So I was talking about Jan Urban's speech when last I wrote. Admittedly, I dropped my International Relations class to enroll in his Modern Dissent class...but then changed back because I really should learn something about politics before I study political dissent. And because the IR class takes field trips to government buildings where I know I will never get to go again.
He started his presentation talking about what it is like to live with the 'burden of history' in a country where history is constantly rewritten. Contextually, he was saying that the American students are lucky because we don't have to live with such a long history as the Europeans. He said we're the lucky ones whose grandparents and great-grandparents were able to start fresh, abandoning their homelands and going to the new world. That put me off a tad bit. For most of my immigrant relatives, the move was not easy. In some cases it wasn't a choice. And I wonder sometimes if the reason Americans respond with their historical heritage when asked "What are you?" is because (my generation especially) we are clinging to that distant history until our own country has enough of a history to give us an identity.
He continued by explaining how for some time Europe tried to define its boundaries based on where groups of people shared languages. This didn't work so well for central and eastern Europe. He said that the mixing of languages and the fact that from 1918 to 1989 the government of the current Czech Republic has changed 6 times has left the people of the region trying to define themselves. In the space of one generation, the reality of the country morphed so many times that it has become unreliable. He defined their crisis like this: "If you base your identity on a non-existent reality, who the hell are you?" He said that for his generation, "We don't lie facts, we lie dreams. Because it allows us to reinvent public memory." This next generation--my generation--now has the task of establishing continuity. They are very special for the Czech Republic because the country's future direction is hinged on how they handle the democracy that was won for them.
There's a local election coming up, and I was talking to some of my RA's about it. Hopefully there will be more of those discussions as the election draws closer. I'm curious to learn what the young people have to say about themselves now that I've heard a bit about how the older generation feels toward them.
Many of Jan Urban's sentiments were echoed in the documentary that we watched called "The Power of the Powerless." Some of the thoughts in the documentary (and follow-up presentation) were:
-Kids don't learn modern history in school because teachers don't want to teach it
-Teachers/Parents don't want to talk about modern history because they aren't comfortable admitting to how they lived
-Living through the revolution in the Czech Republic enables those who know their history to empathize with freedom fighters in other parts of the world, such as Iran (Ref. to Persepolis)
-People knew more about resistance attempts such as Charter 77 in other parts of the world than they did in the Czech Republic
-"Doubts are healthy. Never be sure of anything."
-Some of the same people who put Havel in power were then unhappy with how he let those who had been involved with the Soviet government stay
The day after seeing that film, I went to another documentary event at the National Film Archives here. The professor who put the films together described film as the "historical memory" of a place. The pieces we watched were from the 1930s on. We started with a tire commercial called "The Highway Sings". We looked at the mood of the music and the values expressed in the commercial. Also, it turns out that the shoe company Bat'a used to make tires and this was one of their older commercials.
From the western pop and feel-good vibes of that commercial, we moved to a documentary piece called "The Last Summer of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk." It was a wordless piece about...well...the last summer in the life of the first Czech president.
The darkness at the end of the piece foreshadowed the mood for the rest of the pieces we watched:
~"Monument to Love and Friendship" was a Soviet propaganda film about the building of the monstrous monument to Stalin in Prague.
~"City of Mud" was made during the Prague spring so it was a bit satirical (the filmmaker had some freedom). Apparently, the government moved people into new housing complexes before construction finished. I don't remember where specifically this was, but the film shows parents carrying children, women digging heels out of the mud, everyone buying rubber boots, dust clinging to everything, and kids making mud pies.
~I don't think this next one had a name. It was an illegal documentary made about Jan Palach's
funeral. Scenes of his body in the hospital were cut in with scenes of his grave being prepared and his mother crying at the funeral. I really wish I could find a copy to share with you. It was a very moving and appropriately disturbing piece.
~This next one was made by the professor who put these together for us. It's a music video that stitches together clips showing the members of the band "Plastic People of the Universe." They were arrested by the Soviets and became important cultural symbols in the Czech Republic.
~"The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia" was the last film we watched and the only one I could find online to share. It's animated stop-motion, created in 1990, with a touch of hope and a lot of cynicism. You should watch it. It speaks for itself.
Aside from the films, I went on a few trips. The pictures, however, are on my laptop. Which I'm not on. I'll write about those once I convince my internet to work on that silly machine.
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