The son, absolutely gutted by his father's decision to lead the Pride Parade, is determined, even at the cost of having to beat up his own father, to proceed with the anti-Parade strife and defend his fascist ideals. We also see that the son harbours feelings of resentment, anger and spite for his father. However, in the fight scene he decides to change sides as he can't stand seeing his father beat up. So the son's change is brought about not because of the appreciation of human rights, but rather for the sake of patriarchal institutions. Here again the narrative fails to authentically subvert the dominant codes inasmuch it places gay liberation in the context of the Oedipal battle between father and son- the weakened guardian of the patriarchal order is to be replaced by the strengthened successor son. And even though Lemon's son renounces his supremacy to be united with his father, the text conceals that their reconciliation can be achieved only through an act of violence. The son discards patriarchy only to disclose a deeper truth of masculinity as violence. In their reconciliation there are no open conversations, no laying out the cards on the table, no forgive-and-forget talks; just ruthless play of fists.

Conversely, traces of the subversive character of the text are found in the least expected places. For instance, on their journey Lemon and Radmilo miss a ferryboat and are forced to spend a night in a hotel waiting for the next one. The hotel has only one single-bed room left, so the two of them wind up sharing the same bed. Lemon feels overtly uneasy about this arrangement, and after a few hours spent in a chair trying to fall asleep, he decides to snug into bed with Radmilo. Determined to minimise the odds of getting in physical contact with Radmilo, Lemon places a pillow behind his bottom. This is a typical prejudice about gay men as always having their minds set on one thing only. What is striking is not Lemon's decision to share the same bed, but rather it is Lemon imagining himself subordinated to a gay man. Here is present the usual conception of gay men mimicking the heteronormative division of sexes placing men as active and women as passive. The scene invokes the necessity of heterosexuality to defend its boundaries through a persistent inquiry of what homosexuals do in bed, but here the image is turned upside down to show that real man is in control of the situation only by employing violence. Once violence is out of sight, he becomes vulnerable and open to re-inventing the self.

To read The Parade as subversive would be a long shot for, except on several occasions, the film predominantly relies on 'common knowledge' and the use of stereotypes referring to sexual identity, gender roles and personal aptitudes. It further reproduces the binary divisions of visibility-invisibility, emancipation-backwardness, tolerance-violence, and finally, of life and death. Mirko and Radmilo are aligned along these divisions, occupying polarised positions in the realm of the possible: while Mirko is prepared to give up his life for the cause, Radmilo is reserved about the purposefulness of the action from the beginning and decides to take part in it for love for his boyfriend. In The Parade there are no complex psychologies and middle ground is no-one's land. It shouts We're here, We're queer, Get used to it!, but They are not listening, nor do they understand who exactly We are. The gay and lesbian characters have been stripped of any agency both in their personal and public lives. Presumably, the point was exactly to show the powerlessness of gays and lesbians in Serbia. But in presuming powerlessness, the re-presentation affirms exactly what it has set to subvert. Hence the lives of gays and lesbians are left to the mercy of their violators who may or may not come to pity them, but never to respect them. The Parade fails to capture the 'essence' of gay lives precisely because it heavily relies on its absence in real life, and it insists on using the images easily read by the mass public.

At the outset the fight for gay rights in the States and Western Europe was based on the shared identity. As such it gathered gay, lesbian, bisexuals, transgender and transsexual persons around seemingly the same identity politics. Recently this, once unified, politics has become a subject to further differentiation precisely because difference (from the majority) always presupposes the sameness (in the minority). Today it is no longer possible to create the politics under the umbrella of a single (sexual) identity; and the notion that all gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and transgender persons share the same experiences regardless of their racial, ethnic, class, national, educational backgrounds is quickly fading away. While in the film Sasha, the main character's sexual orientation is in the function of creating a unique and authentic personal narrative of his relationship with himself, his family and his surroundings, the parade topic in The Parade is used to cover the impossibility to authentically re-present the lives of gays and lesbians in Serbia. It remains to be seen whether in the future we'll have the opportunity to watch films which incorporate the peculiarities of realistic gay and lesbian stories.

Miloš Burzan

Milos Burzan studied Social Anthropology and Media at Goldsmiths College, University of London. The title of his disertation is Towards an European Future: theorising masculinity in post-socialist Serbia & Montenegro. His interests include gender and hegemonic masculinities, resistance and social movements, anthropology of Europe, among others. He has worked in the NGO sector and is currently completing his postgraduate studies in Political Sciences at the University of Montenegro