Guca

Guca is upon us once again. I do not intend to go. The sweaty public drunkenness and the cacophony of trumpets are really not my cup of tea (bottle of brandy).
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Guca, as such. Let people party in whatever way they see fit, but labeling this a supreme cultural event or saying that there is something uniquely and authentically Serbian in getting drunk and losing control is just wrong. “It’s a Serbian brand, it’s a Serbian brand”, desperate voices cry out to defend the festival from its critics. Sure it’s a brand. It is a big tourist attraction, an important event in the Serbian calendar, a moneymaking machine, but by no means does this guarantee quality or the “cultural” and “ethnic” aspect of the whole spectacle. People rarely think of the actual trumpeters’ competition. It is merely an excuse.
Some website in the UK has allegedly voted Guca and Exit as the top two festivals or carnivals in the world, even ahead of Rio. I have my doubts that this is probably a website frequented by Serbian diaspora, but there is another thing preventing me from jumping with joy at the fact that I live in the certified epicenter of world entertainment.
Within Serbia there is an evident disproportion in treating these two “world famous” brands. I don’t claim one event is better than the other (I certainly prefer Exit), as it is a matter of taste, but they are deliberately and forcefully confronted.
Guca is seen as traditionally Serbian and Exit as something foreign, even anti-Serbian.
The government and the media proudly promote Guca as Balkan joie de vivre whereas Exit is always marred by criticism of drug abuse and incidents.
Neither event is certainly free from corruption, accidents and illegal substances, the death toll of Guca drunk driving car accidents is not insignificant, but that is part of life and these ugly things do not make them less important or less Serbian.
Another thing that bugs me is the approach to organizing Guca. It is graciously funded by the state and still they have the audacity to postpone the event with only a month to go, potentially ruining plans of thousands of badly needed tourists, just because someone remembered that it was time for fasting!? And here I thought we live in a secular state.
Silly me, everyone knows that any good Christian believer has to be done with al that nasty fasting business before stuffing him/herself with fatty pork and liter upon liter of brandy and beer. After the fast, it’s perfectly all right. After the fast, you can indulge in as many pagan rituals as you want. The church can even rent its frond yard to accommodate this orgy of lard and alcohol, as it gladly does. The church, naturally sees nothing wrong with its flock indulging in large scale gluttony at is very doorstep, but it does have a problem with street theatre performances labeling them satanic, and getting the police to intervene.
Here I go again, but like with every other aspect of life in Serbia lately there is a terrible trend of primitive and shallow celebration of “nationhood”, “faith”, “tradition”. Will we ever learn that faith is something deeply personal, that nations do evolve, that new traditions are bourn and that national identity can encompass so many new things that only make it stronger?