From switchboard operators to Coca-Cola kids: Transformations of the political left in the films of Dusan Makavejev

This article challenges two areas of common preconceptions about Dusan Makavejev's work: firstly, the one that disqualified his later – especially non-Yugoslav – work and secondly, the one that interpreted his work by yoking it strictly to humanist perspectives. By focusing on Makavejev’s only attempt at Hollywood-type filmmaking in 'The Coca-Cola Kid' (1985), the aim here is to reveal Makavejev as a product of his Yugoslav background and Marxist thinking. Through a close reading of the film, it becomes clear that Makavejev was heavily informed by communist ideas, openly attacking rather than just criticising consumer society as promoted and sustained by rampant American capitalism. Makavejev was hence ideologically closer to philosophers of the Frankfurt School and aesthetically closer to Bertolt Brecht - rather than to Freud or Reich - confirming his status as a militant left radical.

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