BELGRADE, SERBIA — It didn't take long for voters to eject Burek from the house in Serbia's version of the "Big Brother" reality TV show.
A Serb from the distant (and disputed) province of Kosovo, Burek was clearly seen as a country bumpkin. He ate hot dogs and pickles for breakfast, he crassly tried to hit on women in the house, and his bathroom habits were, well, a little on the rudimentary side.
"Everything about him stinks of primitivism," one viewer wrote in a long-running Internet chat room that focused on the show -- and particularly on Burek, whose real name is Zivan Janicijevic and whose nickname is the word for a greasy cheese pastry.
So much for "Only Unity Can Save the Serbs," the battle cry of Serbian nationalists for generations: Burek, by popular vote, was unceremoniously evicted a few weeks into the program.
And then there was Elmir Kuduzovic: of all things, a Bosnian Muslim, who joined the housemates shortly before Burek was ousted. Elmir, it turns out, was something of a hit. Good-looking and macho, he got rave reviews.
"Women adore him," one fan wrote. "You can see he's cool. A little rough around the edges, but a true man."
In rejecting fellow Serb Burek and maintaining Muslim Elmir, the viewers of this Belgrade-produced television program were drawn somewhat tentatively into a debate about national identity and social prejudice.
The program managed (probably inadvertently) to bring exposure to issues, such as the lives of Kosovo Serbs, that do not normally penetrate mass culture in today's truncated, dispirited Serbia.
(Ultimately, the show ended abruptly and tragically when the popular Elmir and two former housemates were killed in a car wreck just days before the winner was to be chosen. The three were traveling along icy roads to a big year-end party that got its cachet from having "celebrities" from the show in attendance.)
Serbia is all that remains of what was once Yugoslavia; the other Yugoslav republics, including Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, split off to become their own countries following devastating civil wars; and Kosovo, where Serbian forces in 1999 fought ethnic Albanians backed by NATO, is expected to bolt soon as well. Even tiny Montenegro has seceded.
Dragan Ilic, a psychologist who serves as a commentator on "Big Brother" for the B-92 network that broadcasts it, said the show forces viewers to confront uncomfortable realities.
