Our man Niko
Posted 2008-05-08 05:02 under Off The Record by Viktor Marković / 11 comments
How much damage can a video game bring to a country’s already devastated image? We’ll just have to wait and see: new episode in a violent series GTA4 is out one week ago and it already seems according to both critics and fans that it will be one of the most talked about and most popular video games in history. So what’s it got to do with us over here at the peaceful little Balkans and our image?
Well, the main character, the guy you get to control – killer, thug, wifebeater, childhater, beerdrinker weapons and trafficking expert and drugdealer is – Serbian.
So much for our pitiful attempts to improve the dangeraously bad but still somewhat blurry picture foreigners have about Serbs – thanks to all the wars in the previous decade – all it takes is one fictional Niko Belic, Serbian veteran, from Bosnian war no less, to bring us back to the drawing board. This is not the first time Serbs have been depicted as bad guys – Hollywood movies have not been very kind to us, but most of them were flops that didn’t reach such a broad audience and didn’t leave such impact of the collective conciousness. With Grand Theft Auto IV – well I hope I’m wrong, but it seems to me that this one is going to stick around for a while.
this is something i found off of belgrade 2.0. wtf? why is media taking such a negative bullshit swing at niko? Hes the friggin hero of da damn game. his character is a guy who is tryin to make in da world. As much as hes a gangster he respects his family. hes not a wifebeater, childhater, the drunk thing is a hilarious miny game. hes not bringing a bad image to serbia. i mean look at the popularity borat brung to kazekhstan.