Serbs and Albanians as Siamese Twins? Family Loyalty and Blood Revenge in the British-Serbian Amazon Series “Besa”
Abstract
The article presents the two seasons of the British-Serbian series “Besa” (Albanian for “Word of Honour”). Making use of translocal narration techniques, it presents the Albanian mafia in the Western Balkans (between Ulcinj, Kosovo and Belgrade). After a car accident, the “average” Serbian family father Uroš is forced to work as a Mafia killer. At first glance, the plot seems to reproduce ethnic stereotypes about violence and blood revenge in the Balkans and to naturalise Albanian culture as criminal. This professionally produced action series relativises stereotypes by giving a clearly subversive and antinationalist message: Uroš and the Kosovar-Albanian mafia boss Dardan become close allies, and their thirst for revenge for killed family members makes them mental and emotional twins. The series does not mention Albania with a single word. The protagonists are moving around in a post-Yugoslav space which is marked by vibrant Serbian-Albanian bilingualism. Belgrade, in this work, is the liminal space of several borderline biographies and of hybrid belonging between Europe and the Balkans.
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