ABSTRACT
After the fall of Slobodan Milošević in October 2000, the new political elite sought to bring about profound changes in Serbia’s political, social, economic, and cultural life. With the ambition to dampen or reverse the effects of the controversial legacy of Milošević’s time, the first post-October governments gave priority to the transforming of media, music, and creative industries as well as delegitimization and marginalization of one of the most important symbols of the 1990s – the turbofolk. The necessity to enhance control over the cultural sphere and its different segments was thought to be an adequate “antidote” to the politics of its commercialization and complete deregulation during Milošević’s era. Still, after not more than three years of distancing from the “heritage” of Milošević’s times, there was a gradual return to the populist model of cultural policy which was particularly observable in television production and digital media after 2006. Analyzing different stages of post-October cultural policy, the focus of this chapter will be oriented on examining the importance of diminishing sociocultural inequalities as its part, especially regarding lower classes. Assuming this issue is a priority in the socialist period, a detailed look at postsocialist and specifically post-October 2000 period will give an answer to whether it had relevance in the past two decades and in which ways the political elite sought to refer to it and embrace it in the public cultural policy.
