Part 5 - Revalation

It wasn’t until returning to the Czech Republic as an adult and watching films from my childhood, and inadvertently comparing them to the Saturday morning cartoons and films I watched in the West, that I realized the differences between these texts and the cultures that produced them. In the example of the folk tale films, which regularly included comedy, romance, action, and songs, it was clear that the studio intended for these texts to be consumed by the entire family. Furthermore, the Czech culture is typically not violent. Event the transition from communism to capitalism in 1989 happened relatively amicably in comparison to other formerly communist countries and thus was dubbed the “Velvet Revolution”.

Therefore, even though most stories included a battle of some kind, the producers were careful not to depict the event in an overly graphic way. Graphic bloodshed or depicting the mythical antagonist too realistically would have surely caused the film to be rejected by most viewers, therefore most scenes would solely hint at the event or omit the scene completely and portray the antagonist “beasts” in a less than realistic way. The portrayal of violence was the major difference I found between these films and similar genre productions in the West like Lord of the Rings. This discovery made me realize that not only does producing these texts impact culture, but that culture also influences the production through either acceptance or rejection of consumption.

Golem from Lord of the Rings

My experience of viewing Czech folk tales again inspired me to even revisit my favorite cartoon of Maya The Honey Bee online, only to be disappointed that I no longer felt ‘interpolated' (Žižek) by its texts and thus could no longer invest myself into the cartoon. On the other hand, I was surprised at how much I still enjoyed the folk tale films from my youth. Perhaps more importantly I was astounded at how much of a popular cultural phenomenon they were in the Czech Republic. Virtually everyone in the country watched these films to the point of them being a hegemonic cultural force. Knowing their texts is a large part of ‘belonging’ to that culture.

Paradoxialy these same films would likely be viewed as a predominantly a young female genre under the Western ideology and would render a miniscule following. In the Czech Republic however, they were consumed equally by both sexes belonging to practically any age group. Furthermore, I was amazed to find that despite most of these films were produced between the 1950’s and 1980’s, they were especially popular with individuals in their mid teens to late twenties. It was not unusual for members of this age group to have a song or a sound clip from a film as a ring tone on their mobile phone or to hear an individual quote a popular line in a social gathering or jokingly as a pick up line at a bar. This appropriation seemed to make them an even stronger cultural artifact. Or was it more a process of ‘bricolage’ (Hebdige) under the Gramsci’s hegemony theory that used these traditional romantic texts and mocked them as archaic in modern times? I believe it was more of homage to the texts.


Another interesting discovery was the absence of G.I. Joe style animated series on Czech television. This was not due to a difference in broadcasting standards, Czech standards are in fact much more liberal than Western standards, especially with sexually oriented material, rather this was due to a lack of demand from the viewership. If one views the television network as a vessel of a hegemonic commercial force in distributing media, we could say that in this case the network exercised what Gramsci describes ‘a compromise equilibrium’ (Gramsci). Though the network technically could air these cartoons, they chose otherwise largely because airing them would fail to build viewership due to a different ideology and outlook toward violence than in the West, which would in turn negatively impact their ratings, and finally their sales of advertising space. Ironically, individuals in Czech Republic have lesser of an issue with their children viewing sexually charged material than they do with viewing violence.

Through my experience, I was surprised to find that my preferences for genre consumption were often in line with people my age and gender in the Czech Republic, despite the fact that I spent much of my later development years in Canada. Now in my adult years, I find myself consuming certain cultural texts less for the desire to belong and more for my own pleasure.