The authors of the documentary are to blame for everything See you in the obituary which this year turned 20 years since its broadcast, Vojislav Tufekdžić and Aleksandar Knežević. They found Kristijan Golubović twenty-odd years ago and put him first in front of the cameras, and it seems that since then he has never left the Serbian TV stations and the pages of the Serbian press.
And then, as now when he is the "biggest star" of the TV reality show "Farm" broadcast by TV Pink, it was seen that he likes cameras and likes to talk, which is not the main characteristic of people who are believed to be criminals, robbers and generally condemned for serious crimes.
This is how the "famous Christian", a man who described every step in his life, except for criminal acts, in various TV programs and newspaper interviews, found himself in a new world, in a new role, in a new film, as Boris Tadić once said.
He briefly replaced the prison uniform with a civilian suit, but he still remained imprisoned, now voluntarily and for a high daily wage, and he continued to do the same: to entertain the crowd and to have fun himself when it was already possible for him. As the months spent at the Farm go by and the moment approaches when he will have to go to "serve his sentence", maybe his popularity will grow so much that people will send text messages to request his release.
Given that the producer of the reality show is Željko Mitrović, the indomitable king of television in the Balkans and an influential man, various outcomes are possible.
On the other hand, there were also reactions from the public, who are partly disgusted but mostly watch this program in which Christian "deals" with various starlets and becomes the object of their sexual desires ("Drunken Jelena Krunić on the farm, dragged Christian for his testicles", "Stania : If he wasn't married, Christian would be my choice"). If something is missed in the live program, the next day you can read the best parts in the tabloids, and as a rule, the main character is again Christian, who adorns the front page of one of them almost every day.
It so happened that the man whose sentences were spoken in the film See you obituaries entered slang ("Thousands of push-ups and sit-ups", "I fled to common sense", "I claim, I am invincible") will be recognized as an original thinker whose thoughts and publicly pronounced judgments are quoted in newspapers as wisdom a la Paulo Coelho.
FROM PRISON IN REALITY: Before he appeared in a non-stop television program with various other strange characters, we left the famous Christian in the winter of 2010, arrested in front of the Church of St. Mark in Belgrade, where the police picked him up together with the associates with whom he organized the drug trade. Even then it was breaking news, the arrest was broadcast on television, because Christian was not just anyone, at least for the Serbian media.
Since the last time he was arrested with a group of friends from Sandzak, Christian was not around to a significant extent and the media, as a rule, did not even deal with the proceedings against him. He has already been accused and convicted so many times that it seems that he has spent most of his life in prison and that this is no news.
"Vreme" already dedicated this section to him once in the issue of December 9, 2009, when his life up to that point was presented and described, with most of the adventures, peppered with juicy statements that he spilled over the years in the Belgrade media.
And then his increased presence in the media, where he was presented as a convalescent, as someone who might have a criminal record, but that is not the most important thing, but much more interesting and important for the public, is that he likes to draw, do sports and to propagate healthy life attitudes.
The intention of television productions to constantly bring a proven and confirmed criminal in front of the cameras and give him a space that perhaps other participants in public life in Serbia do not have, seems to have additionally served to relativize literally everything and make it meaningless.
Now that Christian is rampaging in the Farm, it seems that this procedure of the magicians of television production is at its peak, because the "thing" is brought almost to the point of absurdity: in the Farm, a diverse crew from different social strata - most of them from the show and from the real social fringes - is led by a man who is waiting to serve a legal sentence of 14 years for the organized trade and sale of narcotics.
"More people watch Christian while he sleeps than watch all your news," said TV Pink owner Željko Mitrović at a conference on new media and technologies, proud of the fact that his idea with Christian on the Farm led to an enormous increase in viewership for his TV station.
Mitrović exposed the "thing" to the end: only what brings viewers can be broadcast, and the justification is "that people like it" and that much more than sterile informative content.
This is how this creator of TV thrash in the Balkans managed to restore a little "glory" to his station, which, despite the help of the authorities and marketing agencies, began to lose its breath before the onslaught of even more primitive content broadcast by, for example, TV Happy, another station "with a national frequency". For years, TV Happy struggled with ratings and based its program on shows hosted by Milomir Marić, until they started broadcasting the reality show Couples, which helped them become one of the most watched TV stations in Serbia.
And when you have a high rating, then the agencies for the sale of media advertising space direct the advertiser's money towards you, which some other TV stations can understand as a direct loss and the taking away of what probably belongs to them according to an unwritten rule.
From that context, the idea was probably born that a legally convicted criminal should be invited to participate in a multi-month television format together with numerous "starlets" whose job, as one of them said, is to take pictures of their ass or tits with a mobile phone and upload those pictures to social networks.
THE ROLE OF THE BIGGEST ENTERTAINMENT CRIMINAL: The public got a little "waved" when it was announced this summer that Christian will be a participant in the reality show because, by God, he should probably go to prison, but he got a license because he has not yet been sent to serve his sentence. Christian justified himself by saying that he should be allowed to participate in the reality show because he has to earn some money and leave his wife and child something to live on while he is in prison.
And now, how to decide on this kind of concept that may have its finale when we have cameras in the prison where Christian will serve his sentence and when we can watch him non-stop "what he is doing" and have the opportunity to listen to his videos -messages and thoughts?
An initiative was launched on the Internet, a petition to cancel the reality show, which collected tens of thousands of signatures in a short time, but apart from the symbolic act, that act had no other meaning. Petitions, it turned out, that do not produce concrete actions in the domain of politics are just a waste of time, but they have shown that there is an odium for such programs. Also, the debate showed, if you can talk about it when it comes to social networks, that a large number of people believe that reality shows should not be abolished and TV stations punished because such an attitude of society would show how hypocritical we really are.
On the other hand, the ratings show that "the people watch" these programs, that they manage to identify with the "heroes" who are actually in some kind of prison and symbolically perhaps most accurately describe the feeling that the majority of Serbian citizens have: they are sitting around a table, there are some ordinary conversations, someone fights, someone hugs, some nonsensical tasks are performed in order to introduce some classical elements into the dramaturgy, there is sex somewhere at night, but it is not a rule.
The company consists of female singers, male singers, models, starlets, criminals - it all looks like a team from a Belgrade raft or any cafe from any city in Serbia, so something people can easily identify with. The heroes of those programs speak differently than those from the series produced in recent years on Serbian television: they are more down-to-earth, speak in slang, food and sex are their favorite topics, and everything is done to earn some money or to make someone whom it hasn't been in public for some time that he returned to orbit, which can bring him some stall, some job in the future...
The worst of all is that Christian himself in such an environment is not someone who stands out for his simplicity, primitivism or violence. He doesn't seem to know what hit him, but, following his instincts, he enjoys all the media attention that actually made him the first and biggest show criminal. Unlike the others, his future is quite certain and that's what distinguishes him from other "farmers" and can arouse sympathy from both the "combatants" and the audience.
He exchanged one prison for another, which is voluntary and brings some money, so it could be said that he is familiar with the environment, but, judging by his reactions and comments (she grabbed his balls, he instinctively hit his head with the comment " What does it look like?"), it's hard for him to get used to it because even for him, who spent so many years in various prisons, the ecosystem of reality shows is something where it's hard to survive.
The reaction to him is two-fold and stems from what the other participants of the reality show could learn about him on television: for most women, he is a dominant man that every real woman would want, and for the rest, he is anything but a criminal with a thick record. Somehow he gravitates more towards a "life teacher", towards someone who could give you the right guidelines on how to move through life in the best possible way. Perhaps that is why Željko Mitrović stated that Kristijan performs an important social function with his performance at Farma. He also had such ideas in the past when he publicly called on the youth not to engage in crime, but if they have excess energy to use it for some sport or to come to him and beat him: "Then you can say that you beat Christian," he said. Golubović earlier.
AN INSULT TO INTELLIGENCE: The emergence of reality shows also led to a new genre in the press, which are reports and statements from that program, so now all Christian's fans can, day by day, if they skip "live", read the main things in the tabloids that treat the events in the TV program as real and the participants' statements as relevant. This format has made it possible for everyone to say whatever they want and bear absolutely no consequences for it, which also resembles "life", but not a regulated media space. It is not surprising that before entering the Farm, Christian said that many politicians called him and begged him not to mention them because he knows everything about their love and sexual adventures. We also learned that the famous actress Branka Katić is his godmother.
Whatever the outcome at the Farm, Christian would have to go back to prison at some point, but given his career and resume to date, that may not be the end of his media incarnations. It's a miracle that no one has gotten around to making a movie about his life so far, because the very fact that he's the only one who survived, that he's an old hook, can mean two things: either he was never more than a lovable city robber or such an image is intentional created to cover up his terrible criminal record.
In numerous statements after his last arrest, as well as in court, Christian denied that he was ever involved in drug dealings and that, on the contrary, he propagated healthy lifestyle habits and respect for the church throughout his life. In the end, he said that he had to confess everything in order to get his own mother out of prison because she was also detained with him and his associates.
In his closing speech at the trial, he said that the police set everything up for him because he never wanted to work with them and asked the court to be merciful because he is preparing an exhibition and has an offer to be a fitness coach of the women's basketball club Šumadija.
Whether that will ever happen should not be questioned, because Golubović really proved to be indestructible and prone to various actions. At least he never lacked energy and strength, and he learned to be patient: "The least problem for me is abstinence." I have so many years of imprisonment behind me, where it was normal for me to not have a relationship with a woman for three or four years. So I didn't get disturbed, became homosexual, I remained completely normal. I heard Stanija enter, but if I was with her, then they would classify me as ordinary people. They would say that I entered the reality show to meet a silicone girl and starlet and fall in love with her. That would offend my intelligence," he told the tabloid "Alo" before entering the Farm.
