The situations depicted in Leshoski’s verses are his (assumed, real or fictional) daily routines of drinking, smoking, hanging out with friends, making love, arguing and making up. As such, they call upon and evoke the melodramatic imagination with the readers since, as Ien Ang states, “it is a category which shows that the everyday existence (with all of its suffering, triumph, defeats and victories) has deep significance for the common man. The melodramatic imagination creates a field for identification of the common audience with the characters of the fictional world (which imitate the reality). The melodramatic imagination organizes the reality, with all the shades of contrasts and conflicts” (according to Атанасова: 2012, 319). As such, it appears almost inevitable that his poetry (just like soap operas, light pop music or turbo-folk imagery) has attracted a significant number of women as consumers, since popular culture products intended for women “focus on emotions and personal relations, and male on action and physical battle about power…” (Višnjić & Mirosavljević, 2008: 260). Contemporary feminist theorists pointed out that “women have played central roles as consumers of certain popular cultural products,… they are a central subject matter of popular culture for both men and women…” (Rakow: 1998, 278).
It is this broad female audience of Leshoski’s poetry, along with the themes and contents of his verses (or the images presented or evoked by them) that also (or more than other issues) open significant questions about the position of women in this specific popular culture genre, and more broadly, in the current cultural context in Macedonia. On one hand, the “position of woman as a consumer in the inherent patriarchal understanding implies that the female audience is most susceptible to… cultural products such as sweet pop music or soap operas…” (Nenić, 2008: 265). Seduced by the images of powerful emotions in the (traditionally female) realm of the private as opposed to the (traditionally male) realm of the public, in their comments under his poems the female readers repeat verses which they found impressionable: “cherish the guy who cherishes you” and “cherish the guy who will then leave hot Nescafé on your bed stand in a cup red as his heart for you”, adding “I will, I will”. The women’s consumption, but also the repetition (in the form of comments of “shares”) of the images in this poetry touches upon questions such as: “(1) what kind of images are present and what do those images reveal about women’s position in the culture? (2) whose images are they and whom do they serve? (3) what are the consequences of those images?” (Rakow, 1998: 279).
The images produced (and perpetuated) in Leshoski’s poetry are first of all, male images of a female object, as “many popular culture images are for the most part men’s images of women” (Ibid), and his language is phalogocentric.8F Regardless of the situation in which the image of the woman is placed, “she should always represent only one – an object of pleasure, desire, enjoyment” (Višnjić & Mirosavljević, 2008: 260). The (young, male, troubled) poetic subject seems to be in constant, almost eternal quest for complete fulfillment of his feelings of love (or desire), and the only way the female object of his love (or desire) is present(ed) is through the prism of these feelings. Although being the central theme of his verses, the woman is not their central subject – she cannot exist in any other way but as an embodiment of his emotions, admired if she loves him back, cursed if she does not.9F “Nobody knows how much I loved you / Nobody knows how much I still love you / … Only for a moment I curse you in my thoughts in the morning / When a beautiful girl approaches me and in her eyes I can see that she is ready / to give me everything / her life / her love in her chest / her future / … Everything that you never gave me / Everything that you would not give me now”,10F says the poet in a lamentation over unrequited love. The image projected (liked by the readers of these verses and reinforced by repeating) is very familiar, this “rehabilitated image of woman as an object” (Višnjić & Mirosavljević, 2008: 261) is the one of the troubadour’s’ muse, one of the most objectified and passivized sources of male inspiration. The invocation of these romantic archetypes, while seemingly placing the woman on a pedestal as a revered inspiration, at the same time emits the message of her passivity and eventually anonymity (or even non-existence) outside and beyond the verses (or any other artwork) dedicated to her. The female readers of these verses identify themselves with the muse, with the inspiration of the poet, with the trigger of male creativity, and they feel that they would achieve complete happiness, fulfillment, or even meaningful existence, if they themselves were in those shoes.11F
The fact that women are the most frequent audience for such cultural products does not diminish the power of their underlying message, but it rather shows that “if misogyny was long incorporated in culture, it is its part, …even the women themselves do not often have the self-reflection in its recognition, but instead they… are often incapable to redefine the engraved understanding about their place and position in society. It is a paradox (though not an uncommon one) that women themselves, consciously or not, emit misogynous contents in the air” (Višnjić & Mirosavljević, 2008: 250). The persistence of misogyny in the newly established Macedonian popular culture sphere of (and around) Facebook poetry surfaced in the open in the debates about its aesthetic and cultural values, the most telling being the ones that were sparked by an article published in “Nova Makedonija” daily, which attempted to analyze the phenomenon of “male domination” in Macedonian poetry (also touching upon Facebook poetry).12F The women fans of Leshoski reacted with statements that the (alleged) “‘male domination’ of Darko Leshoski’s poetry in the ‘virtual Facebook world’ has been created by women. Not men, by women…”, thus showing their unawareness that the participation of women in certain cultural practices does not imply that the latter are not gender biased, patriarchal or misogynous. Apart from this stand, there was also a swift refuge in the well-known misogynous sexual objectification of women, as some supporters of Leshoski’s poetry said that the (women) critics who had stated that it was part of the male domination in the creative processes (i.e. poetry) could “blow him”. Well known public personalities (also men) denied the women critics the potential for creative power (they could not even dream of writing such great poems), and advised these women to stick to traditional female pastimes, such as cooking and knitting.13F This outburst to what the Facebook community of Leshoski’s fans perceived and identified as “hard core feminism” clearly indicated the perceptions (and possible effects) of the images and messages this poetry contains.