“Mile versus transition”: Social changes and clashes of values through the prism of a television show

The basis of this paper is the idea that post-socialist transformation doesn’t only entail political and economic changes which affect a society going through this process, but also carries with it a slew of new social phenomena which the given society interprets in a suitable way. Such new phenomena are often recognized in bits of popular culture which speak to the populace at large. Keeping this in mind, we decided to test the ways in which new social phenomena reflected in a specific Serbian television show which was popular in Serbia during the beginning of the so-called second transition. The show in question is “Mile vs. transition”, which represents a completely new form within the Serbian context, and which parodies a wide array of changed political and social relationships and values which are markers of the transition process. This television show became very popular with Serbian audiences, and it is our belief that the popularity is due to the success of this type of representation and the possibility of making fun of the system-in-the-making. On the other hand, the specificities of this particular show provided a special platform for negotiating meaning and the basic message between the creators and the consumers. In accordance with this, we have decided to focus on this aspect of the series in this study - the difference between the basic intentions of the authors and the ways in which the audience actually received the character of Mile and his relationship to the transition process. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177026: Kulturno nasleđe i identitet