This reshuffling of players has not only proven ineffective, but has also severely impeded processes central to the normal course of a successful transition like proper privatization and de-classation (Kolarska-Bobinska, 1991). Most elections during the period also lacked any sort of seriousness in political programs and rhetoric, which has been both the reason for and consequence of this reshuffling of the same old oligarchic elites (Horvat and Štiks, 2012). Thus, the actual transitioning climate soon exposed the quasi-biblical connotations of ascending from communist scarcity to the “land of [capitalist] plenty” that was anticipated by the media to be a lost cause. As a consequence, the full (that is: functional) transition from a controlled economy to a self-regulating free market economy is still deemed an incomplete achievement by the people of the European East, for which it came with so many new dreams and fresh hopes. Moreover, the media and academic discourses around this incompleteness continue to dominate the social spheres in Bulgaria. Discursively a sense of civil disempowerment and national frustration with the situation is perpetuated. Hence, the name of the “Transition” period is presently used as a marker for the government’s political inability to finalize the
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expected developments. Nevertheless, although in political and social terms, the transition is incomplete, economically, there is nothing to transit anymore. Privatization has been completed but citizens know that the “politicians’ acquired wealth is nothing more than legalized robbery” (Horvat and Štiks, 46).
On the conceptual side, the Transition is also seen as an ideological construct of Occidental domination based on the narrative of integrating former socialist Europe into the Western core. The problematic incompleteness of the Transition has been suspected to actually hide the monumental neo-colonial transformation of this region into a dependent semi-periphery of the West (Horvat and Štiks, 2012). I argue that the Bulgarian government’s unsuccessful attempts for complete and successful integration in combination with the Western-European accusations of post-socialist failures to catch up with Western economies has created a specific psycho-cultural phenomenon – the Balkan complex of inferiority (Minchev, 1997, Todorova, 1997). This psychological rendering of the Eastern European Self as a sort of second-class citizen, placed in the comparative framework of Western Europe and the European Union, further complicates social sensitivities and deepens Bulgarians’ feelings of anxiety and frustration with the present. The so-called “dodgy privatization” of the Transition, alongside the political jumble of political figures that have proven unable to end the transitioning processes, have generated a deep sense of distrust in authorities and institutions. Further, this has begun to function as one of the biggest impediments on the way to the Transition’s completion, both as a historical period of on-going change and as a shift in politico-economic and moral consciousness. Morally, the Transition’s drawbacks have rendered Bulgarians generally apathetic, politically inactive and disengaged. For example, Bulgaria has one of the EU’s lowest election turnouts and the lowest confidence levels in their elections (O'Brien and Ray, 2019). Emotionally, it leaves the majority of Bulgarians feeling uncertain for their futures and the futures of their kids.
In the discrepant context of transitioning where capitalist reforms built an even more fruitful ground for corruption and predatory behaviour of local elites, the Bulgarian population was, and still is, severely affected by a major socio-psychological condition: anomie. Detached from their social context as its norms and rules changed drastically after 1989, Bulgarians started dwelling in a “typical risk society” both caused by and causing anomie (Genov, 1998). In original Durkheimian terms, anomie is a social condition that occurs when people feel disconnected to their host society because they do not relate to its values and norms anymore (Crossman, 2019). Anomie causes frustrations, hopelessness, purposelessness and can also encourage deviant and criminal behaviour. Academically, post-socialist societies have been
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found to experience anomie both as a structural condition and as an individual reaction to processes of regime transitioning (Ådnanes, 2007). By experiencing normlessness and changeability, a context characteristic of the transitioning state of the country, Bulgaria’s population has grown apathetic, distrustful and sceptical towards its own condition. Since the democratization has been full of inconsistencies and disappointments, the ties that used to bind people together disintegrated, hence creating a state of social derangement. By theorizing the chaotic and unstable Transition period in terms of collective and personal anomie, one can understand why it led to organized criminal groups, petty schemes, large embezzlement deals, numerous national protests and the most extreme forms of discontent such as self-immolations.
2.1.4 Manifestations of Anomie
I will briefly discuss the Bulgarian self-immolation wave of 2013 since I see it as the most recent and relevant example of anomie in the socio-psychological condition of Bulgarian post-socialism. In her regression analysis of anomie among Bulgarian students, Ådnanes (2007) reveals that anomie reflects “a situation of strain, explained by poor income, socio-economic loss, disappointment with reform, and strong feelings of hopelessness for the future” (ibid, 49). The self-immolation cases in Bulgaria during the time of the 2013 mass national protests were “not driven by government rhetoric per se, but were based on true anti-regime sentiment” (Horvat and Stiks, 47, my emphasis) – a rebellion against politics per se. What this true anti-regime sentiment entailed was not that people were unwilling to be governed as much as they were unwilling to have a regime so susceptible to cracking under the
weight of its own contradictions and products.
36-year-old Plamev Goranov was one of the 2013 protest leaders in the seaside city of Varna and set himself ablaze in front of the town hall after raising a banner asking for the mayor’s resignation. Plamen (meaning ‘flame’ in Bulgarian) symbolically died of his wounds on the 3 March, Bulgaria’s National Liberation Holiday, after he called for social justice one last time. His fatalistic act of protest was caused by both personal and structural anomie. I argue that Goranov’s deed, who acted as the Bulgarian Jan Palach2, is not only a symbol of his personal
anomic condition as a Bulgarian citizen. It is also tightly linked to Bulgarians’ collective feeling of socio-political distrust, anguish and scepticism towards their state and its Transition. Plamen was protesting against Varna’s mayor Kiril Yordanov who has been reported to cater
2 Jan Palach was a Czech student who set himself on fire as a form of protest in the historical Prague Spring of 1969.
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ties with organized crime syndicate TIM. Yordanov resigned shortly after the tragic incident. TIM, on the other hand, has ever since exerted growing control over the city by buying media outlets and continuing illegal activities such as prostitution, smuggling and racketeering (Mihalev, 2007). Their unscrupulous mafia behaviour further proves Bulgaria’s transitional normlessness and anomic condition of incompleteness and disrespect towards authorities but also towards each other.
The extreme acts of protest that Plamen and five other men committed in 2013 are the most overt signs of Bulgarian anomie. Importantly, they are also symbolic of the disparity between the actual Bulgarian experience of the Transition and the ways in which the authorities try to organize the people’s understanding of this experience (Tsoneva, 2013). According to Tsoneva, “people who set themselves on fire answered the traumatic nonsensical core of “life” after 1989 with the only answer possible: death” (ibid). Thus, if the anomic condition of an EU state pushes its citizens to respond in such a fatalistic way to corruption, unemployment and oligarchy, it is understandable how that condition also leads to fatalistic demographic trends like Bulgaria’s population decline. If people answer to the ‘reforms’ with the terminal losses of themselves, the psychological distress caused by anomie can be read as the main socio-mental reason behind Bulgaria’s drastic demographic decline. Even though anomie is also said to be potently progressive in triggering positive systematic change (Kolarska-Bobinska, 1991), the question that remains is how the Bulgarian risk society can convert “the loss of private fear [and self] into a fearless collective annihilation” (Tsoneva, 2013) of ineffective social transformations.
2.2 The Transition’s Effects as Brain Drain and Negative Freedom
In some, the psychosocial anomie ignited by the post-socialist plight of uncertainty transforms into severe hopelessness and fearlessness of death. In others, the Transition’s anomic effects turn into a desire to leave the country to “save themselves”. The resulting exodus may be seen as evidence of a lack of trust in the ongoing reform process (Kovatcheva, 1999) or as a passive, private reaction (Hirschman, 1993). Furthermore, if street obituaries symbolically signal the nation’s high mortality rate, then the mass exit of young educated populations and the resulting brain drain signal the Bulgarian post-socialist plight of negative freedom(s) that I will discuss in this section.
When the demographic trend of a nation at peacetime resembles the outer migration of a war zone, the Bulgarian Transition should also be examined from the perspective of the brain
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drain phenomenon. By definition, a brain drain entails a “mass and permanent out-migration of highly skilled and educated persons (who are the driving force of any country), of the best and brightest human capital, of researchers and academics, graduate students and nowadays, students themselves” (Horvat, 77). In the context of the Bulgarian Transition, this loss of qualified people (who are often the ones who take informed political decisions and choices) further impedes the implementation of adequate reforms. Simply put, the intellectual ‘elite’ of the country mostly exits the state, pushed out by the Transition’s inherent uncertainty. This way, educated citizens “give up” on their civic responsibility as social actors by fleeing the state. In that sense, emigration can be interpreted as a sign of high psychological discontent with the country’s economic situation and as a sign of a lack of faith in the reform process (Ådnanes, 2004). However, the brain drain may also be considered a flexible strategy that young people may choose when they face the unfriendly labour markets in the post-communist countries (Kovatcheva, 2001). In both cases, the brain drain still weakens the human potential necessary for social change in Bulgaria. The Transition’s impact on outer migration of socially active citizens also functions as its own impediment on the way to democratic completion. By leaving Bulgaria, the people most responsible for guiding post-socialist society with their knowledge, expertise and political activity “allow” the oligarchic elite(s) to manage the situation as they see fit (i.e. towards their personal benefit).
Thus, if we assume that the cohort of highly skilled and educated people is part of a specific socio-political elite in itself, then their brain drain out of the state permits the loss of invaluable social force. This social force is so essential for the construction of a new society and for its adequate adaptation to a new regime that the fleeing of intellectual elite only puts further hardships on the execution of reforms. When assumed that “reliable democracy should not be made by the masses but be crafted by elites” (Bozoki, 1, my emphasis), then the fact that a big part of these expert elites decides to (permanently) migrate out of the territory becomes a much more urgent and palpable issue. With intellectuals going abroad, oligarchic power and social injustice such as “professional promotion based on unprofessional criteria” (Olesen, 137), i.e. based on nepotistic relations, are further cemented into the social and administrative system. In short, the emigration of educated human capital poses a real threat to Bulgarian democracy by rendering it “unreliable”. Moreover, the fleeing makes it easier for a corrupt government to push their decisions through without meeting much civil resistance. On that note, post-socialist governments “are often pleased to see potential critics leave rather than having them as a source of local criticism” (Olesen, 11) inside the state.
15 2.2.1 Negative Freedom
The frustrations with the Bulgarian system’s instability have led to another post-socialist problem that complicates the way to democracy: the social phenomenon of favouring negative over positive freedom (Kleyman, 2014). I argue that the brain drain’s effects on lowering the responsibility of the electorate pool of Bulgaria help unfold so-called “freedom from” practices. According to the original definitions of these terms by Erich Fromm (1969), negative freedom (or freedom from) is the “emancipation from restrictions such as social conventions placed on individuals by other people or institutions” (Kleyman, 52). On the other hand, positive freedom (or freedom of) is the “use of freedom to spontaneously employ the total integrated personality in creative acts and implies a genuine connectedness with others” (ibid, 53).
The (anomic) condition of Bulgaria created by the politico-economic turmoil of the 1990s and amplified by the following mass emigration made it possible for a form of grassroots authoritarianism to prevail over grassroots democracy. Oligarchic elites and ex-nomenklatura cohorts privileged negative freedom (from restrictions, norms, and ethical regulations) thus discouraging ‘ordinary’ citizens themselves to follow models of positive freedom. Positive freedom would have ultimately strengthened the community and could have eventually led to moments of intellectual solidarity. Such intellectual solidarity as “the participation in the life of the other” (Žalec, 32) is an essential component in the construction of bottom-up, reliable grassroots democracy as it ethically puts the individual fortune as the goal of reforms and policies. By doing so, it has the power to oppose economic instrumentalism and its purely profit and progress-oriented goals. In post-socialist societies like the Bulgarian one, economic instrumentalism comes as a mild form of its predecessor, totalitarian instrumentalism. Economic instrumentalism in a transitional context does not restrict personal freedoms, but by freeing the individual from ethical regulations, gives him/her a sense of normlessness. This process spins the wheel of post-socialism’s ineffective implementation of reliable and genuine democratic transitions and leaves the Bulgarian citizen feeling predominantly anomic.
In the context of favouring instrumentalism over personalism and solidarity as Buchanan observed in the mid-90s, Bulgaria becomes a "krivorazbrana demokratsiya" (“crookedly understood democracy”), in which “people believe that they can do as they like, whenever they like, giving little consideration to ethics or law” (Buchanan, 3). During the Transition’s anomic conditions, Bulgarians have come to privilege "svobodiya" (свободия; the abuse of freedom; licentiousness; negative freedom) over "svoboda" (свобода; liberty; positive freedom; freedom of). As a consequence, Bulgarian society has grown into a risk society not only because of its
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high levels of anomie, but also because it has been freed from (respect for) authority, morality and ethics. Furthermore, without the reasoning voices of many of its intellectuals and critics who left the country precisely because of the aforementioned conditions, Bulgarian society has turned into a subconsciously conformist unit that incorporates its own transitioning processes. Even without trust in their government’s functionality, Bulgarians’ conformity actually allows them to psychologically avoid much of free/critical thinking just so they can save themselves from further anxieties (Funk, 2000). In a sense, Bulgarians have adapted to their model of “crazyocracy” (Buchanan, 1999) – the uncontrolled democracy of the Transition – and have changed not only their lifestyles, but also their perceptions of life standards.
Nowadays, Bulgarian people’s relationship to post-socialism is visible in their relation to loss and death. Bulgarians, unable to explain to themselves certain elements of the politico-economic plight but also by now adapted to its dysfunctionalities, do not perceive others’ (terminal) loss as natural anymore (Kaneff, 2002). In many cases, people think that there have been more unnatural deaths since 1989 and the discourses around them are “fraught with themes of corruption and mysticism” (ibid, 99).
In this chapter, I argued that post-socialism’s effects on the population of ‘democratic’ Bulgaria affect its peoples’ psyches in the three ways of 1) anomie, with extreme cases like self-immolation suicides, 2) brain drain or fleeing the plight of uncertainty, and 3) negative practices of exploiting democratic freedom. Furthermore, I pointed out how the Transition is seen by many as something of an “alien and incomprehensible social, political, or economic order that is currently [still] endangering the known social world” (ibid, 103). This social world becomes visible through media practices of ‘screening’ (televising, commenting on, criticizing) the Bulgarian environment. In the next chapter, I will explain how, similarly to the Transition’s incomprehensible discourses, Bulgarian mass media produce and report narratives of overwhelming negativity that perpetuate the feeling of social plight. Certain voices are muted, others are rarely heard, while in the meantime, mass media systematically screen the Transition in ways regulated by known and unknown powers. I will present some of the journalistic and artistic ways in which the mediated negativity can be transformed into a more critical and/or positive outlook of the Transition.
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Chapter 3 – Screening the “Non-system”: Critical Media Representations
of the Post-Socialist Context
“In this new world, leaders will matter more than institutions, charisma more than political economy…” Jowitt, 1991:13
In post-socialist Bulgaria, fragments of the old socialist order survive alongside new elements obeying another logic: capitalism. The elements from two stable but contradictory systems render post-socialism into a conflicting “non-system” (Stark, 1991), an irrational environment whose patterns are destructive and dysfunctional. I argue that there are, however, ways to expose the unproductivity of post-socialism through the power of visual media and their social commentary. The media objects discussed in the following pages are representations of two main potentials to overcome the “non-system’s” discrepancies. Firstly, they embody a stark critique of the status-quo by discussing it journalistically (Karbovsky’s show) or artistically (the two films). The second episode of the TV show and the two films have another powerful capacity in their emphasis on the “good” and the “valuable” inside a corrupted society: love, family and child-rearing. Mila from Mars (2004) and Tilt (2011) are both films about the importance of love and family. By presenting the positive as well as the negative in post-socialist Bulgaria, they remind the viewers that it is those values that render Bulgaria worth living/staying in. Love and family make post-socialism with all its political and economic inconsistencies bearable and liveable. These themes were frequently uttered by the informants of this thesis as well. In the fourth chapter, their ethnographic insights will empirically illustrate how love and family are seen as the answer to the moral dilemma caused by transitional anomie in contemporary Bulgaria.
Beforehand, the following introduction of the main characteristics of Bulgarian media will serve as a bridge to explain how and why Bulgarian media generates repulsiveness and breeds social inactiveness in many of its local audience members. These two are the main reasons why the next chapter will be concerned with negative and positive affects towards Bulgarian media and post-socialism in general.
3.1 The Modern Bulgarian Mediascape
The Bulgarian Transition has produced numerous inconsistencies, which have impacted the development of the local mediascape. Similarly to how the old elite of the
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nomenklatura reshuffled itself in the political field, ownership of mass media was reshuffled among national oligarchs and foreign companies. These ownership structures have kept Bulgarian mass media complicit and subordinate to political power(s). The big media moguls are seen as personifications of the clientelistic relationship between media and politics (Örnebring, 2012). This overlap between politics and mass media has produced a sort of “democratainment” (Hartley, 2004). Political struggles are filtered through entertainment and news reporting is infused with advertising thus becoming infotainment. Consequently, this generates a post-socialist environment where audiences are concerned with petty topics and/or sensationalist news so that they can effectively be kept passive towards political games.
Through the intersection of media platforms with the interest of oligarchic elites, the market-liberation reforms that led to privatization of the media did not necessarily lead to liberation of speech too. That is not to say that production, distribution and consumption of media did not change at all since 1989. In fact, the transnationalisation of film production, the advent of the Internet and the increasing digitalization of social exchange are all positive developments that came about with the demise of communist control over the media (which functioned mainly as a propaganda-dispersing machine during totalitarian times). Ever since, civic awareness and participation have been empowered through online forums, discussion sites, personal blogs and independent news outlets. The Internet in post-socialist Bulgaria has served as an enabler of “everyday political talk” and has fuelled social criticism online and in the real world (Bakardjieva, 2012). Despite these positive effects, a large part of the Bulgarian contemporary mass media remains under a type of control different from the socialist one but with similar goals. In other words, political oligarchs inflict clientelistic biases upon commercial media in a quasi-totalitarian manner.
The most popular corporate example of oligarchic control is the New Bulgarian Media Group (NBMG) owned by MP Delayn Peevski. Peevski is the same oligarch whose persona triggered the 2013 protests that resulted in cases of self-immolation. He owns an empire containing around 80% of the Bulgarian media through which he “injects the public sphere with fake news” (Ganev, 97). Contrary to liberal media theory, Peevski’s private empire does not guarantee political independence of the media (Voltmer, 2013). The continuous enlargement of NBMG and its ‘unclear’ funding from “sponsors who ‘wish’ to remain anonymous” (Marius, 2) unravel covert state subsidies and the inextricable ties between political and economic elites in this post-socialist “democracy.” Moreover, the ‘subtle’ political control over the media market “distorts not only the plurality of voices in the public sphere, but also media’s ability to hold public officials to account” (Voltmer, 175). Created in
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this media system is indeed not a plurality of opinions, but a plurality of biases. Thus, the captured media of contemporary Bulgaria do not only maintain corruption and politicians’ incumbency, they also impede genuine democratic citizenship and the success of the Transition as a whole.
The “EU-phoria” (Imre, 2009), the initial excitement with which Bulgarians initially welcomed the “reforms” towards democratizing potential of new technologies, European mobility, and transnational exchange, diminished fast as oligarchic structures such as Peevski’s managed to interfere with mass media content production and distribution. Even though unequal control over the media is seen as an “inherent flaw of market forces in the regulatory mechanism for ensuring the functioning of media outputs in the public interest” (Voltmer, 165), in the Bulgarian context, the conflict of interest between power and objective journalism gets even more complicated as forces of corruption come into play.
The media’s clientelism manifests itself in the form of informal ties, such as the ones of political leaders “seek[ing] to turn public institutions and public resources to their own ends” (Medina and Stokes, 2). For example, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s discourse on mass media, previously labelled as “soft decisionism” (Ganev, 2018), stems precisely from the fact that his exertion of power over his and his Cabinet’s image in the media critically minimizes space for free speech. His decision-making narrative “neutralizes critics who insist that democracy [in Bulgaria] is in crisis” (ibid, 92). Borissov declares the status-quo as “normal” and functioning for the masses by replacing constitutional practices of opinion plurality with communist-style narratives of positivity and productivity.
Bulgarian investigative journalism tries to survive in this culture lacking transparency of ownership, funding and influence from ex-communist elites and offshore companies (Trifonova, 2015). These conditions severely impede journalistic professionalism and personal safety. Investigative journalists get attacked and harassed on a regular basis when they produce pieces “inconvenient” for the government, certain politically involved companies or the Bulgarian mafia. In autumn 2018, after a big construction embezzlement scheme involving EU money was unravelled by two investigative journalists from the independent online website Buffalo (Bivol, Биволъ), a female colleague of theirs, Viktoria Marinova, who invited them in her show to discuss the scandal, was later mysteriously murdered (The Guardian, 2018). More recently, another journalist – Slavi Angelov – who researches ex-secret services was beaten in front of his home, prompting a colleague of his to comment: “a severely beaten journalist is not even news anymore and this is yet another example of the victories of Evil [in Bulgaria]” (Stefanov, 2020).
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As violence over journalists continues, the normative and structural constraints of journalism in transition render the Bulgarian media system “partly free” (Voltmer and Wasserman, 2014). Despite international pressure, Bulgarian media freedom has not improved – it scores 111th in the global RSF rankings, deemed as the “black sheep of the European
Union” (RSF, 2020). The ubiquity of kompromat practices – smearing, negativity and advertorials – oriented towards sensationalism render the revelation of corruption scandals into more of a “good product to be sold” rather than a service to society (Örnebring, 2012). As a transitioning mediascape, Bulgaria has followed its own “raison d’etre.” Despite managing to overcome “incremental and partial shifts” (Ganev, 2018), the commercialization, privatization and ludification (gamification) of this emerging democracy’s media has not managed to galvanize genuine democratic participation. Instead, it has proven to citizens, already rendered cynical by the frequent turnover of historical “truths”, “that politics and television are equally trashy, trivial, and untrustworthy shows” (Imre, 15). In that sense, as Imre (2009) summarizes it precisely:
Rather than help to build a sense of civic responsibility on the ruins of communist apathy toward politics, the ludic emphasis of this [media] transformation may even discourage political participation. There is no automatic equivalent of the active, politically conscious democratic consumer in the political wasteland left by communism, which Europeanization processes aim further to depoliticize and tame into a quiet, full-stomach market for media entertainment and tourism. (Imre, 16)
I want to conclude that by serving elites and distracting citizens from pressing issues through gamification of information and proliferation of triviality, Bulgarian mass media act as counter-democratic tools. Instead of fostering civil activism, they cater civil cynicism in their audiences who, if critical enough, get daily doses of repulsion from the screening of the “non-system.”
I will now turn towards the analysis of my first media object. Its national controversy of being an emotionally affective show is a fruitful example for the analysis of post-socialist Bulgarian discourses that merge political struggle and media entertainment. Martin Karbovsky’s show Vtori Plan (Second Plan) can be read as a text that tackles urgent issues while cynically presenting their marginality. In the Bulgarian context, just as the negative demographic trends can prove to be calamitous given the already small size of the population, Karbovsky’s coverage of topics can prove to be somehow productive for the galvanization of society members into broader political activism.
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3.2 Televised Discourses in Popular Culture: Post-Socialism as Cynicism in Karbovsky’s Second Plan
Since September 2016, Martin Karbovsky – a nationally famous essayist and journalist from the beginning of the Transition – has been airing his show Vtori Plan on bTV – the first big private channel on Bulgarian television. The title of the show is quite ambiguous because, literally translated, it means “second plan” – as it concerns the screening of human stories “at the second plan(e) of life, where nothing is as it seems” (bTV, 2016). However, if figuratively translated into English, I argue that Second Plan connotes the meaning of “in the background” and/or “out of the spotlight” of (mass) media. Thus, Karbovsky’s representational concern with marginal groups and individuals that are (normally) left out of the public spectrum of attention provides audiences with unconventional opinions on social dynamics. The host and main narrator of the show compares stories and life struggles in order to potentially galvanize the publics through his media entertainment format, which bears traits of the documentary genre. Moreover, Karbovsky exploits a very specific, satirical, dark and cynical discourse that polarizes Bulgarians’ viewpoints towards his content. I will discuss my informants’ affects triggered by Second Plan and by Karbovsky as a TV persona himself in the next chapter. In the following sections, I shall turn to the content analysis of two of his recent episodes that present and further complicate the topics of demographics and Bulgaria’s future. The choice of episodes has thus been strategically made, so that media content analysis can support the brain drain/family focus of this project.
3.2.1 The Vanishing Bulgaria and the Communist Heritage: Demographics 1: Collapse (2018)
In this 2018 episode, Karbovsky unearths the demographic problem of Bulgaria. To achieve a diversity of perspectives and greater emotional output, the host interviews several characters: the 8-millionth born Bulgarian who is now in his 50s, a historian expert, a 93-year-old man from a tiny village and two ex-teachers from another village whose school was recently shut down. Karbovsky combines these seemingly unrelated people’s stories only to present to us the “kitchen of life”, as he likes to refer to his interviewees’ mixture of “food-for-thought” material.
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Karbovsky narrates the “scary story of a Bulgaria on the path of extinction3.” In a bitter,
emotional and provocative opening narrative, Karbovsky shares the view that Bulgaria has a thousand issues, the most pressing of them being whether (or not) there will be “a Bulgaria” at all in 50 years’ time.
In the beginning, the viewer is introduced to Emil Hadzhiisky – born in 1962 as the 8-millionth Bulgarian. As such, he received a myriad of congratulatory letters from Bulgarian and Russian communist citizens and politicians. In the 1960s, Bulgaria’s demographics were blossoming under communist policies, the standard of life was stable (albeit not high), and the 9-millionth citizen was expected to be born only 18 years after Emil. However, this never happened and 56 years later, there are instead a million less Bulgarians. Emil is part of the show to illustrate the lost possibility of a blooming nation. As a character, he reflects on his “happy life” but also outlines that now – in the Transition – the conditions are different and both of his children are unsure of whether they will stay in Bulgaria after they graduate. Thus, the first block of the episode finishes off on a different note – wrapping up the archival footage of communist productivity with a more bitter nuance – that of democratic migration trends.
Figure 2: Bulgaria's population flight visualisation (Demographics 1: Collapse, 2018)
The second interviewee that Karbovsky introduces is the historian prof. Trendafil
3 All quotes are directly taken from the episodes, which can be found on bTV’s Second Plan YouTube channel playlist:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZMIJosoBN0&list=PLhdRyM3vDCH3I8asattNmqpPIC_H_hogs. The quotes have been translated verbatim from Bulgarian by the author.
23 Mitev. Staged in an old-style
study, he presents to the viewers “scary” statistical facts and information on the demographic “collapse” of their nation. Comparing the crisis to an avalanche-like process, prof. Mitev emphasizes on the phenomenon of “a completely conscious, organized get-away/fleeing from the homeland”, which he sees as a much more complex process to be controlled (in comparison with a common demographic decline). By labelling this process of unprecedented voluntary leaving from the country as “civilizational collapse”, Mitev’s narrative serves as an official pointer to the Transition’s unsuccessful reforms as the main reason why Bulgarians are deterred by their state. The emphasis of the episode hence falls on the moment of then – after 1989 – as the start of Bulgaria’s worsening
demographics. In contrast, Karbovsky’s discourse is strengthened by Mitev’s terminological precision (as an academic) and the more colloquial discussion of the national expression “I
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love my homeland, but I hate my state” – a saying, whose essence lays in the fact that Bulgarians love their country, its nature and ancient history, but despise their government, administration and politicians.
The episode’s interviews are interrupted by footage of abandoned village houses in ruins and empty village streets, accompanied by melancholic melodies for more dramatic a/effect. Additionally, Karbovsky himself shows up in his studio to narrate the project and guide the viewer with rhetorical questions and provocative sentences. After quoting a saying which wisely concludes that “when the disgusted leave, the disgusting remain”, the narrator goes on to reflect on the sad fact that Bulgaria’s disgusted – majority of the migrants – were, the nation’s workforce, its brains and its ova. He accuses the government that “despite the scary picture, [it] looks at all of this from above, with a positive, unshakeable gaze, aimed only at the next four years of power which only results in more power for them and even less Bulgaria for us.”
Aesthetically, Karbovsky narrates the brain drain phenomenon by relying on a series of contextual images of “disappearing Bulgaria” intertwined with talking-heads interviews and in-studio reportages on the documentary-like material. For example, the interview with the elderly Rangel, 93, who inhabits the demographic wastelands of Bulgaria – or, a village of only five constant dwellers – functions as an affective form of presenting Bulgaria’s aging population and demographic plight. Grandpa Rangel’s interview is accompanied with footage of old Bulgarian books and portraits of 19th century revolutionaries (the Revivalists), as if to
create an emotional parallel between old Bulgarian people’s fate and the historical relics of the past.
Lastly in the episode, two ex-teachers, now both pensioners are introduced to the viewer. The school the two elderly persons used to work in shut down two years before the episode was shot. In 2016, there were not enough children left in the village to fill a school anymore. Karbovsky screens the ruins of a big village school while cynically – for purposes of igniting (negative) emotion – refers to it as “dying school N#1621.” Through the posing of direct and uncomfortable questions, the ex-teachers of the ex-school share with Karbovsky through heavy sighs that in Bulgaria, “there are no guilty people for any sort of situation.” Their answer refers to the widespread government corruption and lack of responsibility in the country whose span generates
high levels of civil
inactiveness in society – all widely recognized everyday topics of national disappointment during the Transition.
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Figure 4: "Dying" school N#1621 (Demographics 1: Collapse, 2018)
Figure 5: Ex sunny building (Demographics 1: Collapse, 2018)
As a summary of the affects in the episode, Karbovsky uses prof. Mitev analysis of socialism’s damage onto Bulgarian mentality. The nationally controlled communist productivity in terms of employment, goods and babies, is deemed as harmful to the Bulgarian entrepreneurial spirit and ability. Moreover, it is outlined that the continuous monopoly of the paternalistic Party (Verdery, 1996) created a somewhat socially damaged civilian who has remained politically infantile and unable to participate in democratic elective processes. Thus, Karbovsky’s take on the civilizational collapse of Bulgaria embodies a critique against
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totalitarianism that presents communism’s shortcomings as the origins for the post-1989 democratic incompletions.
In conclusion, the viewers are presented the “darkest sunny country”, with its 1620 shut down schools in 29 years, because of which there are around half a million unborn children, according to Karbovsky’s estimations. They are warned that it will be this army of “aborted kids” that will make us answer their questions at “spring of souls.” With this fatalistically hyperbolic narrative over a factually true process of demographic decline, Karbovsky aesthetically lures the viewers into experiencing empathy, anger and responsibility for their homeland. Karbovksy labels his work “not as a film anymore but as exhumation”, interpreting himself not as a journalist anymore but as an archaeologist that gathers “artefacts” – such as the last standing Bulgarians who “cite the Revivalists and remember poems by heart.” To wrap up, the narrator actively addresses the audience in a provocative manner:
You think that I shoot human stories, whereas in fact I am filming the Bulgarian Titanic, which is sinking under the applause of lustful Europe and the melodies of Diyarbakır. It is the provocative discourse combined with not-less-provocative footage of crying faces, familiar landscapes of ruins and dramatic metaphors that thematise the reasons behind Bulgaria’s deteriorating demographics in this Second Plan episode. By digging into national wounds of the communist past, brain drain migration and lonely elderly provincial/rural inhabitants, Karbovsky uses the documentary format of the talking heads to induce the viewers’ compassion and perhaps active responsibility for their own country’s future.
3.2.2 The Ministers in the Institution of Humanity, the Dysfunctional State and the Future of Bulgaria: If there shall be Bulgaria (2019)
As the second object of analysis of Karbovsky’s content I have chosen a more positive project made by the otherwise critical TV “archaeologist”. This media object is again concerned with Bulgaria’s future but in the form of its children and their (deteriorating) education. Karbovsky opens up the episode by reflecting on yet another characteristic of the Bulgarian Transition: doing/feeling good in the context of post-socialist plight despite and not because of the state. Social entrepreneurs Any-Marry and Zlatko are interviewed to present their work, the foundation of an exemplary enterprise: the only free private school on the Balkans for children from poor families. Actors by education, the two middle-aged Bulgarians
