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selection is in many cases thoroughly considered as it is through music (much like in cinema) that
additional communication (often more emotive) is added to the visual content. In this audiovisual
and textual interplay, in many cases, a general double-line of distinction can be drawn between
these engaged interventions, first, that of valuing the past: through nostalgia or contempt; and
second, attitude towards the past: ‗dead-serious‘ or ‗jokey.‘
An eloquent case of the jokey intervention is a video where an excerpt from Star Wars film is
dubbed with Zdravko Ĉolić‘s famous interpretation of ―Druţe Tito mi ti se kunemo‖ [Comrade
Tito, we swear to you]. 230 In this video several mythological levels are fused together, first Lucas‘
symbolisation and transposition of earthly matters into the realm of sci-fi, a distancing critique the
earthly reality. Ĉolić‘s song on the other hand is a once popular ode to Tito still resonating today
across post-Yugoslavia; a reinterpretation of a partisan song from WWII, which in his cover
attained a much more widespread attention and appreciation, is a glorification of the ‗image and
work‘ of Comrade Tito and at the same time an expression of devotion to him and the Yugoslav
cause. In the marriage with the Star Wars excerpt, this song attains a rather different meaning, as it
is re-contextualised, by way of meshing or renarrating, into the wider mythological and fictional
framework which distinctly marked the western hemisphere at the end of the millennium. One
comment even traces the analogy between the subject matter depicted in the film with the
mythological referential point, WWII of Ĉolić‘s song:
Tito is a hero! Star Wars rule!! The best combination!
Memories!!! when I was a kid partisans and Jedis were the coolest!
And also the analogy- alliance- partisans, fascists Empire.
At the end of the day, I think this is what Lucas thought! Just look at the uniforms.
elendil77 231
Now, as amusing as cases such as this might seem, the central concern of this analysis are videos
on a mission to commemorate 232 Yugoslavia by editing music and images into digital stories—in
some cases vernacular interpretations of history—and digital memorials. It is in the manner of
creating tribute videos that this kind of digital storytelling becomes a fine conduit to
externalisation of memories and remembering. But before delving deeper into this issue, a few
words are in order to explicate the concept of digital memorial.
230 See BogdanDLR, ―Star Wars Druze Tito,‖ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-irP4AAcyo, accessed 23 August
2011.
231 See comments at http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=y-irP4AAcyo, accessed 23 August 2011.
232 I use the term ‗commemorate‘ throughout this writing very broadly to denote an online activity where
users/visitors engaged in mundane digital socialising commemorate on-the-fly an event/period/person and in doing so
often use pop-cultural multimodal mediatisations.
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