126

Amfiteater, letn. 12, št. 1, 2024
UDK 821.163.6.09-22“20“
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2024-1/112-128

Abstract
Comedy has always paid much attention to the depiction of gender relations, love affairs
and the happy ending that a wedding represents. In this paper, the author explores to
what extent 21st-century Slovenian comedy tracks the changing roles of men and women
in the family and society and diverges from traditional representations of the body and
sexuality. The analysis covers Slovenian comedies that question social constructions of
genders, roles and occupations, play with gender stereotypes or go beyond them in some
of their aspects: Denis in Ditka by Tone Partljič; Boris, Milena, Radko by Dušan Jovanović;
and jerebika, štrudelj, ples pa še kaj by Simona Semenič. In these comedies, gender
relations form the central theme, and a female character plays the leading role.

Keywords: contemporary Slovenian drama, comedy, construction of social and gender
roles, love, the body, T. Partljič, D. Jovanović, S. Semenič

Mateja Pezdirc Bartol, PhD, is a full professor of Slovenian literature in the Department
of Slovene Studies at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts, where she lectures
on the history of Slovenian drama and theatre, contemporary Slovenian drama, theory
of drama, and youth literature. She has published three scholarly monographs, among
which Navzkrižja svetov: študije o slovenski dramatiki (The Collision of Worlds: Studies on
Slovenian Drama) has also been translated into Croatian. She has edited several collected
volumes and thematic issues and published numerous papers in scholarly journals in
Slovenia and abroad. She has been a visiting professor at the Zagreb Faculty of Arts,
led a bilateral project with the University of Belgrade, and lectured at numerous foreign
universities. She has chaired juries for various literary awards, including the Slavko Grum
and Cankar awards.
Mateja.PezdircBartol@ff.uni-lj.si

Going Beyond Gender Stereotypes in
Contemporary Slovenian Comedy (Ditka–
Milena–Bogdana)
Mateja Pezdirc Bartol
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

Summary
All three comedies analysed in this paper appeared in the 21st century; thus, they
mirror the changed roles of men and women in family and society, the attitude
towards the female body and the desire for personal happiness regardless of social
conventions. The main characters, Ditka, Milena and Bogdana, reject the historical
model of the wedding of nubile ladies and tamed shrews, the stereotype of youth and
beauty, and captivity in the expected social role. They enter into the so-called pure
relationship, using Giddens’s term, which is characterised by the couple entering into
marriage for the sake of the relationship and mutual trust and intimacy rather than
due to external social or economic circumstances (Švab 214–216).

Tone Partljič’s comedy Denis in Ditka (Denis and Ditka), subtitled An Electoral
Erotic-Political Farce, foregrounds women in politics and poses several questions
concerning stereotypes in the construction of male and female identity, such as
the traditional understanding of women as tender and emotional, versus men as
strong and rational or the division of roles in which women care for the home and
children. The man goes to work as the family breadwinner. The comedy does not go
beyond the binary division of the gender roles it portrays; it only switches the gender
functions, as the futuristic ending presents a family where the female Ditka is a fulltime parliamentarian, whereas the male Denis stays at home and is pregnant. Gender
stereotypes are employed first and foremost for comedic effect, though they partly
also invite reflection on social norms and problematise hidebound gender roles.

Boris, Milena, Radko by Dušan Jovanović takes its structure from the tried and tested
model of the love triangle, as indicated already in the comedy’s title. The audacity
of the text stems from the choice of characters; it is about the older generation
and love at a ripe old age. It is these questions – what is natural, what is decent,

127

128

what kind of behaviour becomes the young and the old – that Jovanović turns into
dramatic dialogues. Gender stereotypes make for many comedic situations and puns;
simultaneously, due to the characters’ ages and the documentary references, they
break with established social conventions. There is also a kind of self-reflection on
the part of the author and his characters, who analyse the psychology of their own
actions, thus undermining the comical situations, laying themselves vulnerable and
aware of the fleetingness of existence.

Simona Semenič has set the events of the comedy jerebika, štrudelj, ples pa še kaj
(rowan, strudel, dance and more) in a specific place and time, that is, a village in the
Vipava Valley on Assumption Day in 1963. The events take place in parallel: some
of the villagers are at the parish house getting ready for mass, while others are in
the hall of the old school, preparing an important celebration; on this day, both the
bishop and the comrade secretary of the Central Committee are coming to visit.
This portrait of society and the collective subconscious thus sums up the ideological
divide among Slovenians, which, however, serves in the text as an external frame for
the sexual adventures, fantasies and romantic yearnings of the villagers. The author
gives free rein to sensuality and returns to the archetypal elements of womanhood,
foregrounding the natural body freed from cultural norms. The central element of the
dramatic text is the theme of sexuality, in particular, the female desire for pleasure.
The villagers may be constantly surrounded by political discourse. However, it does
not fatefully determine their everyday affairs or the limits within which they are to live
their lives, and their sexual practices are not legitimated by marriage or partnership.
Contemporary Slovenian comedy often sticks to well-tried, traditional gender roles
and gender relations, which are a bottomless source of comedic effects, not least
due to the gender stereotypes connected with relations between men and women.
The three comedies analysed, on the other hand, are examples of comedies that also
problematise gender stereotypes and lift taboos, be they about women in leading
positions in the public sphere, love in old age, or the emancipated female body and
the right to sexual pleasure.
Translation: Christian Moe