University of Belgrade

Faculty of Philology
Department for English language, Literature and Culture

The attitude of students in our society

towards theatres, museums and cinemas
Student: Milica Petrovic, index number 2011/0823

April 2014
Belgrade

Table of contents
I Abstract
II Introduction
III Methodology
IV Analysis of the data
V References
VI Appendix

Abstract
Once upon a time, where there was neither Internet nor any similar source of
entertainment, cultural institutions were places where people would gather not only to amuse
themselves, but to obtain knowledge and work on their education. Nowadays, with all
technological changes and trends, seems that people have started to replace institutions of the
undeniable importance with advancements in technology. That phenomen has mostly affected the
youth, almost born with a phone or a tablet in their hands and without any awareness of the
importance of culture whatsoever. The main goal of this paper is to investigate what the real
attitude of the youth (students, more precisely) in our society towards the almost forgotten old
values is. Methodology used in the reserach is a questionnaire filled by 70 subjects, students from
all parts of Serbia. The results are actually optimistic and show that there is still a flicker of hope
for the popularity of cultural institutions among the young generation. This paper should provide
reliable results in the research of this phenomenon.

Key words: culture, cultural institutions, youth, attitude, students

Do students in our society visit theatres, cinemas and museums?

Introduction
The topic of this paper tackles a phenomenon that is not easy to explain and analyse.
Many similar investigations deal with it because it is considered to be a burning issue in society
generally speaking and in smaller societies in particular. Since this topic can be investigated on a
larger scale and entails a thorough and demanding research and since it will never cease to be
explorable, this paper only deals with one aspect of it: the frequency of visiting cultural
institutions among students in Serbia. The reasons for whichever the results may be are not
investigated in this paper, but will be mentioned in the analysis to understand and potentially
explain them to the reader interested in this topic.
My personal motive for carrying this research out is the trend I have noticed among
people of my generation and that is the low level of interest for cultural institutions. There are
always exceptions to the rule, but unfortunately, this is only what they are, rare exceptions. My
expectations were neither positive nor negaative, though. I managed to maintain my objectivity
when it came to making questions for the questionnaire I used as a means of the research. That is
why I was positively surprised upon summarising my findings. It turned out that, if I may count
on subjects' sincerity, students are intersted in visiting cultural institutions perhaps more than they
are supposed to be. Students of different faculties and age participated in the research, which,
making the number of 70 subjects, has hopefully provided a credible source of information.
Making a questionnaire was preceeded by careful thinking about the important aspects that could
arise and followed by a thorough check whether the questions are clear enough so that they could
be answered without difficulties and confusion.
Since the topic can be tackled from many different aspects, the following chapter will
provide attitudes towards it from some sources I found useful when conducting my reserach.

The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent,
but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your
culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To
write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.
Chuck Palanhiuk
We woluld all agree that education plays a crucial role when it comes to forming cultural
habits among the youth. If parents don't refer their children to cultural institutions from the early
age, this is where school needs to come as the most influent factor. In that way, schools engender
future culturally aware students that will continue their personal development at the faculty as
well. By saying school, faculties are also included. Nowadays, since the interest for culture is
noticeably decreasing among young people, many articles, papers and books have been
emphasizing the importance of raising culture awareness. In serious newspapres, such as
Politika, columnists in charge of culture often write articles about the young and their attitude. In
one of them, Bojana Subasic and Bojana Opacic, two columnists, say that what is most important
is that schools and cultural institutions actually cooperate more than they have been doing so far.
1

[... ''Participation in culture most often boils down to students' following the events through

organized visits to cultural institutions. Thus, what needs to be done is to arrange the field of
cooperation between these two most important institutions. It is essential that the Government by
legal mechanisms directs the employees in culture towards schools and teachers and professors
towards cultural institutions. ...''] (Opacic & Subasic, (2013 April 4), Kako se stvaraju kulturne
navike.

Retrieved

from

http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/ostali-komentari/Kako-se-stvaraju-

kulturne-navike.lt.html, April 14, 2014).

There are many reasons why students, who are studying to become academic citizens,
have been losing interest for cultural institutions. Some authors claim that it is to be attributed to
the crisis of identity, psychological burdens and financial situation of society. 2[''Crisis of identity,
psychological burdens, decay of the moral system, life without perspective, economic
dependence because of the unemployment are consequences that are narrowly connected with the
socioeconomic and cultural historic situation in society ... ''] (Mrdja, 2011, 2).

Furthermore, one of the possible reasons can be a social phenomen called alienation that
has been often mentioned in many sciences, psychology, literature, sociology and others in recent
years. It was present also in the past, but with the growing expansion of social networks,
alienation has become even more pronounced than before. Therefore, the influence of the Internet
is much stronger than it can be thought at first. Students are exposed to using the Internet because
of their obligations to such an extent that they tend to spend their free time online as well. They
choose to watch films online, theatre is visitied only from time to time and when it comes to
museums, they even forget about their existance. Thus, there are situations when some students
from Belgrade never even visited tne National Museum.
Finally, professor Theodor Roszak, from the California State University, has a very
controverse theory about young people and their refusal to visit cultural institutions. According to
him, it is a perfect act of rebellion towards the set norms in life. [... ''The cultural identity of
young people appears as a negation and resistance to the existant dominant culture and its values,
which is called counter culture'' ...] ( Roszak, 1968, 71).

Methodology
The method used in conducting this research was a questionnaire. It contained 19
questions, 3 of which were in such a form that subjects needed to provide answers on their own.
The rest of 16 questions were check-the-box questions (12) and 4 questions were the usual ones
(gender, hometown, faculty and the year of birth).
At first, I had 25 questions, but there were some questionable statements that subjects
might have had difficulties to answer, so they had to be ruled out. The research includes three
types of cultural institutions, and the questions equally mention all three of them. I tried to count
on every factor that can influence visiting these institutions, such as money, wheteher the
institutions exist in hometowns of the subjects, subjects' parents attitude towards them, since
upbringing should play the key role in raising children's awareness of culture, opinions of
subjects' friends and classmates that participate in forming cultural habits, as well as the influence
of the Internet, as it is the omnipresent phenomen in our lives.

The questionnaire was delivered to subjects by social network Facebook. Most of the
subjects were students of the Faculty of Philology from Belgrade University, Faculty of
Stomatology, Architecture, Law, Medicine, Bilology, Psychology (University of Novi Sad) and
College of Hotel Management. I consider this an important information since the diversity of the
faculties contributes to the reliability of the research.
The next chapter will be dedicated to the analysis of the acquired data and possible
explanations of most interesting findings.

Analysis of the data

The questionnaire was filled by 70 subjects. Out of it, 61 subject (87%) were girls and 9
subjects (13%) were boys. That information can be taken into account, if the premise is that girls
more often visit cultural institutions. Hometowns of 66 subjects are in Serbia, whereas 3 subjects
were born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and 1 subject in Trebinje, Bosnia and
Hrezegovina, but what is the most important, and which was a prerequisite in the topic of the
research, is that all subjects are studying in Serbia. The year of birth of the oldest subject is 1985
and the youngest is 1995, which is very interesting since it is a ten year difference. The majority
of subjects (80%) were born in 1992.
In the hometowns of 5 subjects (3%) there is no active cultural institution, which may
seem discouraging having in mind the whole number of 70 subjects. The most frequent cultural
institution is cinema, in the hometowns of 34% of subjects, followed by a museum, 32%, and a
theatre is in the third place, 50%. The piece of inforamtion that I personally find disappointing is
that 10% of subjects don't visit any of these institutions. The absolute majority in this question
regarding frequency of visiting goes for the answer ''Sometimes, depending on the repertoire'', it
is 65%.
The embarrassing 41% of subjects never goes to museums. The most frequently visited
cultural institution is cinema. Funnily enough, 47% of subjects visited the event of Museum
Night, either in Belgrade, or in their hometown, which leads to the conclusion that this is the only
occasion they visit museums. Reasons can be different, a possible one can be that the ticket for
the Museum Night is valid in every museum in the city, so they can visit as many as they want,

which can justify the decision having in mind they are students. The fact that doesn't go to the
favour of it is that students can have discount on the regular price of the ticket in almost any
museum in Belgrade. Although cinema seemed to be more popular judging by one of the
previous questions, the unbelievebale percenatage of subjects, 70%, never visited the
International Film Festival (FEST) in Belgrade. This was the first contradiction I encountered
while revising the summary of responses. The reason for this behaviour can be an explorable
topic for next research, and my premise is that young people may have some prejudices towards
the film genres of FEST, but that is to be attributed only to their disinterest in this event.
Money is the factor that I found essential to count on when I was preparing the questions,
since there might be people who are willing to visit cultural institututions, but they simply don't
have enough money to buy the ticket. This can be decisive for many young people, especially
nowadays, when our country is hit by financial crisis. Therefore, 29% of subjects declared that
their visiting cultural instiutions always depends on money, 67% said that it does depend, but not
always, whereas 4% are ready to pay the ticket regardless of the price. When it comes to the
importance of these institutions in our lives, 68% considers that they are or at least should be
highly important for us.
The last three questions tackled the topic of the influence of upbringing, classmates and
friends and the Internet. What is encouraging is that 54% of subjects were taken to and told about
these institutions by their parents in their childhood, but 13% were neither told about them nor
taken there. Their peers enjoy going there, as 68% claimed, but there is 8% whose peers consider
cultural institutions boring or insignificant. The data that was most surprising to me is that 85%
think that the Internet sholud be helpful in getting information about these institututions, and that
only 14% said that Internet is as important as they are.
There are few curious data revealed during this reserach. First, the overall attitude of
subjects towards cultural institutions is positive and better than one might have expected.
However, it is very unusual that cinema, as allegedly most popular cultural institution, received
so many negative responses when it comes to FEST. The most popular film is definitely Serbian
film Montevideo, vidimo se! Furthermore, I found quite strange that subjects from Belgrade didn't
go to the Museum Night, although our capital city organizes it and promotes it prominently.
Students from Faculty of Philology and Architecture seem to be most interested in museums and

another fact that can be concluded is that they share the same interests when it comes to theatre as
well. Some of the most popular plays are Zona Zamfirova (a musical), Krcmarica Mirandolina,
Vazno je zvati se Ernest, Sumnjivo lice. It is also interesting that those whose answer was Zona
Zamfirova were exclusively girls, which can lead us to think that boys don't like musicals. I had
the opportunity to talk to some boys about musicals before and they were decidedly against
musicals, which proves this trend right. As far as the role of the Internet is concerned, I can say
that the data are cheerful, since only one subject declared that the Internet should totally replace
the significance of cultural institutions.
According to this research, students in Serbia care most about theatres and cinemas,
whereas museums are least visited cultural institutions. Judging by these results, future academic
citizens in our society have one main obstacle when it comes to visiting them: money. However,
it is encouraging to know that the awareness of the importance of culture still hasn't decreased
completely.

Footnotes:
1

Translation of the fragment provided by the author of the research paper

Translation of the fragment provided by the author of the research paper

REFERENCES
Mrdja, S. (2011) Kulturni zivot i potrebe studenata u Srbiji.

Beograd: Zavod za

proucavanje kulturnog razvitka

In-text reference: (Mrdja, 2011)
Opacic, B., & Subasic, B. (2013) Kako se stvaraju kulturne navike. Politika online.
Retrieved from Politika Online website http://www.politika.rs/
In-text reference: (Opacic & Subasic, 2013)
Roszak T. (1968) The Making of a Counter Culture. Los Angeles: University of
California Press
In-text reference: (Roszak, 1968)

APPENDIX

Questionnaire
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Gender M F
The year of birth
Hometown
Faculty
Is there an active cinema/theatre/musem in your hometown?
a) a theatre
b) a cinema
c) a museum
d) none of the above
6. Do you visit any of these institutions in your hometown/Belgrade?
a) yes, once in a month or more
b) sometimes, depending on the repertoire
c) no, I don't have time/I am not interested in it
7. Last time you visited any of these institutions was:
a) this/ last week
b) this/last month
c) this/last year
d) I don't remember
8. Write the name of the last play you saw in theatre (if you don't know/remember/don't
go the theatre, please write it; you can write the title in Serbian)
9. Write the name of the last film you saw in cinema (if you don't know/remember/don't
go the theatre, please write it; you can write the title in Serbian)
10. Write the name of the last exhibition you saw in musem (if you don't
know/remember/don't go the theatre, please write it; you can write the title in Serbian)
11. Have you ever visited the Museum Night in your hometown/Belgrade?
a) yes
b) no
c) I don't know about the event
12. Have you ever visited the International Film Festival (FEST) in Belgrade?
a) yes
b) no
c) I don't know about the event
13. Last time you visited cinema/theatre/museum was because:
a) I wished to do so
b) I was only accompannying someone
c) Other
14. What is the influence on money on your visiting these institutions?

a) It all depends on money

b) It does influence, but not always
c) I'm ready to pay for the ticket regardless of the price
15. In your opinion, visiting these institutions should be:
a) an option just in case you don't have anything else to do
b) only for fun and pleasure
c) highly important for your personal development
16. After you have seen a(n) exhibition/play/film, you: (you can check more answers)
a) recommend it or not to others depending on your impression
b) don't think about it anymore
c) share your impression with somebody who also saw it
17. In your childhood, your parents:
a) often took you to these institutions
b) told you about them, but never took you
c) neither told you about them nor took you there
18. Your classmates/friends' opinion about these institutions is:
a) they like going there
b) they are neutral
c) they consider it boring/insignificant or other
19. You think the Internet should: (you can check more answers)
a) be helpful in getting information about these institutions
b) be as much important for us as these institutions
c) totally replace the significance of these institutions