Pornographic Material Is Current Rage in Yugoslavia

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Beleaguered by inflation, unemployment and debt, beset by political and ethnic rivalries, Yugoslavia is also in the grip of a pornography boom.

Scores of erotic magazines displaying explicit acts are on sale at street kiosks alongside official periodicals and comic books produced by the same publishing houses that print Yugoslavia’s principal newspapers.

“At least in the West there are specialized stores and cinemas for pornography,” feminist author Slavenka Drakulic said. “Here, I’m greeted by unpleasant sights whenever I go to my local newsstand.”

She said such problems as Yugoslavia’s 800% inflation rate and nationalist clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians had turned pornography and the exploitation of women into marginal issues that few took seriously.

Drakulic is a lone voice in a country where there are no age restrictions in Belgrade movie theaters, very few letters of protest to the press and no equivalent of the anti-pornography groups that exist in the West.

State television airs sex shows and films late at night, and ordinary commercials feature varying degrees of nudity. Seven of the 18 films playing in Belgrade in August were sex movies.

It is quite different from the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain and other Western countries, where authorities face strong public pressure to curb pornography.

And it is astounding in a country under communism, a system that usually imposes strict press controls, including curbs on “decadent” Western-style pornography.

“We have received exactly one protest letter,” Mica Jovanovic, head of Belgrade’s third television channel, said. “We are responding to the wishes of our viewers, most of whom criticize us for not being hard-core enough.”

The third channel runs a phone-in talk show on Friday nights that incorporates clips from erotic films followed by a movie.

“The Yugoslav erotic press is the freest in the world, both in content and, even more, in its promotion and distribution,” media critic Bogdan Tirnanic said in a recent article.

“All you have to do is stroll to the nearest kiosk, which will openly offer you . . . domestic pornographic (magazines), which multiply every day like mushrooms after rain.”

Soft-core pornography has been present in Yugoslavia for more than 20 years. But this has gradually given way to much more explicit material.

“Erotica in Yugoslavia is only in part escapism for the poor,” Jovanovic said. “There is a shift in values here. There are fewer and fewer restrictions.”

He said his Friday night program initially censored explicit scenes in films but stopped doing so after outraged calls from viewers.

“It’s no secret that there is a hunger for erotica in Yugoslavia,” said Milivoj Pasicek, chief editor of the hard-core magazine Sexy Erotika. He said he was not aware of any laws regulating pornography in Yugoslavia.