Kafkaism communesque
Mar. 20th, 2008 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusPrague's Museum of Communism is pure propaganda. Not communist propaganda, capitalist propaganda. Located above a McDonalds and next door to a casino, the museum is full of shabby bric-a-brac -- busts of Lenin, shop displays with pathetically few goods (all canned, with generic labels) on the shelves. Groups of impressionable teenagers are herded around the show, which is subtitled "the dream, the reality, the nightmare", reading labels which inform them that Marx's ideas are "outmoded" (in fact they'll stay relevant as long as inequality persists), that Czech communism forced women into the workforce (capitalism doesn't?), and that shops betrayed the idea of equality by keeping under-the-counter goods for important customers (there was still less inequality than the present system cheerfully and unhypocritically fosters).
For the Museum of Communism, the revolution is something that happened in 1989, ending communism, rather than 1917, starting it. A video presentation shows images of state brutality accompanied by plaintive folk songs. Images of communist achievement in Czechoslovakia -- the futuristic TV tower, the films of Frantisek Zapasy -- are skipped entirely.
Trying to see an exhibition about Zapasy up at the castle, I had a rather kafkaesque experience. The show was held in a huge, empty hall at the castle stables. The old man by the till seemed to think I'd wandered in by mistake. When I asked him for a ticket he told me he couldn't sell me one. I'd have to go to the central ticket desk in the Information Office across the courtyard. Cursing a castle administration which apparently didn't trust its emplpyees with cash, I crossed the courtyard and queued for ten minutes behind tourists trying to make complex choices in a dozen lamguages. When my turn came, the old lady cashier said "I can't sell you a ticket for the stables, you have to buy one there."
"But the man in the stables told me I could only buy the ticket from you!" I exploded, foreseeing an entire afternoon of to-ing and fro-ing between the two buildings. The cashier phoned up the old man in the stables. "He said you want to see the Castle Pictute Gallery. For that, the ticket is sold here." I explained that I wanted to see the Zapasy show in the stables. "Then you must buy the ticket from him."
So I returned to the stables to confront the old man, who was becoming more and more like the gatekeeper in Kafka's parable Before the Law. "You realize I can't sell you a ticket for the Castle Picture Gallery?" he asked. I turned and gesticulated towards the hall with its arty black and white film stills. "I want to see THIS show," I said, "YOUR show!"
Finally, with a why-didn't-you-say air of astonishment, the man took my hundred crowns and ushered me into the exhibition. It was great, but rather than frame Zapasy's work as an achievement of the communist era it was produced in, the organisers had framed it as "Struggles of Frantisek Zapasy", emphasising that his visionary films were produced despite the regime, not because of it. Which surely applies to the visionary films (I'm trying to think of some) produced under capitalism too.
Meanwhile, I was beginning to understand, thanks to my experience with the gatekeeper, why Czech surrealist bureaucracy and communism may not have been such a great combination.
For the Museum of Communism, the revolution is something that happened in 1989, ending communism, rather than 1917, starting it. A video presentation shows images of state brutality accompanied by plaintive folk songs. Images of communist achievement in Czechoslovakia -- the futuristic TV tower, the films of Frantisek Zapasy -- are skipped entirely.
Trying to see an exhibition about Zapasy up at the castle, I had a rather kafkaesque experience. The show was held in a huge, empty hall at the castle stables. The old man by the till seemed to think I'd wandered in by mistake. When I asked him for a ticket he told me he couldn't sell me one. I'd have to go to the central ticket desk in the Information Office across the courtyard. Cursing a castle administration which apparently didn't trust its emplpyees with cash, I crossed the courtyard and queued for ten minutes behind tourists trying to make complex choices in a dozen lamguages. When my turn came, the old lady cashier said "I can't sell you a ticket for the stables, you have to buy one there."
"But the man in the stables told me I could only buy the ticket from you!" I exploded, foreseeing an entire afternoon of to-ing and fro-ing between the two buildings. The cashier phoned up the old man in the stables. "He said you want to see the Castle Pictute Gallery. For that, the ticket is sold here." I explained that I wanted to see the Zapasy show in the stables. "Then you must buy the ticket from him."
So I returned to the stables to confront the old man, who was becoming more and more like the gatekeeper in Kafka's parable Before the Law. "You realize I can't sell you a ticket for the Castle Picture Gallery?" he asked. I turned and gesticulated towards the hall with its arty black and white film stills. "I want to see THIS show," I said, "YOUR show!"
Finally, with a why-didn't-you-say air of astonishment, the man took my hundred crowns and ushered me into the exhibition. It was great, but rather than frame Zapasy's work as an achievement of the communist era it was produced in, the organisers had framed it as "Struggles of Frantisek Zapasy", emphasising that his visionary films were produced despite the regime, not because of it. Which surely applies to the visionary films (I'm trying to think of some) produced under capitalism too.
Meanwhile, I was beginning to understand, thanks to my experience with the gatekeeper, why Czech surrealist bureaucracy and communism may not have been such a great combination.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 10:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 10:33 am (UTC)you can swap 'regime' with 'studio system' and you have pretty much the same struggle for visionary directors of the west.
Museum on Communism
Date: 2008-03-20 10:33 am (UTC)I later found out that it was established by a Connecticut businessman, who used to write angry letters to the local press denouncing the "pinkoes" on the city council who wouldn't give him planning permission to expand it.
~ Rob
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 12:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 03:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 04:45 pm (UTC)Inequality by who's standards and to what extent? "I won't rest until all evil is gone!".
"propaganda" is in the eye of the beholder, not the hands of the maker. Even if you believe you're being "balanced", you're yet again back to asking "by who's standards and to what extent?".
"that Czech communism forced women into the workforce (capitalism doesn't?)"
If by that you mean you actually have to work to eat under capitalism; then yes, yes it does.
But wait -- Under democratic socialism in the UK, you can live off the dole and benefits, payed for by the tax payer without having to work. If you're disabled, you're entitled to benefits too. So in a way, Capitalism (or rather democratic socialism) doesn't force you to work at all, it just encourages it.
"that shops betrayed the idea of equality by keeping under-the-counter goods for important customers (there was still less inequality than the present system cheerfully and unhypocritically fosters)."
What's that old communist soviet saying? "Well at least we don't lynch blacks!" in response to American criticism. Of course, it's always used sarcastically now days.
"When my turn came, the old lady cashier said "I can't sell you a ticket for the stables, you have to buy one there."
"But the man in the stables told me I could only buy the ticket from you!" I exploded"
Outrageous. That sort of shoddy customer service wouldn't have happened under Communism.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 04:59 pm (UTC)not at all, please, i wouldn't have expected such heights of relativism from you ,; though to your credit capitalist propaganda tends to be what in cultural studies you'd call naturalization (very much what you do) rather than crass propaganda.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 05:20 pm (UTC)I'm very seriously considering marking all my subjective comments in orange and my objective comments in blue.
of course, you could just save me the trouble and tell me how to define what is the universal truth and what isn't, since you seem to know; It's wisdom the likes of which I don't possess, unfortunately.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-21 04:38 am (UTC)regime change
Date: 2008-03-20 04:55 pm (UTC)William Thirteen....
I miss the space race
Date: 2008-03-20 05:36 pm (UTC)Re: I miss the space race
Date: 2008-03-20 09:19 pm (UTC)Re: I miss the space race
Date: 2008-03-20 11:04 pm (UTC)I came across this last night.
Re: I miss the space race
Date: 2008-03-21 05:15 am (UTC)Re: I miss the space race
Date: 2008-03-21 06:51 pm (UTC)The clips I used are from Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms).
Here's an article about it. http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=9874 (http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=9874)
Roger Corman's hatchet jobs "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" and "Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women" can be downloaded from archive.org.
I've been hacking away at it myself:
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 05:51 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked the Vlačil exhibit. Marketa Lazarova, written by Vančura, is one of the greatest films of all time. And Doves and Adelheid are also exceptional.
How did your event go at Tranzit/Display?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-21 05:20 am (UTC)many beautiful flowers
Date: 2008-03-20 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 10:39 pm (UTC)It is one of those popular-cultural-conception museums that do Disney with history.
Visiting Prague one after a few days gets the impression of a city that crunched through the gears from communism to a particularly rapacious tourism-based market capitalism, a transition that the museum and it's surroundings on Na Prikope neatly encapsulate.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-21 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-22 03:02 am (UTC)Cheap shot, and you are obviously not thinking very hard. They have Frantisek Vlácil, we have Monster Inept!