Sviće “Smurf”: Intertextual Linkages in Protests Against Montenegro’s 2019 Freedom of Religion Law

Abstract

Elements of traditional folklore and popular culture were invoked in protests opposing the 2019 Zakon o slobodi vjeroispovijesti ili uvjerenja i pravnom položaju vjerskih zajednica [Montenegrin Law on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the Legal Status of Religious Communities], hereafter referred to as the 2019 Freedom of Religion law. The 2019 Freedom of Religion law replaced an older law on religion and caused controversy for its various articles that would thereafter require evidence of church property ownership, without which such properties would transfer into state property. Many people identifying as Serbs in Montenegro protested the updated law to express their concern that holy sites of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro might become government property under the new law. Protest materials intertextually linked traditional folklore and popular culture characters to the movement. As intertextuality refers to the relationship between two or more texts brought into the same frame, folkloric elements emerged in protests in Montenegro and representations on social media through intertextual linkages. This paper addresses intertextual references made by the hip hop collective Beogradski Sindikat in their song and music video supporting the protests, “Sviće zora” [Dawn Breaks] and people’s recontextualizations of the popular culture figure of Papa Smurf, from the cartoon franchise “the Smurfs,” in Montenegro and abroad. In analyzing such protest materials, I argue that an intertextual approach to protests facilitates understandings of protesters’ meaning-making processes and the semiotic interactions between folklore and protests.