Animate Dissent:

The Political Objects of Czech Stop-Motion and

Animated Film (1946-2012)

Submitted by Adam Gerald Whybray to the University of Exeter

as a thesis for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Film
in December 2014

This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright
material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper
acknowledgement.

I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been
identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for
the award of a degree by this or any other University.

Signature: …………………………………………………………..

1
 Abstract
Czech animated allegories of the period of 1946 to 2012 encode their
political ideas in objects and things, rather than through conventional narrative
techniques such as voice-over or dialogue. The existence of these objects in
cinematic time and space is integral to this process of political encoding, which
is achieved through the selection of objects, cinematography and editing. In
some of these films, time and space themselves are politically encoded.
Materialist critical approaches to the film texts can help illuminate these
latent political meanings. 'Thing theory', which puts a critical emphasis upon
reading objects and things, exposes the politically resistant role of simple,
domestic objects in the films of Jiří Trnka and Hermína Týrlová. Trnka's cinema
in particular defends traditional, pastoral modes of being in which the individual
is rooted within their environment.
'Actor-network-theory', a means of interrogating the relationship between
actors in networks, resonates with the political ideas present in the cinema of
Surrealist artist Jan Švankmajer. Švankmajer's central political project is an
interrogation of anthropocentrism and attempts by humans to exert systems of
control and order upon non-human actors. Rather than celebrating functional,
domestic objects like Trnka or Týrlová, Švankmajer's cinema is radically anti-
utilitarian. Objects are depicted as things that resist categorisation.
'Rhythmanalysis' – a mode of poetic-scientific investigation developed by
philosopher Henri Lefebvre – can be used to unpick the rhythms in the
animations of Jirí Barta. Barta's films critique rational clock time and the design
of urban spaces through the use of editing patterns and repetition.
Finally, all three materialist approaches in combination help illustrate the
political content of animated films (and live-action films with significant
passages of animation) produced in the wake of the Velvet Revolution. Such
films often question the relationship between the individual Czech citizen and
the Czech capital city of Prague.
The animated films of the aforementioned directors and historical
periods, tend to give precedence to the material world of objects over the
semiotic world of humans, though these two realms are often shown to be inter-
dependent. To this end, the political messages of the films are conveyed not
through language, but through images and things.

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 Acknowledgements and Dedication

Although writing a thesis is an often solitary process, it is never

conducted entirely in isolation. I wish to give my utmost thanks to Joe Kember,
who has been a supportive presence throughout the last two years, offering
incisive feedback and often willing to expand his own film knowledge in his role
as my primary supervisor. James Lyons has, as my secondary supervisor, also
provided a valuable perspective on my work, providing some key suggestions
for its development. Dan North, Bill Brown and Suzanne Buchan should each
be credited for providing much of the inspirational impetus for this thesis. I am
never disappointed by their lucid and materialist grappling with cinematic and
literary texts. I am very thankful to both Michela Parkin and Hollie Price for their
careful and thoroughgoing services as proof-readers. Hollie's own academic
writing inspires me to be ever rigorous in my investigation of objects. Peter
Hames' groundbreaking work in the history of Czech film is invaluable for any
researcher in the field. I hope my work does justice to his own. My parents,
Andrea and Michael Whybray, have given countless hours of emotional and
material support and their belief in my abilities is deeply and sincerely
appreciated. My partner Rachael Borrill gives me the necessary faith I need to
do any of this and it is beyond me to express how thankful I am for her
friendship and company these last few years. Finally, I give my thanks to all the
film-makers discussed in this thesis, to whom I am deeply grateful and whose
films send my thoughts spiralling in countless fruitful directions. So much more
could be written about each of these remarkable artists.

This work is dedicated to Ichigo, my favourite thing and no mere object.

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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................... 7
Politics and Objects.......................................................................................... 7
Political Embodiment................................................................................... 7
A Distinction Between Objects and Things..................................................9
Central Arguments of Thesis and Introduction to Methodologies ..................10
A Tentative Third Way................................................................................12
Czechoslovak Animators................................................................................ 16
Key Animators Studied...............................................................................16
Animations/Animators Omitted from this Study.........................................18
Literature Review............................................................................................21
Animation Studies...................................................................................... 21
Czech Cinema............................................................................................22
Czech History.............................................................................................22
Writing on Jiří Trnka................................................................................... 23
Writing on Jan Švankmajer........................................................................24
Writing on Jiří Barta................................................................................... 25
Writing on Thing Theory.............................................................................26
Writing on Actor-Network Theory...............................................................29
Writing on Henri Lefebvre and Rhythmanalysis........................................ 32
Writing on the City of Prague.....................................................................35
Materialist Similarities between Methods....................................................... 36
Theoretical Models Omitted from this Study.................................................. 39
What Will Be Achieved and Why.................................................................... 42
Chapter One: 'It’s the Simple Things': Animated Allegories
against Nazi and Soviet Oppression............................................ 44
Introduction to the Chapter.............................................................................44
Introduction to Allegory...................................................................................45
Allegorical Animations.................................................................................... 48
Ambiguity and Plurality in Allegories.............................................................. 49
Post-War Animated Allegories........................................................................ 56
Walter Benjamin's Theory of Allegory.............................................................58
Allegory Communicated Through Real Objects.............................................59
Two Post-War Allegories.................................................................................60
Objects of Resistance.....................................................................................61
The Springiness of Springs............................................................................ 70
Oppressive Gestures of the Hand of State.....................................................75
Trnka as Champion of Artisanal Values..........................................................88
Technological Abstraction in The Cybernetic Grandma................................. 89
Simple Objects and Anti-Political Politics....................................................... 95
Chapter Two: Jan Švankmajer and the Network of Things.......99
Introduction to Švankmajer.............................................................................99
Švankmajer's Relationship to Surrealism.....................................................100
Švankmajer's Relationship to Trnka.............................................................103
How Psychoanalysis is at once a Useful Tool for reading Švankmajer while
also Completely Missing the Point of the Thing............................................112
An Alternative................................................................................................115

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 Can A.N.T. be used as a Critical Framework?..............................................118
The Most Explicitly Political of Švankmajer's Films......................................120
Death to Anthropocentrism...........................................................................127
A Picnic between Non-Human Actants.........................................................129
A Civilisation of Stones.................................................................................132
A Politically Pessimistic Dialogue.................................................................135
A Politically Pessimistic Cycle of Repetitions............................................... 140
Let the Networks Be as they Are – Švankmajer vs. Categorisation .............141
A Network of Resistant Objects....................................................................145
Not Objects but Things ~ in Defense of Indeterminacy................................149
Three Films in which Things trump Categorisation......................................158
Concluding Remarks: Latour ← → Švankmajer......................................... 158
Chapter Three: Jiří Barta and the Rhythmic Difficulties of Living
in, or with, Time and Space........................................................ 161
Introduction to the Chapter...........................................................................161
Introducing Abstract Time, Charismatic Time and Natural Time..................163
Jiří Barta: An Ambivalent Animator...............................................................168
The Loss of a Green Wood and the Defeat of Natural Time........................173
Designing Uniformity.................................................................................... 184
Twisted Spirals and Swollen Shards: The Sickened Rhythms of Hamelin . .190
Repeating the Past in the Club of the Laid-Off.............................................203
A Hopeful Repetition for the Future?............................................................213
Chapter Four: The Golem Wakes – Reconstructing Prague and
Czech Identity after the Velvet Revolution................................216
Portrait of a City............................................................................................216
Methodological Thickness............................................................................ 219
Historicisation of Objects of Prague.............................................................221
Undermining the “Magic City” of Tourism..................................................... 223
The Mythic City beneath the Contemporary City in Švankmajer's Faust .....231
Networks of Desire in Conspirators of Pleasure.......................................... 234
Consumption – A Desire Older than Consumerism......................................242
The Golem is Prague and Prague is The Golem......................................... 248
Just Orbiting Bodies in Abstract Space........................................................ 258
Life amongst the Dead in One Night in One City......................................... 264
Desiring Rhythms......................................................................................... 271
The Flattened City of Surviving Life............................................................. 275
Conclusion: The Citizen's Inner Life is Collective, Public and Dependent upon
Myths and Stories.........................................................................................279
Conclusions................................................................................. 281
Political Messages........................................................................................281
Communication of Political Messages..........................................................284
Three Methodologies....................................................................................285
Previously Neglected Animators...................................................................286
A Materialist Turn..........................................................................................287
A Silent Language........................................................................................ 290
Appendix (illustrations).............................................................. 292

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Bibliography................................................................................. 297
Books............................................................................................................297
Papers and Journals.....................................................................................310
Online........................................................................................................... 314
Unpublished..................................................................................................319
Filmography................................................................................. 320

6
Introduction
Politics and Objects

Political Embodiment
On the 17th January 1969, student Jan Palach, in protest against the
invading Warsaw Pact soldiers whose tanks were occupying Prague, set
himself alight in Red Army Square (Náměstí Krasnoarmějců). Self-immolation is
an act that seeks to bridge the personal and political in the most dramatic and
catalytic of ways. We are confronted with an abstract political statement while
simultaneously our gaze is commanded by the visceral reality of real, embodied
suffering.
Jan Palach was buried in Olšany Cemetery. Hundreds came to the site
to lay flowers and candles. Communist Party authorities, in particular State
Security (Státní bezpečnost), wary that a figure of anti-state protest had become
a martyr, sought means to prevent further pilgrimage. In July 1973 the bronze
headstone of the grave was removed and, in October of the same year,
Palach's parents, having been coerced by the secret police, agreed for their
son's remains to be exhumed and cremated. 1 A new headstone was erected by
the grave bearing the name of Marie Jedlićkova. In an essay collected in a
retrospective of Václav Havel's political and philosophical work, Timothy Garton
Ash notes that this manoeuvre on the part of State Security did not halt the
visits from those who wished to mourn, commemorate, or pay tribute to Palach's
death.2 The erasing, by a state-sanctioned body, of a signifier that marked the
single, official site of commemoration for Palach, failed to overwrite the meaning
that had already accumulated there for those who had encoded the space as a
site of tribute to dissidence. Visitors continued to read a name they had
internalised, rather than one that existed within an actual physical space.

1
Petr Blažek, 'Jan Palach’s Grav' (sp.) (Prague: Charles University Multimedia Project, 2009)
<http://www.janpalach.cz/en/default/mista-pameti/hrob> [accessed 13 September 2014].
2
Timothy Garton Ash, 'Prague – A Poem, Not Disappearing', in Václav Havel, or, Living in Truth,
by Václav Havel and ed. by Jan Vladislav (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp.213-221
(p.214).

7
 The self-immolation of Jan Palach and the continued potency of his
grave-site in spite of the absence of his body and the presence of a new
gravestone, provide us with potent examples of how political and emotional
ideas and feelings are encoded in objects (a body; a corpse; a grave) often in
spite of these objects' eradication, displacement or effacement.
My thesis will be concerned with acts of political encoding similar to those
performed upon the body of Jan Palach and his grave. The objects I will
examine all derive from Czech animated films – and a smaller number of live-
action films that contain significant portions of stop-motion animation –
produced between 1946 and 2012. There is a significant ontological difference
between the objects that appear in stop-motion films and the objects
represented in other forms of animation (such as “traditional” two-dimensional
hand-drawn animation or computer-generated imagery) – most fundamentally,
those objects that appear in stop-motion animation have a continued existence
in the reality outside of the film world.
To provide an example; imagine that a Czech stop-motion animator
decides to make a film involving the animation of a traditional Czech bread roll
(rohlík). Not only would the roll have specific culinary, domestic and cultural
connotations for Czech or Slovak viewers, but it will also have been baked in a
specific bakery (or the film-maker's own kitchen), been bought for a specific
price and might be eaten (or simply thrown out) after the completion of filming.
Comparatively, the drawing of such a roll or the computer rendering of the
same, would not be possessed of the same historical nor material weight as its
“real-life” counterpart. The cultural connotations (specific for each viewer) may
well remain, but these are liable to change depending on the appearance the
object is given – the roll as drawn by Jiří Trnka would have quite different
connotations to the same roll drawn by Hayao Miyazaki or John Kricfalusi;
although of course, to a certain extent, the same would be true of the manner of
stop-motion animation Jan Švankmajer would subject a roll to in comparison to
Jiří Barta or Garik Seko.
Given the centrality of objects in Czech animated film it is necessary to
firstly define the types of “objects” with which we shall be dealing.

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A Distinction Between Objects and Things
The definition of objects in this thesis is what might be regarded as
“commonsensical”: an object will be defined as any individually definable thing
with a tangible existence in material reality. A man-made artefact like a knife, a
mug, or a puppet, will be considered an object, but so will those objects, like
stones or tomatoes, that occur in nature. Puppets can confuse a strict
object/subject dichotomy. This is because they are objects in the material
sense, but perform on stage as subjects, often as the extension of human
puppeteers. While watching puppets perform we are aware of their status as
things while simultaneously able to invest in their performance of selfhood. A
puppet can be the protagonist of a theatrical show, even while it remains
obvious that their agency is not self-determined. Many of the film-makers who
will be considered in this thesis also treat objects, both naturally occurring and
man-made, as the principle subjects of their films. In the work of Jan
Švankmajer, for example, objects often seem to be possessed of a greater
degree of subjectivity than human actors. Instead of “puppets” as might be
traditionally understood, we will examine rolling pins, rubber balls, a flower pot,
a clockwork hen, a wristwatch, an architect's drawing tools, and a stump of
wood that resembles a baby, alongside a rich assembly of performing objects.
Up to this point of writing, the word 'thing' has been used interchangeably
with 'object', albeit with a sense that 'thing' is a broader, more encompassing,
more ambiguous term. Literary theorist Bill Brown has theorised about the
distinction between objects and things, asserting that the same item can be
understood as both or either an object or a thing. I shall briefly clarify Brown's
distinction as I understand it. The mug before me at the moment of writing is an
object. It is white and made of china. The 'apperceptive constitution' of the mug
'is what we might call its objecthood'. 3 Now imagine the mug not as an object
but as a thing. Forget, if you will, the role we have assigned it as a carrier of
liquids. Forget, if you are able, its name of 'mug'. Think instead of the dull
ringing sound it makes when struck; of its cool, smooth texture in the hand. The
'experience of the thing' is 'what we might call its thinghood'. 4 A thing is
behaving as an object when it is conceptually categorised according to human

3
Bill Brown, A Sense of Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.76.
4
Ibid.

9
schemata, often dependent upon its human-given function. We can name the
mug, know that it is designed to carry liquids – most likely, tea or coffee – and
lift it up to our mouth to drink, ever sure of its stable function. Brown writes
elsewhere in an issue of Critical Inquiry that 'we begin to confront the thingness
of objects when they stop working for us [...] The story of objects asserting
themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relation to the human
subject.'5 So, we drop the mug and it smashes into pieces. Suddenly, it looks
less like a mug and more like a half-shattered hollow of china that we do not
know whether to repair or to consign to the trash. We are less able to categorise
the 'thing' than the 'object' since the thing seems to exist independently upon its
own terms. It may not even be nameable. The thing is other while the object is
homely. This tricky distinction between objects and things will be touched upon
in both the first and second chapters of the thesis, when we look at works by Jiří
Trnka and especially Jan Švankmajer.

Central Arguments of Thesis and Introduction to

Methodologies
The central argument of this thesis is that Czech animated films express
their political ideas through objects (and, by extension, the relations between
these objects and the time(s) and space(s) that govern them) rather than
through dialogue, voice-over, or even – in many cases – conventional narrative.
Which things are politically encoded, how they are encoded, and what
messages are politically encoded in these things, will be demonstrated across a
wide selection of works produced from 1946 to 2012 by a number of Czech
animators, including, Jiří Trnka, Jan Švankmajer and Jiří Barta. The degree to
which these films should be seen as political allegories will be discussed in
some depth at the beginning of Chapter One. The concept of allegory will be
briefly defined and a scale of allegory upon which all such works fall will be
explicated.
Across each chapter a different methodological approach will assist in
exposing the latent political meaning within each film (or, rather, within the films'
objects, the inter-relations between them and the times and spaces surrounding
them). The first chapter will make use of several ideas from thing theory, as
5
Bill Brown, 'Thing Theory', Critical Inquiry, 28 (autumn 2001), 1-22 (p.4) (ellipsis own).

10
developed by its leading practitioner Bill Brown. The second chapter, which is
concerned with the films of Jan Švankmajer – especially the artist's early 1960s
output – will parallel the political ideas implicit in Švankmajer's work with ideas
expressed by Bruno Latour that form the foundations for his actor-network-
theory. The third chapter's analysis of short films by Jiří Barta will be illuminated
by the ideas of post-Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre – most expressly, his
writing on rhythmanalysis. Indeed, it is the rhythms of Barta's films as
established through editing – particularly the rhythms of time and space – that
will serve as the core focus for my writing. Finally, the fourth chapter will involve
a culmination of the methods of the previous three chapters and engage with
ideas stemming from thing theory, actor-network-theory and rhythmanalysis.
The city of Prague will be considered as an object in itself, but also as a series
of objects and actors, all inter-related in time and space.
The primary reason for using these methodologies is that they are most
appropriate for helping to demonstrate how these animated films and sections
of animation within live-action films manage, with little to no dialogue or
narration, to communicate political ideas. Each of these three methodologies
share a common interest in material reality. Human identity and even political
ideology are seen as being rooted in stuff. The political ideas in these
approaches derive from the external world of objects and things.
The aim of this thesis is to give light to the dissident qualities of works
that have been neglected, marginalised or were literally kept under lock and key
under the rule of the Czech Communist Party (Komunistická strana
Československa). A secondary aim, however, is to suggestively advance some
new ways of looking at cinema – in particular, stop-motion animated film – that
owe their approach more to literary studies (in the case of thing theory) or
sociology (in the case of actor-network-theory and rhythmanalysis) than they do
to what might traditionally be regarded as film theory.

A Tentative Third Way

Since a methodological approach informed by thing theory, actor-
network-theory and rhythmanalysis is currently a unique endeavour within film
studies, it is important to situate my methodology within a discussion of
academic approaches to film that consider the cinematic function of objects in

11
relation to affect. My work is being produced in the wake of a phenomenological
turn within film studies that tries to balance an awareness of the material reality
that underpins the cinematic image with an acknowledgement of the illusionary,
phantasmal nature of that image. In the cinema ontological presence is married
to desire – the spectator is acted upon by the film image, while she
simultaneously projects her own ideological assumptions upon the screen. As
such, work that seeks to understand the role of objects within cinema must
necessarily function at the cross-roads between film theory that emphasises the
importance of ideology and the spectator's (often unconscious) mind and film
theory which treats the cinematic image as an embodied replication of a pre-
existing material reality. Although my specific approach towards achieving this
fundamental balance is novel, previous academics have also sought to reflect in
their writing the dual state of film as both embodied and projected; real yet
illusionary. This section will look at the work of these writers and the different
philosophical and art-historical approaches to which they are attached in order
to better place my own work within its theoretical and historical context.
Gilberto Perez, in his monograph The Material Ghost: Films and Their
Medium, endeavours to advance a critical approach to film that occupies a
space between film 'Theory' (sic.), exemplified by the structuralist, theoretical
work of film scholars like Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey, who ground their
writing in psychoanalytic, semiotic or feminist discourse; and film 'theory' that
treats the cinematic image as essentially documentary in nature, a 'window of
truth' that can provide the viewer with a true reflection of nature as is – a
position exemplified, for Perez, by the phenomenological philosopher and film
theorist Siegfried Kracauer.6 Perez writes: 'Neither Kracauer nor the Lacanian
takes proper cognizance of the screen as a space of representation'; instead,
'The images on the screen are neither a reproduction of reality nor an illusion of
it: rather they are a construction, derived from reality but distinct from it, a
parallel realm that may look recognisably like reality, but that nobody can
mistake for it.'7 Perez' rhetoric relies upon a binary distinction that omits those
film theorists, like Steven Shaviro, who couple their interest in visceral audience

6
Gilberto Perez, The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 2000), p.17. Perez uses the terms 'Theory' and 'theory' to distinguish between
these two approaches.
7
Ibid.

12
affect with a psychoanalytically infused politics of desire. Perez also simplifies
Kracauer's writing, which often dealt with the gap between fictional
representation and material reality engendered by technology.
Kracauer's 1960 work Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical
Reality is an essentialist account of cinema's evolution from photography to
modern feature films. The book is concerned with what Kracauer's believes to
be essential or non-essential to the cinematic medium. Kracauer argues that
cinema should foremost draw from reality since it is a means of mechanically
reproducing what is placed in front of the camera. A repeated motif in
Kracauer's work is the image of falling leaves, which is deployed to evoke those
moments of fleeting transcendence in the material world that he considers film
best equipped to capture. In the final chapter of Theory of Film Kracauer shifts
to a prophetic register and speaks in mournful, alarmist tones of the increasing
'abstractness' of the Atomic Age. 8 Having established the sublime realism of
film, Kracauer believers that it must work to rectify this technological malady
through returning humans to a more grounded experience of being. Kracauer
writes: '[I]f we want to do away with the prevailing abstractness, we must focus
primarily on this material dimension which science has succeeded in
disengaging from the rest of the world.'9
So, while Kracauer was certainly interested in how technology might
alienate us from physical reality (and thus had to deal with the paradoxical fact
that cinema is technological) he remained dogmatic in his belief that cinema
could transcend illusion to reach solid, ontological truths. More recently, other
contemporary film theorists have sought to place themselves on either side of
this illusion/reality binary, either arguing that film partakes of reality, or that film
(in combination with its audience) projects upon reality. In Post-Theory:
Reconstructing Film Studies David Bordwell explicitly positions himself against
so-called 'Grand Theory' within film academia, which, according to Bordwell's
argument, imposes an inflexible ideological position (say Marxist, Structuralist,
Psychoanalytic, or a fusion thereof, divided by Bordwell into the two camps of
'subject-position theory' and 'culturalism') onto the study of a particular film and,
in so doing, undermines the specificity of the film, diminishes the experience of
8
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1998), p.292-298.
9
Kracauer, p.298 (brackets own).

13
the individual viewer in favour of the historically-determined mass audience, and
obscures logical argumentation.10
In response to this argument, cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek asserts that
Bordwell and the other authors included in the Post-Theory volume
misrepresent the theoreticians they attempt to criticise and, in doing so, perform
an inadvertent self-parodic caricature of a 'commonsense' intellectual reaction
to 'post-modern deconstructionism'.11 He then claims that cognitivists like
Bordwell and film historians like Ben Brewster have emasculated their own
criticism through turning away from political engagement with film, refusing to
accept that they are unable to extricate themselves (as subjects) from their own
writing. This leads them to make universalising claims that neglect the lessons
of cultural relativism, such as assuming that Western modes of storytelling will
be equally comprehensible to audiences across the world. 12 Žižek implies that
the analysis performed by the likes of Bordwell and Brewster is not without
value, but is circumscribed by post-Enlightenment Western assumptions about
perception, which are then universalised, undermining the espoused pluralism
of their approach. In the preface to Žižek's book, Colin MacCabe is less
charitable, referring to 'those followers of fashion who look for a retreat from
Marx and Freud' with little more than a glib aside, dismissing the very possibility
of a 'third way', as though after the advent of post-structuralism and
psychoanalysis within film departments in the late 1960s, even to attempt a
different mode of analysis would be a form of ludicrous hubris and naivety;
although with the zeal of the ideologue he seems to deem it unnecessary to
offer any grounds as to why this should be the case.13
Steven Shaviro seems to address both cognitivist and psychoanalytic
approaches to film theory when he asserts critically that 'contemporary film
theory' stems from 'a desire to keep at a distance the voyeuristic excitations that
are its object.'14 Put simply, too often film theory fails to accurately reflect the
visceral, embodied experience of watching a film. The film viewer neither
10
David Bordwell, 'Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory', in Post-
Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, ed. by David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (Wisconsin:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), pp.12-36 (pp.3-36).
11
Slavoj Žižek, The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory
(London: British Film Institute, 2001), p.4.
12
Žižek, pp.13-16.
13
Colin MacCabe, 'Preface', in Žižek, pp.vii-ix (p.viii).
14
Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p.14.

14
experiences a film as a disembodied desiring subject, nor as a Euclidean
eyeball on a stalk.15 The recent movement in film studies known as 'affect
theory', alongside those academic writers interested in the haptic and tactile
qualities of film, offers something of a corrective to this trend.
Affect theory is primarily concerned with the the visceral, physiological
experience of film viewing, that often precedes or overwhelms emotional
comprehension. In her introduction to The Affective Turn Patricia Ticineto
Clough describes 'affectivity' as: 'a substrate of potential bodily responses, often
automatic responses, in excess of consciousness.'16
Laura Marks' The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment,
and the Senses (2000) and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media
(2002) provide convincing explanations, grounded in neuroscience, for the
physical sensations that can overwhelm us while watching a film. Indeed,
Marks' work differs most profoundly from my own in her interest in how the film
viewer is able to experience non-verbal meaning at a physiological level (my
interest is more restricted to how political meaning is communicated
cinematically and rests upon the assumption that the film viewer is able to
receive this meaning) and a preoccupation with digital experimental cinema.
Meanwhile, in work grounded in the theories of phenomenologist Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, Vivian Sobchack tries to destabilise the primacy afforded to
vision in many accounts of film in favour of a more sensual account of how
cinema works. In The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film
Experience (1992) Sobchack envisions the screen itself as a gazing subject-
object, that interacts with the gazing (but also, gazed at) subject-object of the
film viewer. Elsewhere, in The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience
(2009), Jennifer Barker expands upon Marks' and Sobchack's writings to
perform phenomenological readings of films by David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky
and the Quay Brothers. Daniel Frampton's eccentric but stimulating Filmosophy
(2006) reaches the logical end-point of these arguments in considering film as a

15
Anne Rutherford archly notes: 'The foundational metaphor of the disembodied eye in decades
of so-called gaze theory has been the historical site of the imbrication of film theory with an
empiricist psychology of perception and optics.' Anne Rutherford, 'Cinema and Embodied
Affect', Senses of Cinema, 25 (March 2003)
<http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/embodied_affect/> [accessed 24 April 2015].
16
Patricia Ticineto Clough, 'Introduction', in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. by
Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p.2 (pp.1-33).

15
self-perceiving mind unto itself, potentially obliterating the spectator altogether.
Finally it is worth noting that the tactile relationship that can exist
between a spectator and a film has previously been of great interest to the
Surrealists and theorist-practitioners associated with the movement like Antonin
Artaud. Indeed, Jan Švankmajer's own recent publication Touching and
Imagining: An Introduction to Tactile Art (2004) is concerned with the poetics of
tactility, although not always in relation to film. Surrealism as an art-historical
and philosophical movement that discussed the role of objects, tactility and
affect, often in terms of cinema, will be considered in greater depth when we
turn to look at Švankmajer in Chapter Two.
My work is sympathetic to the recent phenomenological turn in film. The
combination of scientific rigour (that characterises the cognitivists) alongside an
awareness that the film image is ideologically constructed (the assumption
underlying the work of psychoanalytic and semiotic theorists) ensures that
specific films are never misrepresented in order to fit a pre-existing theory, while
avoiding universalising claims or a rejection/sublimation of the visceral and
embodied immediacy of film-viewing.

Czechoslovak Animators

Key Animators Studied

This thesis will primarily focus on the works of three Czech animators –
Jiří Trnka, Jan Švankmajer and Jiří Barta.
Trnka was a children's book illustrator who gained prestige for his
innovative puppet films that drew from Czech myths, pastoral traditions and
adaptations of dramas by Shakespeare and Chekov. Trnka only produced one
explicitly political film during his working life – The Hand (Ruka) released in
1965, a dystopian fable about a potter persecuted by a large gloved hand.
However, one must consider whether his gentle, bucolic work that draws from
rural Czech traditions of the grunt (the family farm) and seasonal rituals,
becomes political precisely because it is so determinedly non-ideological under
a regime structured by and defined through ideology. We might consider a
statement made by the novelist Milan Kundera that the conflict Czechoslovakia
faced under Communist rule was not one of two competing antithetical

16
ideologies but rather a 'conflict between the imported political system and the
entire culture of a country.' 17 Trnka's puppet protagonists would then be those
practitioners of 'small-scale' work 18 identified by Havel in his seminal essay 'The
Power of the Powerless' (Moc bezmocných, 1978) – work that becomes
dissident through its position outside of mass collectivisation and so poses, in
its quiet way, a threat to the Communist order.
Jan Švankmajer is a Surrealist and film-maker globally best known for
working within the medium of stop-motion animation, although he originally
trained within theatrical design and, later, puppetry. Švankmajer is a prolific
artist, producer of collages and tactile sculptures, prop designer, animator and
film-maker who has, at the point of writing, directed twenty-five short films, six
feature-length films and one music video, over a career spanning five decades.
Furthermore, he has lived through 'six different political regimes and their
attendant ideologies.'19 Across his career Švankmajer has employed a variety of
animation techniques including stop-motion animation of objects and puppets,
pixilation (the stop-motion animation of live actors), claymation, and, less often,
more traditional two-dimensional forms, such as cut-out animation.
Jiří Barta is perhaps the most neglected animator to direct a body of work
through the period of late Communist rule known as “normalisation” and then up
to, and after, the Velvet Revolution. Jenny Jediny of the film blog Not Coming to
a Theatre Near You provides an overview of six of Barta's films, with a particular
emphasis on his short, feature-length work The Pied Piper of Hamelin/Rat
Catcher (Krysař, 1986). Jediny, considering the objects animated in Barta's
stop-motion works, writes that, '[w]e recognize these objects, yet they inhabit a
world of their own which often draws on the political issues of the former
communist block',20 suggesting that the recognition these objects might prompt
in the viewer is simultaneously undercut by the alienating and uncanny
environments they are placed within.
So, the Czech animators whose work will provide the focus for the
17
Milan Kundera, 'Candide Had to be Destroyed', trans. by K. Seigneurie, in Havel and
Vladislav, Living in Truth, pp.258-262 (p.258).
18
Havel, 'The Power of the Powerless', trans. by P. Wilson, in Havel and Vladislav, Living in
Truth, pp.36-122 (pp.81-83).
19
Hames, The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, ed. by Peter Hames
(London: Wallflower Press, 2008), p.2.
20
Jenny Jediny, 'The Animation of Jirí Barta' (Not Coming to a Theatre Near You, 17 June 2007)
<http://notcoming.com/features/jiribarta/> [accessed 14 September 2014] (brackets own).

17
majority of this thesis are Jiří Trnka in Chapter One, Jan Švankmajer in Chapter
Two and Jiří Barta in Chapter Three. The fourth and final chapter will consider
works by both Barta and Švankmajer. Several short animations upon which
Hermína Týrlová worked will also be touched upon in Chapter One, due to
Týrlová's interest in expressing the life implicit in simple, domestic objects. The
fourth chapter, considering the depiction of the city of Prague in contemporary
animation (and sections of animation within live-action films) produced after the
Velvet Revolution, will have a broader focus than the preceding chapters and
also include analysis of work by Pavel Koutský, Jan Balej, Ivan Arsenjev and
Michaela Pavlátová. These animators produce vital and provocative work in
their own right, but their inclusion is primarily due to having directed work that
focuses upon the relationship between the individual citizen and his/her city – in
this case, Prague.

Animations/Animators Omitted from this Study

As may already be clear, this thesis will be restricted to Czech rather than
Slovak animators. As such, work by Slovakian animators who lived under
Communist rule, such as that by Viktor Kubal or Koloman Leššo, will not be
discussed. Likewise, contemporary Slovak animators, such as Ondrej
Rudavsky, Noro Držiak, Ivana Zajacová and Jaroslav Baran, will be neglected.
This is due to my enquiries being limited to a concern with how animated films
of the period address aspects of Czech identity and the fact that the culminating
chapter of the thesis will concern itself with films set within the city of Prague.
There are also several Czech animators of note whose works will not be
considered in this thesis. Since stop-motion animation composes the core of
this project, the films of Garik Seko may seem like a curious omission. However,
Seko strikes me as a formalist i.e. his films are concerned with the pleasures of
animation itself and do not tend towards political allegory. His animations that
depict myths belonging to Czech culture, such as a short piece about the 'Faust
house' of Prague (Faustuv dům, 1977) or an account of the construction of
Prague's astrological clock (O mistru Hanusovi, 1976), are uncomplicated
historical works, offering little commentary on Czech national identity outside of
the engaging recitation of well-known stories. As such, the discussion of objects
and things within Seko's films would allow for the historicisation of cultural

18
artefacts or material for the budding animator, yet provide little content for
political analysis (at least, not within the allegorical mode with which this thesis
is concerned).
Karel Zeman's cinema is artistically rich and fascinating for its technical
innovations. However, his films, like those of American stop-motion animator
Ray Harryhausen, are flights of fantasy, with seemingly little in the way of social
or political commentary. Much of Zeman's filmography also consists of
adaptations of stories by the French proto-science fiction writer Jules Verne, so
it is rare for him to set his work within the boundaries of Czechoslovakia. As with
the animator Stanislav Látal, Zeman's output was generally intended for a child
or family audience, which partly explains its lack of social commentary. Indeed,
a wealth of animation (puppet; stop-motion; and traditional hand-drawn
animation) was produced for children across the 20 th century in Czechoslovakia,
which was often showcased in the nightly children's television programme
Večerníček.
The remarkably prolific Bretislav Pojar produced much beautiful work,
worthy of its own study. Like Trnka, Pojar directed several works for children
and later produced more allegorical films intended for an adult audience – in
Pojar's case, with the financial support of the National Film Board of Canada.
However, Pojar primarily produced graphical drawn animations, so rarely
worked with objects with a tangible, material existence outside of a film's world.
Moreover, Pojar inclined towards the depiction of imaginary objects, such as the
sentient cuboids and spheres of Balablok (1972) or the giant sculptural titular
letter of E (1981) to illustrate his moral fables. The objecthood of objects is
rarely central to his films' political arguments, which are often universal or
abstract, rather than culturally and politically specific to Czechoslovakia.
Many of the directors considered in this thesis have worked alongside
assistant animators (such as Pojar, who worked for Trnka in his early career).
Švankmajer, for instance, generally works with assistants and rarely performs
“hands-on” animation himself. Trnka, meanwhile, is purported to have never
manipulated the puppets in his films with his own hands. Speaking at a B.F.I.
screening of Trnka's 1959 adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's
Dream21 Vlasta Pospísilová asserted that while the film-maker designed and
21
Vlasta Pospísilová, 'Q&A after screening of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Jiří Trnka, Sen noci

19
built all his films' puppets, as well as constructing and designing his films' sets
and directing his animators, he never actually directly interacted with the
puppets themselves when it came to animation. As such, though the films
considered in this thesis will be attributed to single artists, it should be
remembered that, as with the vast majority of film-makers, they did not work
alone. Even an artist as aggressively auteurist as Švankmajer is a collaborator;
primarily, with other members of the Czech Surrealist Group. Before her death
in 2005 Eva Švankmajerová – a prolific and respected artist in her own right –
often provided art design for Švankmajer's work and her posters for his films are
beautiful objets d'art in themselves.
Finally, the temporal focus of this study (1946-2012) has been
determined by the simple fact of these years encompassing the release of those
Czech animations that contain some element of political allegory, although the
date of 2012 is provisional rather than final. Jean Ann Wright notes that the first
Czech animated film was Karel Dodal's The Lantern's Secret (Tajemství
lucerny), which Wright dates at 1935 22 (although 1938 is more commonly
attributed). The potential for subversive animated cinema produced in occupied
territory under Nazism was inevitably very limited. The earliest film that will be
examined in the first chapter of the thesis is Jiří Brdečka's and Jiří Trnka's
Springman and the SS (Pérák a SS) of 1946, although by this point Trnka had
already directed Grandfather Planted a Beet (Dedek Zasadil repu) in 1945 and
Animals and Bandits (Zvírátka a Petrovst) in 1946. Springman and the SS will
be the first of Trnka's works to be considered in depth due to its explicit political
content, relevant to this thesis due to its focus upon political allegory in Czech
animated film. The most recently released film to be examined will be Michaela
Pavlátová's Tram (Tramvaj) from 2012.

Literature Review

Animation Studies
One of my objectives for this project is to increase recognition of Czech

svatojánské, 1959)', B.F.I. Southbank (19 April 2012) (as seen by the writer).
Archived: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7-nWrJS0FE> [accessed 14 September 2014].
22
Jean Ann Wright, Animation Writing and Development: From Script Development to Pitch
(Cambridge: Focal Press, 2013), p.26.

20
film-makers such as Jiří Trnka and Jiří Barta whose work is in desperate need
of preservation and distribution; a situation that has arisen not through any lack
of craftsmanship or brilliance, but through the fact that they produced their work
under a repressive political system, within the often critically neglected medium
of animation. Put simply, the work this thesis will accomplish is unprecedented
in the close attention it will give to Czech animation. When animated Czech
films are discussed in print, they tend to be merely mentioned in passing within
comprehensive anthologies for animation fans and collectors, such as Liz Faber
and Helen Walters' Animation Unlimited: Innovative Short Films Since 1940
(2004), Andrew Osmond's 100 Animated Feature Films (2010), Giannalberto
Bendazzi's Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation (1994), or
David Kilmer's The Animated Film Collector's Guide: Worldwide Sources for
Cartoons on Videotape and Laserdisc (1997); considered in terms of technique
and craft, within guides for the aspiring animator, such as Jean Ann Wright's
Animation Writing and Development: From Script Development to Pitch (2013),
Barry Purves' Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance (2007), Tom
Gasek's Frame-By-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation
Techniques (2011), Susannah Shaw's Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model
Animation (2003) or Ken Priebe's The Art of Stop-Motion Animation (2006) and
The Advanced Art of Stop-Motion Animation (2010); or works suitable for both
the animation viewer and the student of animation that combine the two
approaches, such as Andrew Selby's Animation (2013) or Maureen Furniss' The
Animation Bible: A Guide to Everything – from Flipbooks to Flash (2008).
Individual films produced by the subjects of this thesis have previously
been described, or else analysed in some depth, in academic monographs
structured around a medium, genre or theme. Paul Wells in his lucid and
engaging published works on animation, including Understanding Animation
(1998), Animation: Genre and Authorship (2002) and Re-Imagining Animation:
The Changing Face of the Moving Image (2008) provides insight into the work
of several of the animators that will be covered in this thesis, in particular, Jan
Švankmajer and Jiří Trnka. In Understanding Animation Wells makes the
argument that Trnka's refined aesthetic approach to animation elevated the
puppet film from simple children's entertainment to the level of art 'which could

21
support significant social and political meaning.' 23 Since my thesis is an
investigation into the political ideas within Czech animated film, this shift from
animation considered as sheer entertainment, to animation used as a tool for
socio-political commentary, is something of a genesis moment for this project
and, accordingly, the first chapter of the work will be mainly concerned with films
directed by Jiří Trnka.

Czech Cinema
British academic Peter Hames is perhaps the most authoritative source
on Czech animation and, more broadly, Czechoslovak cinema. Hames' writing
tends to situate films within their historical contexts and is often descriptive,
rather than analytic. That said, his sheer breadth of knowledge makes his work
invaluable to any student or teacher of Czech or Slovak cinema. Some of
Hames' texts are situated at the periphery of my enquiry. The Czechoslovak
New Wave (2005) is a comprehensive investigation into the late 1960s film
movement of that name. Films of the Czech New Wave share the dissident
impulse that characterises many of the animations that will be analysed in this
thesis. However, the works I will be considering must contain significant
sections of animation, else falling outside of my remit. Hames' Czech and
Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition (2010) is more relevant to my concerns
and provides the reader with a broad, encompassing understanding of the
history and trajectory of Czech and Slovak film, allowing one to better grasp a
holistic view of the nations' cinema. Hames has additionally edited a volume
dedicated to Jan Švankmajer – The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy
(2008) – the animator whose early animations provides the focus for the second
chapter of this work.

Czech History
There are a limited number of published books on 20 th century Czech
history available in the English language, but a plethora of scholarly articles.
Paulina Bren's study of television and consumerism in late Communist
Czechoslovakia, The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism
After the 1968 Prague Spring (2010), takes as its focus the years of so-called
normalisation under the Husák regime and seeks to understand the desires of
23
Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (New York: Routledge, 1998), p.64.

22
the Czech citizen under the regime and how the governing communists
regulated, manipulated and eventually acquiesced to these desires. Bren traces
a trajectory by which the Czech Communist Party shifted from a strict
adherence to Stalinist ideals to a model of socialism that was willing to engage
with the introduction of consumer goods into the country; meaning that, across
the period of normalisation, the Party became less able to convincingly distance
itself from its Western capitalist counterparts, leading – at least in part – to the
Velvet Revolution.
By contrast, Mary Heimann argues in Czechoslovakia: The State That
Failed (2011) that it was Czech nationalism, which sought to secure Czech
hegemony over Slovak, German, Jewish, Ruthenian, Hungarian and Romanian
citizens, that resulted in the country's ultimate dissolution. 24 However, Heimann
is an American citizen and her attempts to universalise the dangers of
nationalism strike me as problematic. For an empire state that has great wealth
or influence to be nationalist or for their citizens to espouse nationalistic
sentiment is a very different phenomenon to nationalism as present within a
small, occupied state of fluctuating borders. While both might be condemned, it
is disingenuous to pass over the fact that political and territorial differences
ensure that nationalism functions in a very different way between two such
states.

Writing on Jiří Trnka

There is very little English language writing on Jiří Trnka outside of blog
entries and reviews on the internet. Jaroslav Boček's Jiří Trnka: Artist and
Puppet Master (1965) as translated by Till Gottheiner, is the most
comprehensive work on the artist to date, though the text is mostly biographical
and descriptive, rather than analytical in nature. However, biography is useful in
that it illuminates how Trnka's relationship with the Communist authorities
changed over the years, which informed his film-making. Adam Balz comments
that while '[a]t first glance, Trnka’s relationship with the Stalinist Czech
government seems symbiotic – they allowed him to produce his films without
difficulty, even christening him the National Artist in 1963, while his art remained
strictly apolitical [...] as Czechoslovakia became more and more Communist,
24
Mary Heimann, Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2011), p.99.

23
the government threatened to subsidize the work of all Czechoslovakian film-
makers, Trnka included.'25

Writing on Jan Švankmajer

By contrast to Trnka, Jan Švankmajer has been the focus of a host of
variegated critical enquires, most recently Jan Švankmajer – Dimensions of
Dialogue: Between Film and Fine Art (2013) edited by František Dryje and
Bertrand Schmitt, which also doubles as a compendium of Švankmajer's visual
art, including collages and photographs of his sculptural work. There has also
been work published in German, including The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (Das
Kabinett Des Jan Švankmajer) by Rebhandl, Hartel, Matt and Blicke in 2011; in
Spanish, with Gregorio Martín López's edited volume Jan Švankmajer: The
Magic of Subversion (Jan Švankmajer: La magia de la subversión, 2010); in
French, with Charles Jodoin-Keaton's Jan Švankmajer, a surrealist animator
(Jan Švankmajer, un surréalisme animé, 2011); and an Italian volume edited by
C. Antermite and G. Lanzo, simply entitled Jan Švankmajer (2011). Švankmajer
himself has published work on tactile art – Touching and Imagining: An
Introduction to Tactile Art, translated by Stanley Dalby and edited by Cathryn
Vasseleu, was released in 2014 and touches upon the artist's own work, as well
as that produced by other Surrealists. In this thesis I will also consider the
artist's 1990 revolutionary manifesto To Renounce the Leading Role (Vzdát se
vedoucí role) as central to an understanding of his work.
Perhaps the most dedicated commentator on Švankmajer's work is the
aforementioned Peter Hames, editor of Dark Alchemy: The Films of Jan
Švankmajer (1995) and the updated volume The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer:
Dark Alchemy (2007). Hames situates Švankmajer's work within a culturally
specific tradition of Czech avant-garde cinema, providing appropriate historical
contextualisation for the films and interviewing Švankmajer on the subject of his
creative practices and beliefs.
Rather than providing political readings of his work, the other
commentators within Dark Alchemy tend towards aesthetically or philosophically
inclined readings that are sympathetic to Surrealism (an on-going project, rather
25
Adam Balz, 'The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka' (Not Coming to a Theatre Near You, 17 June
2007)
<http://notcoming.com/features/jiritrnka/> [accessed 13 September 2014] (brackets and ellipsis
own).

24
than a historical artefact) and the specific ambitions and concerns of the Czech
Surrealist Group. Michael O'Pray discusses the dual influences of Mannerism
and Surrealism upon Švankmajer's work; broadly splitting the films into those
made before Švankmajer joined the Czech Surrealist group in 1970 and those
produced afterwards (that bear the imprint of the group's tactile
experimentation), with the caveat that O'Pray is hesitant to assign the films to
fixed categories, aware of the inter-relation of the two movements/disciplines. 26
Roger Cardinal, discussing the role of puppets and animated things in
Švankmajer's work, makes a brief diversion to note that 1983's Down to the
Cellar (Do pivnice) contains 'political allegory' 27 but does not clarify the nature of
the allegory. This may be in agreement with Švankmajer's assertion in interview
with Wendy Jackson that he regards all of his films as politically 'engaged' yet
not concerned with specific political phenomena. 28 Likewise, Meg Rickards
provides a quote from Švankmajer spoken in the documentary The Animator of
Prague (James Marsh, 1980): 'I consider all my films to be political – some
more than others.'29

Writing on Jiří Barta

Writing on Jiří Barta tends to appear within broader academic texts on
animation, Czech cinema or fairytale films. Providing a politically inflected
reading of Barta's Rat Catcher, Ivana Košuličová sees the film as interrogating
'the decline of socialist society in the mid-1980s.' 30 Peter Hames in Czech and
Slovak Cinema cites Košuličová's interpretation, but does not further it. 31 Jack
Zipes in The Enchanted Screen (2010) provides the same reading as
26
Michael O'Pray, 'Jan Švankmajer: A Mannerist Surrealist', in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn,
pp.40-66 (pp.51-52).
27
Roger Cardinal, 'Thinking through Things: The Presence of Objects in the Early Films of Jan
Švankmajer', in Hames, Dark Alchemy, pp.67-82 (p.73).
28
Švankmajer interviewed by Wendy Jackson, 'The Surrealist Conspirator: An Interview with
Jan Svankmajer', Animation World Magazine, 2.3 (June 1997)
<http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.3/issue2.3pages/2.3jacksonsvankmajer.html> [accessed 14
September 2014].
29
Švankmajer in The Animator of Prague (James Marsh, 1980) quoted by Meg Rickards,
'Uncanny Breaches, Flimsy Borders: Jan Švankmajer's Conscious and Unconscious Worlds',
Animation Studies, 5 (4 February 2011)
<http://journal.animationstudies.org/category/volume-5/meg-rickards-uncanny-breaches-flimsy-
borders-jan-svankmajers-conscious-and-unconscious-worlds/> [accessed 14 September 2014].
30
Ivana Košuličová, 'The Morality of Horror: Jiří Barta's Krysař (The Pied Piper, 1985)', Kinoeye,
2.1 (7 January 2002)
<http://www.kinoeye.org/02/01/kosulicova01_no2.php> [accessed 14 September 2014].
31
Peter Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009),
p.200.

25
Košuličová though without specific mention of her article, although extends its
contemporary resonance with a veiled reference to the corporate scandals and
economic crash of the new century. 32 Elsewhere English language references to
Barta are consigned to enthusiasts on blogs, festival programmes, or the
broadest of accounts in stop-motion “how to” guides and general histories of
animation, as already discussed.

Writing on Thing Theory

Thing theory is a materialist school of critical theory dedicated to the
study of objects, things and their role within culture. One of the central tenants
of thing theory is that to assess the symbolic or functional role of any given
object within a cultural text (whether a novel, a film, or a painting) one must first
attend to the object's material reality. As such, thing theory is closely connected
to both museum studies and anthropology, though has most regularly been
employed within a broader framework of literary studies, notably by its foremost
practitioner Bill Brown.
Jiří Trnka's films prove particularly receptive to the methods of thing
theory because they often concern the close relationship between humans and
objects. Moreover, Trnka's simple, household objects are outwardly more
functional than symbolic; their political meaning is generally a function of some
essential, material quality inherent to the object, as will be demonstrated across
the chapter. Moreover, because Trnka's films generally have either domestic or
pastoral settings, his interest lies with everyday objects that are part of common
usage and generally not thought too deeply about.
Daniel Miller in The Comfort of Things (2008), his anthropological
account of the relationship between people and things 33 in an anonymous East
London street, takes a broad approach to the role that things play within
people's lives. Thus for Miller, the act of understanding things is simultaneous
and non-sequential; which is to say, he is more concerned with how things
might interact with subjects in the now, rather than with tracking a thing's
metamorphoses through time. For Miller, it would be more conducive, say, to
think all-at-once about the relation between figurines on a mantelpiece than to

32
Jack Zipes, The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-tale Films (New York:
Routledge, 2011), p.213.
33
Miller prefers to use 'thing' rather than 'object'.

26
interrogate, for instance, whether the bone ash that constitutes a porcelain
horse came from a knacker's yard. Miller thus neglects the constitution of things
for their inter-relations. Problematically, Miller returns several times to the issue
of the materiality of things as being central to the project, though too often when
the relationships between things is discussed, it is this very thingness that
becomes obscured.
If Miller is concerned with broadening the notion of the thing to include
human memories and desires as constitutive of things themselves, fellow
anthropologist Martin Holbraad – co-editor of Thinking Through Things:
Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (2006) and author of Truth in Motion: The
Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination (2012) – perceives his project as
'widening the circle of the human'. 34 In an illuminating comment on Miller's
academic blog, Holbraad establishes the difference, as he sees it, between his
own approach and Miller's; 'Crudely put, I think your decency leads you to
*embrace* your informants, and that puts you on the spot when it comes to
articulating the assumptions that might allow you to do so. Conversely, my
concern for decency leads me to remain silent about my informants [...] as with
God, I feel I cannot presume to say anything “about” them.' 35 There is a split of
intent, namely, does one wish to give a voice to things per se or to those to
whom things are important? Miller falls within the latter camp and in so doing
might be described as a humanist, while Holbraad aligns himself with the former
approach as a post-humanist. Miller's approach is deeply empathetic, which
risks distorting his case studies through his personal feelings for his
participants, while Holbraad's approach might neglect “common sense” ideas
about how people feel that they relate to things.
To understand how the things of Czech cinema encode political dissent, I
will seek a third way between these two approaches. This would involve
following Holbraad's stated, but yet unaccomplished aim of:

[T]aking fully on board the post-human (e.g. Latourian) point that a

34
Martin Holbraad, 'Can the Thing Speak?', OAC Press, 7 (12 January 2011)
<http://openanthcoop.net/press/2011/01/12/can-the-thing-speak/> [accessed 14 September
2014].
35
Martin Holbraad, 'Thoughts on 'Thinking Through Things'', commenting on Daniel Miller,
'Thinking Through Things' (Material World Blog, 4 March 2007)
<http://www.materialworldblog.com/2006/12/thinking-through-things/> [accessed 14 September
2014] (ellipsis own, asterisks in original).

27
 proper emancipation of the thing must eschew any principled
distinction between it and humans as a starting-point [...] finding a
way nevertheless to credit the Ingoldian intuition that a full-hog
emancipation of the thing must place those characteristics that are
most thing-like or “thingy” [...] at the top of its agenda. 36

I would add to this, that Miller's profound sense of empathy for the human must
also not be lost.
While Miller, an anthropologist, is concerned by what things say about
people and Holbraad, also an anthropologist, believes that a distinction between
people and things must be collapsed, Bill Brown – a literary theorist – is
concerned primarily with what things might say about themselves. His
monograph A Sense of Things (2003) rests upon an ontological distinction
between 'objecthood' and 'thinghood' discussed at the beginning of this
introduction.37 Objects in works by four American-Victorian novelists – Mark
Twain, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett and Henry James – are traced across a
trajectory of encroaching modernism in which things are increasingly fetishised;
not just as commodities, a la Marx, but for their thingness. However, as Brown's
focus is upon objects as represented in works of literature, he might
ocassionally be accused of an ontological blurring that confuses the textual
thing that exists as a word-concept, imaginatively given life by the reader, with
those artefacts that physically exist within reality, such as the objects of the
stop-motion films of my thesis.
As of writing, thing theory proper has no anthology within film studies,
though there have been papers that explicitly deal with its themes, such as
Brown's 'Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny' on Spike Lee's
Bamboozled (2000). Elsewhere, Patrick Crogan in his paper 'Things Analog and
Digital' provides case studies of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and James
Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) to argue that while both
analogue and digital special effects in cinema ask the audience to respond with
awe, analogue techniques (hydraulics; make-up) make the labour behind the
effects manifest, so that we are impressed by the transformation of raw matter
into new and exciting forms; digital effects mask the intensive human labour

36
Ibid (ellipses and brackets own).
37
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.76.

28
they require, obscuring their means of production. 38
Elsewhere, ambitious and far-reaching philosophical enquiries into
material culture, such as Barbara Johnson's Persons and Things (2010) touch
upon films as examples to illuminate broader philosophic ideas, rather than as
case studies in their own right. Several of the existing anthologies that might be
aligned with thing theory in terms of their objects of focus and methods of
investigation – such as Sherry Turkle's edited volume Evocative Objects:
Things We Think With (2011), Lorraine Daston's Things that Talk: Object
Lessons from Art and Science (2007) or Bill Brown's seminal volume Things
(2004) – devote single chapters to individual things and are inter-disciplinary in
nature. However, the area of research that still dominates thing theory is
Victorian Studies, with volumes including Talia Schaffer's Novel Craft: Victorian
Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (2014), Jonathon Shears'
and Jen Harrison's Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians (2013), Elaine
Freedgood's The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel
(2006) and Bill Brown's own The Material Unconscious: American Amusement,
Stephen Crane, and the Economies of Play (1997) that focuses on Stephen
Crane's writing and the late American-Victorian period. These works have a
very different focus to my own, but writers like Brown and Freedgood touch
upon ideas about how one might approach writing about objects and things that
I will explore and develop in my first chapter, 'It's the Simple Things: Animated
Allegories against Nazi and Soviet Oppression'.

Writing on Actor-Network Theory

Actor-network theory is a mode of enquiry generally applied within
science studies and sociology, the principles of which have been established
most thoroughly by French philosopher Bruno Latour. Actor-network theory
(A.N.T. for short) holds that to investigate any given phenomenon, event,
organisation etc. one might consider the subject of observation as an ever-
shifting and fluctuating network composed of provisionally inter-connected
actors.
A.N.T. chimes profoundly with the ideas expressed by the films of Jan
Švankmajer, not least because Švankmajer's films often depict political
38
Patrick Crogan, 'Things Analog and Digital', Senses of Cinema, 5 (April 2000)
<http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2000/5/digital/> [accessed 14 September 2014].

29
processes as being composed, not only of humans with cognition, but also non-
human objects and things that are just as dynamic and active (if not more so)
than their human counterparts. Švankmajer's work requires us to divest
ourselves of traditional human-animal-object hierarchies and instead consider
the ways in which the stuff that makes up the world is inextricably intertwined.
Latour's most committed introduction to A.N.T. is Reassembling the
Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2007) although sections of
both Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (2004) and
Pandora's Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies (1999) work
through ideas that later find more concrete expression in actor-network-theory.
Graham Harman's Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (2009)
provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to both Latour and actor-
network-theory, situating the philosopher's work within a scholarly context,
giving particular weight to the influence of Martin Heidegger upon his unique
metaphysics. The sociologists Michel Callon and John Law are also associated
with actor-network-theory. John Law, as a philosopher of science, has written on
the way in which the process of scientific enquiry is entangled with and
constructed by the multiple stories that scientists, onlookers and others tell and
share about any given scientific project. As a case study to illustrate how
science is constructed through discourse, Law uses the creation of the military
aircraft the TSR2, which he details in Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in
Technoscience (2002). Meanwhile, Michel Callon's anthology The Laws of the
Markets (1998) uses actor-network-theory (in early, developmental form) as a
means by which to consider market forces in their relation to broader networks
of high-complexity. As with the aforementioned thing theorist investigations into
Victorian literature, the focus of these texts is both outside my area of expertise
and markedly dissimilar to my own research, justifying the restricted focus upon
Bruno Latour's more comprehensive writings on actor-network-theory and those
writers who have, in turn, written on Latour.
Many of the published books on actor-network-theory take the form of
discipline-specific case studies. The titles of these works are often self-evident,
such as Tara Fenwick's and Richard Edwards' Actor-Network Theory in
Education (2010) or Ignacio Farías' and Thomas Bender's edited anthology
Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies

30
(2011). Likewise, Actor-Network Theory and Tourism: Ordering, Materiality and
Multiplicity (2012) edited by René van der Duim, Carina Ren and Gunnar Thór
Jóhannesson, restricts itself to the topic provided by its title.
As of the time of writing, there is no anthology or monograph dedicated to
actor-network-theory and film studies, or cinema more generally. The two
academic works which have perhaps come closest to discussing the role of
A.N.T. within film studies are Anita Lam's Making Crime Television: Producing
Entertaining Representations of Crime for Television Broadcast (2013) and
Ilana Gershon's 2010 journal article 'Actor-Network Theory and Documentary
Studies'. Lam's book is in response to what she regards as the 'black-boxing' of
television crime drama.39 By this, Lam means that academics who analyse
fictional portrayals of crime tend to focus upon the content of the media as
though the programmes were always already finished. In contrast to this
tendency, Lam's work gives space to the processes by which crime dramas are
produced; considering the programmes she selects as case studies in medias
res as unstable, shifting, multiple and composed from myriad networked actants
(computer processors; multiple script re-writes; researchers; newspaper
columns etc.) that are fundamentally irreducible.
However, ground-level enquiries into methods of production (in lieu of an
unbiased, comprehensive “making of” documentary) require a level of access
that most researchers will find prohibitive. Lam gained access to the writer's
room of the Canadian television drama The Bridge (2010), which was
remarkably conducive to her research.40 This approach, of course, cannot be
replicated for those writing upon programmes or films completed before the
point of writing. Exhibitions of Švankmajer's sculptures, such as the 'Inner Life
of Objects' exhibition at the University of Brighton in 2013, allow a productive
glimpse at the post-cinematic life of some of the objects of his films. Production
diaries for Švankmajer's later feature-length works are also available – extracts
from which will be considered in Chapter Four. However, for the most part, the
analysis in this chapter will consign itself to what is visible within the works
themselves.
Ilana Gershon's paper 'Actor-Network Theory and Documentary Studies'
39
Anita Lam, Making Crime Television: Producing Entertaining Representations of Crime for
Television Broadcast (New York: Routledge, 2014), p.3.
40
Lam, pp.50-56.

31
is concerned with the circulation and social construction of 'truth values' 41 within
the network of the documentary and how 'objective' truth – so constructed – is a
function of power.42 She writes that according to A.N.T. 'all beings and objects,
whether constructed as volitional or not, are active contributors to the network
[...] This involves refusing to take objects as simply standing for particular
symbolic meanings or information, but rather viewing objects as structuring
engagements in their own right.'43 This statement resonates with the role that
objects have within Czech animated political allegory – they are not merely, as
will be demonstrated in Chapter One, place-holders for symbolic meaning, but
have their own role to play in-and-of themselves. In the first chapter, focused
upon Trnka, the emphasis will be upon the objects taken individually in terms of
each having their own singular shape, texture, weight etc. In the second
chapter, focused upon Švankmajer, in accordance with the principles of A.N.T.
the objects of the director's works will be considered as, to quote Gershon,
'structuring engagements in their own right'. 44 Gershon reminds us that by
rejecting the binaries of human and non-human (amongst others) 'ANT
presumes that every thing and everyone is profoundly relational'. 45

Writing on Henri Lefebvre and Rhythmanalysis

Rhythmanalysis is a methodology developed by post-Marxist philosopher
Henry Lefebvre for studying the rhythms of everyday life. According to
Lefebvre's philosophy, space offers a concrete embodiment of social relations.
As such, to understand how power and ideology function within a given
environment one must first unpack the rhythms in the environment, giving
attention to how they interact, clash, repeat or exist in harmony with one
another.
Jiří Barta's filmography returns time and again to the theme of ritual and
repetition, namely how humans (or even non-human actors) adopt certain social
roles or functions through their acquiescence to rhythms that inhere within
architectural and natural spaces. To understand Barta's cinema, one must

41
Ilana Gershon, 'Actor-Network Theory and Documentary Studies', Studies in Documentary
Film, 4.1 (2010), 65-78 (p.75).
42
Gershon, p.76.
43
Gershon, p.72 (ellipsis own).
44
Ibid.
45
Gershon, p.66.

32
examine the way time and space are constructed within his films, as well as the
objects governed by the rituals and rhythms that these impose.
Immediately it should be apparent that rhythmanalysis can be applied to
the study of film, since film is a temporal-spatial medium, structured according
to the rhythms of editing. However, despite the clear affinities between the
methodology and the medium, there is a limited amount of academic work
within film studies that employs Lefebvre's ideas. Aga Skrodzka uses some
quotations from The Production of Space in Magic Realist Cinema in East
Central Europe (2012) to illuminate the distinction between the city and nature
and the unmasking of the labour hidden inside consumer objects in Piotr
Trzaskalski's Edi (2002).46 Les Roberts engages with Lefebvre's
conceptualisation of urban space in the second chapter of his monograph on
Liverpool on screen: Film, Mobility and Urban Space. His understanding of
Liverpool as a cinematic representation encompasses both how the city is
depicted in film and how these representations then shape the city itself. As
such, he follows Lefebvre in arguing that representational abstractions of space
(such as maps; illustrations; architectural designs; even film images) do not
merely depict space, but actively construct it. Like Lefebvre, Roberts insists that
it is only through engaging with the lived space of social reality that citizens and
artists can resist the top-down tyranny of representations of space, although he
provides little in the way of case studies to illustrate how cinema might partake
in this resistant, progressive engagement with space, rather than replicating the
hegemonic ideologies sustained by urban planning and other spatial practices. 47
Other critics are less sustained in their engagement with rhythmanalysis
and the ideas of Lefebvre. In Recent Italian Cinema: Spaces, Contexts,
Experiences (2009) Tiziana Ferrero-Regis mentions Lefebvre's notion that the
regions of Italy that border the Mediterranean have been coded as spaces for
commercialised leisure.48 Mattias Frey compares Lefebvre's 'synthetic' approach
to 'material culture' to that of German film-maker Oskar Roehler in a paper for

46
Aga Skrodzka, Magic Realist Cinema in East Central Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2012), pp.111-112.
47
Les Roberts, Film, Mobility and Urban Space: A Cinematic Geography of Liverpool (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2012), pp.32-63.
48
Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, Recent Italian Cinema: Spaces, Contexts, Experiences (Leicester:
Troubadour Publishing, 2009), pp.211-212.

33
Cinema Journal.49 Elsewhere, Ranjani Mazumdar uses Lefebvre's distinction
between the 'utterance' and the 'language' of the city to consider the Mumbai
tampori – a rowdy, urban male youth – as a figure that might be read like a text
to better understand the 'Mumbai experience'. 50
One paper that is wholly committed to applying rhythmanalysis to film is
Eitan Freedenberg's currently unpublished 'One-Minute Boogie Woogie:
Rhythmanalysis and Landscape Cinema' (2013), which unpicks the rhythms of
the films of James Benning to illuminate the workings of capital within the
Californian landscapes he depicts. Freedenberg usefully opens a space for
rhythmanalysis in film studies by situating the methodology in relation to the
previously discussed phenomenological writings of Vivian Sobchack, asserting;
'The multisensory registers of Sobchack’s cinesthetic subject are remarkably
similar to that of the rhythmanalyst, who must first perceive the rhythms
immanent to his somatic self in order to discriminate between, classify, and fully
decode exterior rhythms – natural, social, or industrial.' 51 Through making this
comparison Freedenberg reminds us that the cinema viewer is not a
disembodied eye, but an embodied subject.
However, while drawing parallels between Lefebvre's figure of the
rhythmanalyst and Sobchack's cinesthetic subject, Freedenberg neglects the
differences between these two figures, leading to implicitly contradictory
theorisation. For, while the rhythmanalyst internalises environmental rhythms in
order to measure them against her own bodily rhythms, she must also act like a
detached sociologist, observing and recording rhythms with precision and
accuracy. However, the ontological ambivalence of such a theorisation can be
preserved, rather than closed down along the binary of embodiment or
detachment, through recalling Perez' assertion that film images are neither
wholly reproductions of reality, nor simply projected constructions – rather, film
partakes of reality while simultaneously transforming it. The spectator is

49
Mattias Frey, 'No(ir) Place to Go: Spatial Anxiety and Sartorial Intertextuality in "Die
Unberührbare"', Cinema Journal, 45.4 (summer 2006), 64-80 (p.76).
50
Ranjani Mazumdar, 'Figure of the 'Tapori': Language, Gesture and Cinematic City', Economic
and Political Weekly, 36 (29 December 2001 – 4 January 2002), 4872-4880 (p.4875).
51
Eitan Freedenberg, 'One-Minute Boogie Woogie: Rhythmanalysis and Landscape Cinema' /
'Rhythmanalyzing the Films of James Benning' (unpublished doctoral paper, University of
Rochester, spring 2013), p.21 (emphasis in original)
<http://www.academia.edu/3506889/One_Minute_Boogie_Woogie_Rhythmanalysis_and_Lands
cape_Cinema> [accessed 14 September 2014].

34
voyeuristically, temporally and spatially detached from the flat images upon the
screen, while vicariously enveloped in the film's perspectives and movements;
emotionally, cognitively and sympathetically invested in the film's world and
characters. The viewer watches from a distance while affected at the level of
their body – present, yet not. I intend to uphold this often paradoxical
experience of film-going across my thesis, rather than simplifying spectatorship
in order to better align my theorisation with a pre-existent ideological framework.

Writing on the City of Prague

Several academic monographs have been written on cultural and
architectural aspects of the city of Prague. Cynthia Paces' Prague Panoramas
(2009) examines how Czech national identity has been constructed and
articulated through buildings, monuments and other 'sites of national memory'. 52
Paces articulates the central thesis of her project most succinctly as follows:

The definitions of what it meant to be part of the Czech nation or its

capital city have never been fully agreed upon, and debates on this
have often played out in Prague's public spaces, through temporary
commemorations, such as parades and protects or through
permanent sites of memory: statues, monuments or buildings. 53

Film directors and animators have the capacity to stage these debates in a
uniquely non-verbal way, through engaging with the city's 'sites of memory'
poetically and creatively and setting those monumental aspects of the city
discussed by Paces (Charles Bridge; the statues of Jan Hus and Saint
Wenceslas) in dialogue with its less “respectable” quarters (the old Jewish
ghetto and cemetery; the tired pubs and seedy bars; subways; mediocre
shopping districts) through provocative uses of editing, animation and montage.
Alfred Thomas is also concerned with the construction of Czech national
identity, but as filtered through literary representations of the city of Prague. In
Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory and the City (2010) Thomas refers to
Prague as a 'palimpsest',54 comparing it to 'a multilayered manuscript on which

52
Cynthia Paces, Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth
Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), p.2.
53
Ibid.
54
Alfred Thomas, Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory and the City (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2010), p.7

35
numerous writers have left their trace without completely effacing the presence
of their predecessors.'55 Thomas' description overly privileges the written word
over other forms of inscription, such as those of smell and touch (not to mention
the audio-visual), however his concept of the city as a palimpsest is provocative
and useful. When poets and novelists write about Prague, they inscribe their
words onto the city itself; directors and animators do the same with sounds and
images. Writers and film-makers who choose to depict the city are faced with
layers of cultural inscription to imitate, borrow, interpret, reinvent, or disregard.
Czech Surrealism – which has existed and continues to exist as a
seperate strain to Parisian Surrealism, evolving not from DADA but from the
inter-war Czech avant-garde movements Devětsil and Poetism – has an
intimate relationship with the city of Prague, where the Czech Surrealist Group
still practices and exhibits. Derek Sayer's Prague, Capital of the Twentieth
Century: A Surrealist History (2012) considers Prague as a stage upon which
the tragedies of late modernity played out; catalogued, mourned and rendered
absurd by Czech Surrealists and their Parisian counterparts. Surrealism set a
historical precedent regarding the relationship between cinema and everyday
object which, while not the primary focus of this thesis, will be touched upon in
Chapter Two in order to better contextualise the work of Jan Švankmajer.

Materialist Similarities between Methods

The core commonalities of thing theory, actor-network theory and

rhythmanalysis will ensure that the theorisation across this project remains
coherent and will allow for each of these theories to be used in tandem within
the fourth, final chapter of the thesis without moving too far between conflicting
ontologies and perspectives.
Thing theory, A.N.T. and rhythmanalysis are united by the fact that they
each seek to place an emphasis upon the non-human. All three methodologies
are materialist, albeit in differing ways.
Thing theory is materialist because it insists that the material history of
objects and things is essential to understanding how they operate in a given text
(film texts in the case of this thesis). Thing theory refuses to treat things

55
Ibid.

36
symbolically before first interrogating their materiality. The interest, shared by
thing theorists, in illuminating the hidden histories of power that adhere within
consumer goods and commodities – the interest in unearthing hidden labour –
stems from a Marxist-materialistic engagement with socio-political realities.
Thing theory allows things to be read semiotically, but it also insists that things
are not mere signifiers, countering the ideology of post-structuralism.
Actor-network-theory, meanwhile, is materialist due to its rejection of
metaphysics in favour of ontology. Latour's refusal to use framing concepts such
as “nature” or “culture” to inform his argumentation is materialist since it insists
that the A.N.T. theorist must work with stuff as is. A theorist who subscribes to
the critical assumptions of A.N.T. must resist any tendency to elevate certain
actors above the material world. Like thing theory, A.N.T. is concerned with
narratives of history and labour, especially when they give rise to claims of
universal truth or objectivity, of which A.N.T. is rigorously sceptical. Furthermore,
A.N.T. is concerned with non-human actors/objects that go unnoticed by other
critical theories. It is a materialist position to claim that a stone is always
potentially worthy of analysis.
The writings of Henri Lefebvre are, even more so than in the case of a
thing theorist like Bill Brown, indebted to Marxist scientific-materialism.
However, Lefebvre's work represents a departure from a strictly dialectical
method in favour of a mode of analysis that favours the tripartite structure of
melody, harmony and rhythm (latterly with a focus upon rhythm). That is to say,
instead of a focus upon ideological oppositions that clash violently until a point
of eventual synthesis, Lefebvre's writing tends to assume a greater sense of
balance/harmony between competing impulses which, while often distorted or
transfigured by capitalism, are generally grounded in the natural or material
world. For Lefebvre, discussing ideology entails discussing the experiences of
daily lived life at ground level in the midst of things. Lefebvre's writing is, in a
sense, more consistently materialist than that of many Marxist thinkers, since he
is reluctant to use ideological abstractions to illustrate a point, unless concrete
examples can be found. He tends to work from the micro, rather than the macro
– a tendency shared by thing theorists who analyse a single object, or actor-
network-theorists who interrogate a single actant.
All three of the methodologies employed across this thesis necessitate

37
close, attentive reading. I will be working upwards from the films, rather than
using films as case studies to fit my ideological assumptions. This is because
respecting the materialism of thing theory, A.N.T. and rhythmanalysis means
building from micro examples that exist provisionally and moment-by-moment,
moving upwards towards conclusions, rather than imposing an a-priori
framework or schema to which a film is forced to fit. Thing theory bids the
academic to work from objects themselves, resisting the temptation to draw
symbolic readings sooner rather than later. Similarly, A.N.T. and rhythmanalysis
require the practitioner to respond moment-by-moment to ever shifting networks
of interconnected rhythms and things. If such analysis seems partial and
fragmentary, then that is because it seeks to describe systems that are neither
closed nor completed. Politically this accords with an anarchist sensibility that is
resistant to authoritarian truth claims. A fragment of rhetoric from turn-of-the-
century French anarchist Zo d'Axa unexpectedly chimes with resonance at this
juncture, though d'Axa was referring to political theories, rather than academic
ones:

There is no Absolute. If the facts lead us today to specify such and

such a way to see and be, every day, in the lively articles of our
expressive collaborators, our determination has been clearly affirmed
[...] Up till now nothing has revealed to us the radiant beyond.
Nothing has given us a constant criterion. Life’s panorama changes
without ceasing, and the facts appear to us under a different light
depending on the hour. We will never react against the attractions of
contradictory points of view.56

This spontaneous, ground level, even improvisatory approach to problem

solving is common to all three of my chosen methodologies and allows for a
partial synthesis of methods, in which the conclusions of any one theory might
overlap with another, or even offer a provocative contradiction. Notably, this is
also the favoured approach of Václav Havel's so-called “politics without politics”,
which will be addressed in some detail in Chapter One. However, despite the
fact that Chapter Four does not provide a singular overarching Grand Theory
with which to explain the city of Prague and its relation to the national and
personal identity of its inhabitants, a provisional methodology will help illuminate

56
Zo d'Axa, 'Us', L’En-Dehors, 1896, trans. by Mitch Abidor, 2004
Archived at: <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zo-daxa/1896/us.htm> [accessed 12
May 2015] (ellipsis own).

38
and clarify the series of portraits of Prague constructed by Czech films made
post-1989 and what these portraits suggest about Czech national identity in this
period. Being a citizen of any city involves being a thing amongst things as part
of a complex network of actants, interacting according to variegated rhythms.
The method for reading each film's political meaning involves considering the
film's objects and things; understanding their functioning within a network (or
the absence of such a network); then considering their function within this
network in terms of rhythm. So, for example, in the discussion of Jiří Barta's
Cook, Mug, Cook! (Domečku, vař!, 2007) several individual objects in the film,
including a cooking pot and a hacksaw, will be isolated and examined in relation
to thing theory. The way in which these objects are kept atomised, deprived of a
network, will be then be considered. Finally the rhythms of these objects in the
absence of a network will be discussed and political conclusions drawn.

Theoretical Models Omitted from this Study

Restrictions of space and the need to keep this thesis theoretically and
structurally coherent ensure that some critical approaches that could, in a
different study, prove pertinent to the analysis of Czech animated allegory, will
be neglected here.
Firstly, the films in this thesis will not be approached from the perspective
of animation practice. There will be brief discussion of certain specificities of
stop-motion puppet films (for instance, the fact that Trnka himself did not
manipulate the puppets of his films; the flickering effect caused by the
movement of the sun across the sky during the shooting of one of Barta's films;
Švankmajer's use of quick dissolves in combination with stop-motion
photography etc.) but little on how puppets were jointed, or the use of
replacement puppets, or precisely how certain objects are being manipulated
between frames. While there will be some engagement with the critical writing
of animation theorists like Paul Wells, the thesis is fundamentally a work of film
theory and does not belong within the field of animation studies. The films will
be approached from a theoretical position, not from the perspective of an
animator or practitioner. This is not merely because I lack the pre-requisite
knowledge to do so, but because I am primarily concerned with how these films
function at the point of being viewed. Indeed, without access to detailed

39
production notes or access to the film-makers' animation studios at the point of
filming, any specific claims related to animation practice would be speculative
and unverifiable without recourse to interviews or production stills. To engage
fully with animation practice in films of Czech practitioners would require a study
without the allegorical encoding of objects as its focus, since my thesis will
demonstrate that this encoding is generally accomplished through cinematic
techniques and properties of the objects, rather than animation techniques per
se (although, as stated, these contribute to political meaning and will be
discussed when relevant).
The ideas of Giles Deleuze will also not provide a methodological focus
for my study, although a couple of ideas/extracts from Cinema 1: The
Movement-Image (Cinéma 1. L'Image-Mouvement, 1983) will be used to
illuminate the concept of unstable things in Chapter Two that defy easy
categorisation due to their ceaseless transformations and changing
contingencies. However, few of the objects in this thesis might be considered
immanent things; rather, the animators I am interested in attend to a thingy
materialism that often precedes or resists abstract conceptualisation.
Christopher Vitale suggests that to see cinema as Deleuze does one must 'think
of all nouns as verbs'. 57 This is appropriate when objects are behaving as things
(which is why the closest I get to engaging with Deleuzean theory is Chapter
Two – Bruno Latour shares with Deleuze a conception of the world as
fundamentally networked) but not when the stolid noun is the very matter that
viewers are asked to “hold in their minds”. Deleuze's notion of cinema is that it
is a partial and fragmentary projection of an already fractal and holographic
universe. Such a conception cannot but radically reconfigure stubborn
materiality in a way that is at odds with the political project of many of the films
discussed (especially those of Trnka and Barta, which are fundamentally
backwards-looking, traditionalist and adhere to natural conceptions of time).
My work is concerned with how objects communicate meaning, but these
meanings rarely spin off into countless heterogeneous directions. Indeed, this
will be a considerable tension in the chapter on Švankmajer and A.N.T. since

57
Christopher Vitale, 'Guide to Reading Deleuze’s The Movement-Image, Part I: The Deleuzian
Notion of the Image, or Worldslicing as Cinema Beyond the Human' (Brooklyn: Networkologies,
04 April 2011) <https://networkologies.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/the-deleuzian-notion-of-the-
image-a-slice-of-the-world-or-cinema-beyond-the-human/> [accessed 18 June 2015].

40
while actor-network theory insists that the network is heterogeneous, multiple
and not easily isolated, Švankmajer makes films like wunderkammers in which
arrangements might be eclectic, but everything has its right place and the
objects play through their neurotic rituals as though on pre-determined paths.
Arguably this tendency is less present in the short films Švankmajer produced
after he joined the Czech Surrealism Group in 1970, at which point his films'
allegorical meanings become less systematic. The focus in my chapter will be
largely upon Švankmajer's earlier Mannerist films which maintain a more
allegorical approach to their subjects. This is not to say that Deleuze is not
compatible with allegorical study (the power of his work is that it is so broadly
applicable to different systems and ontologies) but that his work problematises
stable ontologies in such a way as to make the allegorical project untenable.
This could provide the starting point of a useful deconstruction of allegory in
film, yet the allegories are unlikely to remain intact and “readable” in the sense
of offering stable political messages relevant to a given time and place. Finally,
working with Deleuze, in the sense of applying his ideas systematically to the
analysis to films is – to quote David Surman – 'challenging, to say the least.' 58
That something is challenging does not, of course, mean that it is
insurmountable, as demonstrated by Patricia Pisters with her 2003 monograph
The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory, but I would
contend that Deleuze's writing requires a level of engagement that precludes
the use of my three other more central methodologies, each of which offer a
degree of materialist (rather than metaphysical) analysis not present in
Deleuze's work.
Lastly, despite it being the only critical theory explicitly endorsed by the
Surrealist movement, psychoanalysis will not be used to decode the objects of
the films in this thesis. As mentioned, Jan Švankmajer – whose works constitute
the case studies of Chapter Two – is a member of the Czech Surrealist Group.
As such, one might imagine that Švankmajer's films would be singularly
receptive to psychoanalytical readings. Indeed, often, as in the feature length
work Lunacy (Šílení, 2005), the director is clearly working within a
psychoanalytical mode. However, psychoanalysis privileges human needs and

58
David Surman, 'Reviewed Work: The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film
Theory by Patricia Pisters', Leonardo, 37.5 (2004), 415-416 (p.415).

41
desires. The processes of projection, sublimation and transference are all-too-
human defence mechanisms, even while they play out beneath the conscious
mind. Švankmajer, however, states that 'the irrationality of the dialogue of
objects' in his films resists the anthropocentric tendency of humans to only view
objects in terms of their own needs.59 The objects of his films should be taken on
their own terms. An interpretative framework such as psychoanalysis is not
respectful enough in its treatment of objects, not content to leave them as
simple things, transforming them into subjective phenomena, belonging more to
inner phantasy than to the outer world of ontological being. Psychoanalysis has
no space for stuff. This is precisely what Bill Brown is critiquing when he states
that 'psychoanalysis [...] represses the object world, unfailingly translating it into
the human world'.60 The opening section of Chapter Two will consider the
specific case study of Švankmajer's 1971 adaptation of Jabberwocky to
demonstrate in further detail how psychoanalysis is limited when it comes to the
analysis of the animator's work.
More generally, psychoanalysis (at least in its Freudian incarnation)
contains its own interpretive schemata and set of recurring symbols and
narratives. My intention is to explicate the political messages encoded in the
material objects of the films I study. Simultaneously offering a psychoanalytical
interpretation of the films might, in some cases, lead to illumination and
synthesis, but it other cases it would lead to obfuscation and contradiction.
Simply put, psychoanalysis provides a methodology for a different study to my
own.

What Will Be Achieved and Why

This thesis intends to illuminate some works of Czech animation, many of

which have been critically neglected, whether due to certain historical realities
or the comparative lack of focus upon East-European cinema within film
studies.61 This illumination will propose some forms of materialist engagement
59
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.118.
60
Bill Brown, 'Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny', Critical Inquiry, 32 (winter
2006), 175-207 (p.198) (ellipsis own).
61
In her 2003 monograph Cinema of the Other Europe Dina Iordanova authoritatively asserts
that '[t]he concept of European cinema is still more or less synonymous with West European
film-making, and the teaching of European cinema barely covers East Central European
traditions.' Dina Iordanova, Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East
Central European Film (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), p.1 (brackets own). That said, while

42
that offer a way of talking about film quite distinct from the current paradigms of
critical or cognitive theory. The methods of thing theory, actor-network-theory
and rhythmanalysis (either deployed separately or in combination) will not
answer every question we may ask about films. It strikes me that thing theory –
due to its emphasis upon objects – is particularly suited to the discussion of
stop-motion animation. Rhythmanalysis is perhaps best served as a kind of
viscerally felt, poetic augmentation to current modes of writing on film editing.
Actor-network-theory offers less of a methodology, than it does a set of critical
practices and assumptions that may help steer an analyst in the direction of
things that might otherwise be missed (an actor always wore gloves on set; a fly
entered a scene and landed on the table; the shooting script was written in
cursive etc.)
However, the work of this thesis itself is focused and limited. It will show
how several Czech film-makers encoded/encode objects and things in space
and in time (and sometimes those times and spaces themselves) with political
meaning. What these meanings are and how these meanings are
communicated will be illustrated. Some of these films were made under the rule
of the Czech Communist Party, in which the threat of censorship or persecution
necessitated the use of allegory. More recent films take an allegorical form in
spite of purported artistic freedom. All these films, however, have something to
say about Czech identity, culture, history or politics within the 20 th (and now 21st)
century. Whether the film-makers are speaking through objects, or the objects
are speaking for themselves, is open to debate.

the hegemony of Western European cinema may hold true as a general trend within the
discipline, academic journals such as Kinoeye or Studies in Eastern European Cinema have
forged a significant niche for the study of Eastern/Central European cinema within film studies.

43
Chapter One: 'It’s the Simple Things':
Animated Allegories against Nazi and Soviet
Oppression
Introduction to the Chapter

The animated films considered within this thesis are either political
allegories or contain traces of political allegory. Thing theory complicates any
simple notion of allegory, since it demonstrates that in an allegorical work, the
latent, symbolic meaning of a given object does not necessarily require the
subordination of the object's manifest, material content in order for the allegory
to communicate its moral, political or intellectual message. It is not merely
enough to state that the objects in Czech animations are sometimes politically
encoded, it is important to look at how the material specifics of these objects
(texture; weight; dilapidation; etc.) are essential in generating the political
meaning of a given work.
Four animated films will be used as case studies – Trnka and Brdečka's
Springman and the SS (1946); Týrlová, Kanera and Uzelac's Revolution in
Toyland (Vzpoura Hracek, 1946); Trnka's The Hand (1965); and The Cybernetic
Grandma (Kybernetická Babicka, 1962), also directed by Trnka. The first two of
these films, Revolution in Toyland and Springman and the SS, are post-war
anti-Nazi allegories, made to celebrate the end of World War II and the
withdrawal of Nazi troops from Czechoslovakia. The former is stop-motion
animated, while the latter is a “traditional” two-dimensional animation. The latter
pair of films, Jiří Trnka's Cybernetic Grandma and The Hand, are both stop-
motion animated and were made in the early-mid 1960s, in the years preceding
the Prague Spring. Both offer coded critiques of aspects of Communist rule.
Other films by both Trnka and Týrlová will also be touched upon, to
contextualise the central works and support arguments.
The chapter will demonstrate that these films communicate their political
ideas primarily through the animation of objects. The meanings these objects
communicate are dependent upon specific material attributes possessed by
these objects (the springiness of a pair of springs; the redness of a rubber ball;

44
etc.) so it is essential that the objects are not merely symbols, but are
possessed of a convincing materiality on screen (quite simply achieved in stop-
motion animation; dependent upon draughtsmanship in drawn animation). I
intend to show both what these films are allegories of and, also, how they
communicate their political messages to an audience.

Introduction to Allegory
Allegory is a contested term. Maureen Quilligan goes so far as to state
that 'the status of allegory has been low since the early nineteenth century'
leading 'modern scholars […] to begin not with definitions but with defences.' 62
Indeed, Quilligan's own work merely seeks to establish that allegory is, in itself,
a legitimate genre that can be said to exist. Defined simply, allegory is a
rhetorical or pictorial form in which surface content functions as an extended
metaphor for hidden, symbolic meaning. This meaning tends to be of moral,
spiritual or political import and will sometimes relate to a particular situation
contemporaneous to the author/creator, but will generally also contain a more
universal or generalisable message potentially applicable to all times and
places. The concept and function of allegory is debated because it can be hard
to delineate precisely where a symbolic work becomes allegorical. Many
authors or painters or directors seek to communicate some kind of a message
to their audience, or make use of metaphors or allusions, yet not all such works
should be considered allegories. A requirement of allegory is that its symbolism
is extended to the full length of a work and is internally consistent. For instance,
in a novel a rose might represent the love between two characters, but if the
rose is merely a metaphor used once to illuminate the emotional landscape of
two characters who merely exist as themselves, rather than standing in for
some higher, or more abstract concept/s, then the work is not functioning as an
allegory. Compounding this problem of blurred definitional boundaries is the fact
that classical or early-modern allegories could rely upon a common set of
literary and mythic allusions known to the majority of readers or viewers, such
as figures from the Bible or Greco-Roman myth. Modern writers or artists
working within an allegorical mode have a far wider pool of references to draw

62
Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (New York: Cornell
University Press, 1992), p.14.

45
from, yet they cannot assume common knowledge amongst their audience. As
such, these modern allegories are more likely to open to a broader variety of
readings, or depend less upon prior knowledge or viewership. Such works may
consequently end up being closer to moral fables or fairy-tales (when simplified,
relying less upon allusion) or, on the other hand, more abstract and broadly
symbolic, employing a wide range of symbolism, rather than providing a
coherent allegorical vision. Despite this, Theresa Kelley insists, 'allegory
survives after the Renaissance, against pressures that ought to have done it
in'.63 This is because, in spite of its unfashionable status, the allegorical form
has remained useful to artists working across the 20 th century and beyond.
The allegory is the ideal artistic form for film directors living within a
totalitarian state who are liable to find themselves under scrutiny from their
government. This is because allegory hides its latent meaning beneath its
surface. It says other than what it appears to say. The viewer of a filmed
allegory must act as an interpreter, inferring the meaning of the film and the
intentions of its director through their awareness of parallels between what they
see on screen and some other paradigm/s external to the film, which, ideally,
they have already encountered or been made aware of prior to their viewing.
For instance, the viewer of any of the film adaptations of George Orwell's
Animal Farm (1954 and 1999) would need to be already acquainted with the
figures of Stalin and Trotsky to recognise their doubles in the pigs Napoleon and
Snowball; or, more broadly, be aware that forms of totalitarian power exist within
the human world to understand the film's message. With such knowledge, the
viewer can then adopt a schema taken from the world outside of the film (the
Russian Revolution, for instance) and overlay it upon the diegetic world on the
screen. This is symptomatic of an essential difference between the allegorical
form and the morality story, fable or fairy-tale, which offer self-contained stories,
from which a meaning can be derived in its entirety, without reference to outside
sources or specific historical, political, or social knowledge. This accounts for
the tendency to consider the very young as the appropriate audience for the
latter and the treatment of allegory as a higher, literary form, associated less
with folk culture and instead with the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, or Swift. 64 Of
63
Theresa M. Kelley, Reinventing Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.2.
64
Examples from Jeremy Tambling, Allegory: The New Critical Idiom (New York: Routledge,
2010), pp.1-18.

46
course these are generalisations since, as Jeremy Tambling notes, the
definition of allegory has not historically been a stable one, its theorisation
shifting across the twentieth century. Indeed, Tambling even ventures that
'perhaps there is no definite thing called “allegory”, only forms of writing more or
less 'allegorical'.'65
However, a genre or artistic mode of expressing having blurred
boundaries, does not mean that genre or mode ceases to exist. Despite its
contested status, allegory remains the appropriate term to use within this thesis
in relation to the films studied because, as explained above, they involve a
systematic interplay between a literal meaning and a hidden symbolic meaning
that does not necessarily characterise myth or fantasy as genres in themselves.
Meanwhile, the related genres of fairy-tale or fable make their message explicit
as part of the content of the story. Although some of the cinematic allegories
considered within this thesis are more overt than others, it would be
theoretically possible to view any of the films at the level of story alone,
neglecting the deeper, political meaning. Much of this thesis will be concerned
with not only what messages are communicated by these films, but how these
messages are communicated.
Finally, as Ismail Xavier notes, '[t]hrough-out history, the powers that be
(religious or secular) have protected their interests by censoring texts and
images, and allegory has been a frequent weapon against authoritarian rules.' 66
This of course is the tradition in which the animators living under 20 th century
Czech Communism were working within. Xavier also notes that even in the
case of narrative cinema 'allegory is not simply produced by a storytelling
process involving agents and actions, but also results from visual compositions
that […] establish a clear dialogue with particular iconographical traditions,
ancient and modern.'67 In this study of the political encoding of objects in Czech
animated film it will be vitally important that my conception of 'agents and
actions' is considerably broader than just human actors, their dialogue and
gestures. In fact, my argument hinges upon the point that the allegories chosen
for my study are often more dependent upon 'visual composition' and editing

65
Tambling, p.2.
66
Ismail Xavier, 'Historical Allegory', in A Companion to Film Theory, ed. by Toby Miller and
Robert Stam (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), pp.333-362 (p.344) (brackets own).
67
Xavier, in Miller and Stam, p.337 (ellipsis own).

47
structures, than upon narrative or actors, for the communication of their political
messages.

Allegorical Animations
The films I will be looking at in this chapter are all political allegories,
which comment upon the situation of the citizen or citizens under a repressive
totalitarian system that seeks to curtail civil and artistic liberties. Two of these
films, Trnka and Brdečka's Springman and the SS and Týrlová, Kanera and
Uzelac's Revolution in Toyland – both released in 1946 – explicitly ridicule the
Nazi regime in the wake of the withdrawal of Axis troops from Czechoslovakia
and the defeat of Nazi Germany. I would hesitate to designate these works as
children's films since in Czechoslovakia the boundaries between works
intended for children and those intended for adults were not always as clear-cut
as in the West, especially in the field of animation. In thinking of the proclivity for
mature animation within Czechoslovakia, one should think firstly of Bohemia's
rich history of sophisticated puppet plays 68 and also the workshop-based
production process for animated films, which prohibited total governmental
control69 and so enabled works of nuance and maturity to pass through the
system, often unadulterated. Elsewhere, in the BFI Companion to Eastern
European and Russian Cinema, Peter Hames remarks that during the early
1950s when Stalinist dogma within the creative arts was at its most severe,
Czech animated film was at a creative peak, maintaining the modernist tradition
of formalism even as this was being purged from the live-action cinema. 70
While the two films from 1946 are concerned with banding the nation
together to celebrate the defeat of Nazism and cultivate national myths in the
aftermath of tragedy, the two other films I shall consider as political allegories
concern the struggle of the individual, dispossessed and persecuted by sinister

68
Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, p.189. Hames notes that in the 1840s there were at least
seventy-nine travelling puppet theatre troupes in Bohemia and that far from being an obscure or
marginal cultural force, puppet theatre has been immensely popular across the country's history,
and has performed the mainstream role normally occupied by “live-action” theatre, helped
preserve the Czech language across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and contributed
to political resistance during Nazi occupation.
69
Mira Liehm and Antonin J. Liehm, The Most Important Art: Eastern European Film After 1945
(California: University of California Press, 1992), p.110.
70
Peter Hames, 'Czechoslovakia', in The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian
Cinema, ed. by Richard Taylor, Nancy Wood, Julian Graffy and Dina Iordanova (London: British
Film Institute, 2000), pp.54-57 (p.55).

48
agents of repression and conformity – governmental censorship and
technology, respectively – that isolate the individual from society and nature.
One of these films, The Cybernetic Grandma (1962) is ultimately optimistic
about the potential for the individual to rejoin society and escape a state of
alienation; while the other, The Hand (1965) tragically, is not. Both these films
were directed by master puppeteer Jiří Trnka, whose poetic films yearn for a
lost pastoralism eroded by the industrialisation of Soviet Czechoslovakia. Both
the films I will discuss have been described by Hames as 'visionary' 71 and
certainly, for this writer, their delicacy, morality and assured craftsmanship, mark
them out as two of the greatest Czech films of the 1960s.
Through discussing all four of these films as political allegories, my
intention is to establish that political allegory in film can operate foremost
through the political coding of objects/things, rather than through dialogue or
voice-over. While fairy-tales and fables are often capped with a coda, which
explicitly provides the moral of the story, filmmakers dealing with repressive
political regimes must be more light-footed and discretionary, crafting
sometimes elusive allegories, which may not mean what they seem to mean
upon their surface. Moreover, it is essential to the meaning of these works that
the politically-coded objects/things that house the allegory, are not mere
symbols or sign functions, representing through visual simile or metaphor some
political faction or persecuted individual, but are themselves important as
common, knowable objects, as everyday things familiar to the audience and
with a real, physical presence. As such, my task over this chapter is both to
explain what these four films are political allegories of (while first further
classifying what I mean by 'allegory') and to explain how the allegorical
meanings of the films are delivered to the viewer encoded in the form of
politically-charged objects and things.

Ambiguity and Plurality in Allegories

In the animation studies anthology A Reader in Animation Studies William
Moritz considers four works – Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica's Home
(Dom, 1958); Jirí Trnka's The Hand (1965); Yuriy Norshteyn's Tales of Tales
(Skazka skazok, 1971); and Priit Pärn's Picnic on the Grass (Déjeuner sur
71
Hames, in Taylor, Wood, Graffy and Iordanova, p.237.

49
l'herbe, 1988) – each belonging to a different decade of Soviet control over
Eastern Europe. He considers these works to be allegorical or satirical critiques
of totalitarianism. The Hand will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter.
It is a stop-motion puppet film concerning an artist whose home is invaded by a
sinister gloved hand that insists that the artist produces clay statuettes of itself.
Tale of Tales is a Russian hand-drawn animation in which a wolf moves
between different groups of Russian peasantry that engage in inexplicable and
dream-like rituals. Picnic on the Grass, meanwhile, is a Kafkaesque indictment
of bureaucracy and the stolid restrictions of everyday life in 1980s Soviet
Russia. Home is a radically experimental short film that combines cut-out
animation with stop-motion and pixilation (the stop-motion animation of people).
In an apartment in what appears to be a dystopian future a woman (Ligia
Branice) has a number of visions/experiences: a brain-like floating craft is
charged with energy; two men fight a taekwondo match; a wig consumes an
array of objects; a man repeatedly enters a room and palces his hat upon a hat-
rack. After a collage-like montage of architecture, the woman caresses and
kisses a manikin's head, which disintegrates.
Moritz posits that through adopting non-linear narrative structures, the
use of symbolic misdirection, or else generally through their ambiguity and
openness to a multiplicity of readings, these subversive animated films were
able to avoid censorship, while making critiques pertinent to the presiding
regimes of their respective countries.72 In summary, Moritz writes that, '[w]hile
these strategies might have been devised to circumvent censors, they result in
a rich experience that rewards repeated viewings since the films are composed
freshly in the viewers' minds, with new connections, new perceptions and new
feelings every time.'73 If these films are allegories, they are ambiguous
allegories, making Moritz's application of the term congruent with the prevalent
20th century understanding of allegory as 'both calling for and resisting
interpretation'.74

72
William Moritz, 'Narrative Strategies for Resistance and Protest in Eastern European
Animation', in A Reader in Animation Studies, ed. by Jayne Pilling (Sydney: John Libbey Cinema
and Animation, 1999), pp.38-47 (pp. 39-47).
73
Moritz, in Pilling, p.47 (brackets own).
74
Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, 'Introduction', in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory,
ed. by Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.1-
13 (p.10).

50
 Ambiguity serves a political function in that it can allow an artist to
produce work which may not be recognised as politically subversive by
censorship bodies more receptive to counter-readings which do not incriminate
the artist. So, for example, the gloved antagonist of Trnka's The Hand is
associatively linked to the statue of liberty, Napoleon's hand-in-coat, the scales
of justice and a television set, opening the work to the possibility of being read
as a critique of Western imperialism. Additionally, if an artist is accused of
producing politically subversive art, ensuring that their work maintains a degree
of ambiguity provides them with the possibility for arguing that their work has
been misconstrued.
If the political message of a cinematic allegory is too direct and clear then
it becomes increasingly likely that it will be banned or pulled from circulation. In
an essay for Current Michael Koresky refers to Jan Němec's A Report on the
Party and its Guests (O slavnosti a hostech, 1966) as 'one of the most
transparently political of all Czech New Wave films'. 75 Although its parable of a
group of feckless picnickers forced to submit to the arbitrary coercions of a
smaller group of besuited bullies could theoretically function as a universal
condemnation of all forms of state power, the statement made by the 1967
National Assembly of the Czech Communist Party that the film had 'nothing in
common with our republic, socialism, and the ideals of Communism' 76 suggests
that the apparatchiks found the message of the film to be pointed enough that
they felt the need to act defensively. Indeed, the lack of ambiguity in the film's
political intent led to it being formally 'banned forever' in 1973, the reels locked
away in a vault until the fall of Communist rule. 77
We might imagine allegories existing somewhere upon two separate,
though interrelated, axes. The first axis would trace a spectrum from
obfuscation at one end, to clarity at the other. The second axis would concern
the multiplicity of an allegory's readings; reaching from allegories with a singular
meaning at one end, to allegories with a high level of plurality at the other. So,
The Party and its Guests would fall at one end of the spectrum, with both a

75
Michael Koresky, 'Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave' (Current, 25 April 2012)
<http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2269-eclipse-series-32-pearls-of-the-czech-new-wave>
[accessed 23 June 2015].
76
Ibid.
77
Peter Hames, The Czechoslovak New Wave, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press,
2005), p.240.

51
clear level of meaning and a limited number of possible readings; 78 while Home
would be situated at the other end of the spectrum, with both a high level of
obfuscation and a high number of potential readings. It is harder to name films
that have a high level of clarity, yet a multiplicity of possible readings; or a highly
obscure, yet single meaning. Arguably, Věra Chytilová's stylistically eclectic and
satirical New Wave masterpiece Daisies (Sedmikrásky) of 1966, which follows
the hedonistic antics of two young women, is obscure in its political intent
(which seems to aim for a deconstruction of patriarchal, totalitarian systems of
control while simultaneously displaying scepticism towards the limits of
individual freedom when solely driven by personal desires) while restricted in
terms of its possible readings due to the narrow scope of the film, which limits
itself to scenes in which the girls eat excessive amount of food, have absurd
conversations in a bedroom and a pier, cause trouble in a dancehall and
torment various male suitors. Trnka's Cybernetic Grandma on the other hand
strikes me as a film that is very clear in its messages, but offers multiple
readings – it argues that technology alienates people from daily lived life; that
human relations are irreplaceable; that children must be nurtured etc.
However, there must come a point at which the multiplicity of possible
readings ends in ambiguity and obfuscation; cases when, to quote Ismail
Xavier, 'the accumulation of data creates the risk of fragmentation'. 79 This can be
said to be the case in some of the films that Moritz designates as allegories. For
example, Moritz writes of Home: 'It sets up a complex non-linear structure that
the viewer must decipher, which (1) makes it hard for a censor to ban since no
individual element is obviously against the rules and the overall meaning is
uncertain, and (2) requires the viewer to question the norm, which is a
subversive act in itself'.80 However, 'norm' is a qualifying phrase and means little
without referential terms or a context through which to grasp its meaning –

78
Alison Frank demonstrates that the film's specific political message functions as an extension
of its universal message, arguing that objects in the film are loaded with hybrid meanings that
provoke a sense of ambiguity either in relation to human social relations or more specifically in
relation to the political situation in Czechoslovakia. She argues: 'The fact that the film presents
the general ambiguity before moving on to the political one adds to the film's criticism of society
by suggesting that the more dangerous political ambiguity naturally developed from the
seemingly innocuous social one.' Alison Frank, Reframing Reality: The Aesthetics of the
Surrealist Object in French and Czech Cinema (Bristol: Intellect, 2013), p.80.
79
Ismail Xavier, Allegories Of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian
Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p.16.
80
Moritz, in Pilling, p.39.

52
which norm are we talking about? If the 'overall meaning' of the film remains
'uncertain', then so does Moritz' theorising at this juncture of his paper. How
diffuse can a film's message(s) become until it ceases to function as an
allegory? To return to Xavier, allegories are not only 'polymorphous', they also
'require specification'.81
A potential danger that arises when attempting to provide a reading of a
purportedly allegorical work as ambiguous as Home is that one might, as a
reader, fall victim to a tendency of projecting the ideological agenda we desire
of the work's creator onto the work itself. When considering art produced under
a repressive or totalitarian regime, it is unlikely that we, providing we are not
sympathetic to the totalitarian cause, will argue that an artist was in league with
the status quo. We are far more likely to favour the image of the dissident,
persecuted artist, a champion of free speech, dignity and human rights,
operating against a faceless bureaucracy. For example, the increasingly
fragmented domestic space that the female protagonist inhabits, inter-cut with
still images of landscapes and sepia photographs, could be interpreted as
signalling a need to return to a traditional, patriarchal order, where female desire
is circumscribed within the family home. As viewers and interpreters, we are not
fundamentally directed toward the position presented by Moritz that Home is an
allegory of totalitarianism.
However, it would be disingenuous to accuse Moritz of naivety. Home,
with its lack of dialogue and fragmented, vignette structure, is a bewildering
work. Allegory seeks to communicate some form of message or meaning to its
viewer, latent beneath but signalled by the manifest content of the work. If we,
or a contemporary viewer, find ourselves bewildered or confused by Home does
that immediately render the work a-political or, indeed, ourselves as lacking in
the requisite political knowledge required to unlock the film's message?
Contrariwise, Moritz' point that the film's ambiguity would have made the work
harder to ban, reminds us that there were pragmatic political reasons for
Borowczyk and Lenica to make their work ambiguous if they wished to avoid
censorship. The political element to the work is present in its very method of
construction.
Moritz' second point that the film's 'non-linear structure [...] requires the
81
Xavier, p.16.

53
viewer to question the norm'82 hints that perhaps the ambiguity is in itself the
message of the allegory. Moritz does not refer explicitly to Soviet Realism, but
this might be construed as representative of the 'norm' which the film seeks to
question, or even undermine. The tropes of female bodily fragmentation, the
mechanisation of the male body, and of throwing the bourgeois domestic space
into disorder, aligns Home with the aesthetics and ideology of the Surrealist
movement. We could, then, think of Jan Švankmajer's assertion that Surrealism
was perceived in Czechoslovakia under communism as 'an abscess on the
body of Czech culture'.83 This statement, while outwardly pessimistic, can be
read in a radical light; when the cultural body of a country has become
moribund and artistry has reached a point of stagnation, then “degenerate” art is
a curative sickness; its purging potential contained within its very form, which in
itself constitutes a message, or threat.
As Moritz similarly suggests of the films of Hans Fischerkoesen made
under Nazi rule in Germany,84 the fact that Home is difficult to read is
threatening to a system that functions via prescriptive ideology imposed from
above. 'Workers of the world, unite!' or any other party sloganeering, provides a
clear message, the like of which Home, or the other allegorical films that Moritz
describes, do not provide. They are, vitally, not art that produces didactic
lessons or laws to be followed. They are without the unity of meaning provided
by works of Soviet Realism, structured as they were around the ideological
principles of 'class-mindedness' (klassovost), 'party-mindedness' (partiinost),
'idea-mindedness' (ideinost) and 'people-mindedness' (narodnost);85 or, for that
matter, the revolutionary zeal that characterised the avant-gardist inclinations of
Soviet montage directors like Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. However abstracted
the films of these directors became, they were always at some level connected
to concrete social realities, albeit sometimes historically or mythically
embellished. Gilberto Perez notes that Vertov's films are 'emphatically not a

82
Moritz, in Pilling, p.39 (ellipsis own).
83
Jan Švankmajer interviewed by Peter Hames, 'Bringing Up Baby', Kinoeye, 2.1 (7 January
2002)
<http://www.kinoeye.org/02/01/hames01.php> [accessed 15 September 2014].
84
Mortiz, 'Resistance and Subversion in Animated Films of The Nazi Era', in Pilling, pp.228-240
(pp.235-236).
85
Petre Milltchov Petrov, 'Socialist Realism (Sotsrealizm)', in Encyclopedia of Contemporary
Russian Culture, ed. by Tatiana Smorodinskaya, Karen Evans-Romaine and Helena Goscilo
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), pp.575-577 (p.575).

54
figment of the imagination'.86 Eisenstein aimed similarly for truth, not make-
believe. A clear message about reality (and remember, for a communist mind-
set, ideology is reality) is being communicated by these works.
What Moritz argues then, is that in the face of such clear-sighted,
ideological thinking, ambiguity and the refusal to provide clear, singular
meanings in one's art, is dangerous in and of itself. Writing later in the same
anthology about animated films produced in Germany under Nazi rule, Moritz
opines that 'ambiguity was anathema to the Nazis, who could only hope to
maintain their fascist programme by enforcing strict, unbending codes of
behaviour and absolute, inviolable “ideals and truths”.' 87 Though I would argue
that the Nazis' 'inviolable “ideals and truths”' were often augmented with
ambiguous symbolism and loose, metaphysical notions of “blood” and “destiny”,
theirs was inarguably a rule-based system that relied upon standardised regalia,
ritual and clearly defined notions of obedience and morality.
In terms of censorship, Joseph Goebbels (in the years immediately
following 1933) centralised the previously atomised system of individual
provincial and city censorship boards into a top-down system governed by the
Reich Ministry of Popular Entertainment and Propaganda. 88 Within the ministry
there was, in turn, the inner ministry of the Reich's Film Chamber
(Reichsfilmkammer). All film scripts were submitted to this ministry for
inspection before filming and distribution would only occur subject to the
approval of the Propaganda Ministry. 89 Goebbels situated himself as the ultimate
authority at the heart of the Nazi propaganda system and governed this system
with a set of personal principles related to the purpose of propaganda that
included the idea that political messages communicated through film should do
so via the repetition of emotive rhetoric focused upon specific objects of hate
(Jews; Marxists etc.).90 Coupled with the fact that Goebbels himself personally
reviewed a film for the considerations of censorship at least three times a
week91 and that all films flowed through the ministry, including overseas imports,
86
Perez, p.43.
87
Moritz, 'Resistance and Subversion', in Pilling, p.235.
88
Thomas Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 (New York and Chinchester: Columbia
University Press, 2013), pp.25-26.
89
Ian Garden, The Third Reich's Celluloid War: Nazi Propaganda in Documentary, Film and TV
(Stroud: The History Press, 2012), p.17.
90
Garden, p.19
91
Ibid.

55
then it should be of no surprise that the Nazi Party produced a significant
amount of newsreel footage and documentaries with clear, explicit political
messages that appealed to popular sentiment.
Laura Julia Heins notes that in addition to such films, the Nazi film
industry also produced a significant number of romances and melodramas, in
fact ten times as many as they did war films. 92 However, while this may appear
counter-intuitive, Heins points out that the romantic-melodrama form relies upon
binary oppositions and simplistic narratives that accords to 'normative systems'
of sex, gender and power. 93 Both the newsreel and the melodrama are machine-
like in their systematic manipulation of audience's emotions and sympathetic
alignments. They seek a unified response amongst a compliant populace. Art
that insists upon personal, subjective interpretation runs counter to this impulse.
As such, under a repressive regime, the production of such art constitutes
dissent.

Post-War Animated Allegories

What I wish to turn to look at, though, are a number of animations that
were produced after the fall of Nazi domination over Eastern Europe, in which
Czechoslovak film-makers were able to reflect upon the horrors and privations
of the previous years and express a sense of catharsis in the wake of the defeat
and withdrawal of an occupying power.
The Eastern European films that Moritz considers are all allegories that
speak, in coded terms, of the relationship between the individual and the state.
The protagonist of the allegory may be a persecuted artist as in The Hand, or a
stifled housewife, as in Home; however, he or she should be understood to be
at once an individual citizen and metonymically all citizens – the suppressed
people of a totalitarian regime. That said, in these films the protagonist suffers
alone. The films function at the level of individual recognition by the viewer,
even as they seek to communicate an experience common to all viewers.
By contrast, the films I shall examine speak to the crowd en masse,
addressing the spectators as the people of a nation, rather than as persecuted
individuals. This could only be achieved in the absence of Nazi authority (film-
92
Laura Julia Heins, Nazi Film Melodrama (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of
Illinois Press, 2013), p.1.
93
Heins, pp.2-3.

56
making that addressed national identity and sought to do so through the
negation of or in opposition to a fascist ideology could, obviously, never have
received funding and distribution). Indeed, we can observe a shift back into the
individual register during the subsequent period of Soviet rule. The following
films should be considered as 'allegories of the nation' 94 concerned with the
meaning of nationhood and what it might mean to be a Czech citizen at the end
of the Second World War. In the Cambridge Companion to Allegory Rita
Copeland and Peter Struck tell the reader that with 'its transformations from era
to era' the allegory 'is a gauge of ideological shifts.' 95
Through the close-reading of Czech animated short films that take an
allegorical form, building this reading within a framework of thing theory, which
primarily pays attention to things over subjects but is open to the ways in which
things may become subjects, and subjects things, we can better comprehend
the myths of Czech nationhood that were being constructed at various formative
or tumultuous points in the nation's history. In these films made in the immediate
post-war period the national myths reinforced by the film-makers involve the
notion of the Czech nation as small, but resilient – a nation of honest, simple-
living craftsmen, chimney sweeps and peasants who band together to defeat
larger militaristic forces from outside the nation's borders. Ladislav Holý evokes
this national self-conception when he refers to 'little Czechs' who compose a
'nation of common, ordinary and unexceptional people'. 96 In the wake of the
destruction of the Second World War these national myths provided a coherent
identity to shore up against the ruins of Europe. In his provocative essay 'Dream
of Europe' (Sen o Evropě) Vladimír Macura demonstrates that left-leaning
Czech poets of the post-war period, such as Ivan Skala and Vilem Zdvada,
exploited the image of Europe as decimated site of death and destruction in
order to juxtapose this image against a mythic vision of a newly re-birthed
Czech nation, revived through collective solidarity under socialist and Slavic

94
This phrase is my own, but it is inspired by Xavier's discussion of films within Brazilian cinema
that sought to provide a totalising allegorical account of the nation. See: Xavier, p.5. Xavier
himself is building upon the notion of 'national allegory' as deployed by Frederic Jameson and
Aijaz Ahmad in, Frederic Jameson, 'Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational
Capitalism', Social Text, 15 (Fall 1986), 66-88; and Aijaz Ahmad, 'Jameson's Rhetoric of
Otherness and the 'National Allegory'', Social Text, 17 (summer 1987), 3-25.
95
Copeland and Struck, p.11.
96
Holý, Ladislav, The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation: National Identity and the Post-
Communist Social Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.62.

57
values.97
The philosopher Walter Benjamin posited that myths and allegories,
national or otherwise, are built from sites of ruin and destruction (such as,
thinking literally, post-war Europe). Benjamin's conception of allegory will now
be briefly discussed, providing a theoretical contextualisation for the analysis of
the two post-war animated allegories that shall follow.

Walter Benjamin's Theory of Allegory

According to Xavier, the philosopher Walter Benjamin theorised allegory
as 'a figure of speech in which one can recognise the action of history in the
entanglement and fragmentation of meanings'. 98 This is in concordance with the
reading of Benjamin offered by Howard Caygill in the Cambridge Companion to
Allegory (to which Xavier makes reference in a manner that suggests that his
reading of Benjamin is built upon Caygill's own), in which allegory offers a way
of reading history that apprehends its fragments while respecting the complexity
of their intersections. For this rhetorical manoeuvre to occur, allegory must work
from a fissured foundation of destruction. Caygill writes: 'The first movement of
the allegorical is that of fragmentation – the destruction or ruination of contexts
of meaning – with the ruin as an emblem of the destructive character of
allegory.'99 Caygill is of course evoking Benjamin's figure of the 'Angel of
History', of which Benjamin himself writes; 'His face is turned towards the past.
Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which
keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.' 100 This is a
holistic, non-sequential view of history; only made sense of by imposing a linear,
causal order upon the fragments, which clarifies though also transforms the
past. Allegory is ambivalently poised between this Angelic view of history and
the human view, as it is both explicative and mimetic. Concurrently, an entire
world of meaning is replaced with another, fragments and all; while the reader is
handed a decoder, to make sense of and “set in order” this baroque and
97
Vladimír Macura, 'Dream of Europe', in The Mystifications of a Nation: The “Potato Bug” and
Other Essays on Czech Culture, ed. and trans. by Hana Pichová and Craig Cravens (Madison:
The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), pp.13-26 (p.19).
98
Xavier, p.14.
99
Howard Caygill, 'Walter Benjamin's Concept of Allegory' in, Copeland and Struck, pp.241-253
(p.248).
100
Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', trans. by Harry Zorn, in Illuminations
(London: Pimlico, 1999), pp.245-255 (p.249).

58
untimely mess. To borrow a phrase from Stephen Greenblatt, allegory builds its
structure, 'upon its own undoing'.101
Thus does allegory dramatise the impossible lure of the representational
project, to summarise Greenblatt's argument, after Paul de Man. Cristelle
Baskins and Lisa Rosenthal reach a similar conclusion in their introduction to
Early Modern Visual Allegory when they posit that: 'the dynamic function of
allegory might be situated most fundamentally in its mobilisation of the
intersecting energies of interpellation and interpretation.' 102 That is to say, the
individual reader of the allegorical fiction or viewer of the allegorical film is both
sutured into an ideological position and simultaneously prompted to disentangle
themselves from this position through the critical distance afforded by their act
of interpretation.
If we think of our previous axes of allegory in which the first axis positions
obfuscation against clarity and the second axis positions singularity of meaning
against multiplicity of meaning(s), then it becomes apparent that these axes
might be determined by a more fundamental dynamic of 'interpellation and
interpretation'103 – namely, the degree to which the meaning of the allegory acts
upon the reader/viewer and the degree to which they actively interpret the text's
allegorical meaning for themselves. An obscure text open to a multiplicity of
readings like the aforementioned Home frees the viewer to unearth meaning for
themselves; while more propagandistic works, such as the two Czech films from
1946 I shall be examining over the coming pages, force their interpretation upon
the viewer, positioning him/her in a more passive role.

Allegory Communicated Through Real Objects

If we turn again to the quotation from Xavier with which I began the
previous section (allegory as a 'figure of speech') 104 it suggests that Benjamin
regarded allegory as a linguistic phenomenon. By contrast, these allegorical
films of 1946 tend to communicate their meanings through things rather than
101
Stephen J. Greenblatt, 'Preface', in Allegory and Representation: Selected Papers from the
English Institute, 1979-1980, ed. by Stephen J. Greenblatt (Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press, 1981), pp.vii-xiii (p.viii).
102
Cristelle Baskins and Lisa Rosenthal, 'Introduction', in Early Modern Visual Allegory:
Embodying Meaning, ed. by Cristelle Baskins and Lisa Rosenthal (Surrey: Ashgate, 2007),
pp.1-13 (p.1).
103
Ibid.
104
Xavier, p.14.

59
words (as such, they contain very little dialogue or voice-over).
I am concerned with a concretisation of the allegorical. Though Baskins
and Rosenthal are specifically discussing allegory in classical painting, their
following words are also highly applicable to allegory in the visual medium of
film: 'Visual allegories engage [...] with distinct force. For as objects designed for
particular settings and as images that represent abstract ideas in embodied
form, they operate in the physical world of the senses.' 105 In the case of a stop-
motion film, we are dealing with real objects and in the case that these films are
allegorical then the allegorical meaning is embodied in and expressed through
these real objects, appealing directly to our senses. Indeed, in the case of stop-
motion films made in the wake of the Second World War, we can take
Benjamin's notion of allegory being built from ruins literally. The 'destruction or
ruination of contexts of meaning'106 had already been achieved for these Czech
filmmakers by the Nazi occupation and, by turns, the Allied bombing of Prague
in 1945, before they set about constructing their allegories. At a pragmatic level
finding objects or making puppets for a stop-motion film in 1946 Prague would
have been a matter of salvaging those materials still available after rationing,
bombing and the redirection of material to the war effort/industry.
Examples of real objects that appear in the stop-motion film I will first
discuss include: a toy dog, a cuckoo clock, a wooden chest, a length of rope,
and a pair of boots. The power of allegory to give voice to those 'objects
silenced in the human name'107 is the project that the following animators are
engaged in. When these objects are no longer silenced, what might they tell us
about national identity for Czechs in 1946?

Two Post-War Allegories

Two animated films that can supply us with an answer to this question
are the stop-motion short Revolution in Toyland (1946) directed by M. Uzelac
and co-written by the influential post-war animator Hermína Týrlová and Eman
Kanera; and the flat, cellular animation Springman and the SS (1946) directed
by Jiří Trnka and Jiří Brdečka under the 'Trick Brothers' studio name. Both are
short films that might be considered to be works of propaganda, engaged in
105
Baskins and Rosenthal, p.1 (ellipsis own).
106
Caygill, in Copeland and Struck, pp.241-253.
107
Caygill, pp.244-245.

60
raising morale and celebrating the defeat and withdrawal of the Nazi forces from
Prague. Both characterise Nazi forces, the SS (Schutzstaffel) in the case of
Springman and the SS and the Gestapo in the case of Revolution in Toyland, as
composed of dull-witted blunderers, quick to anger and irrationally violent.
The Gestapo man who visits a toy shop in the Uzelac, Kanera and
Týrlová film and the principle commanding officer of the SS in the Trnka and
Brdečka work, are both characterised as essentially cowardly and, more
idiosyncratically, prone to a kind of hallucinogenic paranoia, that manifests itself
as the inability to take things at face value. This is complicated in the case of
the Gestapo agent who raids a toy shop, as what starts off as the character's
antagonistic response to things merely behaving as things (wooden toys sat still
upon workbenches; perhaps more suspiciously, a box snapping shut upon his
head) becomes, arguably, an animistic reality, as the workshop toys take their
cheerful revenge upon him.

Objects of Resistance
Revolution in Toyland begins by setting the scene of what is to follow – a
homely toymaker's workshop somewhere in Europe (presumably
Czechoslovakia). We meet the toymaker (Jindra Láznička) affixing rigid wooden
arms onto a block-headed Hitler toy. The toy is little more than a rectangular
wooden cuboid with two arms jointed at its sides, strokes of black paint for the
ears, hair and tie and small stuck-on facial features, which the toymaker goes
on to affix. At the diegetic level, the Hitler toy is being used to stow away a
secret message to aid the Allies.108 Bill Brown reminds us of the fantasy indulged
by children that their toys contain some special something, a secret message,
which might illuminate the life that they seem to possess. 109 The toymaker
makes this fantasy truth by literally stuffing his toys with messages; in so doing,
he repurposes the toys for adults, instead of children. In the original Czech
version of the film, we infer that the toymaker is playing a part in the resistance
from an extended sequence that finishes with his hurried stowing away of the
Hitler toy when he hears knocking at the door. In the American release by

108
It may be interesting to note that this act of concealing a message within a vehicle that is
outwardly innocuous to the presiding regime, is analogous to the activity of filmmakers
disguising political commentary through allegory within outwardly apolitical films.
109
Brown, A Sense of Things, pp. 6-7.

61
Sterling Films, this introductory passage is heavily cut and an English language
voice-over directly informs us of the fact that the toymaker is 'helping our side',
reminding viewers that those countries occupied by the Nazis are, in a post-war
milieu, our allies and indeed, may have proved their allegiance over the
preceding years in serving the resistance. The fact that the help the toymaker is
providing is peaceable and of a piece with his agreeable, humble work as a
craftsman for children, helps present an image of the Czech hero as a homely
figure whose moral sensibilities are inextricable from his traditional labour,
which is notably workshop based, rather than industrial.
Though Revolution in Toyland was produced and released before the
Czech Communist coup of 1948, the romanticising of the artisan present in
Marxist thought may already be seen to be present here. Alongside this
tendency, is a specifically Czechoslovak strain of nostalgia for rural, family-
based industry, which was successively undermined with the industrialisation of
the region under Soviet rule and the accompanying deforestation in Northern
Bohemia. When Václav Havel is quoted by Aviezer Tucker as imagining a
medieval man encountering a factory for the first time, falling to his knees and
praying to God to be saved, 110 or Havel, during his presidency in his Summer
Meditations writes of renewing 'our once-picturesque countryside, woods, and
fields [...] the farm buildings, the churches, chapels', 111 it is this specifically
Czechoslovak strain of respect for the pastoral and openness to an agricultural
past of peasantry112 that is being drawn upon. This brief sketch does not do
justice to the complex history of these dual impulses (one Marxist; one
Czechoslovak) but seeks to contextualise a narrative, one which we will see
crop up again and again in Trnka's career, in which the peasant or the artisan is
the hero and – later in his work – the forces of modernity and technological
advancement, the enemy.
In Revolution in Toyland, supporting the positive portrait of our toymaker
hero, is a pleasant amicability in the uncredited actor's features; a middle-aged

110
Aviezer Tucker, quoting Václav Havel, 'Politics and Conscience', trans. by E. Kohák and R.
Scruton, in Living in Truth, ed. by Jan Vladislav, pp.136-157 (p.136) in, The Philosophy and
Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel (Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh
Press, 2000), p.150.
111
Václav Havel, Summer Meditations, trans. by Paul Wilson (New York: Vintage, 1993), p.111
(ellipsis own).
112
Tucker, p.98, making reference to the ideas of Czech dissident Jan Patočka.

62
puckishness given by his fair hair, tufty beard and spry, swift-footedness that
sees him leap to escape through a window before a Gestapo agent (Eduard
Linkers), suspicious of the artisan's allegiances, bursts his way into the studio.
Fortunately, before he succeeds in doing so, the Hitler toy is successfully
hidden behind a metal door to avoid the discovery of its inner message.
In contrast with the nimble and attractive toymaker, the Nazi at the door
is – this being a work of propaganda – demonised through his repulsive
appearance. His face is bloated and the actor scowls and grimaces in a manner
reminiscent of Emil Jannings' portrayal of the mountebank Tartuffe in F. W.
Murnau's 1925 adaptation of Molière's play.
The clearest distinction drawn between the film's two characters is in
their relationship with the space of the toymaker's workshop. The toymaker's
familiarity with this space is immediately apparent in the ease of his escape.
The room provides him with no difficulties or obstacles and the objects of the
room are pliant and receptive to his needs. The window causes him no trouble;
he finds no disagreement with any toy underfoot. Meanwhile, the Gestapo agent
struggles with the door, which seems to rap him on the chest, after it rebounds
against the wall.
The camera pans across rows of wooden toys arranged in little groups
on shelves. This shot establishes several of the toy characters that will be
animated over the course of the film and allows us to perceive them in their
static, inert state, so as to make their animation seem all the more miraculous.
Glancing underfoot, the agent seems to notice something by his feet and the
camera tilts down to follow his gaze until it comes to rest upon a cylindrical
wooden dog. The design of this toy is far more playful than that of the tedious
little Hitler facsimile. It might be of note that Hitler is reducible to bland
iconography and thus infantilised into a block-headed amalgam of various
hollow and kitsch signs – the slicked hair; the black tie; the pencil moustache.
By contrast, the dog is of a much more complex and modern design. It is almost
Cubist in appearance and has sharp protruding teeth, flexed limbs and goggle-
eyes. Unlike the dull, rectilinear design of the Hitler toy, this dog seems almost
to “pop” off the screen. Presumably disgruntled by such lack of uniformity, the
Nazi agent boots the dog across the room. We do not follow the dog's path, the
shot is held static as we hear the dog thud against the ground some distance

63
off-screen. If we ignore the agent's hammering on the door, then this constitutes
the first significant act of violence against an object within the film.
In Švankmajer's Food (Jídlo, 1992), the callous way in which a character
sweeps a paper plate, cup and cutlery to the floor anticipates the later
objectification and subsequent callous treatment of the character at the hands
of another person. It is as though Švankmajer were cautioning us to treat things
with respect, else that respect might not be extended to ourselves. This is a
motif, a moral even, that can be detected here in Revolution in Toyland and
more so, in Týrlová's later short work The Day of Reckoning (Den odplany,
1960), in which a boy who tosses crumpled paper to the floor and, cavalierly,
into a fish tank, finds himself transformed in a nightmare into paper himself and
is all but drowned in the very same tank.
Of course, in the case of Revolution in Toyland, the Gestapo agent's
brutish treatment of things also acts symbolically to remind us of the Nazis'
brutal treatment of human beings. The abused dog and the door pounded upon,
are not merely substitutes representing oppressed Czech citizens. According to
the moral schemata of the film, abused objects are similar, not dissimilar to,
abused subjects. Objects and subjects are linked in a metonymic, not a
metaphoric relationship; which is to say, the objects in the films are not stand-
ins for the real victims of abuse; they are victims in and of themselves. The
mistreatment of things is positioned on an ethical continuum with the
mistreatment of the toymaker (and countless other, unseen, victims of the Nazi
regime). This is congruent with Daniel Miller's repeated implication in The
Comfort of Things, that moral care for objects is correlative with moral care for
people.113
After having kicked the wooden dog, the agent starts a persecution of
toys, in which a sailor and monkey are tossed to the floor – arguably, we are
climbing the scale of anthropomorphisation with regards to fidelity to the human
form, thus sympathy for these toys is more easily established. However, such a
manoeuvre (if it were one) would then be undermined by the fact that the next
objects of the Nazi's cruelty are a bandy-looking toy mule and a toy cannon on
wheels. Though the narrative could justify the man's actions as part of his
search for evidence of the toymaker's treason against the Nazi regime, he
113
Daniel Miller, The Comfort of Things (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), p.25 and p.195.

64
performs his duties with an insouciance that suggests that the roughness with
which he handles the toys stems from moral turpitude. Unarguably, this is a
violent sequence, even though it shows no blood, no pain, no harm that
technically extends much further than property damage.
Bill Brown, in his introduction to the issue of Critical Inquiry on things and
how they might be theorised, pauses to consider those troublesome moments in
which things seem to announce their presence in the world: 'you cut your finger
on a sheet of paper, you trip over some toy, you get bopped on the head by a
nut [...] They are occasions of contingency – the chance interruption – that
disclose a physicality of things.' 114 The Gestapo agent finds himself flung into a
panoply of such moments, in which, to borrow a turn-of-phrase from Peter
Schwenger, 'the sense of a demonic malignancy in physical things cannot be
dismissed.'115 Having rained persecution upon the things of the room, after not
having heeded the warning of being smacked in the chest by the door upon
entering and then having found 'some toy' underfoot, things seem to conspire
against him. The objects of the room have become dissidents themselves,
actively resisting the fascist invasion.
Still searching for the absent toy that might disclose an incriminating
message smuggled out to the Allies, the agent searches in a heavy-looking box,
which cracks him upon the head and catches his arm. The agent slumps to the
floor and the image fades, through superimposition, to a shimmering, mildly
canted, softly-focused shot of the work-bench, shot from the point-of-view of the
fallen man, with wavering strings on the soundtrack to indicate its oneiric quality.
The screen fades back to a close-up of the man's head as he crumples his brow
in confusion. The film cuts to a close-up of the door of a cuckoo clock as a stop-
motion animated cuckoo is thrust/thrusts itself through the doors and calls the
time. This marks the transition to what might be regarded either as a subjective,
hallucinogenic state (aligned with the perspective of the stunned agent) or as an
ontologically true occurrence – an animistic revenge taking place within the
physical space of the film.
The use of the cuckoo is an ingenious way of marking this ambiguity. The
cuckoo of a cuckoo clock is animated, in reality, by mechanical contrivance;
114
Brown, 'Thing Theory', pp.3-4 (ellipsis own).
115
Peter Schwenger, The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects (Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 2006), p.77.

65
thus, the movement of the wooden cuckoo in the film is not understood by the
spectator as wholly unreal. However, the means of this cuckoo's animation is
not one of mechanical contrivance hidden within the body of the clock, but
achieved through stop-motion manipulation. It is left unclear as to whether the
stop-motion animation is imitative of mechanical movement, or shows the
creature-thing “come to life”. The Gestapo agent himself shares with us in this
confusion as he points his gun at the wooden bird and then withdraws it,
suspiciously. He does not know whether to treat the thing as passive and
moving according to a predetermined movement or as wilful and invested with
life – a life which may turn malevolent. He points the gun above him and the
cuckoo now appears quite suddenly through a door to the side of the clock.
Though the cuckoo's pupils are not animated, their position as the bottom of the
eyes as though the bird were looking down, suggests that its gaze is falling
upon the agent, hinting that it is aware of his presence.
The agent shoots up, the clock gives a lurch and with a clanging noise,
an object resembling a heavy, artificial pinecone (part of the weighting for the
clock's pendulum) falls from the clock and strikes the agent on the head. This is
analogous to Bill Brown's nut that falls from a tree and 'bops' the unprepared
reader.116 The action may be motivated simply by gravity, but we sense a
vengeful force behind it. The ambiguity of this pinecone-resembling thing, its
evident hardness and heaviness and the shot that follows of it in close-up,
clearly delineated upon the floor in its darkness, casting its own shadow, is a
heavy-voiced announcement of its status as thing. This is matter, existing on
terms disturbingly separate from the human, violently resisting the fascistic
ideology of a terrorising subject
It is worth nothing that at this point in the film our ontological
understanding of things and subjects is curiously mixed. Insensate and
drooping upon the floor, the fallen Gestapo agent appears not so much of a
man as a leaden and ungainly object. He resembles little more than a sack of
potatoes. Brown quotes Merleau-Ponty when speaking of these moments
where subjects are caught unaware by things: 'These are occasions outside the
scene of phenomenological attention that nonetheless teach you that you're

116
Brown, 'Thing Theory', pp.3-4.

66
“caught up in things” and that the “body is a thing among things.”' 117 The body,
so acted upon, is a thing. This is the blurring of perspective that the agent
suffers. Having been a self-determined “agent” able to throw things to the floor
or over his shoulder with ease, he is now the victim of an object-oriented
fantasy, at the mercy of things far more alive, animated and unencumbered than
he. Indeed, cropped, close-up shots of the slumped man's socked feet lying
alongside a discarded bottle and an over-turned metal bowl, makes the
substances of his body seem like so much bric-a-brac.
The agent knocked out for a second time, the toys quite literally spring to
life. A jointed sailor with a gleeful, toothy grin rises up and down exuberantly
from his stand, with the pull-and-pull of an accordion matching his movements
on the soundtrack. Indeed, the liveliness of the things is, in part, communicated
by the sudden, sprightly exuberance of the soundtrack. The toys leap, nod, sit
on their haunches, lean backwards, ride one another, crawl, tumble, climb,
abseil, work machines, bite, hide, and are ultimately victorious. A toy horse is
perhaps the most animated of all, its goggle-eyes swivelling as it bounds across
the screen.
The revenge enacted by the toys is first to strip the agent of his uniform
that signifies his status and authority. Of course, the Hitler toy plays no part in
this, having been hidden away behind a door (presumably the other toys
suspect his allegiances and have little interest in letting him out). Buttons are
cut from the agent's jacket with a pair of scissors; his boots are tugged off with a
loop of rope; a sock is yanked from its foot in the teeth of the toy dog, now
recovered from its earlier kick across the room. The attack is waged against the
clothes, rather than the body that these clothes contain; indeed, the body
comes to little harm, save some toes being nipped when the sock is pulled off.
This does not deflate the work's function as a celebration of the defeat of
Nazism, since as the clothes are ripped off him, the agent is stripped
symbolically of his status as a Nazi. There is, as one might expect, a high
degree of sublimated violence during this montage of scenes in which clothes
are removed. The aforementioned scissors are wielded like a sword and are

117
Brown, quoting Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'Eye and Mind', trans. by Carleton Dallery, in The
Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of
Art, History, and Politics, ed. by James M. Edie and trans. by William Cobb (Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 1964), p.163, in 'Thing Theory', p.4.

67
brought dangerously close to the unconscious agent's chest. The rope that is
slipped around the agent's feet is tied in a noose, resembling a hangman's knot
– indeed, upon my first viewing, I expected that the agent was going to be
winched into the air and humiliatingly held upside down by his feet.
The toy dog in its liveliness seems almost rabid and clearly takes great
glee in its task of wrestling the sock from the agent's foot, presumably because
in so doing he gets to also bite the foot the sock contains. It is this action that
rouses the slumbering agent. The toys retreat into a cupboard, which the agent
douses with spirits and then mercilessly sets alight with a gunshot. The blazing
cupboard filled with the toys is a distressing image that recalls the cremations of
the Nazi concentration camps. A tiny fire brigade works cooperatively to put out
the flames, though not before squirting the agent with water after he attempts to
shoot one of the men. The bravery of the firemen is evident, as is their
efficiency, resourcefulness and comradeship. The impression is of a fighting
spirit that is determined, though not pugilistic.
Another toy snuffs out the lamplight illuminating the room. A tiny army of
soldiers is summoned and they fight with toy cannons under the now
chiaroscuro lighting. Though the cannons are small, real gunpowder is used.
The cutting rate increases to a frenzy, to the point where some shots only last
several frames. The mise-en-scène becomes splintered, though the jaunty non-
diegetic music continues on the soundtrack under the sound of gunfire and the
buzzing of planes. The sequence recalls the battle scenes of Eisenstein in
technique – for instance, the tumultuous climax of the revolt of the sailors in
Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925) – if not in tone. A cannon
that strikes the decisive blow is afforded more screen time than any others. The
film cross-cuts between the cannon being loaded and prepared and the agent
being bombarded from the skies like King Kong; potentially an intentional
reference considering Kong's release in 1933, though likely mere serendipity.
Eventually the cannonball is fired, striking the agent in the posterior, setting it
smoking and ripping his trousers. The crowd of toys cheers and the Gestapo
agent is blasted out of the window into the street, where he runs off, utterly
humiliated.
If the Gestapo agent embodies the Nazi forces and the toys the
persecuted Czechs, then it is only through the spirited co-operation of the

68
Czech citizens that they are able to resist the far larger force of the Nazis. The
size of the antagonistic agent compared to the toys is clear throughout the film
as the toys clamber over the agent's slumbering body like the Lilliputians over
Gulliver, reminding us that the German national body is far greater than the
Czech. The narrative provides an allegory that recalls David and Goliath, with a
smaller, but heroic “body” defeating a much larger, antagonistic one,
characterised as bullying, violent and oafish. Czechoslovakia is also
outmatched in terms of the size of its firepower, represented by toy cannons in
comparison to the agent's “human size” revolver. Ithiel De Sola Pool, in
transcribing a series of opinion polls carried out with citizens of Czechoslovakia
from January 1968 to March 1969 by the Czechoslovak Institute of Public
Opinion, takes interest in the fact that in reply to the question, 'What do you
consider to be the most important event of the previous year?' 23% of
respondents in 1968 answered the Israel-Palestine conflict and 19% the
Vietnam War. De Sola Pool attributes this interest to 'concern with the problems
of small nations surrounded by larger powers [...] Widespread sympathy in both
cases goes to what is perceived as the smaller power, namely the Israelis and
the Viet Cong.'118
Clearly, many Czechoslovak citizens felt as though they could relate to
the situation of a smaller power seemingly terrorised by a larger. 119 However, in
Revolution in Toyland smallness does not represent insufficiency since the tiny
cannons and the little force of toy soldiers are greatly effective at dispelling the
Nazi threat. The film imagines a historical narrative in which Czechoslovakia
was able to dispel the Nazis through collective ingenuity, determination and
pluckiness. Importantly, this is not a narrative of the compromises of the Beneš
administration or abandonment by the British and French governments.
Czechoslovakia, while staying rooted within its tradition of workshop-based
labour and the national character of Hašek's Good Solider Švejk (who succeeds
within a militaristic environment through ingenuity and trickery rather than
outright violence) and preserving its essential smallness, is able to retain its
independence and freedom in the face of belligerence from a larger outside
118
Ithiel De Sola Pool, 'Public Opinion in Czechoslovakia', The Public Opinion Quarterly, 34
(spring 1970), 10-25 (p.16) (ellipsis own).
119
Arguably a misrepresentation of the situation in Israel, though sympathy may have derived for
the Jewish cause from the horrific levels of loss in the country's Jewish population two decades
earlier.

69
force.
We can see by my reading that Revolution in Toyland would, viewed in
terms of my two axes of allegory, be considered a clear allegory with a singular
reading. This suits its purpose as post-war propaganda, celebrating the defeat
and withdrawal of the occupying Nazi force. It is an allegory of catharsis and of
the triumph of smallness, community and ingenuity, specific to a post-war
Czech context, but potentially generalisable to any situation where the small are
persecuted by the mighty. If we take the toys to represent the people and forces
of Czechoslovakia, then they are not rescued by an outside Allied force, but
dispel the enemy from within. The American commentary for the Western
release of the film does not undermine this message, although it does frame the
film's story within a broader narrative of the Western Allied forces resistance.
If Revolution in Toyland contains ambiguity, it is not of the message, but
an ontological ambiguity that blurs the distinction between objects and subjects.
Certainly, if we step for a moment outside the allegorical mode and consider the
film literally, it places the country's triumph within the “hands” of objects, albeit
sometimes humanoid objects that play roles such as fire-fighters and soldiers.
As has been demonstrated, the message of the allegory is communicated
effectively through these objects, without recourse to dialogue and with only
minimal recourse to voice-over in the edited American release. If we now turn to
Trnka and Brdečka's Springman and the SS, we shall see how the humble
spring is essential for the humiliation and defeat of the SS by the titular Pérák,
the Springman.

The Springiness of Springs

Springman and the SS may seem, to those familiar with Trnka's later
works such as The Hand, an anomaly within the animator's canon, due to its
cellular, two-dimensional animated form. However, in the late 1940s and early
1950s Trnka often worked on short, non-puppet films; indeed, it is worth noting
that a two-dimensional work like The Merry Circus (Cirkus Veselý, 1951) was
produced a year after completion of the master's third feature length stop-
motion work, The Prince Bayaya (Bajaj, 1950). At the time of Springman and
the SS's production in 1946, Trnka was professionally most well established as
a children's book illustrator, creating illustrations for collections of fairy and folk-

70
tales.
The Springman himself had a peculiar lineage as a recent Czech folk
hero, or perhaps more accurately, urban legend, that had arisen under the Nazi
occupation of the country during the Second World War. New York Times
historian Mike Dash identifies the Springman as a successor of Spring-heeled
Jack,120 the devilish subject of penny dreadfuls in the 19 th century,121 who was
said to leap great distances by virtue of springs attached to his boots, breathe
white or blue flame,122 and accost his – mostly female – victims under the cover
of night. In contrast to the accounts detailed by Dash of a malevolent spring-
heeled figure taking a cruel delight in persecuting the unwary and defenceless,
Brdečka and Trnka's Springman is merely impish and seems justified in
humiliating the goose-stepping SS guards and their snivelling, hectoring leader.
Indeed, in an opening English-language intertitle for the film's American release,
the Springman is clearly defined as a “good ghost”. He saves his imprisoned
countrymen, works hard at his job of cleaning chimneys and is appealingly
good-humoured, flighty and puckish. As such, his characterisation is not
dissimilar to that of the toymaker who operates undercover for the resistance in
Revolution in Toyland. Neither is a violent figure, but instead uses objects
ingeniously in order to craftily elude capture by a violent fascistic opponent. In
contrast to the thuggish and lumbering Gestapo agent in Revolution in Toyland,
the commanding officer in Springman and the SS crawls and snuffles his way
about the frame, his voice represented by the over-dubbed yelps, sniffs and
snarls of a dog. Physically he is a peculiar amalgam of sharp, stiff angles (his
nose is especially sharp and pointed, like a beak) and liquid, elastic

120
Mike Dash, 'Spring-heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo From Suburban Ghost', 'Part 2. -
Antecedents, Parallels and Successors' (London: Mike Dash.com, 2 April 2005)
<http://www.mikedash.com/extras/forteana/shj-about/shj-paper-2> [accessed 16 September
2014].
121
Spring-heeled Jack is identified as being the subject of Victorian penny dreadfuls by Patrick
A. Dunae, 'Penny Dreadfuls: Late Nineteenth-Century Boys' Literature and Crime', Victorian
Studies, 22 (winter 1979), 133-150 (p.133) and John Springhall, ''Disseminating Impure
Literature': The 'Penny Dreadful' Publishing Business Since 1860', The Economic History
Review, 47 (August 1994), 567-584 (p.571). He existed alongside figures such as Varney the
vampire and Turnpike Dick.
122
An ability less attributed than the aforementioned leaping that stems from three separate
witness accounts given in 1838; see Dash, 'Spring-heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo from
Suburban Ghost', 'Part 3. - The Fakelore of Spring-heeled Jack', (London: Mike Dash.com, 2
April 2005)
<http://www.mikedash.com/extras/forteana/shj-about/shj-paper-3> [accessed 16 September
2014].

71
movements. This helps visually identify him from the ranks of completely
uniform SS guards, who are completely robotic and rigid in their movements,
exemplified by their characteristic goose-stepping.
It may be apposite to note here that many of Sergei Eisenstein's writings
on the early art of Walt Disney are concerned with the idea that animation itself
(here synonymous with Disney)123 is a pure expression of freedom. As such, it
conjures life with the vitalist appeal of pre-civilised notions of 'the omnipotence
of plasma, which contains in its “liquid” form all possibilities of future species
and forms.'124 Conceptualised so, animation is understood to be life-potential as
such. Under such a view, the rigidity of the officers is essentially life denying.
Their uniformity runs counter to the very form of cellular animation and, as such,
they seem not only tedious and dull-witted, but unnatural. Their movement is
not congruent with the form in which they exist.
What then, can we say about the SS officer, who contorts his body so?
Trnka and Brdečka perform a successful series of juxtapositions to ensure that
the viewer also experiences this character as life denying, not least in the
simple contradiction between the hardness of his character design and the
fluidity of his movements. Despite the potential for freedom the officer's
movement suggests, the character is repeatedly shown to squander this
freedom and, over the course of the short, restrict his body to increasingly
stereotyped and uniform gestures, such as heiling Hitler (in the form of a bust or
painting) or glancing neurotically over his shoulder. For much of the film, he is
stooped over, with his head kept close to the floor, presumably to emphasise his
lack of backbone and his essentially cowardly and obsequious nature. The
Springman is, of course, the true agent of freedom within the film embodying
'freedom of movement' and 'freedom of transformation'. 125 Through the use of
his springs, he is shown to bound immense distances, during which his body,
which is expressively curved, seems to stretch and contort, before resolving
itself into a balletic pose. Since the Springman spends much of the film clothed
in a streamlined, black body sock and mask, there are times where he looks

123
Eisenstein seems to have paid a curious lack of attention to the work achieved in the same
period by the Fleischer Studio, despite their home style being more appropriate to his
arguments than that of Disney.
124
Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney, ed. by Jay Leyda and trans. by Alan Upchurch
(Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1986), p.64.
125
Eisenstein, p.30.

72
rather like an inkblot. This is highly appropriate, as what better thing to
represent metonymically the expressive potential of animation.
Previously, when writing about Revolution in Toyland, I mentioned that
the Gestapo agent is prone to a curious paranoia, which manifests itself as a
suspicion of inanimate objects; a mistrust that they might be in some way
dissenting (before they actually do!). When the agent suspects the cuckoo clock
of being propelled by some sinister inner animism, he is refusing to take things
at face value. Likewise, the SS officer in Springman and the SS has an inability
to accept that things are agenda-less and consequently, many of the victims of
his persecution are innocent and humble objects. A pot, dancing on the hob
tumbles to the floor and is immediately pointed out to be taken off and
imprisoned. Then, later, on patrol, the officer spots a sign for a tool shop
consisting of the silhouette of a man holding a picture containing a hammer, a
pair of pliers and a sickle. With comic inevitability, the officer takes this to be
sinister Communist Party propaganda and apprehends the sign, which is duly
carted off. Trnka and Brdečka seem to be hinting that ideology obscures the
truth of things and can obscure and distort one's phenomenological awareness
of reality, breeding paranoia amongst the benign presence of physical objects.
This defence of a rooted phenomenological apprehension of reality over
ideology would become a common trope of Trnka's later work, as will be
demonstrated when we turn later in this chapter to examine The Hand and The
Cybernetic Grandma.
After a montage in which various inanimate objects, animals and
innocent by-standers are all arrested by the SS officer and his guards, the
heroic chimney sweep, who has transformed himself into the Springman by
affixing springs filched from a sofa to the bottom of his feet, springs into action.
Pursued by the guards, he leaps across rooftops, is chased through a park and
a prison yard and finally manages to trick his pursuers into falling down a series
of holes. The officer, whose comeuppance receives the most detailed treatment,
suffers the indignity of being bonked on the head, led through a sewer, covered
in tar and soot and then finally, kicked into the distance by the hoof of a metal
horse. All those imprisoned by the SS are set free, including, it must be noted,
the objects, of which more seem to have been imprisoned than people. Clearly,
in another similarity to the toymaker, the Springman is sympathetic to objects

73
and people alike. Objects, in the form of his two springs, are his essential allies.
The springs are – typically for a Trnka animation 126 – domestic not fantastical
objects. The capacity for enhanced bounciness they bestow upon the chimney
sweep is exaggerated, but it is not magical. The quality inherent in the springs
(their coiled structure that allows them to retain and release energy) determines
the power they provide to the wearer, rather than something from without (such
as magical words, or the 'powder-of-life' in Frank Baum's Oz books) granting
some “special quality” to the object, which is then available to the user. The
power the springs confer is springiness itself, which transforms the chimney
sweep, rather than the chimney sweep transforming the springs to his purpose.
Now, we can clearly see an essential difference between the Springman
and the officer of the SS: the officer projects his prejudices onto things to make
of them what they are not; the Springman sees objects for what they are and
releases the power latent within them. The villain persecutes objects while the
hero lets the objects determine and enhance his movements.
One does not have to stretch far to consider that this is the preferred
rhetoric of the stop-motion animator, such as Švankmajer, who speaks of his
preference for objects that 'have some kind of inner life'. 127 Švankmajer's role as
an animator is thus to coax this inner life of objects to the surface in his films, as
opposed to transfiguring them in a way that obscures their essential objecthood.
Though, like Švankmajer, Trnka often animates simple, domestic objects, he
seems more content than Švankmajer to respect their simplicity. Hames
asserts, quite correctly I feel, that Švankmajer 'seeks to restore magic to the
utilitarian'.128
For Trnka, this magic has never disappeared. The objects he favours in
his films, those protected and loved by his heroes, are humble things – the
springs; a child's ball in The Cybernetic Grandma; clay plant pots in The Hand;
even going back to Trnka's earliest animated work Grandpa Planted a Beet
(Zasadil dědek řepu, 1945) the beet, though quite large, is otherwise

126
Even in Trnka's 1949 work The Devil's Mill (Certuv Mlýn), which concerns a travelling vagrant
with a music-box who spends a stormy night in a mill inhabited by the devil, the objects
bewitched by the devil are quite regular items of crockery and furniture.
127
Švankmajer interviewed by Peter Hames, 'Interview with Jan Švankmajer', in Dark Alchemy:
The Films of Jan Švankmajer, 1st edn, ed. by Peter Hames (Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1995), pp.96-118 (p.110).
128
Hames, 'The Film Experiment', Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, pp.8-39 (p.38).

74
unremarkable. With the notable exception of Trnka's 1959 beautiful adaptation
of A Midsummer Night's Dream, his films are surprisingly unconcerned with the
metamorphoses of objects or things that change and distort, but rather with the
quiet, domestic objects from which a life is made. It is, tragically, these objects
and the domestic space in which they are housed that will be threatened and
ultimately destroyed in Trnka's final, explicitly political work, The Hand.

Oppressive Gestures of the Hand of State

By 1965, when The Hand had been completed, its fate to remain
practically unseen until the fall of Communist Eastern Europe in 1989, the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) had exercised effective, undisputed
control over the country for seventeen years, since the coup d'état of 1948.
Under the administration of Antonín Novotný the governmental system had
remained essentially Stalinist; collectivisation was still in place, the economic
system was experiencing only hesitant and limited reform (Ramnath
Narayanswamy notes that the reform of 1965 was a compromise with the
existent economic system, which continued to affirm the importance of the
Stalinist central plan)129 and policy was still being dictated by overseas Soviet
influence in Moscow.130 Furthermore, the censorship policies of the repressive
1950s would not be significantly altered until the government of Alexander
Dubček attempted to establish “socialism with a human face”, leading to a
subsequent period of relaxed government control over artistic and press
freedom known as the Prague Spring (Pražské jaro).
Within the realm of visual arts, the Chief Press Inspection Board (Hlavní
správy tiskového dohledu) would examine the catalogues and programmes of
art exhibitions for expressions of non-conformity. 131 Maruška Svašek details that
across the 1950s, those works not considered ideologically correct by the tenets
of Socialist Realism would not receive distribution and so artists were forced to
either adapt their style or communicate with other dissident artists underground,
129
Ramnath Narayanswamy, 'Czechoslovakia: Reforming under Pressure', Economic and
Political Weekly, 23 (May 28 1988), 1112-1114 (p.1112). The document that outlined the reforms
of 1965 was the Main Directions for the Improvement of Planned Management of the National
Economy.
130
Gordon Skilling, 'Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution', Canadian Slavonic Papers, 10
(winter 1968), 409-429 (p.409).
131
Maruška Svašek, 'The Politics of Artistic Identity: The Czech Art World in the 1950s and
1960s', Contemporary European History, 6 (November 1997), 383-403 (p.399).

75
in studios, outside of the public sphere. 132 While by 1965 the influence of
Stalinist factions within the Czech Communist Party had considerably abated in
the wake of Krushchev's second de-Stalinisation speech of 1961, Svašek's
judgement that 'the dam finally burst in 1964' 133 with the appointment of Jindrich
Chalupecký to the position of Chairman of the Art Union, is a little hyperbolic, or
at least premature. I would contend that even though there was a thawing of
dogma in the approach to the censorship of the arts across the mid-sixties
under Novotný, in the years preceding the Prague Spring, the immediate effect
on artists would have been minimal due to their internalisation of the rules of
censorship over the previous decade, a phenomenon that Miloš Jůzl refers to
as 'auto-censorship'.134 Jůzl argues that through not knowing precisely what was
allowed by the regime and what wasn't, artists lowered their standards and
policed themselves, effectively doing the job of the regime's censorship forces,
such as the Office for Publishing and Information 135 or the aforementioned Chief
Press Inspection Board, for them.136
This is essentially the argument made by Miklos Haraszt in The Velvet
Prison that the most insidious form of censorship was one that artists imposed
on themselves, due to the phantasmal, ever-present fear of the censor. Though
Miklos Haraszt was a citizen of Hungary, he makes it clear that his argument is
applicable to Eastern-Europe and other oppressive regimes more generally –
that artists react to conditions of censorship by imposing more censorship upon
themselves; as such, '[t]he state is able to domesticate the artist because the
artist has already made the state his home.' 137 The hand of the state infiltrates
the private sphere and the mind of the artist, insidiously, seductively, coercively,
until the artist becomes their own worst censor.
When we imagine the “hand of the state” how do we imagine it? Do we
visualise the phrase nebulously, thinking of the instigation of policies across
numberless ministries and departments, their invisible implementation through
132
Svašek, pp.390-391.
133
Svašek, p.401.
134
Miloš Jůzl, 'Music and the Totalitarian Regime in Czechoslovakia', International Review of the
Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 27.1 (June 1996), 31-51 (p.46).
135
Jiřina Šmejkalová, 'Censors and Their Readers: Selling, Silencing, and Reading Czech
Books', Libraries & Culture, 36.1 (winter 2001), 87-103 (p.87).
136
Jůzl, p.46.
137
Miklos Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism, trans. by Katalin
Landesmann, Stephen Landesmann and Steve Wasserman (London: I. B. Tauris, 1987), p.5
(brackets own).

76
services, spending and instituted public bodies? Or, do we visualise the hand as
something more concrete, with the ability to put things into place, to count upon
its digits, to pat its supporters upon the head, to grasp and to throttle. If we have
lived under a totalitarian regime with a cult of personality, we might imagine the
specific hand of a specific dictator, real and fleshy and connected to an arm, to
a body, to the head of state – a hand that salutes, that waves to the masses or
that pounds in a fist upon podiums. If we are religiously inclined we may believe
that the “hand of the state” is dominated in turn by a greater hand, 'the hand of
God' and again, do we imagine this hand as something ethereal and
unfigurable, or emerging benevolent yet powerful, from under a whitened robe
or cloak?
The capabilities of a hand, the weight that we afford it, the momentums
that characterise it, are all indivisible from our knowledge of a hand's physicality.
It seems difficult to imagine a hand that is wholly symbolic and transcendent,
without investing it with fingers and then with knuckles and nails and so forth. In
Jiří Trnka's 18-minute stop-motion short The Hand the hand of the state is
characterised as repressive, by turns coercive and placatory, and increasingly
violent. Throughout the film, the hand terrorises a solitary potter-harlequin,
endeavouring to force him into crafting statues that honour it. Its every gesture
is readable symbolically; for instance, near the start of the film, when the hand
is attempting to force its way into the potter's house, leaping in through the
window and then, when driven out, pressing up against the door, we can read
this easily as the surveillance of the state, under which the public-political realm
intrudes into the individual's private space and their actions, speech and their
daily lived life, is subject to merciless scrutiny and investigation. Later, when the
hand picks the little potter up by his spherical head, forcing him violently back
down before his potter's wheel, we understand that the state can turn to
increasingly threatening methods to reach its ends, such as imprisonment or the
threat of torture and execution.
Considering the above, it should not be surprising that The Hand has
been widely interpreted as an allegorical work. Peter Hames, in both an article
for Sight and Sound138 and in his Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and

138
Peter Hames, 'The Hand That Rocked The Kremlin', Sight and Sound (February 2012)
<http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49844p> [accessed 16 September 2014].

77
Tradition139 regards it as such; as do William Moritz (1999), Edgar Dutka (2000),
Susan Hayward (2000), Steven Subotnick (2003) and William Bernard
McCarthy (2007) in various published works; not to mention similar readings on
blogs and film review sites.140 In terms of my axes of allegory, these writers tend
to position the work as having a singular meaning and a meaning which is
altogether clear. Marketa Dee asserts that 'Ruka is clearly Trnka's protest
against the conditions imposed by the Czechoslovak Communist state on
artistic creation and creative freedom'; 141 while Hames in the Sight and Sound
article states that the film 'remains one of the most overt attacks on Stalinism to
have been made in the 1960s.' 142 Hames summarises the film, thus: 'It [The
Hand] tells the story of a happy potter whose simple creative life is ruined by the
demands of the state. An enormous hand commissions him to make official
works, but he refuses. Initially the hand tries to persuade him, offering him
money and women; ultimately it resorts to force.'143
Hames, perhaps intentionally, conflates the upper layer of the allegory as
presented on screen (in which a hand invades a potter's house) and the lower
level of the allegory as interpreted by the attentive viewer (the state imposes its
demands upon the nation's artists, to the detriment of artistic output and the
artist's wellbeing). Hames' conflation of these two stories usefully illustrates how
in allegory, the upper-level meaning exists concurrently alongside the lower-
level meaning. It is this ever-changing, sometimes confusing relationship
between the two layers present in The Hand – one explicit and diegetic and the
other hidden and inferred – that demands an attentiveness to how symbols
within the works are embodied. Merely focusing on the symbols or upon the
objects of the film, without recourse to both, would vitally misrepresent the work,
distort its function as allegory and diminish Trnka's considerable artistic
achievement. Throughout this analysis it must always be borne in mind that

139
Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, p.193.
140
Such as Byrne Power, 'Antidote Art #1' (The Anadromous Life, 03 February 2011)
<http://theanadromist.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/antidote-art-1/> [accessed 16 September
2014]
and Rudi Stettner, 'Thank You Jiri Trnka' (Rant Rave, 2010)
<http://www.rantrave.com/Rave/Thank-You-Jiri-Trnka.aspx> [accessed 16 September 2014].
141
Marketa Dee, 'Jiri Trnka – 'The Walt Disney of Eastern Europe'' (Ireland: Bohemian
Connection, 25 February 2012)
<https://bohemianconnection.wordpress.com/tag/jiri-trnka/> [accessed 16 September 2014].
142
Hames, 2012.
143
Ibid (brackets own).

78
allegory involves the very real hand existing simultaneously alongside its
deeper, allegorical meaning.
Gijs Grob, on his animation review blog, commends Trnka for his choice
of the gloved hand as his film's antagonist, noting approvingly: 'The glove is a
masterstroke. In its facelessness it is as scary as it is symbolic for the invisible
hand of totalitarian power.' 144 Grob seems to hint in this sentence that there is a
dual aspect to the gloved hand; a symbolic part, which in turn, is complemented
by its “scariness”, that is felt at a more immediate, visceral level. Both of these
aspects he attributes to the hand's 'facelessness'. In being gloved, the hand's
individual fleshy characteristics are veiled. Any wrinkles of the skin, any
discolouration of the nail, or veins above the knuckles, are hidden from view.
However, since the form of the hand is identifiable through the glove, cast into
gestures and thrown into a multiplicity of movements, it is never wholly
anonymous, nor faceless.
One needn't be a palmist to suggest that we can read a hand as we do a
face. Frank R. Wilson, in his exhilarating monograph on the evolution,
development and social coding of the hand, writes insistently that, 'the hand is
not merely a metaphor or an icon for humanness, but often the real-life focal
point [...] of a successful and genuinely fulfilling life.' 145 That is to say, a hand
does not simply stand-in for character, gesturing us to look elsewhere for our
understanding of life, but is, in its remarkable expressivity, often where we
should look to glimpse life in the full. It is as adept as the face at expressing
anger, hope, love or fear and indeed, may often tell the truth of a situation,
which the face tries to mask or distort; by which I suggest, despite the masking
of the white glove, the viewer of The Hand and its artisan protagonist, can read
the sinister intentions of the hand clearly. Although Grob is correct to praise
Trnka's choice of the hand-in-glove as antagonist, he is mistaken to
characterise it as the faceless embodiment of 'invisible' 146 totalitarian power. The
hand is not mere 'metaphor'147 but powerful in its real and human incarnation,

144
Gijs Grob, 'The Hand (Ruka)' (Utrecht: Dr. Grob's Animation Review, 14 May 2011)
<http://drgrobsanimationreview.com/2011/05/14/the-hand-ruka/> [accessed 16 September
2014].
145
Frank R. Wilson, The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture
(New York: Vintage, 1999), p.14 (emphasis and ellipsis own).
146
Grob, 2011.
147
Wilson, p.14.

79
with the endless potential to smash, throw, and throttle. In order to do service to
the embodied intricacies of the hand's gestures and interactions with the potter,
I shall, over the next few paragraphs, be turning to acting manuals and
monographs upon the anatomy of the hand, to dissect more carefully than
previously achieved, the power that the hand holds over viewer and protagonist
alike and demonstrate that the work succeeds primarily due to its use of the
hand-in-glove as a real thing, not just as a sign functioning within a larger
allegory, a characterisation typical to previous discussions of the work. 148
François Delsarte, in the mid-nineteenth century, wrote influentially upon
the art of oratory, both off-stage and on. Delsarte regarded oration as a spiritual
art, through which the speaker might elevate himself closer to God. As such,
many of the motions and gestures he devised for the orator's body are
analogous to spiritual states, the orator's hand and arm tracing the fluctuations
of the soul. However, I shall neglect the religious foundation to Delsarte's work,
since it is his systematic and hyper-specific approach to the movement and
position of the hands, which interests me here. Firstly, Delsarte conceptualises
the hand as having three fundamental 'attitudes'; the 'normal state' in which the
hand is easefully open, without strain or effort; the 'concentric state' in which the
hand is closed; and finally, the 'eccentric state' in which the hand is open, with
force and tension.149 Delsarte then further sub-divides these attitudes into nine
different positions, defined according to the togetherness of the fingers, whether
the palm or the back of the hand is facing forward, the strain in (the muscles of)
the hand, and the movement of the hand, as determined by the movement of
the wrist and arm. These variations express one of the following: acceptance,
negation, “lack of will”, wilfulness, menace, desire, imprecation, repulsion, or
finally what I shall loosely define as tenderness, characterised by a caressing
gesture.150
Though the antagonistic hand of Trnka's film makes a very brief show of
decorum upon its entrance, bobbing towards the potter in a movement that
148
See the litany of writers given two pages prior, who provide short summaries of the
allegorical meaning of The Hand and its historical import, without ever truly being attentive to
what the hand is doing at a scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot level.
149
François Delsarte, 'Attitudes of the Hands', Delsarte System of Oratory, 4th edn, trans. by
Abby L. Alger (New York: Edgar S. Werner, 1893)
Archived at Project Gutenberg: <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12200> [accessed 16
September 2014].
150
Ibid.

80
resembles a curtsey, it wastes no time in adopting a position between wilfulness
and menace. Hovering above the potter's wheel, the fingers and thumb are held
together in a fist, save the index finger, pointed wilfully towards the potter. The
hand then shapes the potter's clay into a small iconographic representation of
itself. In doing so, the hand moves between a desiring and a caressing
movement, albeit one which is purposeful and possessive, rather than tender.
When the potter shapes the clay back into a pot, the hand returns to its position
of wilfulness/menace, now jabbing its index finger forward threateningly towards
the potter.
Though it is the hand's iconographic power that allows us to abstract its
meaning to the concept of the “hand of the state”, it is not merely the hand as
icon that communicates the dynamic of power here. The hand as sign is what
alerts us to its allegorical role, but the specifics of Trnka's critique are
communicated through the precise, gestural movements of the hand. The
sequence of courtesy/menace/desire/threat that the hand moves through in the
first forty seconds of its on-screen time (see fig. 1) is a caricature of the
emotional position adopted by Soviet governments towards their artists, by
turns conciliatory and overly threatening. Though intruding into the artist's
private space uninvited, the hand immediately establishes itself as a guest,
adopting the social ritual of polite greeting in order to secure for itself this role.
From here on in, any refusal given by the potter is transformed into an act of
rudeness and incivility, as though it were the potter, not the hand, being
unreasonable. The hand makes its desires clear and yet is careful to adopt the
threatening aspect only momentarily, hinting at the potential for force, rather
than becoming explicitly violent. Again, this coercive behaviour allows the hand
to assert its domination while pretending to remain within the sphere of civil
relations and polite interaction. Trnka is showing us here that the state strikes
an emotionally ambivalent relationship with artists, offering plaudits and respect,
while all the time reminding the artist – sometimes implicitly; sometimes
explicitly – of the fact that they are in service to a power, which has the ability to
destroy their life at any time. However, this power is (up to the point that an
artist can be clearly identified as dissident) only hinted at, so that the state can
retain its mask of benevolence and defend against accusations of tyranny by
pointing towards its previous good-will gestures.

81
 Neither a static image, nor a disembodied signifier could adequately
communicate this complex succession of emotional gestures. When the hand
points its index finger it is both simultaneously a pointed “look here” indicated
silently through gritted teeth and also the physical threat of a long, forceful
finger, that contains threat in itself (rather than pointing to a threat elsewhere)
with its power to jab, push or crush the potter to the floor. A sentence from
Gilberto Perez' The Material Ghost chimes serendipitously here with double
meaning: 'The photographic image is an index because it is an imprint taken
directly from the things represented; and it is also an index because, like a
pointing finger, it tells us to look at those things.' 151 If we take the 'pointing finger'
to be the very 'thing' represented (as in my example above) the sentence folds
in upon itself to become self-recurring. The finger is an icon which points at
itself, the thing, which is an icon, etc.
A visual representation of this paradox is M. C. Escher's 1948 lithograph
Drawing Hands, in which two hands seem to draw each other in an endless
loop. Demonstratively, the hand of Trnka's film is unresolvable as icon or thing,
possessing a frightening ambivalence for the viewer, since they can never know
for sure at what level of reality (sign or thing) they should be reading the hand.
This is essentially the irreconcilable difference at the heart of allegory; to quote
Elana Gomel; 'the allegorical text is always double, split in the middle by the
gap between the literal and the figurative, the wrapping and the message, the
husk and the kernel.'152 The fact that the hand is possessed of a figurative
capacity in its ability to sign and gesture, but is simultaneously a blunt
instrument, a fleshy thing, makes it an allegorical figure par excellence;
embodying the very sign/thing split that characterises the allegorical form.
Gomel's explanatory metaphor of the 'husk and the kernel' 153 is especially apt
when we consider that in The Hand we only ever see the white glove that
houses the hand itself. Thus, the glove functions like the sign for the hand,
hiding the inner-thing, even as it outwardly communicates the hand's intentions.
Those with even the most cursory familiarity of Sign Language should be
aware that hands are possessed, to a remarkably dexterous degree, of the

151
Perez, p.395.
152
Elana Gomel, 'The Poetics of Censorship: Allegory as Form and Ideology in the Novels of
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky', Science Fiction Studies, 22.1 (March 1995), 87-105 (p. 89).
153
Ibid.

82
ability to sign intricate and complex sentences. Indeed, a single gesture can
represent a dense amalgamation of different meanings, overlaying signifiers at
a high degree of both complexity and nuance. For example, Armstrong, Stokoe
and Wilcox note that a 'particular configuration of a hand and arm' through
participating 'in signifying a word, also performs the function of sentence
subject, and hence has the general meaning of agent, something acting.' 154
Hands have also been co-opted, historically, to embody an abstract ideal
– such as power and resistance (think of the raised clenched fist of the Black
Power salute), divine suffering and grace (Christ's stigmata), refined aesthetic
sensibility (Michel Sittow's famous portrait of Henry VII circa. 1500) or
peace/victory (the “V” salute). The latter case is a replicable sign and yet the
subtleties of its meaning are still dependent upon context. So, Richard Nixon
holding the “V” sign after a military victory, for instance, carries connotations
(unabashed militarism, evocation of Churchill, appeal to popularism) very
different from the current trend for young Japanese women to make the sign in
photographs (happiness, friendliness, goodwill, celebration). Moreover, a
gesture may be both a sign and icon. Nixon's “V” is intended to be read
linguistically as signifying “Victory”, yet his making of the sign before
photographers, was also a self-conscious attempt to create an iconic image and
a personal signature, recognisably linked to his public-political persona. Of
course, behind all this, may be a simple display of power.
Trnka captures these complexities in a dense montage of images that
begins when the hand, tired of attempting to reshape the potter's clay and
having failed in its attempt to bribe him over the telephone, 155 sneaks a
television set into his room and bombards the bobble-headed artist with an
exultant sequence of pro-hand propaganda.
Michael Brooke describes this sequence as a 'virtuoso montage' that
'demonstrates the image’s potency as a political tool: hands hold scales of
justice, the torch of the Statue of Liberty, Napoleon’s hand tucked into his
waistcoat, a mailed fist, a boxing glove, the accusing finger, the clasped
handshake, even the silhouetted rabbit trick.' 156 Not only does this establish in a
154
David F. Armstrong, William C. Stokoe and Sherman E. Wilcox, Gesture and the Nature of
Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.15.
155
We might ask how does the hand speak over the telephone? Presumably sign language,
resulting in a peculiar conflation of the aural and visual registers.
156
Michael Brooke, 'The Hand' (Closely Watched DVDs, 27 July 2006)

83
threatening fashion the omnipotence of the hand and reassert the previously
established gestural motif of the aggressively pointed finger, it also positions the
hand as having omnipotence in language and, as such, a stranglehold on
meaning. The hand bearing the torch of the Statue of Liberty, for instance, is
both a sign of freedom and metonymically America. It marks the entrance to the
“Land of the Free” both figuratively and literally. The hand holds power over
both the signifier and the signified.
Moritz suggests that in Trnka’s film, through having the hand hold the
State of Liberty and adopt the “heil Hitler” salute, the hand is deliberately
associated with 'considered enemies of socialism' – a strategic manoeuvre on
the part of Trnka to evade state censorship, presenting his film as 'a protest
against foreign domination'.157 However, the hand adopts such a multifarious
degree of poses that it transcends specificity. The fist in chain-mail and the
boxing glove especially carry much broader associations of power and violence.
On the television screen, rendered almost two-dimensional, these images are
iconic. The fist and the glove signify violence but they cannot hurt the potter in
and of themselves. However, we never forget while watching, that the potter has
the real embodied hand to deal with, who must be 'behind the scenes' and may
itself try adopting chain-mail or a boxing glove in the escalation of its violence.
As ever, a linguistic description is insufficient to account for the power of
the sequence. It is important that we see this dizzying array of hands to feel the
spell of the propaganda. Iconic reminders of violence carry the clear threat of
real physical violence which, as when the hand mushes the potter's head down
into one of his clay pots, are visceral and emotionally painful to watch. The final
pose adopted by the hand in its self-promoting advertisement, may at first
glance seem incongruously playful. It is the shadow puppet of a rabbit, cast by
the hand. However, Stephen Russell-Gebbett perceptively notes that this shows
that the hand 'is capable of illusion. It can appear to be something that it is
not.'158 This is a remarkable image as, in this one moment in the film, it shows
the hand as phantasmal. The shadow cast by the hand is ultimately more
dangerous than the physical presence of the hand itself. It is the dark shadow of
<http://filmjournal.net/czech/2006/07/27/the-hand/> [accessed 16 September 2014].
157
Moritz, 'Narrative Strategies for Resistance and Protest', in Pilling, p.40.
158
Stephen Russell-Gebbett, '8. The Hand' (Wonders in the Dark, 16 December 2010)
<https://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/8-the-hand/> [accessed 16 September
2014].

84
power. Film reviewer “Paghat” accurately notes that at the end of the film it is
one of the potter's own pots that kills him, rather than the hand itself, by falling
on his head.159 The potter, worked into a frenzy of paranoia, anger and fear, is
killed by his own art. Though Trnka needs the embodied hand to effectively
communicate its threat, it is actually the internalised fear of the hand (the
shadow cast upon the brain) that is death to the dissident artist.
In The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit, Bella Merlin instructs actors that
their 'external actions' must physically manifest the 'desires and aspirations' 160
adopted through the internalisation of their character role. However, when we
watch a puppet perform we are, to quote Tina Bicat, 'directly engaged without
having to travel through a mist of apparent naturalism.' 161 The audience is never
asked to believe that the puppet is invested with true interiority – or more
precisely, human consciousness – but rather is induced to invest in a more
primitive form of animism, in which all matter partakes of life. This is a mode of
thought that holds abiding significance within Victoria Nelson's treatise on
puppetry and animism, The Secret Life of Puppets: 'a once dominant, now very
much marginalised religio-philosophical tradition in Western culture: that no
Cartesian boundary between mind and matter exists, and moreover that “dead”
inorganic matter and we as sentient, self-conscious beings, share a mysterious
and direct connection with a second reality that lies beyond the material
realm.'162 This conception of the puppet's inner life can be set in dialectical
opposition to the one offered by Wilson in The Hand who writes that the
movement between the puppet and the puppeteer's body is 'analogous'. 163
Staying close to the subject of his monograph, he provides a specific example
of the puppeteer using his biceps to turn his elbow in such a way that the
puppet's arm is supinated. Between the actor and the puppet, Wilson tells us,
'there is a close match not only in surface choreography but in the underlying
mechanics of the movement.'164 It is this correlative closeness between the small

159
'Paghat', 'The Hand, etc.' (Wild Realm Reviews, date unknown)
<http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/f-jiri-trnka2.html> [accessed 16 September 2014].
160
Bella Merlin, The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit (London: Nick Hern Books, 2007), p.135.
161
Tina Bicat, Puppets and Performing Objects: A Practical Guide (Wiltshere: Crowood Press,
2007), p.13.
162
Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003),
p.30.
163
Wilson, p.332.
164
Ibid.

85
wooden body on stage and the large fleshy body above or behind it that helps
puppeteers to occupy their puppet's body during a performance, imaginatively
positioning their vision as though looking through their puppet's eyes. 165 This
investment of the puppeteer in his puppet, so that the puppet's gestures are
synonymous with his/her own, transforms the puppet into a vessel for the
puppeteer's inner life, who becomes therefore an actor, not unlike those
addressed by Merlin in her acting manual. This encroachment, if we may call it
that, of the puppeteer's life into their puppet, is surely the reason why Nelson
decides to forgo discussion of the puppet theatre; arguing that automata outside
of these performance spaces have a higher 'uncanny' charge, stripped of their
'theatrical charm'.166 For Nelson then, the puppet's wooden body, its cloth or
cotton dress – the very stuff of which it is made, contains life prior to it being
picked up and puppeteered upon a stage or before a film camera. There is the
'life' of the object itself and the 'life-movement' invested by the subject. 167
The interplay between these two different forms of “life animation” is
significantly problematised in The Hand by the fact that we are faced with a
protagonist that is a stop-motion puppet (later strung up to resemble a
marionette) and an antagonist that is a real, human hand, albeit one hidden in a
glove. Confounding the fact that it is a real human hand we are watching, is not
only its masking by an anonymous white glove, but also the fact that the hand is
always seen as disembodied, cut off at the upper wrist. Yet Wilson spends
much of his work reminding us that the hand's movements are never isolated
phenomena and that to comprehend the hand we must simultaneously
comprehend the wrist and the arm and the shoulder and so forth. 168 The hand is
not an isolated entity. As such, through cropping the arm out of shot, the hand
appears to us as a body without a brain. Its autonomy is disturbing, as we are
given no indication of what might be behind its movements. The potter-
harlequin is more immediately relatable as a friendly, expressive figure, but the
irony is of course that he is merely a simulation of humanity, while the hand
genuinely belongs, at a non-diegetic level, to a real human being.

165
Wilson, p.285.
166
Nelson, p.60.
167
Here an intersection with Kracauer's notion of cinema as life-movement presents itself, but it
is too complex a digression to unpick at this juncture. Kracauer's Theory of Film (1960) is
discussed in more detail in Chapter Two.
168
Wilson, p.8.

86
 Although the Quay Brothers have a markedly different aesthetic and
indeed, working method, to that of Jiří Trnka, 169 the difference between their
methods as stop-motion filmmakers/puppeteers is illuminating when we
consider a quote from Suzanne Buchan; Buchan writes: 'The Quays' automata
and puppets act as intermediaries between the filmmakers' tabletop world and
the world they evoke on-screen; they are, as the creators, embodied in their
puppets.'170 The fact that it is the Quays' hands that are manipulating their
puppets is essential as it allows for a direct communication between the body of
the puppeteer(s) and the body of the puppet(s). Wilson's conception of puppetry
is honoured. The puppet is an extension of the puppeteer's body – is, in a
sense, the puppeteer. It is therefore interesting to note that in contrast to the
Quays, Trnka did not always directly manipulate his puppets himself. At the 19 th
April 2012 BFI screening of Trnka's 1959 adaptation of A Midsummer Night's
Dream, assistant animator Vlasta Pospísilová informed the audience that, 'he
could make the set design, he'd paint trees on glass panels and he could
makes the faces, the heads and he could even make the mechanism inside the
puppet (sic.) [...] he could do everything, except for the animation.' 171 This
strongly indicates that it was not Trnka himself animating the potter in The Hand
and very probably not his hand inside the gloved antagonist. Although this
should not detract from Trnka's significant achievements, it does complicate the
relationship between Trnka and his protagonist and, in turn, Trnka and the hand.
Trnka was not, as per the Quays, using a puppet as his embodied avatar within
the film-world; nor are we meant to understand the hand as a representation of
the director-animator's ultimate artistic control of his film, 172 since this would
ultimately reverse and undermine the film's 'protest against the conditions
imposed by the Czechoslovak Communist state an artistic creation and creative
freedom'173 by suggesting that the artist, not the state, yields ultimate control.
The Hand is an allegory and as such exceeds the specifics of its production.
Edgar Dutka reflects that the work curiously seems to predict its director's fate.
169
Trnka worked with an increasingly large workshop team of animators and technicians, while
the Quay Brothers work closely together as a pair and, in their short works, have employed a
small, select number of regular collaborators, such as Keith Griffiths.
170
Suzanne Buchan, The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom (London: University of
Minnesota Press, 2011), pp.101-102.
171
Pospísilová, 2012.
172
As per Chuck Jones' Duck Amuck (1953).
173
Dee, 2012.

87
 At the end of the film the potter dies in trying to resist the hand and then
is given a ceremonious funeral, the hand placing a medal atop his coffin.
Meanwhile, when Trnka himself died late in 1969, having been awarded the title
of National Artist, he was buried in an honorary state funeral. Four months later,
The Hand was banned, reels were sequestered and the film went without
screening in its native country for a subsequent two decades. 174 However,
despite this striking biographical parallel, Dutka is canny enough to note that the
film holds universal allegorical relevance; according to Dutka, though it was
'officially declared as Trnka's criticism of the Cult of Personality (Stalin) […] for
all people, it was an alarming allegory of human existence in a totalitarian
society.'175

Trnka as Champion of Artisanal Values

Michal Bregant, director of the Czech National Film Archive, quoted by
Radio Prague, characterises Trnka's work as fundamentally 'not
autobiographical'.176 However, Bregant then goes further to note that, 'the
concept of a hero and of an individual human being, of an artist is something
that has some undertones, which are rather personal.' 177 The solitary hero might
be a simple concept but it is one of monumental importance to Trnka's canon,
from the Springman outwitting the SS, to the young lovers of A Midsummer
Night's Dream refusing to acquiesce to the marriage demands placed upon
them by their state-sanctioned elders, to the potter refusing to make tributes to
the domineering “hand of the state”.
In his works, the hero/heroine is often the lone individual, who resists the
demands of an alienating, unreasonable system. It is this perennial concern of
Trnka's films that prompts me to agree with the sentiment given by Bhagya
Sumanabandara that essentially all of Trnka's works are political. 178 This may
174
Edgar Dutka,'Jiri Trnka -- Walt Disney Of The East!', Animation World Magazine, 5.04 (July
2000), p.2
<http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.04/5.04pages/dutkatrnka2.php3> [accessed 16 September
2014].
175
Ibid (ellipsis own).
176
Michal Bregant interviewed by Dominik Jůn, 'Jiří Trnka: 100th anniversary of the birth of a
great Czech animator' (Prague: Radio Praha, 28 February 2012)
<http://www.radio.cz/en/section/czech-history/jiri-trnka-100th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-a-great-
czech-animator> [accessed 16 September 2014].
177
Ibid.
178
Bhagya Sumanabandara, 'Jiri Trnka (1912- 1969)' (My Little Drawing Desk, 27 January 2011)
<http://mylittledrawingdesk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/jiri-trnka-1912-1969.html> [accessed 16

88
seem like a curious assertion to make about a filmmaker whose work was so
lyrical, gentle and beloved by children, but in essence Trnka's ideological
alignment was at odds with that of the state. While the Soviet state endorsed
efficiency, collectivisation and progress, Trnka's films celebrate daydreaming,
the whims of the individual and tend to be backwards-looking and nostalgic.
This is why Hames can convincingly argue that Midsummer virtually defied 'the
political realities of the fifties.' 179 The potter in The Hand makes his ceramics not
to be of useful service to the state, but merely due to the joy in their own
creation. The pots are not distributed amongst the people, but line the shelves
of his own room. In the microcosmic view we are given, the potter becomes
heroic precisely because he refuses to make ceramics for anything another
than for art's sake. He violently resists the notion of his art being co-opted
towards a larger, political agenda. In such an atmosphere, to make agenda-less
art is perversely to hold an agenda.
However, to be agenda-less is not to be without values. Indeed, Jaroslav
Boček, quoted in The Most Important Art, praises Trnka for his spiritual and
poetic defence of permanent, nationalistic, traditional values and virtues, in the
face of shifting demands of propaganda and the threat of technology. 180 Liehm
and Liehm even hint that there was something radical in Trnka taking inspiration
from traditional forms of Czech folk-art as this continued the artistic
preoccupations of the country's pre-war avant-garde. 181 In the final part of this
chapter I shall turn my attention to how Trnka embodies his resistance to
technological advancement in the form of a red rubber ball in The Cybernetic
Grandma of 1962 and how the critiques that he is offering complement and
coincide with those made by Václav Havel in works he published as a dissident
in the 1960s and 70s and later, as president of Czechoslovakia/the Czech
Republic.

Technological Abstraction in The Cybernetic Grandma

For a film with a sometimes bewildering sense of space, The Cybernetic
Grandma has a rather simple narrative. A young girl lives alone with her

September 2014].
179
Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, p.192.
180
Jaroslav Boček, Film a doba, 5 (1965), quoted in Liehm and Liehm, p.108.
181
Liehm and Liehm, p.99.

89
grandma. A message delivered by a flying machine prompts the grandma to
take the child, who brings with her a red bouncing ball, on a journey that leads
through the countryside (although a countryside that seems unpleasantly
augmented by industrialisation) across a bridge and ends at a strange,
imposing facility. After retrieving a ticket that is hung around the girl's neck, the
grandmother encourages the child to enter an elevator-like compartment which
brings her onto a moving run-way, then into a transparent flying pod. The pod
transports the girl deep into the structure of the facility, where she traverses
stark corridors of confusing geometric design, following her rolling red ball as
she goes. Eventually she finds the titular 'Cybernetic Grandma' who has been
created to replace her real grandma. However, the Cybernetic Grandma, which
resembles a metal chair with wings, proves itself a little too eager to play with
the child's ball and becomes quite manic and dangerous. The girl's real
grandma appears and shuts down the Cybernetic Grandma, returning the child
to her arms.
Trnka deploys various techniques, some simple and some complex, to
leave the viewer in no doubt that this technological landscape is dystopian. The
sound design matches shrill discordant noises with the artefacts of technology.
Even the flying machine, which resembles a latex hand attached to metal
helicopter blades, which induces the journey to the facility, burbles like a
stenograph. It's design recalls a Surrealist objet d'art and in its splicing of the
human form with technology, the photographic cut-ups of Czech avant-gardist
and member of the precursor-Surrealist movement Devětsil, Karel Teige.
Indeed, Teige seems to be the most recognisable influence upon the work in
total. His Collage #225 (1942) for instance could belong to the same world as
The Cybernetic Grandma – a surreal photo montage that depicts a pale artificial
hand (not unlike the one belonging to the flying machine) sprouting from the
landscape, scored with black inky lines that resemble veins. In the foreground a
lady in a full-body streamlined costume is reclining on the grass and behind her
head is a giant ornament, in which a stag-beetle like creature hovers, or has
been set in glass.
In Teige's visions, the countryside has been de-naturalised and rendered
strange. It becomes clear very early on in The Cybernetic Grandma that the
world our protagonists inhabit is no longer one of verdant, untouched nature,

90
either. The birdsong, when overlaid upon dismal organ music, begins to seem
eerily repetitive and mechanical and when the girl and grandmother seem to be
passing through some kind of heathland, a bird's eye view shot makes it
apparent that this merely fringes an enormous empty motorway of white and
black. One of the only structural elements passed by the child and her
grandmother that is clearly made from natural materials is a dilapidated wooden
bridge, fallen by the way-side in a world where technological equipment is seen
to be kept gleaming and clean. There is a sense, as in Teige, that the landscape
has become atomised, that people are living in a fragmented technological
collage.
This concern is one returned to again and again by Václav Havel in his
writings and it always carries a moral impetus. When in Summer Meditations –
a manifesto-like autobiographical work that established for the populace his
desires for a Czechoslovakia newly independent of Soviet rule – he speaks
elegiacally about the nation's 'once-picturesque countryside', what seems to be
important is to re-establish a universal togetherness, to gather up the fragments
of the country and 'renew the old connections between its elements.' 182 This
theme had been established far earlier in writings Havel made as a dissident
and leader of the Charter 77 movement. Here we encounter an elevation of the
figures of the child and the peasant to a high moral and spiritual level. They are,
writes Havel, 'more intensely rooted in what some philosophers call “the natural
world”, or Lebenswelt, than most modern adults.' 183 It is no coincidence that
Trnka casts his heroes as a little girl and a peasant grandmother. The
(un)natural enemy of these romantic and nostalgic figures is mechanisation,
that 'removes us from the experience of “being” and casts us into the world of
“existences”.'184 Aviezer Tucker succinctly notes; 'This demonization of
technology is well represented in Havel's writings.' 185
The Cybernetic Grandma is not as clear an allegory as The Hand, but it
strikes me that it does carry a moral message, much the same as Havel's.
Namely, that technology can never replace human relations and indeed, tends
to alienate us from a stable sense of home and hearth. In this regard, Trnka's

182
Havel, Summer Meditations, p.111.
183
Havel, 'Politics and Conscience', trans. by E. Kohák and R. Scruton, Living in Truth, p.136.
184
Havel, 'The Power of the Powerless', trans. by P. Wilson, Living in Truth, p.114.
185
Tucker, p.150.

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career traces an interesting trajectory, moving from the agricultural traditions
and pastoralism evident in The Czech Year (Špalíček, 1947) or Old Czech
Legends (Staré Ceske povesti, 1953) and moving towards the fragmented
technological future of The Cybernetic Grandma and the apartment-dwelling
artist, with his tiny pot-plants as the last vestige of nature in The Hand. With this
shift comes also a change in mise-en-scène and cinematography. Trnka's
earlier works are often tranquil, with clearly delineated spaces traced by a
slowly moving camera. By contrast, the cinematography of The Hand becomes
increasingly feverish, splintered and chaotic as the film progresses, as abstract
spaces and iconography start to take up more and more of the frame.
The Cybernetic Grandma is the apex of such discordance. Some shots
are up on screen for mere seconds and are sometimes arranged in an order
which makes it difficult for the viewer to make sense of the space we are
moving through. For example, in the aforementioned cut between the ground-
level shots of the girl and grandma moving through the landscape and the aerial
shot depicting the colossal motorway, the visual discordance is so striking, that
it took this viewer several views to reconcile the two shots and understand their
relation.
Some very simple cinematic (or even, proto-cinematic) techniques
augment our sense of confusion. For instance, one hallway passed through by
the little girl is carpeted with tessellating Necker cubes so that the girl is literally
walking across an optical illusion. The most innovative of these techniques is,
surprisingly, one favoured by the French New Wave of the same period (of
course it seems unlikely that Trnka would have had access to these films,
despite the fact that he was occasionally permitted by the regime to leave the
country).186 The grandmother carries with her a device that serves as a polaroid
camera and takes several pictures during her journey. Occasionally Trnka will
have a photo fill the entire frame and do so unannounced so that it seems that
the action has suddenly come to a stop. The photograph is then moved away
and we realise that we were occupying the point-of-view of the girl, looking at
the photograph, who is now in quite a different position to that pictured. In one
instance, the child looks at a photograph of herself on a swing. The image itself

186
Gene Deitch, '43. Jiří Trnka' (Gene Deitch Credits, February 2012)
<http://genedeitchcredits.com/roll-the-credits/43-jiri-trnka/> [accessed 16 September 2014].

92
is static, but is moved back and forth across the screen in a movement that
resembles the swinging, creating an odd, vertiginous effect. It seems as though
reality has been replaced with Baudrillardian simulacra.
The net result of all this is that we lack anchorage as viewers. In this way,
Trnka seeks to replicate for his audience at the experiential, phenomenological
level, the experience of his child protagonist, who seems so bewildered by this
unnatural, technological landscape. Whenever the camera is set spinning; the
film cuts abruptly; the architecture is bewildering; a scene is dimly-lit and there
are pools of darkness on screen; or else when the frame is treated as an
abstract space, with technological objects, symbols and numbers set flying
across it, the girl's red ball helps orientate us. It is a simple, unchanging,
primary-coloured, ever-recognisable shape; almost a Platonic “simple object”. It
often occupies centre-frame, allowing us to track its movements, giving the
viewer anchorage within a particularly bewildering space (see fig. 2). Its function
is as simple as can be. Throughout her journey, the ball becomes for the child,
the material connection to her previous life within a more stable, rural (although
clearly increasingly compromised by an advancing roadway) environment.
It should be no surprise therefore that when the child meet the
Cybernetic Grandma at the end of her journey, the robot causes the ball to be
thrown down a seemingly infinite chasm. It is as though this moment captures
the lapsarian loss of the object – the object that knows its place, has a defined
function and does not pretend to be a grandma. This incident might be
equivalent to when Havel's functional medieval peasant encounters a factory for
the first time and drops to his knees, believing it to be the work of the devil. 187
We are no longer grounded in a stable sense of 'being' but are assaulted
through the senses, set adrift 'into the world of “existences”'. 188 The profound
influence of Heidegger upon Havel's thinking is evident in such a statement. For
Heidegger, along with other 'conservative revolutionaries', '[t]echnology, despite
its contribution to the reduction of drudgery, has not solved the main problem of
humanity: How to live in an authentically human way?' 189 This sentiment is given
its burlesque and parodic fulfilment in the figure of the Cybernetic Grandma,
which is unable to be authentically human.
187
Havel, 'Politics and Conscience', Living in Truth, p.136, quoted by Tucker, p.150.
188
Havel, 'The Power of the Powerless', Living in Truth, p.114.
189
Tucker, p.68 (brackets own).

93
 The Cybernetic Grandma is composed of materials metonymically
related to a (generic) grandmother's body – its body is a plush, comfy chair and
its wings resemble doilies. However, this merely reinforces the absence of the
grandmother's real body. The chair provides the space where a grandma would
sit and so is structured around this notable absence. Jean Baudrillard has this
to say about robots in The System of Objects: 'The robot is a symbolic
microcosm of both man and the world, which is to say that it simultaneously
replaces both man and the world, synthesizing absolute functionality with
absolute anthropomorphism.'190 Clearly the Cybernetic Grandma is designed to
replace a real grandmother, but its excessive functionality renders it perversely
too fit for purpose. My thinking at this point is inspired by Baudrillard's notion
that gizmos become hyper-functional, as functionality becomes abstracted to
the point of no longer connoting greater ease of use, it starts operating as a
second-order signifier, as though functionality were a desirable trait quite
divorced from use. Gizmos are therefore more functional than functional.191
Earlier in System of Objects, Baudrillard uses the example of the 'tail fin', built
into cars in the late 1950s as a mark of style. Baudrillard recalls this trend: 'We
[...] witnessed a veritable triumphalism on the part of the object – the car's fins
became the sign of victory over space – and they were purely a sign, because
they bore no direct relationship to that victory'. 192 He goes on to write that, 'form
has become allegorical. Tail fins are our modern allegory.' 193 By this Baudrillard
means that tail fins aren't actually useful in any practical sense (far from it),
instead they dramatise the notion of speed.
Baudrillard's notion of allegory here is similar to my own – namely, that of
objects encoded with allegorical meaning that transcends their use value. The
Cybernetic Grandma is just such an object and allegorises the desire for care
and comfort, in the abstract, divorced from real human relations. Trnka believes
this to be impossible and as such, this hyper-functional object, with its ability to
play, skip, talk, clean a child and screen short movies, is useless. Its proficiency
at throwing a ball is such that it far exceeds the child's abilities. The movie that it
shows the child (a bizarre parody of violent animation, increasingly prevalent in
190
Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. by James Benedict (New York: Verso, 2006),
p.129.
191
Baudrillard, pp.123-126.
192
Baudrillard, p.62 (ellipsis own).
193
Baudrillard, p.64.

94
the 1960s and absolutely counter to Trnka's own) scares her. Finally, the
Cybernetic Grandma cannot offer true love and affection and it falls to the real
grandmother to save the day and rescue her granddaughter, restoring familiar
harmony. Significantly once the grandmother has, quite amicably, defeated the
Cybernetic Grandma through pressing its “off” button, she settles herself
peacefully into its lap. The Cybernetic Grandma is restored to its functional
purpose as a chair. The space that signified the missing grandmother is filled
and the object is no longer hyper-functional and complex, but a simple chair
with a single, simple function.

Simple Objects and Anti-Political Politics

Simple objects with simple functions are treated with great affection in
Trnka's work. It is normal household springs in The Springman and the SS that
allow the chimney sweep to save the day; the potter-harlequin's flower pots are
synonymous with art, nature and goodness in the face of state oppression in
The Hand; the child's ball offers us a centre-point of stability in a bewildering
technological future in The Cybernetic Grandma. Although we have only looked
at one of Hermína Týrlová's films, Revolution in Toyland, she too shares Trnka's
affection for the small objects that comprise daily living. A Little Speckle-Ball
(Míček Flíček, 1955) concerns a little round ball, very similar to the one in The
Cybernetic Grandma, getting kidnapped by a disturbed kite. The heroes of the
film, a kindly grandfather and grandmother, rescue the ball and adopt it as their
child. In Knot in the Handkerchief (Uzel na kapesníku, 1958) a handkerchief
saves a house from flooding by alerting the neighbourhood clothes. Not least of
course, the heroic toys of Revolution in Toyland band together and defeat a
Gestapo agent.
The objects in these films exist across a wide spectrum of
anthropomorphism. The flower pots, springs and the red ball are not
anthropomorphised in the slightest, while some of the toys resemble tiny
people. However, what strikes me as significant across all these films is the fact
that the objects are not magical, but household. Conceivably the knotted
handkerchief is blown to life by gusts of wind; the toys are a mere hallucination
of the semi-conscious Gestapo agent; the little speckled ball bounces
energetically around like a child, as it is knocked back and forth between people

95
and objects. These things are animate whether we believe them to be
conscious or not. Moreover, they resist ideologies (fascism/state
censorship/technological futurism) precisely because as humble objects they
carry such little ideological baggage. These are objects people live – and more
importantly – play with. They are objects important to children and to simple
living (the Czech notion of the “quiet life” – klid) and as such are antithetical to
political grandstanding or the dogma of Soviet Realism. As such, allegorical
films could have a high plurality of meaning, with low clarity, yet still be banned
by the state, as we shall see in the next chapter concerning the 1960s and early
1970s output of Jan Švankmajer.
Havel, in a passage near the end of Living in Truth, maintains that:
'Hundreds of examples testify that the regime prosecutes most rigorously not
what threatens it overtly but has little artistic power, but whatever is artistically
most penetrating, even though it does not seem all that overtly “political”. The
essence of the conflict, that is, is not a confrontation between two ideologies [...]
but a clash between an anonymous, soulless, immobile and paralysing
(“entropic”) power, and life, humanity, being and its mystery.' 194 Later in this
collection Milan Kundera extends this notion further, while applying it to a
specifically Czech context, asserting that the 'situation in Czechoslovakia' is
characterised by the 'conflict between the imported political system and the
entire culture of a country.' 195 This shows us how the celebration of artisanal
labour, simple living and rural life, against the encroachment of alienation and
mechanisation in Trnka's work was politically resistant, even while the works
themselves often seemed tranquil and non-combatant. The objects in these
works carry their allegorical meaning through metonymy – the energetic will of
the Czech people (represented by the labouring chimney sweep) is contained
within the springiness of a couple of old springs from a sofa; the threat of the
Hand is both phantasmal and embodied because of its ability to be icon, symbol
and real thing all-at-once; the potter's plants stand-in for all art but are also
beautiful in their simplicity and their lack of pretension towards art; the
Cybernetic Grandma fails to be a grandmother because it is composed of
metonymic signs that signal a grandmother's absence – its hyper-functionality
194
Havel, 'Six Asides about Culture', trans. by E. Kohák, Living in Truth, pp.123-135 (p.133)
(ellipsis own).
195
Kundera, in Havel, Living in Truth, p.238.

96
renders it useless; finally, the red ball provides visual anchorage for both the
viewer and the child protagonist to follow and, in opposition to the high-
complexity robot, is a near-Platonic idealisation of the Simple Object, that gains
political resistance precisely because it is so adamantly non-ideological.
The way in which these objects are politically resistant precisely due to
their domestic objecthood has something of a parallel in Havel's contentious
notion of 'anti-political' or 'non-political' politics. 196 Havel never provided a simple
explanation of the concept, despite its repeated usage in his writings. Arguably,
this is because anti-politics is defined by what it is not. In an address at New
York University in 1991, Havel characterised 'non-political politics' as politics
with a conscience, in which politicians act in good faith, without deceit or
recourse to Machiavellian political intrigue. 197 Havel was perhaps simplifying for
his American audience. The parallel with Trnka's allegorical objects is more
apparent when we consider Popescu's assertion that anti-political politics puts
great emphasis upon civil society and civic virtues, while de-emphasising the
role of the state.198 Furthermore, Simon Smith claims that Havel's anti-politics
found their most 'receptive social milieu' in rural, rather than urban,
communities.199
Anti-politics, then, concerns itself with how politics might govern and
enrich daily lived life on a micro, individual level. Popescu explains that this
emphasis upon the micro aspects of civic life coincides with a rejection, or
suspicion towards, political ideology:

Havel's difficulty in considering political institutions comes from the

fact that he believes in small associations that are temporary, and
dedicated to one goal usually related to a particular community.
Individuals involved in such ad-hoc associations are highly motivated
problem-solvers rather than the bearers of an overarching ideological

196
Delia Popescu spends Chapter Five of her Political Action in Václav Havel's Thought: The
Responsibility of Resistance (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2011) explicating Havel's notion of
'anti-politics'.
197
Václav Havel, New York University, New York City, 27 October 1991
Archived at: <http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?
cat=projevy&val=273_aj_projevy.html&typ=HTML> [accessed 27 October 2014]
198
Popescu, p.105
199
Simon Smith, 'Civic Forum and Public against Violence: Agents for Community Self-
Determination? Experiences of Local Actors', in Local Communities and Post-Communist
Transformation: Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, ed. by Simon Smith (New
York and London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp.41-91 (p.43).

97
 creed.200

When, in Chapter Two, we come to consider actor-network-theory, this notion

that all associations are fleeting and contingent upon other associations, will be
shown to be at the heart of Švankmajer's filmmaking. For the moment, this
quote usefully illuminates the political role of objects in Trnka's work. The
springs in Springman and the SS and the little red ball in The Cybernetic
Grandma are useful objects that serve individuals faced with specific problems
(how to evade the SS or how to navigate an abstracted and disorienting terrain,
respectively) but otherwise carry little ideological baggage. The people these
objects serve are the young, the disenfranchised, or the rural poor.
There is a tension, or even a contradiction, in discussing Trnka's
filmography as simultaneously political and non-political as I have done in this
chapter. Popescu provides a quote from Havel at perhaps his most clear-
sighted to clarify what something being at once political and anti-political could
mean: 'I favour “anti-political politics,” that is politics not as the technology of
power and manipulation, of cybernetic rule over humans or as the art of the
utilitarian, but politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful
lives'.201 The Hand is Trnka's stand against 'power and manipulation'; The
Cybernetic Grandma is his critique of cybernetics; but Trnka would never so
plainly disparage the utilitarian and Havel was mistaken to do so. The simple
use of objects can restore us to the 'rootedness' 202 in Being that Havel extolled
through his career and Trnka's films show us that use value and ideology need
not go hand in hand, but that the most useful objects can take on allegorical
significance in the quiet fight against oppression.

200
Popescu, p.127.
201
Havel, 'Politics and Conscience', Living in Truth, p.155, quoted in Popescu, p.112.
202
Tucker, p.144. Doubtlessly, a term intentionally used for its Heideggerian connotations.

98
Chapter Two: Jan Švankmajer and the
Network of Things
Introduction to Švankmajer
An egg as hard and heavy as a metal weight; a wind-up chicken tethered
to a length of rope; a soup spoon peppered with holes; a chess set with a
missing pawn replaced by a pebble; a flapping shoe with hobnail teeth; a dirtied
and dilapidated glove puppet of Punch/Kašpárek; a chandelier made from
human bones; a sugar-powdered cake of coal; a shoe covered in butter; candy
wrappers hiding screws; a swinging pair of dentures tangled up in razor-wire –
these marvellous and abject objects are all from the short films of Czech
Surrealist Jan Švankmajer.
The films that have been selected for this chapter are those which
employ these animation techniques, rather than the small number of
Švankmajer's works which include only live actors, with no animation. Although
the latter hold their own political intrigue, they do not fit within the current work's
focus upon how Czech animated films have encoded their objects to express
political ideas. Also, those films which have their origins in source material
which is not Švankmajer's own, such as his adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe or
Horace Walpole, will not be discussed here, since the focus of this thesis is
specifically Czech and these other films, though exemplary, strike me as being
formal experiments worthy of being discussed elsewhere as experiments in
tactility (the Poe adaptations) or the documentary form (the Walpole). A notable
exception has been made for Švankmajer's 1971 treatment of Lewis Carroll's
'Jabberwocky' since it is stop-motion animated and proves useful in explaining
why a psychoanalytic approach is insufficient when analysing Švankmajer's
work.
Švankmajer's films, like those discussed in the first chapter, contain a
wealth of objects. It is an irreconcilable tension within his work that as a viewer
one feels compelled to seek concrete meaning from the dilapidated objects and
things on display, while remaining keenly aware of the futility of this effort, since
the meaning they produce cannot be elegantly expressed through language,
indeed is often proto-linguistic, a “sense-meaning” that precedes articulation.

99
The gap between the viewing subject and the silent yet expressive objects on
screen can never be truly bridged. The textures of the object world remain an
alien script, inscrutable to humans. However, cinema can allow us the pleasure
of experiencing these textures through the eyes, and gradually – if we immerse
ourselves in the experience of viewing – as through the entire body. Laura
Marks refers to this kind of spectatorship as 'haptic visuality', in which 'the eyes
themselves function like organs of touch.' 203 If we consider Švankmajer's films to
be politically subversive, it is not because the experience of watching provides
the viewer with a directly political message or slogan with which to fight
censorship or nullifying uniformity, but rather, it can provide a glimpse of a way
of being far removed from the drab years of normalisation under which many of
the films were made. Instead of thinking dogmatically, functionally or
bureaucratically, the viewer of Švankmajer's films is invited to think haptically
and sensuously. Švankmajer makes us consider the possibility that resistance
in the face of censorship and oppression does not require charters and
manifestos, but feelings, textures and a way of engaging with the world that is
not merely visual, but tactile.
However, Švankmajer's work also contains visual references to specific
political events – the Warsaw Pact Invasion; the Slánský show trial of 1952 –
alongside more subtle political allusions. As such, Švankmajer's films may invite
precise allegorical readings, while simultaneously engaging with more universal
political conflicts such as the struggle between freedom and oppression, or the
tension between systems of categorisation and those objects/subjects that seek
to exceed or escape these systems of control. This chapter will continue the
allegorical approach established in the previous chapter when discussing
Švankmajer's films, but will also engage with other critical frameworks in order
that the aspects of his work that resist symbolic reading are not neglected.

Švankmajer's Relationship to Surrealism

Surrealism holds that objects are conduits for the projected desires of the
artist or audience. Say, to borrow an example from Charles E. Gauss, the
Surrealist is sold a tomato. He then chooses to exhibit this tomato as a balloon.
A Surrealist understanding holds that, 'The tomato has become a balloon for the
203
Marks, Touch, p.2 (italics in original).

100
individual who sees it as such, and that individual is not concerned whether the
object is a tomato or a balloon to anyone else. It is a balloon in his
imagination.'204 By this logic the object yields to the transformative power of the
mind. As such, while Surrealist activity 'may eventuate in material objects [...]
the existence of these as material objects is always disregarded by the
surrealists. They are reinterpreted as signs of the mental.' 205
In interview Švankmajer has repeatedly identified himself as a 'militant
surrealist'.206 The phrase evokes an ideological approach to the movement,
suggesting as it does that Švankmajer is a stalwart adherent of Surrealism as
expressed in its official 'doctrines'. Therefore, it would seem that to consider
Švankmajer's self-definition we must assess the role that objects are assigned
within Breton's manifestos and speeches.
Objects play a peripheral role within Breton's 'First Manifesto of
Surrealism', subservient to the 'psychic automatism' 207 which to Breton is nothing
less than a fountainhead around which the world should be refashioned anew.
Upon this point Breton is explicit, stating that when he writes of automatism he
is 'not talking about the poetic consciousness of objects which I have been able
to acquire only after a spiritual contact with them repeated a thousand times
over'.208 When Švankmajer writes of his predilection for objects that 'have some
kind of inner life'209 it is precisely this spiritual contact which he is appealing to.
Yet if in 1924 Breton regarded this subject-object connection as near impossible
to obtain, by the time of his 'Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme?' lecture given ten
years later in 1934 in Brussels, Breton's position on objects had undergone
some revision. In contrast to views expressed within what Breton now refers to
as 'the purely intuitive epoch of surrealism (1919-25)' in which thought was
regarded as 'supreme over matter' 210 he now told the Belgian Surrealists that, 'It
is essentially on the object that surrealism has thrown most light in recent
204
Charles E. Gauss, 'The Theoretical Backgrounds of Surrealism', The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, 2.8 (autumn 1943), 37-44 (p.43).
205
Gauss, p.42 (ellipsis own).
206
Švankmajer interviewed by Michael Brooke, 'MAKERS: Free Radical', Vertigo Magazine, 3.5
(spring 2007), and in the film The Chimeras of Jan Švankmajer (Les Chimères des Švankmajer,
Betrand Schmitt and Michel Leclerc, 2001), 0:04:50.
207
André Breton, 'Manifesto of Surrealism', Manifestos of Surrealism, trans. by H. R. Lane and
R. Seaver (Michigen: University of Michigen Press, 1972), pp.1-48 (p.26).
208
Breton, p.34
209
Švankmajer interviewed by Hames, in Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.118.
210
Breton, 'What is Surrealism?', What is Surrealism? Selected Writings, ed. by Franklin
Rosemont (Atlanta: Pathfinder Press, 1998), pp.151-187 (p.157).

101
years.'211 Breton then purports to give these illuminations their fullest explication
six months later in a lecture delivered in Švankmajer's home city of Prague. In
this lecture, 'Situation de l'objet surréaliste', Breton contends that, 'It is only
when we have reached perfect agreement on the way in which Surrealism
represents the object in general [...] that there can arise the question of defining
the place that the Surrealist object must take to justify the adjective Surrealist.' 212
Yet, as in the Brussels lecture the previous year, Breton defers the question –
discoursing upon Hegelian aesthetic theory, the death of realism in the arts and
Surrealist object constructions – until the end of his lecture, the last few
sentences of which are worth quoting in full:

Surrealist painting and construction have now permitted the

organization of perceptions with an objective tendency around
subjective elements. These perceptions, through their very tendency
to assert themselves as objective perceptions are of such a nature
as to be bewildering and revolutionary, in the sense that they
urgently call for something to answer them in outer reality. It may be
predicted that in large measure this something will be.213

Either, this is a deliberate and provocative tautology, which suspends any

attempt to nail down the role of objects within Surrealist discourse; or else,
Breton is suggesting that since Surrealist activity has allowed imagination to
encroach upon the territory of objects, it is now time for matter to encroach upon
the territory of imagination. Which is to say, that by the principle of dialectical
materialism the Surrealist assertion of 'subjective elements' as 'objective
perceptions' demands an equal, opposite assertion from the objective world.
The Surrealists have thrust forward ideals and now Breton awaits the world to
thrust back matter: 'something will be'.
Švankmajer seems engaged in an attempt to wrest himself from what
Antonin Artaud referred to as 'the dictatorship of speech'.214 One means of
escaping this 'dictatorship' is through turning to other senses for one's means of
communication, such as touch. In Touching and Imagining: An Introduction to
Tactile Art Švankmajer describes the process of his first investigation into tactile

211
Breton, 'What is Surrealism?', in Breton and Rosemont, p.184.
212
Breton, 'Surrealist Situation of the Object – Situation of the Surrealist Object', in Breton, Lane
and Seaver, pp.255-288 (p.258) (emphasis and ellipsis own).
213
Breton, 'Surrealist Situation of the Object', p.278.
214
Antonin Artaud, 'On the Balinese Theatre', The Theatre and its Double, trans. by Victor Corti
(London: Calder Publications, 2005), pp.38-48 (p.40).

102
communication, an artistic experiment entitled The Restorer (Restauráteur,
1975).215 This experiment took the form of a collective game participated in by
members of the Czech Surrealist Group. The stimulus for the project was a
photograph of an art restorer. From this photograph Švankmajer produced a
tactile assemblage of objects which, hidden in a bag, was presented to the
other members of the group. Having felt the objects the participants then
produced their own works and having produced these, were given a series of
photographs to choose from; the task being to identify which was the photo that
had served as Švankmajer's original stimulus. Only one member of the group
correctly identified the photo and many felt there were affinities between several
of the photographs and their own work. From this Švankmajer deduced that the
strength of the tactile lies not in its ability to provoke recognition, but in its ability
to function as a catalyst for creativity and imagination. Although this thesis is not
directly concerned with Švankmajer's non-cinematic output, such tactile
experimentation is illustrative of his interest in developing forms of
communication that do not rely upon language, narrative, or speech. It is clear
therefore that it is appropriate to analyse Švankmajer's films from the
perspective of “reading” the objects of his work for political messages, despite
the non-verbal means of this communication.

Švankmajer's Relationship to Trnka

Švankmajer did but begin his artistic career as a Surrealist, but trained at
the School of Applied Arts in Prague and then at DAMU, the School of Dramatic
Arts, where he worked in the Puppetry Faculty. 216 As such, the idea that some
continuity might exist between Švankmajer's work and the films discussed in
Chapter One seems intuitive, since he was learning about the craft during the
period that Jiří Trnka and Hermína Týrlová were producing the work previously
discussed.
Švankmajer first encountered Trnka's work as an undergraduate when he
was exposed to Trnka's début stop-motion film The Czech Year (1947).
Švankmajer reminisces, in a volume dedicated to his own work, that Trnka's film
was 'entirely different' and, in being so, 'made an impression on [him, as] only
215
Švankmajer, Jan, Touching and Imagining: An Introduction to Tactile Art, ed. by Stanley Dalby
and trans. by Cathryn Vasseleu (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), pp.13-25.
216
Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, pp.104-105.

103
something new and unexpected can.' 217 However, following this charitable
appraisal, Švankmajer immediately distances his artistic practice from Trnka's
own, explaining that as a student he was focused on theatrical design, not film
production, and that, by the time he had entered animation, Trnka's work had
been rendered banal through dreary imitation and was of little influence upon
his own practice.218 Švankmajer, who joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1970,
may – in his allegiance to the notion of surrealism as a disruptive cultural
practice that defines itself against “art” and commercial success – be distancing
himself from the popularism of Trnka and strengthening the notion that his work
exists in strict fidelity to surrealism, rather than continuing the celebrated
tradition of Czech puppet films discussed in the last chapter.
Švankmajer, while recognising the unambiguous political intent of The
Hand, asserts that Trnka never attempted 'engagé art' and notes disapprovingly
that Trnka was eventually awarded the official title of 'national artist' in state
recognition of his work.219 In making this statement, Švankmajer suggests that
Trnka's work was neutered of political potential through its assimilation into the
mainstream, firmly positioning Trnka within a non-revolutionary camp of artists
acquiescent to the Communist government, and himself in a more radical,
politically-resistant camp (specifically, that of the Czech Surrealists).
However, Švankmajer's views on his discontinuous, disjunctive
relationship to Trnka stand in contrast to the opinions expressed by others
writing in the same volume. Michael O'Pray writes of a protest tradition common
to Czech puppetry that unites both Trnka and Švankmajer; 220 while Peter Hames
reminds the reader that The Hand 'provided the first frontal attack on Stalinist
realities', while Švankmajer – with the exception of 1992's agit-prop work The
Death of Stalinism in Bohemia – 'has avoided the directly political.' 221 However, a
reflection upon the previous chapter should remind us, in fact, that The Hand
was Trnka's only overtly political work (meaning that, like Švankmajer, he
produced only one such work within his oeuvre) while other works like The
Cybernetic Grandma made their political arguments allusively through

217
Švankmajer, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.106 (brackets own).
218
Ibid.
219
Švankmajer, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, p.107 (italics in original).
220
O'Pray, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.60.
221
Hames, 'The Core of Reality: Puppets in the Feature Films of Jan Švankmajer', in Dark
Alchemy, 2nd edn, (pp.83-103) p.85.

104
politically-encoded objects within allegorical frameworks. When we consider
this, Švankmajer again ricochets back to proximity with Trnka as a political film-
maker who, with a single exception, has not produced explicitly political works.
When Hames writes of several of Švankmajer's works that their 'anti-Stalinist
implications' are clear even when Švankmajer 'aims at a point beneath such
surface realities',222 he could just as easily be writing of The Cybernetic
Grandma or even Trnka's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream which, as
Hames expresses elsewhere, stood in opposition to 'the political realities of the
fifties.'223 The above might lead one to the assumption that the differences
between the two directors are mainly of an aesthetic and stylistic nature, rather
than there existing any significant split between the political practices of the two
artists. Trnka's visual style of soft, gauzy photography, delicate bobble-headed
puppets and slow, gentle camera movements, stands in opposition to
Švankmajer's hard, sharp edits, whip pans, harsh juxtapositions and grotesque
hybridised creations.
Yet, for artists working under a totalitarian regime, aesthetics can never
be truly divorced from politics. To be stylistically abrasive is to – whether
conscientiously or not – align oneself with a perceived avant-garde whose
commitment to formal stylistic expression can seem, to a totalitarian regime,
suspiciously stronger than any commitment to furthering the ideals of the
state.224
Švankmajer says that his 1982 film Dimensions of Dialogue (Možnosti
dialogu) was used by the Communist government to illustrate precisely the kind
of film-making that shouldn't be made under a dogma of socialist realism. 225 In
terms of the spectrum of film allegory from Chapter One, Švankmajer's works
tend towards obscurity in style and content, with a multiplicity of possible
readings available to the viewer. This means that the authorities cannot have
been objecting to any specific political message/s in the artist's work. We should
also recall the theorising from the first chapter that states that such ambiguity in

222
Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.37.
223
Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, p.192.
224
Liehm and Liehm, p.39.
225
Švankmajer interviewed by Eoin Koepfinger, ''Freedom is Becoming the Only Theme': An
Interview with Jan Švankmajer' (Pittsburgh: Sampsonia Way, 5 June 2012)
<http://www.sampsoniaway.org/blog/2012/06/05/freedom-is-becoming-the-only-theme-an-
interview-with-jan-svankmajer/> [accessed 18 September 2014].

105
and of itself is threatening to a totalitarian regime, which seeks to enforce clear,
unambiguous ideals upon a compliant populace. 226 Even if censors couldn't pin-
point precisely what was ideologically offensive about Švankmajer's work, one
can imagine that they experienced with suspicion and distrust that physical
sense of anxiety that Švankmajer's juddering, spasmodic editing and harsh,
discordant sound design, can engender in his audience. The skeletal corpses;
the mouldering fruit; the dead insects – all these images that appear in
Švankmajer's films communicate something essentially diseased and unhealthy
about his outlook that could only be viewed negatively by an ideology, such as
communism, that values health and (externally defined) purity of mind and spirit.
One can hardly imagine the perfectly synchronised and sculpted gymnasts or
the upright and muscular workers of Soviet propaganda enjoying Švankmajer's
work.
Of course, such theorising is highly speculative. We can only state with
certainty that Dimensions of Dialogue was banned by the Communist
authorities and removed from distribution. We also know that Švankmajer has
repeated his claim that the film was used by the regime as an example of the
kind of cinematic work that should not be produced, such as in interview with
Peter Hames, where Švankmajer discusses the film. 227 In personal
correspondence with myself, Hames has noted the lack of published or archival
sources regarding film censorship in Czechoslovakia. This is, in part, due to the
fact that there was no formal censorship body during the period that dealt
exclusively with film; instead, censorship involved members of the Party
functioning as executive producers, or making suggestions as to the nature of
the work that should be produced. For example, Jiří Purs, director general of
Czechoslovak film from 1969, and his deputy, Bohumil Steíner, were both
members of the central committee of the Czech Communist Party. 228 In the
absence of any recorded correspondence or documentation from the likes of
Purs or Steíner, one can only hypothosise about the reasons why any given film
of the period was censored or banned. In support of my speculation that
Švankmajer was often censored due to the tonal and aesthetic elements of his

226
Moritz, 'Narrative Strategies for Resistance and Protest', in Pilling, pp.38-47.
227
Švankmajer, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, pp.107-108.
228
Peter Hames, 'Czechoslovakia', in Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, ed. by Derek Jones
(London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), p.637.

106
work being suggestive of undesirable political content, avant-garde inclinations
and certain morbid fixations, Hames has stated that: 'the subversive nature' of
Švankmajer's films 'applied to both form and content (i.e. not positive, readily
comprehensible, experimental, decadent, pessimistic).' 229 That is to say, that
Švankmajer's films would have struck viewing Party members as anathema to
Communist ideology at the level of surface aesthetics and form, rather than just
in terms of explicit political content, which is rarely present.
Švankmajer has been plagued by censorship throughout his career. He
was effectively banned from film production from 1972 through to 1979 230 and
was only allowed to resume filmmaking in the 1980s under the instruction that
he was to produce adaptations of approved literary sources. 231 Švankmajer
informs Hames that The Flat (Byt, 1968) and The Garden (Zahrada, 1968) were
both taken by the regime and locked away in vaults; Jabberwocky, or Straw
Hubert's Clothes (Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta, 1971) and
Dimensions of Dialogue were both banned; while The Ossuary (Kostnice,
1970), Leonardo's Diary (Leonardův deník, 1972) and The Pit, The Pendulum
and Hope (Kyvadlo, jáma a naděje, 1983) were all attacked by the censor. 232
Indeed, it was Švankmajer's unauthorised post-production changes to
Leonardo's Diary that led to his seven-year enforced hiatus from film-making. 233
By contrast, as American animator Gene Deitch reminisces, Trnka made
considerable money through his work (which also included children's book
illustrations), earning enough to afford a Mercedes-Benz and the occasional
drum of caviar in the financially impoverished Czechoslovakia and was
permitted by the regime the occasional shopping trip to Vienna. 234 Švankmajer
says of surrealism – perhaps with a degree of self-negation – that 'it was
considered to be an abscess on the body of Czech culture.' 235 Trnka's films
meanwhile played regularly at Cannes and won him the title of 'national artist',
even while The Hand was locked away – a regrettable “mistake” in an otherwise
exemplary career.
229
Peter Hames, 'Re: question regarding censorship of 'Možnosti dialogu'' (email to the author,
05 May 2015).
230
Hames, Dark Alchemy, p.37.
231
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.108.
232
Švankmajer, in Hames, pp.107-108.
233
O'Pray, in Hames, p.40.
234
Deitch, 2012.
235
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.133.

107
 The aforementioned differences in style and technique between the two
animators doubtlessly contributed to their differing fates vis. a vis. censorship,
economic success and cultural acclaim under communism, but it is also worth
noting a difference between the socio-historical contexts in which the two
animators worked. Trnka's early films were made in the post-war democracy
that followed Nazi occupation and he continued working through Stalinism and
the years preceding the Prague Spring; the years in which Švankmajer began
working. Švankmajer continues to work today and produced the bulk of his short
films under “normalisation”, the period of bureaucratic post-Stalinist tedium that
followed the Warsaw Pact invasion. After the fall of the Berlin wall and the
dissolution of Communist Eastern-Europe and the splitting of Czechoslovakia,
Švankmajer continued working, turning his attentions to the production of
feature length films, that will be discussed at length in Chapter Four.
Švankmajer observes a difference between how animation was treated by the
state under Stalinism, to how it was treated under normalisation, commenting
that during the 1950s animation was regarded as being wholly for children and
was thus neglected by the censorship bodies of the regime. Later, the rise of
provocative animation in the 1960s (that coincided with the production of the
politically-charged live-action films of the Czech New Wave) meant that under
normalisation in the 1970s and '80s, 'animated film began to receive the same
scrutiny as feature and documentary films.' 236 Perhaps, we might speculate, if
Trnka had remained alive to continue making films into the 1970s, his work
would have received similar censorship to Švankmajer's own.
So, in aesthetics and working context Švankmajer and Trnka differ
profoundly, yet there is another fundamental difference between how the two
animators relate to objects, and more specifically how they encode objects to
carry political ideas. In Chapter One it was demonstrated that Trnka champions
the everyday non-ideological functional object as the thing that can provide
stability within an increasingly fragmented and industrialised landscape. These
objects can help root the individual within the space of home and – when the
objects are specifically Czech – within national traditions that precede Soviet
influence within the country. As mentioned, Trnka's objects rarely morph or
transform, but remain stable, simple and utilitarian. A ball is a trusty companion
236
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.107.

108
for a child; a beet is a reliable source of food for a hungry family. By contrast,
Švankmajer explicitly asserts that the 'irrationality of the dialogue of objects' in
his work, is 'a rebellion against utilitarianism.' 237 Objects, for Švankmajer, are not
humans' humble servants, to be played with or eaten or otherwise used, but
exist resolutely upon their own terms. Švankmajer expands upon this idea in his
'Decalogue Manifesto' where he instructs the aspiring artist that before they
'bring an object to life' they must 'try to understand it first. Not its utilitarian
function, but its inner life.' He continues commandingly: 'Never violate objects!
Don't tell through them your own stories, tell theirs.' 238 Clearly, Švankmajer is
proselytising here not merely within an aesthetic mode, but with an ethical
intent. Essential to Švankmajer's creative project is to honour the 'inner life' 239 of
objects; coaxing their latent content to the surface, while never imposing
authorial, anthropocentric authority upon them. The latter is the crime that a
utilitarian relationship to objects commits. The little red ball in Trnka's The
Cybernetic Grandma never exists wholly for itself, but as the attachment object
for the child, reminding her of grandma and helping her traverse the
disorientating spaces of a new, technocratic world. Likewise, the artist's plant
pots in The Hand exist simultaneously as works of art for the artist and as
containers for his plants, but they are never severed from their function to exist
fundamentally in and of themselves. These objects are known and understood
through their relations with human subjects, essentially one-sided relationships
founded upon ownership, but not through their sheer, unmediated objecthood.
Conceptual thinking in which these objects are given a name and a role, is a
human phenomenon which distorts or misrepresents some essential truth of the
object, according to Švankmajer's animistic world-view.
Considering the above, Švankmajer's approach to objects necessitates
scepticism towards allegory, since allegory involves a further layer of meaning
imposed upon a primary, pre-existing layer. Objects in allegory exist to be read
symbolically. They mean other than what they outwardly appear to mean. This
is why Roger Cardinal can argue that a strictly allegorical reading of
Švankmajer's work would be fated to over-conceptualise his objects as symbols

237
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.118.
238
Švankmajer, 'Decalogue Manifesto', in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, pp.140-141.
239
Ibid.

109
to be unravelled, thus negating the shock of their tactile immediacy. 240
Švankmajer's objects don't stand in for something else, but present themselves
as is. It is along these lines that the head of the Czech Surrealist Group,
Vratislav Effenberger, excerpted at length by František Dryje, positions
Švankmajer's work in opposition to 'banal allegory'. 241 Instead of operating
through symbolism or metaphor, Effenberger argues, Švankmajer's objects are
essentially metonymic, in that they partake of what they simultaneously
represent. Describing a stove on which dolls' heads boil in Švankmajer's film
Jabberwocky, or Straw Hubert's Clothes Effenberger writes; 'It is only when the
symbol can preserve its original unclouded freshness and its happy lack of
restraint that the imagery becomes a great bestower of associative perception
[…] An old kitchen stove, without losing its objective importance, is at the same
time a hell full of sinful souls … It is not only a comparison with hell; in its
everyday use it is a hellish object itself.' 242
We can now better understand why Švankmajer would seek to distance
himself from Trnka's artistic legacy. According to Švankmajer (in a text quoted
by Michael O'Pray) Trnka worked with 'representational illusion', while he
himself works – as Effenger also asserts – with 'brute reality'. 243 The stove does
not exist merely as some place-holder in a parable, inter-changeable with any
other object that could carry the same symbolic load, but as one of the very
subjects of the film that has 'objective importance'.244
The second chapter, on the early work of Surrealist artist Jan
Švankmajer, will move from an analysis of single objects/things, taken
individually, to encompass the inter-relations between these things, as animated
in space and time. Since the methodological approach to this chapter will be
informed by actor-network-theory, rather than 'objects' or 'things' I will often refer
to 'actants' or 'actors'. Actor-network-theory (or A.N.T.) will provide less of a
framework for the chapter, than a series of critical practices and assumptions.
Underlying actor-network-theory and the writing of A.N.T.'s foremost theorist

240
Cardinal, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.76
241
Vratislav Effenberger, 'Žvahlav/Jabberwocky', extracted in František Dryje, 'The Force of
Imagination', in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, pp.143-186 (p.160).
242
Effenberger, in Dryje, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.159 (ellipses own).
243
Petr Král, 'Jan Švankmajer', in The Concise Encyclopedia of Surrealism, ed. by René
Passeron (London: Omega Books, 1988), p22, quoted by O'Pray, in Hames, p.41.
244
Effenberger, in Hames, p.159.

110
Bruno Latour, is the idea that there exists no a-priori “field” in which events
unfold, such as “nature”, or “society” or a “laboratory” – all of these are social
constructs and never ideologically neutral. Instead, events (or film scenes in
the case of this thesis) display the workings of hugely complex networks
composed of actors/actants. Conscious intent does not determine the
importance or influence of any one actant. Even an actant as seemingly
insignificant as a petal or a grain of rice can radically alter a network or shape
an event. Jan Švankmajer's short films, in which objects and things are given
the narrative weight generally afforded to human actors, provide a cinematic
embodiment of this idea. Unlike the post-war Czech films examined in the first
chapter, in which playful allegories involving objects provide messages about
human politics, in Švankmajer's films, things themselves are politically engaged
and establish their own political discourse, to which humans may bear witness
or document (as Švankmajer professes to do in his films) but must resist the
anthropocentric desire to “speak over” or dominate, else face the danger of
things turning against them.
As indicated, there will be necessary limits to the degree to which I can
actively engage in the use of actor-network-theory, in comparison to the way in
which thing theory will be used in the first chapter. To write as a thing theorist,
one must simply turn one's attentions to things, gathering and interrogating the
material, cultural and historical information that one can, with some mind always
given to the ontological and epistemological status that things have been
afforded in film and in everyday life. This is a rigorous task but it is nonetheless
graspable. By contrast, to write as an actor-network-theorist (in comparison to
merely writing about actor-network theory) one must accomplish a great deal of
ground work observing material processes as and when they happen. This is
why Anita Lam gained entry to a writer's workshop; John Law worked alongside
Royal Airforce officers in writing about the TSR2; and Bruno Latour followed
scientists in the Amazon taking soil samples for Pandora's Hope. This option is
not available to me. My network will be artificially cut off at the borders of the
cinema screen. As such, Chapter Two differs from my first chapter, which
performs a thing theorist reading of a selection of Trnka's works and my third
chapter, which performs rhythmanalysis upon works by Jiří Barta. Švankmajer's
films will be considered in terms of actors and networks, but the chapter is also

111
interested in illuminating the belief system expressed by Švankmajer's films
through considering some of the metaphysical assumptions of A.N.T. This
chapter, then, will consider Švankmajer as an actor-network-theorist, as
opposed to being an example of actor-network-theory itself.

How Psychoanalysis is at once a Useful Tool for reading

Švankmajer while also Completely Missing the Point of the
Thing
To further illuminate the distinction between objects having 'objective'
importance and objects having 'symbolic' importance, I will examine
Jabberwocky, or Straw Hubert's Clothes (from here on in simply Jabberwocky)
at greater length, demonstrating how a symbolic (in this case psychoanalytic)
reading of the film's objects is at once both perfectly serviceable and limited,
failing to meet the objects on their own terms. I will then introduce a different
critical framework which will provide me with the methodology for this second
chapter to examine Švankmajer's short film work under communism in
appropriate critical depth.
Jabberwocky is not strictly an adaptation of the Lewis Carroll poem of the
same name, although the poem is recited in voice-over at the start of film. What
follows, within what appears to be a Victorian play room, is a succession of
stop-motion animated vignettes involving a plethora of objects, mostly
antiquated toys: a wardrobe, a rocking horse, building blocks, a gaslight, a doll's
house, two irons, a framed photographic portrait of a bearded man, toy soldiers,
a chamber pot, a birdcage, porcelain dolls, a pocket knife, a set of dominoes,
and a suit. Švankmajer himself provides a Freudian model for the narrative of
Jabberwocky, referring to the film in interview with Geoff Andrews as 'a Freudian
record of the development of a child through all its stages: through
homosexuality and sado-masochism to rebellion against the father.' 245
Psychoanalysis has historically been linked to Surrealism since its origin in the
inter-war years. In the 'Second Manifesto of Surrealism', André Breton, founder
of the movement in France, writes that 'Surrealism believes Freudian criticism to
be the first and only one with a really solid basis.' 246 Although not all artists who
245
Jan Švankmajer interviewed by Geoff Andrews, 'Malice in Wonderland', Time Out, 19-26
October 1988, pp.16-17.
246
Breton, 'Second Manifesto of Surrealism', in Breton, Lane and Seaver, pp.117-194 (p.160).

112
identify as Surrealist will necessarily be working within a psychoanalytic
framework, many of the working practises common to surrealism rest upon
basic Freudian assumptions about the nature of the mind – the free associative
play of Surrealist games such as 'Exquisite Corpse' and the practice of
automatic writing more generally, rely upon the belief that an unconscious mind
operates beneath all conscious creative acts. Salvador Dali's paranoid-schizoid
method of inducing what he considered to be a schizophrenic state of mind in
himself before painting247 would not have been conceivable without the cultural
and psychological underpinnings of Freudianism.
A psychoanalytical reading of the stop-motion animated object vignettes
of Jabberwocky can be performed with intuitive ease, without resistance. The
objects, previously listed, interact and play through their scenes across the
various surfaces of the playroom. A novelty pocket knife that flips itself across a
table, jumping from table to chair, seems to dramatise early masturbatory rituals
of the male child. The handle of the knife is a carved statuette and when the
knife comes to rest on the table, the head of the figure is rubbed back and forth
against the embroidered table cloth. After an extended display of self-mastery
the knife, in a moment of ecstasy, spins itself into the air, then falls to the
ground, the blade closing tight upon the figure, which bleeds, soaking the white
table cloth in blood. Thus, onanism for the child is bound together with anxiety
over damaging the penis; a fear common in puberty, which child psychoanalyst
Melanie Klein details in her case studies of 'Bill' and 'Ludwig'. 248
Other vignettes seem equally amenable to similar interpretation. In
another sequence, small cloth dolls burrow their way out of the straw-stuffed
body of a larger doll, ripping apart the larger doll's body in the process. This
could be seen as playing through anxieties about the mother's body and the
children imagined to be inside it; a phantasy that enacts the child's sadistic
urges to destroy the mother's body, with the doll as substitute, while
simultaneously entertaining the child's desires to gain knowledge about the
children it is imagined to contain. 249 Elsewhere, we bear witness to the oral-
sadistic cannibalistic phantasies of the child, as dolls are boiled in little metal
247
Haim Finkelstein, 'Dali's Paranoia-Criticism or The Exercise of Freedom', Twentieth Century
Literature, 21.1 (February 1975), 59-71.
248
Melanie Klein, The Psycho-Analysis of Children, trans. by Alix Strachey and H. A. Thorner
(London: Vintage, 1997) p.83.
249
Klein, pp.174-175.

113
saucepans upon the aforementioned stove praised by Effenberger. For the
reader of Klein, this might recall the case study of Erna, who chewed up bits of
paper, interpreted by Klein as representing, among other things, children. 250
More broadly, to quote David O'Kane, the film represents the 'pure world of
transitional phenomena' as experienced by a child. 251
It would seem that for every episode of the film, a corresponding incident
in a case study from Melanie Klein or Freud can be found to explicate it. This is
not to say that Švankmajer scripted the film with The Psycho-Analysis of
Children or The Interpretation of Dreams at hand, but that the games of
projection and transference that he is creatively employing are clearly lifted from
psychoanalytic discourse. However, shouldn't a psychoanalytical reading offer a
little more resistance? In writing the above, it feels as though the film is not
illuminated, but merely described. After all, these meanings are barely latent
under the surface of the film; they constitute the film's narrative. The film analyst
is not unearthing hidden content by such means, since Švankmajer has already
brought this content to the surface of the film. Providing a psychoanalytical
reading of Jabberwocky, however elegant, is about as fruitful as observing that
Norman Bates in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) is suffering from an arrested
Oedipus complex, when the psychiatrist – the film's proxy for the director – has
already shared this at the end of the film.
A psychoanalytic reading, inspired by Klein, can attend to the objects of
Jabberwocky at the symbolic level but, I would argue, fails to grasp their
“objective importance”. Victoria Nelson in The Secret Life of Puppets similarly
argues against 'the essential homocentricity of the [Freudian] notion of
projection – that is, its assumption that human subjectivity is the source of all
phenomena in the universe that cannot be explained by the empirical-materialist
rules laid down by science.'252 'But of course', the psychoanalyst might argue,
'since objects are not subjects they cannot perform acts of projection and so
cannot shape the world by their own means.' However, Švankmajer's cinema
relies on the notion that objects may become self-shaping subjects and actively
possess the desire to do so. Perhaps, to entertain this, we lose our critical

250
Klein, p.38.
251
David O'Kane, 'Seeking Švankmajer: Illuminating the Dark Unconscious' (unpublished BA
dissertation, The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, February 2006), p.17.
252
Nelson, p.222 (brackets own).

114
distance and regress from the position of the critic to the level of the child trying
to search for the life within their toys; a fantasy that Bill Brown admits is
'repeatedly revealed' as 'doomed to exposure'. 253
Perhaps it is sheer romanticism to continue to search for meaning within
objects when objects seem so unwilling to yield their secrets; but then,
Švankmajer is a romantic film-maker. If we are naïve in our interpretations, then
we are only as naïve as the director whose films we interpret.

An Alternative
However, what critical approach does allow a space for objects?
Psychoanalytical approaches are too insistently subjective. A post-structuralist
approach is too dependent upon the centrality of language (however slippery
and shifting). Feminist, queer and post-colonial approaches are understandably
wary of objectification and I believe there is a danger of applying human ethics
to the world of objects. In the first chapter thing theory provided, if not precisely
a critical framework, then at least a critical thinker in the shape of Bill Brown, to
assist in attending to the thinginess of objects.
However, it is an emergent school with certain limitations. Firstly, thing
theory has, at the point of writing, generally been associated with the analysis of
English and American Victorian literature, as in the work of Brown or Elaine
Freedgood. Moreover, Brown generally treats objects as essentially static and
individualised. In Švankmajer's films, objects transform and are hybridised. The
medium of stop-motion ensures that as soon as the eye and mind of the viewer
has grasped the static object upon the screen, the object has moved forward in
time and space, ever in motion. Freedgood's methodology is perhaps more
appropriately suited to discussing objects in film, even Švankmajer's. Brown's
objects are often textually bound, products of the studied novelist's imagination.
Freedgood is more concerned in her work with situating the objects of enquiry
within a socio-historical context. So, if we are looking at a mahogany table in
Jane Eyre we must be prepared to examine the mahogany trade in the mid-19 th
century.254 As such, objects are not allowed to obscure or disguise the specifics
of their construction, which are always foregrounded in Freedgood's writing.
253
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.7.
254
Freedgood, Elaine, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp.30-54.

115
Likewise, man-made objects are always treated as hybridised, not least due to
their composition from variegated materials, but also because of the different
discourses in which they exist, by which they are charged with political
meaning. However, Freedgood's object choices still tend towards the rational
and utilitarian, rather than the irrational and magical objects favoured by
surrealism. Furthermore, they are objects framed by human desire. They do not
act among themselves. This is where actor-network-theory and the ideas of
Bruno Latour fill a void; in combination with allegorical readings, they will
provide the methodology for this chapter.
Underlying actor-network-theory is a basic assumption – that a thing can
act upon another thing without there being any necessity for intent or cognition.
Furthermore, this action is no less significant due to its perceived lack of
intentionality. As such, actor-network-theory decentralises the human as the
sole site of influence in the world. It refuses anthropocentric “specialness”.
Latour expresses this clearly when he writes that actor-network-theory 'does not
limit itself to human individual actors, but extends the word actor – or actant – to
non-human, non-individual entities.'255 For Latour, the main theorist and
proponent of actor-network-theory, each and every thing, utterly unique at each
individual moment, is inextricably intertwined through mediators with other
things – these mediators are, in their turn, actors and acted upon. Within these
systems of mediators and actors (Latour prefers the less anthropocentric
'actants') new combinations are constantly being formed, existing within
complex webs of inter-connection.
Even the most seemingly innocuous or mundane of things can yield
unforeseen effects. Moreover, while a human may in some sense facilitate an
object's action, this does not necessarily mean that she/he is the sole party
responsible for that action's occurrence. Intention and cognisance do not wholly
determine action; for, as Latour reminds us; 'kettles “boil” water, knives “cut”
meat, baskets “hold” provisions, hammers “hit” nails on the head'. 256 A nail may
not be effectively hammered without a person to do the hammering; but the
absence of a hammer would also make no small difference. This conception of

255
Bruno Latour, 'On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications', Soziale Welt, 47 (1996), 369-
381 (p.369).
256
Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), p.71.

116
the world is one that Graham Harman describes as, 'a series of negotiations
between a motley armada of forces, humans among them'. 257 As such, the world
as conceived through actor-network-theory is inherently political, if politics is
defined as any site in which there are processes of forceful relations between
actors. Harman's language in describing Latour's philosophy appears especially
politically charged – 'negotiations'; 'armada'; 'forces' – what is being described
here is a battleground of things, in which elements are always knocking up
against one other, forming momentary allegiances, only to then shift in their
relations.
Politics can either be defined in terms of its formal institutions
(parliaments; law courts; city councils) or else, more holistically, in terms of the
interactions achieved through force, negotiation and power, of any given
society.258 The lack of formal institutions among objects (in spite of Latour's
esoteric visions of a future '[p]arliament of things' 259) predisposes me towards
accepting a working definition of politics that is inclusive, common to all
societies, and non-institutional. Within this chapter, politics will be defined as a
process of power relations and negotiations within the sphere of nature. 260 This
definition of the political is, in part, a response to Neil Carter's complaint in
'Politics as if Nature Mattered' that, in the majority of attempts to define politics,
nature is placed elsewhere, treated as an 'add-on'. 261 Non-human objects are so
central to Švankmajer's films that it would be inappropriate to deny their political
centrality, insistently searching for political meaning in the scant range of human
subjects who pepper his filmography. Essentially, a definition of the political
when discussing the political meaning of Švankmajer's work must be radically
non-anthropocentric. Neil Carter writes that at the bottom of anthropocentrism

257
Graham Harman, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (Melbourne: re.press,
2009), p.13.
258
Adrian Leftwich, 'Thinking Politically: On The Politics of Politics', in What is Politics? The
Activity and its Study, ed. by Adrian Leftwich (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), pp.1-22 (p.2).
259
Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2004), p.227 (brackets own).
260
A definition that incorporates Latour's refusal to acknowledge any absolute division between
the sphere of “society” and the sphere of “nature”, considering the latter to be an arbitrary and
socially-contingent construction. See: Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature, 2004. After Latour, I
believe that “nature” is the space that humans have designated for whereever they are not.
Since humans exist through precisely the same evolutionary processes as all other animals and
known lifeforms and inhabit precisely the same Earth, I will also admit no distinction. Everything
that exists does so 'within nature' simply by virtue of the fact of its existence. As such, there can
be no 'extra-natural' phenomena.
261
Neil Carter, 'Politics as if Nature Mattered', in Leftwich, What is Politics?, pp.182-195 (p.188).

117
lies, 'the belief that ethical principles apply only to humans and their relations,
and that human needs and interests are of the highest, perhaps exclusive,
significance: humans are placed at the centre of the universe, separated from
nature, and endowed with unique values.' 262 As previously discussed, a degree
of anthropocentrism is still present in the short films of Trnka; but, for
Švankmajer, the life of things is just as important as the life of humans and it is
this life which his films seek to honour.
The argument across this chapter will be twofold. Firstly, that Švankmajer
politically encodes the objects of his films, as with Trnka in the last chapter;
secondly, that throughout his filmography Švankmajer advances a vision of
politics that includes objects, interacting with and sometimes without, humans in
complex networks. This conception of the political world resists
anthropocentrism because it honours the influence exerted by objects – in this
regard, Švankmajer's vision of politics can be usefully aligned with actor-
network-theory, which can provide a set of assumptions to help orientate the
chapter.

Can A.N.T. be used as a Critical Framework?

In a curious middle chapter of Reassembling the Social: An Introduction
to Actor-Network-Theory Latour stages an imaginary dialogue between a
student, acting as a proxy for the reader, and a tutor, acting as a proxy for
himself. The student has visited the tutor in his office in a bid to obtain advice
regarding how actor-network-theory might be applied within his sociology
project. The tutor, however, proves highly resistant to the notion that actor-
network-theory might provide any kind of structuring framework for the student's
work, insisting that 'a frame' merely, 'makes a picture look nicer, it may direct the
gaze better, increase the value, but it doesn't add anything to the picture'. 263 He
advises the student – to some dismay and irritation – to 'abstain from
frameworks altogether' and simply 'describe the state of affairs at hand.' 264
Latour's play on 'frame' is a little disingenuous and I would take issue with the
lecturer's contention that a structure always essentially lies outside of the work,
rather than permeating it.
262
Ibid.
263
Latour, Reassembling the Social, p.144.
264
Ibid.

118
 However, the lecturer's dismissal of structuring frameworks is congruent
with the A.N.T. (actor-network-theory) practitioner's more general scepticism
towards holistically-applied explanatory paradigms that impose conclusions
before the work has been done. Hence, Latour's dismantling of concepts such
as nature and society and his general fascination with the space of the
laboratory. For Latour, nothing can exist outside of the network. The linesman,
the referee, the grass, the football fans, the refreshment stand, the scarves, the
stadium lights – all these thing are in play during a football match – they do not
frame the game; they are part of it. As such, a framework can never be neutral,
but will always affect the content of what is being described. A lighthouse
keeper on the Isle of Wight is not the same lighthouse keeper if understood
through feminism; psychoanalysis; post-colonialism; all these paradigms create
a new lighthouse keeper, which stands in front of and obscures the actual
lighthouse keeper the sociologist was hoping to describe. Of course, even this
actual lighthouse keeper is caught within a complex relationship with his
lighthouse, the stairs of the lighthouse, the sea, the postcards on his wall, his
jacket etc. He changes from moment to moment. As such, the theorist must
resign herself to always providing an incomplete analysis, necessarily partial
and temporal.
Rather than a framework, what I take from A.N.T. is the compulsion to
look closely and attentively and not to dismiss an actor, no matter how small or
insignificant it might appear to be. Throughout this chapter I shall endeavour to
keep the following statement of Graham Harman close to mind: 'Nothing is
mere rubble to be used up or trampled by mightier actors. Nothing is a mere
intermediary. Mediators speak, and other mediators resist.' 265
A.N.T. is useful for discussing Švankmajer's work because it is
radically materialist. As such, it is an approach that helps ensure that the
objects that are so essential to the Surrealist's work are not lost under a veil of
symbolism, but remain present in their thinginess. Furthermore, A.N.T. is a
critical approach that always considers objects/things (or actants, using A.N.T.
terminology) as part of a network. Politics is not a process that concerns
isolated bodies; it is the process of dynamic interaction between things. As
such, if we are to think about Švankmajer politically, we must always take care
265
Harman, p.15.

119
that we are not merely reading each object in turn, but rather, always remaining
aware of how one object acts upon another object and, in turn, is acted upon.
Since A.N.T. is strictly materialist it might seem like a contradiction in
terms to use an A.N.T.-inspired-approach in combination with allegorical
readings of the films. Despite the potential of raising Latour's personal
disapproval, this is actually a false dichotomy. A.N.T. can be used productively
alongside symbolic analysis due to the diegetic/non-diegetic split common to all
films.
Put simply, within the animated worlds that Švankmajer creates,
there is little or no symbolic meaning, due to the absence of human subjects. If
these subjects are present, their powerlessness and subjugation in relation to
objects makes it hard for them to impose symbolic meaning upon their world
through processes of language categorisation and control. Existing in
networked communities upon their own terms, these objects merely exist.
However, in the non-diegetic world outside the film, the viewer is able to see
that the objects sometimes carry symbolic meaning, or exist within an
allegorical framework that might relate to the political context in which the films
were made. This meaning is a legitimate meta-discourse that Švankmajer – I
would argue – knowingly provides, but it exists alongside, rather than inside, the
film's world. The objects themselves remain utterly unmoved by whether
humans are ascribing them symbolic value (and this applies to both the film-
maker and his audience) or not. My task across this chapter will be therefore to
respect the limitations of A.N.T. in approaching Švankmajer's films, since such a
strictly materialist approach would not allow for symbolic readings, but also be
ever attentive to the films' networks of objects and their material reality.

The Most Explicitly Political of Švankmajer's Films

As a litmus test for this A.N.T.-inspired-approach to discussing
Švankmajer's work, I will begin by considering Švankmajer's most dogmatically
political film, the aforementioned Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. If such analysis
proves conducive to understanding Švankmajer's political intent when the work
itself already seems bluntly insistent with its political signifiers, then this should
suggest that A.N.T. can assist in the reading of Švankmajer's most explicitly (or
even bluntly) allegorical work, even while it fails to account for the entirety of the

120
work's meaning. Also, necessarily, beginning with The Death of Stalinism in
Bohemia, will require some discussion of the historical context within which the
films of the chapter were made, ensuring that political readings of Švankmajer's
work aren't given before the reader is made familiar with the requisite political
background for these readings to make sense.
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, released in 1990, after the end of
communist rule in Eastern Europe, was a project commissioned by the B.B.C. in
which Švankmajer was asked to produce a reflection upon his country's history
in the light of the Velvet Revolution. Švankmajer himself freely acknowledges
the film to be a work of 'propaganda' and, as such, believes it to be, 'a film
which will age more quickly than any of the others.' 266 Certainly, much of the
meaning of the film is incomprehensible without a basic knowledge of 20 th
century Czech history; however, it retains a visceral and tangible impact that
exceeds the historic particulars of its production. That said, photographs and
newsreel footage of the principle political players in the drama (Stalin; Klement
Gottwald; members of the Party executed in the Slánský show trials of 1952)
ensure that the notable events depicted can be clearly identified. Stephen
Russell-Gebbett notes that, '[w]hatever the metaphorical, allegorical illustration
of the political course and its impact on the people, The Death of Stalinism in
Bohemia is an accurate enough short history of Czechoslovakia from World War
II to the end of the Cold War.'267
The film opens with documentary footage of a tower-block being razed to
the ground. It cuts sporadically between this footage and the opening inter-titles,
suggesting that the tower-block represents the structure of Stalinism – out-
moded; previously seen as implacable; bureaucratic; brutalist – now crumbled
into smithereens. Immediately, as viewers, we are keyed into reading the
objects that we see on screen symbolically. However, I would argue that even
from this first image Švankmajer is working through metonymy, rather than
simple metaphor. The grey, multi-storey apartment building is the concrete
embodiment of Soviet realism in architecture, which dominated urban design in
the post-war communist period (the period we would identify as Stalinist). Jiří

266
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.109.
267
Stephen Russell-Gebbett, '31. The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia' (Wonders in the Dark, 23
November 2010) <http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/31-the-death-of-
stalinism-in-bohemia/> [accessed 19 September 2014] (brackets own).

121
Barta's 1981 film The Design (Projekt) will be discussed in some detail in
Chapter Three and the history of these apartment buildings will be described
more comprehensively there; what is simply worth noting at this point, is that the
hyper-functional, rectilinear uniformity of such a building is the dogma of
Stalinism given form, not only metaphorically, but literally – the building
expresses in space the ideology of the state. When such a building is
destroyed, we are witnessing Stalinism destroyed in synecdoche. 268
In the first extended sequence after these opening credits, a bust of
Klement Gottwald, the first Communist President of Czechoslovakia, is
extracted through caesarean section from a bust of Stalin. The sequence is
fleshy and visceral. Stalin's head is filled with offal meat – brain and intestines –
and wet, slathering, hyper-real sounds accompany the extraction. Gottwald's
hard-line Stalinism is literalised. Gottwald, an infantile dummy, can do little more
than parrot his symbolic father. The sound of a baby crying is overdubbed when
the bust of Gottwald has been successfully extracted and is slapped on the
back of the head in an equivalent action to a newly born baby given a light
spank by the doctor. This disjunctive gap between the soundtrack and the
object on screen creates an uncanny effect. Logically we know that a plaster
bust cannot cry like a baby and that the sound has been over-dubbed. However
the match between sound and image adheres to an emotional and symbolic
truth that feels intuitively correct, while on a technical level the over-dub is timed
precisely so it follows from the slap with the inevitability of an effect following a
cause. As such, the sound-object of the bust of Klement Gottwald crying like a
baby is given concrete truth. The symbolism is highly on-the-nose, but the
concrete truth of the sequence is such that this banal observation (Gottwald is a
figurative child of Stalin, parroting his father's words) is rendered disturbing.
What does it mean to have a leader with no real political life, with policies
merely transplanted from another? What does it make the citizens of a
totalitarian regime when the leader himself is a puppet? Again, symbolism and
reality bleed freely into one another.
Gottwald died just weeks after Stalin in March 1953, as though with the
death of the father, the imitative son had to die too. Švankmajer depicts these
deaths through having a grinning skull munch its way through a monochrome
268
By which I mean the apartment building is part of the whole of Stalinism.

122
depiction of Stalin, then Gottwald, respectively. This is both a simple statement
of fact – Gottwald and Stalin died, their flesh was eaten away and bone
remained – and simultaneously the cadaverous aspect of their respective
regimes; the fact that under Gottwald two hundred and thirty citizens were
sentenced to death and approximately 200,000 dissidents and counter-
revolutionaries sent to labour camps or imprisoned. 269 Under Stalin, of course,
millions of Russians were either executed; died in the gulags of Siberia; or
perished through famine under collectivisation. The face of a dictator always
hides a death's head.
This morbid imagery is inter-cut with kitsch propaganda paintings,
images belonging to the Cult of Stalin, of a benevolent Uncle Joe and smiling
Soviet workers. At the surface level of aesthetics, this would appear to be visual
juxtaposition but, symbolically, Švankmajer is drawing a connection between the
murderous ideology of a totalitarian regime and its officially sanctioned art. In
the essay 'What Is Totalitarian Art? Cultural Kitsch from Stalin to Saddam'
Kanan Makiya considers the notion of 'totalitarian art' and how it differs from art
merely created by artists living under and sympathetic to a totalitarian regime.
Makiya concludes that totalitarian art is produced in a top-down manner by
which the ideology of a regime is converted into artistic expression –
'Totalitarian art', Makiya asserts, 'is the lifeless and mindless outcome of that
dictation.'270 Such art, because it stems from ideology, not personal expression,
is lifeless since it is not imbued with the life of an artist; instead it conforms to
pre-established rules dictating composition and content. This, I would argue,
makes such art “political kitsch”, in that it is emptied of everything except the
crudest surface meaning and is produced, ad nauseam, according to an
unwavering template.
Milan Kundera writes of kitsch in The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) that it acts as a 'folding screen set to curtain off
death.'271 In The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia kitsch fails in its task – the kitsch
269
Nick Carey, 'Klement Gottwald', 'Czechs in History' (Prague: Radio Praha, 22 March 2000)
<http://www.radio.cz/en/section/czechs/klement-gottwald> [accessed 19 September 2014].
270
Kanan Makiya, 'What Is Totalitarian Art? Cultural Kitsch from Stalin to Saddam' (Foreign
Affairs, May / June 2011)
<http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67734/kanan-makiya/what-is-totalitarian-art> [accessed
19 September 2014].
271
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. by Michael Henry Heim (London:
Faber and Faber, 2000), p.247.

123
portrait of Stalin proves to be the flimsiest of screens to hide the chattering
death's head that pushes itself to the fore. After all, if totalitarian kitsch is merely
a papering-over of atrocity as Makiya argues, then all that is needed is to lift the
paper to expose the horrors beneath.
After the figurative deaths of Stalin and Gottwald, a waterfall of grain
seems to fill the screen. Victor Margolin writes perceptively about grain and the
U.S.S.R., discussing how grain became symbolic for the notion of plentitude
under Stalin and collectivisation (a plentitude that was of course more fictitious
than real). In particular, Margolin focuses on a composite portrait of Stalin
published in the Soviet magazine USSR in Construction in 1939.272 The portrait
was composed by the little-known A. Zykov and depicts Stalin's face through a
collage of different grains – millet; poppy seed etc. Here, an enticing
intersection with Švankmajer's practice opens up, in that the picture recalls the
composite portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, court painter to Rudolf II, an
influence which Švankmajer freely acknowledges. 273 Margolin writes: 'The
portrait, made up of far too many grains to count, signifies abundance, while
their arrangement into an image of Stalin attributes this abundance to him. On
another level, each grain might be seen to represent a Soviet citizen, or at least
a farm worker.'274 The grain is at once literally a product of collectivised farming,
while also representing the scheme of collectivisation in its totality.
A.N.T. would recognise the grain as produce, respect both its organic and
its technological origins, but would not provide a space for this metonymic
reading that connects the micro instance of production, to collectivisation as a
holistic, political phenomenon. A.N.T. can understand the connection between
grain and collectivised farming in functional, objectivist terms, since it allows us
to look not merely at the micro level of production (the grain) or the macro,
structural level of organisation (collectivisation) but allows both to be considered
simultaneously as existing co-dependently within a network. 275 However, A.N.T.
cannot reveal the allegorical connection between grain, collectivisation and
Stalin's cult of personality that is produced by Zykov's portrait. Here we see that
A.N.T. can provide the foundation for a symbolic reading, but that it has clear
272
Victor Margolin, 'Stalin and Wheat: Collective Farms and Composite Portraits',
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, 3 (spring 2003), 14-16 (pp.14-16).
273
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.116.
274
Margolin, p.16.
275
Latour, 'On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications', p.372.

124
limitations for reading a work of art or film within a specific socio-political
context.
Margolin does not draw a direct parallel between the grain portrait of
Stalin and Arcimboldo's Vertumnus (1590) – in which the Emporer Rudolf II is
depicted as the fecund and fruitful god Vertumnus, his face formed from a
bountiful assembly of different fruits and vegetables 276 – but clearly the two
works are functioning in a similar way, mythologically linking the leader with
growth, plenty and abundance. There is play between multiple levels of the
literal and the symbolic; in the case of Vertumnus, 'the images of vegetables
that suggest a face, which in turn is an image of a season, which relates back to
the primacy of the vegetables.'277 So when, in The Death of Stalinism in
Bohemia, what appeared to be spilling grain is revealed to be merely small
fragments of pebbles, the sense of lack and depletion this communicates can
be immediately linked in the viewer's mind both to the depletion (cultural and
material) engendered by the policies of Stalin and Gottwald and a certain
morbidity – a dryness – of the figures themselves. Švankmajer's work here is
congruent with the principles underlying actor-network-theory, since the
smallest of things (grain; pebbles) are doing heavy symbolic work, which is
reliant upon their placement within a network of cinematic montage. Indeed,
Latour is a curiously cinematic thinker; as expressed succinctly by Graham
Harman, Latour 'basically defends a cinematic universe of individual instants'. 278
Latour essentially conceives the world as consisting of unique, singular actants
that only become expressive in networks of meaningful connections. This
happens to be especially true of stop-motion animation in which the camera is
never left running, but rather, every single frame is its own singular instant,
every frame a scene to itself. 279 Each individual actant fails to signify in itself, but
does so in combination with other actants in a network. One might then argue
that it is never the actants themselves that carry political meaning, but rather,
the connections between the actants. In terms of the cinematic form, this would
mean that rather than the frames signifying, it would be the space between the
frames that carries meaning. This is a concept which will be returned to in some

276
Cardinal, in Hames, p.68.
277
O'Pray, in Hames, p.44.
278
Harman, p.30.
279
Buchan, pp.157-158.

125
depth later in this chapter.
The Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, by which soldiers and tanks from
Russia and other Warsaw Pact countries occupied Prague to put a stop to the
liberalising reforms of the Prague Spring, 280 is depicted in the film through a
sequence in which rolling pins are placed on a hill by a pair of anonymous
black-gloved hands. The rolling pins, of different sizes, roll down the hill at
speed, leaving crushed objects, such as tin cans, in their wake.
Although clay figures have been used to represent the supposed
counter-revolutionaries executed in the show trials of the 1940s and the film is
intercut with a wealth of documentary footage depicting real crowds of Czech
citizens, Švankmajer chooses to depict one of the most traumatic events in
modern Czech history with no recourse to the human form. Russell-Gebbett
explains beautifully how Švankmajer's sound design enables such objects as
rolling pins to function convincingly as tanks and tin cans and rocks to function
convincingly as the victimised Czech populace: 'Amplified and emphasised
sounds bring out disgust, rawness and humour, the extra squelch and scrape
teasing the inner qualities and thoughts of inanimate objects out. One could say
that sound transubstantiates these symbols into what they speak of. For ten
mintues (sic.) those are the victims.' 281 I agree with Russell-Gebbett's implication
here that the hyper-real sounds that Švankmajer gives to his objects provides
them with a vividness and tactility that renders them less abstract and more
tangible and so easier, on some level, to relate to as subjects.
However, I will also add that it is essential that these objects are known,
domestic objects, familiar to the viewer. The viewer is immediately familiar with
the actual violence propagated by rolling pins against hunks of dough, digestive
biscuits, or pastry. Likewise, most viewers will have witnessed the sad spectacle
of a crushed tin can kicked into the gutter, or a shattered stone. For Švankmajer
is it important that we extend our empathy to these objects, as well as to our

280
As detailed in Josef Korbel, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of Its History
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp.305-308; Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring
and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics 1968 – 1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), pp.112-118 and Fred H. Eidlin, ''Capitulation', 'Resistance' and the Framework of
'Normali-Zation': The August 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak
Response', Journal of Peace Research, 18 (1981), 319-332. Richard Davy details some of the
political consequences of the invasion in 'Soviet Foreign Policy and the Invasion of
Czechoslovakia', International Journal, 33.4 (1978), 796-803.
281
Russell-Gebbett, '31. The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia', 2010.

126
fellow humans. As viewers with an awareness of Czech history (and here we
encounter a limitation of the film, since it would be impossible to attempt these
readings without a cursory knowledge of the country's history) we recognise
that the crushed objects recall those civilians killed in the Warsaw Pact Invasion
and it is those people to whom our hearts go out. Nevertheless, this pathos is
effectively achieved because we have previously known the pathos of a
crumpled can kicked into the gutter or a rock smashed by a violent child.

Death to Anthropocentrism
In the final sequence of The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, the bust of
Stalin is brought back into surgery but now, instead of birthing a new dictator or
president, his head contains nothing but guts and offal. Russell-Gebbet reads
this scene as posing the question: what should fill the cultural space left by the
Velvet Revolution and the death of Stalinism? 282 In fact, a document written by
Švankmajer in 1990, the same year as the film's release, goes some way
towards answering this question. To Renounce the Leading Role is a manifesto
that calls for an end to anthropocentrism. In it Švankmajer argues that to
survive, humanity must no longer categorise itself as distinct from 'nature', but
instead realise that it is merely one thing amongst others, no more special or
elevated than all the rest.283 In doing so, mankind will ensure its continuation,
since it can no longer exploit nature as a resource, as it would no longer be able
to distinguish itself from nature. Moreover, this return to nature will be
redemptive, since it will in some measure reverse mankind's casting off of the
natural world in the pursuit of 'civilisation', a concept which Švankmajer treats
with cynicism.284
Švankmajer's radical argument against anthropocentrism is similar to that
made by Neil Carter in 'Politics as if Nature Mattered' 285 that it is essential that
humanity reconfigures politics to include nature, so that it treats the concerns of
fauna, flora and things with the same seriousness as it treats its own concerns.
Only in so doing, will humanity be able to consider nature not as a function of

282
Ibid.
283
Jan Švankmajer, To Renounce the Leading Role, 1990
Archived at: <http://surrealcoconut.com/surrealist_documents/svankmajer.htm> [accessed 19
September 2014].
284
Ibid.
285
Carter, in Leftwich, pp.182-195.

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man's desires, but as something that encompasses humanity and is inter-
related to our survival. Likewise, this is the grand project of Bruno Latour;
however, he goes further than Švankmajer, since he seeks the abandonment of
the very concepts of 'nature' and 'civilisation', 'objects' and 'subjects', instead
encouraging the reader to think in terms of the 'human' and the 'non-human', if
at all.286 Latour would be hesitant to speak too much of the ecological necessity
of transcending anthropocentrism as Neil Carter does, since he would argue
that this desire is essentially anthropocentric in and of itself. Humanity should
not be, for instance, protecting the rainforest for the sake of humanity's survival,
but rather should abstain from destroying the rainforest out of respect for the
rainforest's own concerns. This does not require us to believe that trees are
sentient or experience pain, but rather it requires us to abandon the concept
that sentience or the capacity for pain are worthy criteria to judge whether a
thing has interests – or indeed rights – to be respected. The summation of this
project would be to extend politics to non-human actants. For their interests to
be known, not only must these non-humans be 'endowed with speech' but also,
'they have to be made capable of acting and grouping themselves together in
associations'; yet even then, Latour laments, 'there will still be the problem … of
finding a proper body for them.'287
One of Latour's ideas for how to achieve this – how to provide a space
for non-humans in politics – is to have a number of human spokespeople who
speak on behalf of the non-humans' concerns. 288 In many ways, Švankmajer in
his To Renounce the Leading Role manifesto is positioning himself as just such
a spokesperson, speaking on behalf of things and objects. Certainly, when
Švankmajer cautions artists to never speak through objects or impose
narratives upon them, but to allow objects the space to speak for themselves 289
he is essentially acting as a guardian for these non-human actants, seeking to
protect them from the impositions of human artists less careful than himself.
However, lest we become too lost in fantasies of animism, it is worth
considering that objects cannot literally speak (or at least, not in the sense that
humans do). Latour himself reminds us that while '[p]olitics talks and palavers;

286
Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature, 2004.
287
Latour, Politics of Nature, pp.71-72 (ellipsis own).
288
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.64-65.
289
Švankmajer, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, pp.140-141.

128
nature does not, except in ancient myths, fables and fairy tales.' 290 Of course,
Švankmajer often works within these modes – his adaptation of Walpole's
Castle of Otranto (Otrantský zámek, 1977) is mythical-surrealist, while his
feature length film Little Otik/Greedy Guts (Otesánek, 2000) is a fairy-tale.
Švankmajer moves within magical spaces where nature does indeed talk.
However, the point still stands, that the layperson is unable to converse with
objects, natural or man-made; as Jane Bennett asks of Latour's 'parliament of
things': 'How can communication proceed when many members are
nonlinguistic?'291 In Picnic with Weissmann (Picknick mit Weissman, 1968)
Švankmajer suggests that the concerns of things may run counter to humans'
own, leading to a fatal break-down in communication.

A Picnic between Non-Human Actants

In his short but comprehensive monograph Understanding Animation
Paul Wells speaks generally of Švankmajer's work in a clear-sighted and vivid
litany:

The tangibility and malleability of clay; the hardness and weight of

stones; the fragility and smoothness of china; the living essence of
wood; the colour and texture of textiles; and the physical mechanism
of the human body become the narrative imperatives of
Svankmajer's work and serve as an important example of fabrication,
creating stories through rediscovered and redetermined
discourses.292

Picnic with Weissmann is probably the film that best suits Wells' description of
Švankmajer's work. Interspersed with several extreme close-up shots of tufts of
grass and weeds, a series of increasingly close establishing shots presents the
viewer with the host of objects about which the film will revolve: a wardrobe; a
bed; a couple of wicker chairs; a white wooden chair; a desk with a drawer; a
trowel; a chess game; and an antique phonograph, with a few records. These
objects are all laid out as though in a bedroom. The juxtaposition between the
grass and a majority of objects that belong to (and are positioned as though
inside) a domestic interior is immediately apparent; while simultaneously, their
290
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.62 (brackets own).
291
Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press,
2010), p.104.
292
Wells, Understanding Animation, pp.90-91.

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very matter-of-factness and the quiet sobriety of their placement, neutralises
this juxtaposition, rendering it almost banal. It is as though the network that
includes both grass and objects assimilates all differences. There is no
discordance between the grass and the objects – rather, it provides a rather
homely surface for the chairs and wardrobe.
Perhaps the viewer has stumbled across a rural idyll where objects are
content to exist outside of human influences. Seemingly, the objects are not
ensnared in some complex human narrative, but simply play through the
movements that are most expressive of their forms – so, the phonograph spins
records; the chess pieces move horizontally and laterally across the board; the
trowel digs into the earth. The action literalises Latour's deceptively
commonsensical claim that 'kettles “boil” water, knives “cut” meat' 293 etc. In
Švankmajer's vision the tool is quite able to get on with its work without the
necessity for a human tool-bearer. Indeed, without the strain of a sweating
human, the grass seems more pliant that usual to the trowel's efforts. Of course
this is a side-effect of the stop-motion technique, but all the movements seem
unencumbered and graceful and, most fundamentally, co-operative. Notably,
the objects are not subjected to ritual abuse or destruction, as is common in
Švankmajer's work. Even natural objects seem to participate alongside the tools
and furniture as co-conspirators. A snail works its way across the phonograph
and a small stone has replaced one of the pawns in the chess set; the grass
enables a game of football to be played between the chairs.
The scene is tranquil. The music from the phonograph is notably less
discordant than the avant-garde compositions by Zdeněk Liška that usually
score Švankmajer's early work. The editing is slightly less manic and the frame
less cramped. The only visual cues that something more sinister might be afoot,
reference the human form in some way. A rubber ball is pumped by the desk,
the pump’s nozzle extending into the desk drawer. Within the drawer is also the
cartoon illustration of a naked woman. The ball inflates as the woman is
exposed with the opening of the drawer, providing visual innuendo which sits
uncomfortably amongst an otherwise innocent scene. Perhaps this sequence
mildly disturbs because it introduces the notion of sexuality to objects. Jean
Baudrillard in his published graduate thesis The System of Objects writes how
293
Latour, Reassembling the Social, p.71.

130
mankind needs robots to be sexless since otherwise their hyper-functionality
would be too threatening. Through their asexuality, robots can embody a desire
that has been domesticated and tamed.294
Likewise, pets must be sexless if they are 'to provide emotional
security'.295 As such, the virile rubber ball is faintly threatening, since it is moving
into a realm that does not belong to non-humans, let alone objects. Moreover,
its expansion/arousal comes at the expense of female objectification. The
human woman is reduced to the level of a dirty picture postcard, while the non-
human ball is elevated to the height of virility. With respect to objectification,
Barbara Johnson writes that to 'treat someone like a thing' can be considered
negatively if such treatment means to act towards another as though they were
'a tool of one's own desire'. 296 However, how much worse if it is a thing that is
doing the objectifying.
Perhaps more troubling still is a shirt and pair of trousers which seems to
be mimicking the human form by reclining on the bed and leisurely sucking up
small fruits through an idle sleeve. The fruit is processed within some
phantasmal digestive equipment and then a stone pops out of the end of the
other sleeve. Not only have the objects developed sexual desire, they have
evidently also grown appetites. Indeed, the network of objects, both natural and
man-made, functions elegantly without the disruptive presence of humans. At
the end of the film, it becomes apparent that this is the conclusion that the
objects themselves have reached. The trowel has dug a sizeable pit and
autumnal leaves cover the objects, heralding the end of their picnic. The doors
to the wardrobe swing open and out falls a bound and gagged human
(presumably the titular Weissmann) who is dumped unceremoniously into the
pit that now serves as his grave. This is perhaps the dark potential conclusion
that awaits at the end of a renunciation of anthropocentrism. If humans are not
the masters of the world, then objects are no longer automatically in their
servitude.
Of course, this blackly comic ending is contingent upon the notion that
objects are capable of Machiavellian plotting; however, at the level of allegory,
the point stands. If humans are de-centred through a renunciation of
294
Baudrillard, p.130.
295
Baudrillard, p.95.
296
Barbara Johnson, Persons and Things (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), p.2.

131
anthropocentrism, then they lose their inherent value and so their negation
loses ethical weight. Picnic with Weissmann illustrates that objects can operate
in a network without human intervention. Švankmajer illustrates this point
magically and cinematically; however, one can imagine a less ecstatic and more
realistic version of the same scene – a ball blown by the wind against chair legs;
dead leaves falling upon a chess set; a record on a phonograph that might be
moved by wind, or a snail, or gravity.

A Civilisation of Stones
In Picnic with Weissmann the non-human actants act co-operatively in
symbiotic playful relationships to defeat the tyranny of anthropocentrism;
however, A Game with Stones (Hra s kameny, 1965) depicts a network of non-
human actors that eventually disintegrates in a flurry of violence and
destruction. The film provides an allegory of the birth and death of a civilisation,
hinting that with political interaction (that is, a process of power relations and
negotiations within the sphere of nature) inevitably comes fragmentation,
disorder and an eventual end to the political process. The film also provides a
corrective to Barbara Johnson's statement that a 'stone can't defend itself
against anthropomorphism without resorting to anthropomorphism' 297 by
showing in its early sequences stones engaged in a life project which does not
resemble that of humanity. Tragically, it is only when the stones do start
collectively depicting the human form that their evolutionary progress comes to
a stumbling halt, to finally end in destruction.
Upon the wall of a filthy and dilapidated room is mounted a clock.
Suspended from the clock by wire is a bucket and below the face of the clock, a
tap emerges from the wall. When the hour strikes 12:00, two stones issue from
the tap into the bucket. One stone is white and the other is black. To animate
this, Švankmajer, in very quick succession, replaces a small stone at the mouth
of the tap, with a larger, then a larger, then a larger still. This creates a
“dripping” effect, giving the impression that the stones are shaped in the
process of issuing, spreading and congealing from amorphousness into solidity.
Accompanied by the ringing melody of a music-box, the stones then form
simple patterns by multiplying and arranging themselves in rows (of the same
297
Johnson, p.17.

132
colour; of alternating colours) and shapes (pyramids; rectangular grids) in a
process that resembles cell-division. However, the stones are not merely
engaged in a facsimile of life, but rather, life itself. To claim that the stones,
through Švankmajer's animation mimic cell division, would be to project
schemata upon the film's world, an epistemological framework derived from a
modern scientific understanding of biology that exists outside of the film-world.
Rather, the film elicits in the viewer a mythologised primitivism that precedes
Mendel and Darwin. The stones appear to us self-propelled and self-generating;
Švankmajer's interference as an animator is firmly outside the diegesis. This is
a depiction of animism in its purest state.
At the height of the sequence's complexity, the bucket throws the stones
to the floor and upon the hour striking 03:00 more stones are issued into the
bucket, of more variegated shapes, colours and textures. The sequence that
follows depicts the flow of blood, or some other vital life-force through channels
of stone and movements of impregnation/fertilisation. As Ed Howard writes,
'There is something increasingly sensuous, even sexual, about the subsequent
patterns, with stones rubbing against one another, sometimes seeming to birth
torrents of smaller rounded stones from the frictive collisions of the larger
rocks.'298 This is a remarkable sequence since the sexual element of these
movements is clear, without Švankmajer resorting to anthropomorphism. Unlike
the rubber ball in Picnic with Weissmann that grows firm through a movement of
pumping that is almost crassly masturbatory, the sexuality of the stones in this
sequence bears little relation to human sexuality. Švankmajer convinces us that
the sensual action of the stones is true to form; in so doing, he accomplishes
what Roger Cardinal refers to as a 'rare feat', namely, 'to elicit higher import
from the banal object while still respecting its very banality.' 299 Stones, tumbling
down mountain sides, or drifting along a river bed, really do rub against each
other and move in currents. Švankmajer makes the idea that an animistic
sexuality exists within the natural world seem almost common sense.
Again, in yet another cycle, the complexity of the interactions increases
and we move from engaging directly with the real (stones in and of themselves,
298
Ed Howard, 'A Game With Stones/Punch and Judy/Historia Naturae (Suita)' (Only the
Cinema, 27 January 2009)
<http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/jan-svanmajer-shorts-game-with-stones.html>
[accessed 19 September 2014].
299
Cardinal, in Hames, p.74.

133
not signifying) through to pictorial representation and symbolism. In the third
movement, stones are arranged to denote simple human bodies (think,
perhaps, of the Cerne Abbas Giant), which flex their joints and transform into
new humanoid figures. The fourth movement, similar to the third, is the most
complex. The stones are broken into shingle, so that each fragment of stone is
now the tiniest unit of information. Shapes and faces are sculpted from the
sediment, depicting dialogue and conflict. The stones, previously the loci of
animation (life) in and of themselves are now pixels/Ben-Day
dots/letters/units/cells that compose larger, more complex, sites of animation.
This is the entry of the stones into politics. There is a danger here that
the stones themselves become obscured. Graham Harman reminds us that
under Latour's philosophy of the world, 'Nothing is mere rubble to be used up or
trampled by mightier actors.'300 However, at this point in A Game with Stones,
this is precisely what has transpired. The stones have been reduced to rubble,
no longer signifying in themselves, but merely composing the altogether
mightier actants of the human face; conversing, arguing, kissing, gobbling each
other up. This represents political dialogue and destruction follows. In the next
and final sequence of the film, the stones smash up against and consume each
other. This is not, however, a dialectical process leading to greater evolution.
Rather, it is war, the breaking point of the political process. 301 The system itself
ruptures (the stones smash through the bottom of the bucket) leaving the clock
to spit out stones to add to a now ever-increasing pile of rubble. Animation has
been reduced to entropy.
Švankmajer has stated in interview that all his films are political, but that
they concern currents that run deeper than specific political systems. 302 A Game
with Stones is a perfect example of Švankmajer's meaning. Although it does not
present a symbolically-encoded critique of a particular political system (Soviet-
style communism, for instance) it convincingly sets before the viewer a process
of political interaction. Leaving aside the misleading question of their self-
cognisance, the stones interact to create increasingly sophisticated patterns, an
interaction that necessarily involves conflict as the stones are of different sizes

300
Harman, p.15.
301
Bernard Crick, 'Politics as a Form of Rule: Politics, Citizenship and Democracy', in Leftwich,
pp.67-85 (p.67).
302
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.127.

134
and shapes; this conflict is inevitably destructive and leads to the death of the
political system. Michael O'Pray writes broadly of Švankmajer's career that, 'his
work is a denial of dialogue, a retreat into the ordered chaos of artefacts and
natural objects.'303 I would agree with O'Pray that the behaviour of the natural
objects of A Game with Stones is one of 'ordered chaos', however I disagree
with his notion that these objects sit outside of dialogue and thus within ordered
chaos. Rather, their behaviour is chaotic precisely because they (the stones)
are engaged in political dialogue. The political dialogue of stones belongs to
gesture and action (and if we argue that Švankmajer is ultimately behind this
movement, we must remember that attrition, collision, the forming of patterns,
erosion into fragments, all belong to the behaviour of stones in the natural
world, away from human intervention) in a language not translatable to words;
yet Švankmajer's gift is to film this dialogue, showing how it is political, while
fundamentally respecting its otherness. He is present at the 'parliament of
things'304 and will record its deliberations, but he will not translate. Bertrand
Schmitt describes this role as being like a 'ferryman', 'who allows the internal
nature of objects and materials to express itself through his actions'. 305 That is to
say, he may galvanise or help facilitate the communication of things, but he
does not speak for them.
In the following two films, Dimensions of Dialogue of 1982 and Et Cetera
of 1966, Švankmajer turns his focus to humanoid figures, trapped in cycles of
futile or destructive repetition. Švankmajer's vision of politics as a violent arena
of control and coercion, leading to transformation or degeneration, is as
apparent with humanoid actants as it was with the non-human actants of A
Game with Stones.

A Politically Pessimistic Dialogue

Peter Hames writes of Dimensions of Dialogue that its 'anti-Stalinist
implications' are clear.306 At first, this might seem like a contentious claim to
make about such a highly abstract work, but then one recalls that the film was

303
Michael O'Pray, 'In the Capital of Magic', Monthy Film Bulletin, 630, July 1986, pp.218-219.
304
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.227.
305
Bertrand Schmitt, 'The Artworks of 1958-1968', in Jan Švankmajer: Dimensions of
Dialogue/Between Film and Fine Art, by Bertrand Schmitt and František Dryje (Prague: Arbor
Vitae, 2013), pp.95-119 (p.110).
306
Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.37.

135
banned by the Communist regime.307 According to Švankmajer, the film was
used by the Ideological Commission of the Czechoslovak Communist Party
Central Committee 'as a deterrent example'. 308 Clearly, the censors recognised
political implications in the film which they found highly disagreeable.
Dimensions of Dialogue is composed of three separate movements on
the same theme. In the first sequence, 'Exhaustive Dialogue' (dialog věcný) a
composite head composed of food stuffs – it has a bulbous lemon nose;
sausage lips; two tufty sprigs of garlic for a beard – comes into contact with a
head composed of kitchen equipment – a pastry brush for whiskers; spoons for
an eye and lips; a ladle for a nose (see fig. 3). These heads recall again the
composite portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The head made from these
domestic objects violently gobbles down the first head and the film cuts to a
montage in extreme close-up of an eruption of mastication. The component
parts of the head of food are pulverised in a frenzy of activity. Scissors slice an
apple into pulp; a spoon splatters radishes; keys bore into a lettuce; chicken is
dissected by blades. The chaos of this sequence is accentuated by a dense
sound design that includes the clatter of metal objects; coarse brushing noises;
wet slurping sounds and a flurry of horns that recalls Stravinski at his most
discordant.
When the assault has finished, the metallic head vomits up the food,
which now looks battered and diminished. The metallic head continues on its
way and meets a head comprised of scholastic equipment – text books; straight
edges; graph paper – that recalls Arcimboldo's Librarian (1566). This time, it is
the paper head that consumes the metallic head and another flurry of violent
disorder and frottage bursts forth – lids are crushed between the pages of a
book; pastry brushes are shattered by graph paper; graters and forks are
broken into pieces. Again, the broken objects that result are vomited back up
and the face reconstituted in a more diminished form. The sequence now
returns full circle, with the head of food laying waste to the paper head. The
cycle continues, with each head sinking further and further into undifferentiated
mush and then clay, until every head resembles the others. The movement
ends with a classically sculpted anonymous clay head vomiting up replicas of

307
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.108.
308
Švankmajer with Eoin Koepfinger, 2012.

136
itself.
Both Michael J. Anderson and Jack Eason read 'Exhaustive Dialogue' as
symbolising class warfare under communism – with the first head representing
agrarian labour and the rural peasantry; the second representing factory work
and the industrial proletariat; and the third head representing abstract,
intellectual labour and the bourgeoisie.309 Such a reading would suggest that
Švankmajer views the class struggle as a dialectic process that repeats ad
nauseam until each class is assimilated into the other and the citizen under
communism becomes anonymous and undifferentiated. Ed Howard offers the
alternative reading that 'Exhaustive Dialogue' provides a critique of the
processes of cognition and categorisation. Howard expresses this notion as
follows: 'In this recursive food chain, organic matter is devoured and
regurgitated by machinery, masticated to make it finer for digestion, and also
dissected, pulled apart in an effort to understand it. This is a continual theme of
this section, the way that attempts at understanding inevitably lead to the
destruction of the thing under examination.' 310 Howard's reading strikes me as
being more congruent with the film-maker's aims and philosophy than the
readings of Anderson and Eason. In the analyses of Eason and Anderson, the
specific actants (the food stuffs; the metal objects; the paper and books) merely
stand in for something else (agrarianism; factory work; the bourgeoisie). As
such, their reading suggests a certain utilitarianism to Švankmajer's approach
i.e. the specific things were chosen because they could be made to signify. By
contrast, Howard's notion that the sequence enacts processes of dissection can
be true both symbolically and literally. The actants are literally 'pulled apart' 311 in
an effort of comprehension, which attempts to break its actant down into its
component parts, open it up, or flatten and homogenise it. If we think of a heart
dissected in a biology lesson, the knowledge that it contains is symbolically
“opened up” through the process of literal opening up. The heart can then enter

309
Jack Eason, 'Dimensions of Dialogue: moznosti dialogu' (Cinelogue, 19 November 2010)
<http://www.cinelogue.com/reviews/dimensions-of-dialogue> [accessed 21 June 2013] and
Michael J. Anderson, 'Dimensions of Dialogue' (Tativille, 11 August 2005)
<http://tativille.blogspot.co.uk/2005/08/dimensions-of-dialogue.html> [accessed 19 September
2014].
310
Ed Howard, 'The Ossuary/Dimensions of Dialogue' (Only the Cinema, 02 June 2008)
<http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/62-ossuary-dimensions-of-dialogue.html>
[accessed 19 September 2014].
311
Ibid.

137
into the realm of language through scientific discourse, but the material heart is
left severed from the system of the body and broken as a functioning network in
and of itself.
In short, I agree with Howard that 'Exhaustive Dialogue' suggests that
dialogue always fails to maintain things in their state of original wholeness, but
instead dismembers. The heads perform an aggressive intermingling of ideas,
until all ideas are alike. It is an essentially pessimistic view of dialectics. The
world of 'Exhaustive Dialogue' resembles that of Bruno Latour in which, 'all
actants are constructed through numerous trials of strength with others, and all
have an intimate integrity that partially resists any attempt to disassemble
them.'312 The dialectical process is, according to Švankmajer's view, one of
violent conflict in which synthesis does not occur, but rather, any difference is
coercively eradicated through the exercise of power.
The second sequence in Dimensions of Dialogue, 'Passionate Dialogue'
(dialog vášnivý) involves two heads, one male and one female, seated across
from each other at a table. They commingle sensuously in an ecstatic act of
sexuality, pressing into each other. When this is finished, some thing is left over.
Whether ejaculate, spent desire, a child, or something less nameable, it is
clearly regarded as abject and repulsive by the two figures. This lump of clay is
at first rejected and then flung as a weapon back and forth. The two figures
eventually start tearing into each other, pounding down on the other's head,
scratching fingers into backs, until all that is left is a writhing mass of clay. Deep
quavering strings on the soundtrack recalling Shostakovich accentuate the
sense of discord.
The title of the piece and the differentiated sexes of the figures clearly
suggest a critique of romantic relationships. As such, 'Passionate Dialogue'
immediately appears less explicitly political than 'Exhaustive Dialogue' that
preceded it. However, if we think in terms of the second wave feminist mantra
that the personal is political, the violence of the sequence seems intensely
politically-charged. In 'Politics beyond Boundaries: A Feminist Perspective'
Judith Squires argues that domestic violence is always a political issue and that
the private space of the home is no less political that the public space of formal

312
Harman, p.63.

138
governmental institutions.313 Under such a framework, 'Passionate Dialogue' is a
deeply pessimistic political statement that suggests that the two genders (as
long as these two heads are read as universal stand-ins for their respective
genders, rather than as specific individuals) can never co-exist in harmony and
that romantic relationships will always eventually breed discord and violence.
In the final movement of Dimensions of Dialogue, 'Factual Dialogue'
(dialog vyčerpávající) two male heads sit across from each other upon a table.
From their mouths, the heads issue a series of domestic objects – a toothbrush;
toothpaste; butter on a knife; bread; a shoe; laces; a pencil; a pencil sharpener.
At first these objects are matched in their utilitarian pairs. So, the pencil is
slotted into the pencil sharpener; the toothpaste is squeezed onto the
toothbrush etc. Visually and musically, these meetings are harmonious.
However, the heads then rotate upon the table and repeat their gestures, with
every possible combination of object pairs. So, shoelaces are threaded through
a slice of bread; a tube of toothpaste is sharpened; a shoe is buttered. The
spectacle is both disruptive and hilarious in its radical juxtapositions. Finally, like
objects are paired to destructive effect. Shoes spring open when bumped
together; the two toothbrushes grind away their bristles into powder. All this
conversation takes a material toll upon the two clay heads, who end the
dialogue sunken and cracked, wheezing with tongues out and eyes bulging.
Anderson and Eason are again united in their reading, seeing this third
sequence as representing the process of the market under capitalism. 314 True,
the objects are clearly consumer goods and if the first sequence provides a
critique of communist class conflict, then this would provide a neat symmetry.
However, I am not convinced that this allegorical reading makes any rigorous
sense. What does it mean that two similar objects inevitably destroy each
other? One could argue that this represents competition between brands, but
the objects used are clearly identical consumer goods – probably off the same
factory line. Perhaps, one could say that such destruction is a critique of supply
and demand, yet surely this would render the first series, in which the objects
are logically matched, equally as destructive. Instead, I would read 'Factual
Dialogue' as the name implies. Its suggestion seems to be that when two

313
Judith Squires, 'Politics beyond Boundaries: A Feminist Perspective', in Leftwich, pp.119-134.
314
Eason, 2010 and Anderson, 2005 (see footnote 309).

139
speakers are in agreement with each other, there will be harmony; however,
more often, incompatible ideas will present themselves, leading to argument
and discord. Worse still is when both speakers have precisely the same idea,
but each wants their own idea to gain ascendancy over the other.
In total, Julian Patley's more broad political reading of Dimensions of
Dialogue seems to make the most sense: 'Taken as a whole, the three
“dialogues” bear witness to humankind's intolerance of otherness, the
inhabitual, the non-conformist and the unexpected.' 315 The film is
comprehensively cynical, suggesting the impossibility of sustained co-operative
dialogue, whether personal or political. Latour argues that a network's stability
comes not from the strength of any individual actant, but through the 'netting,
lacing, weaving, twisting of ties that are weak by themselves'. 316 According to
these terms, the reason that the dialogues of Švankmajer's film are never
sustainable is that each actant is trying to gain ascendency over the other.
Although the composite faces of 'Exhaustive Dialogue' may originally appear to
be tightly-woven networks, when the argumentative dialogue with a second face
commences, each individual actant (each spoon; each sprig of garlic; every
page) fights alone.

A Politically Pessimistic Cycle of Repetitions

At this point in the chapter it should be readily apparent that Švankmajer
is a politically pessimistic film-maker. Et Cetera of 1966 is perhaps the most
condensed example of this pessimism. The film's very structure is cyclical,
beginning with a giant 'FIN' (or FINE in Czech) in imposing calligraphic font.
Three sequences unfold to a sound design by Zdeněk Liška that sounds
remarkably digital considering the date of production – all blips and clicks. In the
first sequence a faceless jointed figure attempts to jump between two chairs, set
at increasing distances from one another. He plucks a series of increasingly
large wings from a diagrammatic schema below him to assist with his efforts.
Eventually, he makes the furthest distance, only to fly off screen-right and re-
enter screen-left. At this point the second chair has been moved so far it has
been brought in through the other end of the frame, meaning that it is once

315
Julian Petley, 'Dimensions of Dialogue', Monthly Film Bulletin, 630, July 1986.
316
Latour, 'On Actor-Network-Theory', p.37.

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again right next to the first chair. The man makes this tiny jump, moves the chair
forward and the sequence repeats – presumably, as the title implies, ad
infinitum. Political progress, Švankmajer seems to argue, is inherently cyclical
and never truly advances.
In the second sequence, a humanoid figure whips a beast into
performing tricks. As this pattern repeats, the beast becomes more humanoid
and the humanoid figure more beastly. Eventually they both resemble how the
other one started and the whip changes hands, with the figure who was once a
beast now whipping the subjugated other. Again, the sequence repeats ad
infinitum. The political reading is that hegemony will always impose itself. When
an oppressed people overthrow their masters they will, in time, become the
oppressors. The message, then, is close to that of George Orwell's Animal
Farm (1945).
In the final sequence, a man draws a house for himself but finds he is
unable to enter it. Frustrated by being on the outside, he redraws the house with
himself inside it. However, soon enough he has become claustrophobic and
wishes to escape. He erases the house and draws it once again with himself on
the outside. The cycle repeats. The fact that the figure is composed of
illustrations of cavalry and soldiers hints that this is a meditation on warfare and
national boundaries. Countries move through periods of expansionism (where
they want to push outwards) and isolationism (where they want to draw
inwards). At the end of the film, the word 'Etc.' fills the screen with increasing
rapidity as pounding carnivalesque music fills the soundtrack. Clearly, the
message is that human nature is such that political progress (whether
technological in the first sequence; class-based in the second; or in terms of
national boundaries in the third) is doomed to a futile cycle of repetition.

Let the Networks Be as they Are – Švankmajer vs.

Categorisation
While Picnic with Weissman and Games with Stones depict networks of
objects/things that exist outside the sphere of human influence, and whereas
Dimensions of Dialogue and Et Cetera show that networks of human actants
are just as likely to fall into repetition or disarray, I will now turn to a series of
films – Historia Naturae ~ Suite (Historia Naturae ~ Suita, 1967), The Flat

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(1968) and A Quiet Week in the House (Tichý týden v dome, 1969) – that
involve a human actor attempting to exert a network of control over non-human
actants. Švankmajer is predictably sceptical about this urge and seems to
suggest that objects, things and animals (the distinction between objects and
things will be later elaborated upon) will always exceed or escape human
attempts at mastery.
Historia Naturae ~ Suite is an audio-visual suite that, as the title
suggests, charts various evolutionary categories in order of ascendency. The
zoological categories – aquatilia; hexapoda; pisces; reptilia; aves; mammalia;
simiæ; homo – are displayed via densely interwoven montages that combine
skeletons; illustrations; anatomical and scientific drawings; stuffed and mounted
creatures; and living beings. These sequences are edited in time to selected
categories of music – foxtrot; waltz; blues; tango; polka etc. – which heightens
the sense that a classificatory schema has ordered the structure of the film.
Interspersed between each sequence is a repeated piece of footage in which an
anonymous human mouth eats a grey and anonymous piece of cooked meat
(presumably belonging to a creature of the category depicted). As such, the
editing seems to assert that the carnivorous behaviour of the human
(allegorically, all humans) is enabled by the preceding acts of categorisation.
Bruno Latour argues convincingly in Politics of Nature that the concept of
“nature” allows humans to order life within a hierarchy, placing all other flora and
fauna beneath itself.317
However, Švankmajer makes clear with the conclusion to Historia
Naturae ~ Suite that this is a delusion. The final sequence in the film is 'homo',
thus placing humanity in sequence with all the other creatures. Then, following
a montage in which anatomical diagrams flip open to reveal the body's inner
workings and the human form is dissected and paraded in precisely the same
way as the other creatures, a cadaverous skull is shown munching on a piece of
grey flesh. Švankmajer reminds his audience that death will eventually consume
even the most rationally-minded of humans – try as we might through our
desperate hierarchies, we are unable to remove ourselves from the realm of
nature. Moreover, Bertrand Schmitt asserts that through 'placing the human
race at the very end of his film, Švankmajer show[s] the anthropocentric a priori
317
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.25.

142
which presides over the majority of human disciplines and which the
Renaissance cabinets of curiosities magnified, by making man the “lord and
master of creation” placed as the summit and finality of a hierarchy.”318
Historia Naturae ~ Suite, then, forms a Surrealist critique of the rational
impulse itself. The desire to place variegated life forms within precise scientific
categories is a denial of man's place in nature, a denial of death and
fundamentally a denial of the richness and variegation of life. For, how can the
cacophony of visual data that Švankmajer presents us with possibly be laid to
rest within such sober categories? Švankmajer beautifully allegorises this
argument by having creatures repeatedly break free from their constraints – a
mounted skeletal fish smashes through its glass case; a pair of pinned beetles
escape from their fixings and crawl manically about; even shells violently erupt
through the black and white drawings that depict them, noisily announcing
themselves. In Persons and Things, Barbara Johnson refers to art as 'a
boxing'319 but we can also say this of science, academia and pedagogy. In all of
these disciplines, subject matter is understood and made readable through
categorisation. If we think of natural history museums and school text books,
animals are quite literally put into boxes of pen and ink or wood and glass.
Švankmajer makes it clear that this boxing is never an ideologically neutral act,
showing this through the unpleasant and destructive spectacle of the man
eating the creature that he has previously categorised. The pedantic ordering,
followed by the obsessive consumption, exposes a pathological need for
control.
Susan M. Pearce in her remarkably comprehensive On Collecting: An
Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition describes collecting as 'a
dynamic process in which the collector struggles to impose himself and to
control outcomes.'320 The collecting impulse, then, is a fight against chaos and
disorder. In Historia Naturae ~ Suite the editing process itself exists as a
function of the collecting impulse, since it cuts the material into bite-sized
chunks. Thus, the very structure of the film (aligned with rationality) is situated
in opposition to the content of the film (aligned with irrationality). This is in
318
Bertrand Schmitt, 'Detailed Biography with Commentary (I) 1934-1970', in Schmitt, pp.61-93
(p.86).
319
Johnson, p.130.
320
Susan M. Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation Into Collecting in The European Tradition
(London: Routledge, 1999), p.181.

143
accordance with Michael O'Pray's invaluable observation that Švankmajer's
films, including Historia Naturae ~ Suite, create a dynamic conflict by arranging
the chaotic and sensuous visual content of the footage according to a rational
ordering scheme imposed through the edit. 321 Sometimes order wins the battle
in these films – the otherwise ecstatic Jabberwocky ends with an ominous
close-up onto a black suit and trousers – but generally, Švankmajer will end his
work on a note of gleeful destruction or ruination, in which an ordering system
collapses; so, A Game with Stones ends with a smashed bucket and a
malfunctioning machine; in Picnic with Weissmann, the human who should be
presiding over the picnic is buried alive; and in Historia Naturae ~ Suite, man is
unable to continue his task of categorisation in the face of death. Essentially, to
quote Roger Cardinal, 'for all our human methodicality, the world remains alien,
irreducible, absurd, fundamentally unquotable.'322 The gawping mouths of fish;
the curious eyes of monkeys; the coiling forms of snakes and shells; the
absolute strangeness of lobsters – in Švankmajer's vision these things pose a
genuine challenge to a rational understanding of the world.
However, lest Historia Naturae ~ Suite begin to appear didactic, it is
necessary to note that the film begins with a dedication to Emperor Rudolf II,
the Habsburg monarch of the late 16 th century who set up court in Prague and
had alchemists conduct experiments in the powder tower of Prague castle. The
dedication is presumably intended as a mark of gratitude towards Rudolf's
patronage of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, whose composite paintings clearly inspired
the sequences in A Game with Stones, in which the stones are arranged to
resemble human faces, and the first third of Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) in
which faces are assembled from scholastic and drafting equipment, food and
domestic kitchen objects, discussed later in the chapter.
More important to the themes of Historia Naturae, perhaps, is the fact
that Rudolf II was a prolific collector of art, natural objects and other assorted
treasures of scientific and aesthetic interest. Susan M. Pearce notes that, 'Early
modern Europe, roughly the period from 1500 to 1700, saw fresh attempts to
understand the world which [...] involved an enhanced interest in collection and
the organisation of collections'. 323 These collections were, to modern eyes,
321
O'Pray, in Hames, p.46.
322
Cardinal, in Hames, p.70.
323
Pearce, p.109 (ellipsis own).

144
proto-museum/art galleries, with objects arranged both categorically and
associatively. In German, the name for these collections was the kunstkammer
(or, cabinet of curiosities). In his article 'Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II:
The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio' (sic.) Thomas DaCosta
Kaufmann describes how Rudolf would invite dignitaries and political visitors to
view his kunstkammer. Kaufmann argues that far from being a random
assortment of eccentric or marvelous miscellanea, the kunstkammer was
strategically arranged to represent the mastery of the Emperor over his
domain.324 Although the ending of Historia Naturae, as argued, seems to
indicate that Švankmajer views such attempts at mastery as misguided at best,
the dedication – perhaps with a note of irony – at least pays lip-service to this
Sisyphean task. Moreover, one suspects that the clockwork contraptions,
narwhal's tusk (believed in the Early Modern period to be a unicorn's horn) and
scientific oddities housed in Rudolf's collection would appeal to Švankmajer,
considering his self-acknowledged 'weakness for Rudolfine Mannerism'. 325
Švankmajer may balk at the habits of the collector who attempts to build
for himself to 'a world, a private totality' 326 but such attacks must be necessarily
self-directed, considering the preponderance of such tendencies in his own
work. This explains the ambivalent tone that Historia Naturae strikes, since it so
fervently embodies what it seeks to critique. As such, perhaps it is the single
best example of what Peter Hames deems 'Švankmajer's cinema of
incongruities', a mode of film-making intended 'to categorise and control the
worlds created and imagined' while also suggesting 'the contradictory and
provisional nature of the process' 327 – the very process in which the film-maker is
engaged.

A Network of Resistant Objects

So, in Historia Naturae ~ Suite an unseen human influence (some
Platonic curator) and the director himself attempt to impose stable categories
upon the ever-shifting, complex and deeply variegated network of non-human
objects, only to find that this quest is futile, since they too are ensnared within
324
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, 'Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II: The Kunstkammer as
a Form of Representatio' (sic.), Art Journal, 38.1 (autumn 1978), 22-28 (pp.22-17).
325
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.116.
326
Baudrillard, p.92.
327
Hames, Dark Alchemy, 2nd edn, p.101.

145
the network. This is a political failure, since it allegorises human actants' efforts
to exert control, through dominant discourses of scientific rationalism, upon a
host of “natural” actants – shells; crabs; monkeys; beetles etc. By contrast, in
The Flat, non-human actants – in this case, domestic objects – persecute a
human protagonist (Ivan Kraus). The man finds himself locked in an apartment.
From his very first interactions within the room, objects refuse to co-operate with
him. A mirror shows not his reflection but the back of his head. When striking a
match, the open stove releases a gush of water which puts it out. When these
disruptive events occur, the wistful, albeit pensive music on woodwind and
string is interrupted with a crash of drums and a series of piano stabs,
emphasising the viewer's sense that these are not merely unfortunate mishaps,
but moments of attack. Graham Harman in his work on the metaphysics of
Bruno Latour refers to 'trickster objects' that might disrupt proceedings or
change the course of events. 328 Harman's point is that even the most seemingly
insignificant of actants may yield significant effects, which is why actor-network-
theory instructs the budding sociologist to attend to every single thing in a given
network, no matter how obscure. The absurdity of The Flat derives from the
accumulation of 'trickster objects' that would seem insignificant in-and-of
themselves, but when working within the networked space of the apartment,
begin to gain a sinister import.
In the first chapter of this thesis, when discussing The Revolt of the Toys,
I referred to 'dissident objects' that seemed to conspire against the Gestapo
agent who intrudes upon a toy shop, quoting a passage by Bill Brown that refers
to 'occasions of contingency [...] that disclose a physicality of things.' 329 Instead
of being mere conduits for some designed function, these objects assert their
physical presence with violent tangibility. The notion of the dissident object was
appropriate when writing about objects in Revolt of the Toys, but the protagonist
of The Flat is a hapless nebbish, more reminiscent of Gregor Samsa or Josef K
than a fascist soldier. The apparent animosity of the objects is, the viewer might
feel, misplaced. As such, it would be more appropriate to consider these objects
resistant things rather than politically dissident objects like the toys of Týrlová's
work. The items that the protagonist of The Flat attempts to interact with seem

328
Harman, p.21.
329
Brown, 'Thing Theory', pp.3-4 (ellipsis own).

146
to resist the utilitarian function expected of them, asserting instead their
hardness; their slantedness; their porosity – the very qualities that utilitarianism
would seek to repress. In the cases of the qualities listed, a boiled egg is so
hard that it bends a spoon used to tap it; a picture insists upon being slanted
even when adjusted; a spoon is riddled with porous holes, rendering it
impossible to drink soup with.
In Pandora's Hope Bruno Latour provides a knowingly caricatured
description of materialism as being a sociological approach in which every
'artefact has its script, its potential to take hold of passersby and force them to
play roles in its story.'330 Under such a framework, humans have no agency, but
merely play out the roles allocated to them by objects. If Latour's depiction of
materialism is correct, then The Flat is a politically materialist film, since it
suggests that humans are merely the victims of their environment, ensnared by
forces beyond their control. Once the utilitarian objects of the apartment refuse
to play their roles, the human protagonist is plunged into confusion. A black
humour derives from the fact that against all odds, the protagonist continues his
attempts to engage in the rituals of everyday life, even when the objects render
his efforts utterly futile. Not only once does he try to drink soup from the porous
spoon, but he does so repeatedly, with a certain manic fervor. Similarly, the
dangerously heavy egg is not abandoned until it is eventually implausibly
smashed. It is as though the protagonist expects his place in the network of
objects to be completely stable and his interactions pre-programmed; when the
objects do not behave as he expects them to, he is unable to adapt.
Consequently, to quote Ralph Barker, 'The man is reduced to an inanimate body
through his subjugated state in the film; he becomes the “object” with which the
flat, a supposedly inanimate facet, toys with.' 331 Barker also notes that the stop-
motion animation of the actor in the film (a technique known as pixilation)
assists in rendering him object-like.
Barker's observation chimes with Siegfried Kracauer's gnomic statement

330
Latour, Pandora's Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge: Havard
University Press, 1999), p.177.
331
Ralph Barker, 'Jan Švankmajer – The Psychological Švankmajer' (London: Applied
Imagination, 08 August 2012)
<http://artandculturecritic.com/2012/08/08/jan-svankmajer-the-psychological-svankmajer/>
[accessed 19 September 2014].

147
that upon the cinema screen the actor is an '[o]bject among objects' 332 except
here the non-human objects are imbued with a bustling life that exceeds that of
the human. There is a switch between what we as a viewer expect to be the
motivating, forceful, directive actant and what we expect to be acted upon,
pliant, subject and yielding. The effect is uncanny since the objects
demonstrating such violent agency are all regular, utilitarian objects and the
man a fairly anonymous “everyman”. If one is to read The Flat as a direct
political allegory, it would seem that Švankmajer is critiquing the position of the
subject under totalitarianism, manipulated by forces beyond his understanding
and control. Barker perceptively notes that when the protagonist finally comes
up against a brick wall at the end of the film, among the names of several
influential Surrealists graffitied there, is the name of Evžen Plocek, a dissident
who, like Jan Palach, committed suicide via self-immolation. Barker writes that
the protagonist 'has become as physically inanimate within the flat as Plocek
was politically outside of it. Both men attempt to escape from a system that is
beyond their control, and must both resign themselves to inevitable fate.' 333
However, as with the psychosexual reading of Jabberwocky, this analysis
immediately feels too on-the-nose, failing to grasp where the affective power of
the film derives from. As ever, Švankmajer's more interesting political argument
is considerably more subtle and universal. Again, it is an argument against
anthropocentrism. Man, Švankmajer illustrates, is only able to be the master of
his domain if objects acquiesce utterly to his demands. As soon as the objects
begin to break, or in any way resist, he is thrown into confusion. As such, it is
man who is utterly in thrall to objects. Objects do not depend on man, or desire
anything from him. Conversely, even the very simplest of man's daily tasks are
utterly dependent upon objects, upon which he projects all sorts of desires and
anxieties. The Flat is, then, a consciousness-raising exercise, that instructs the
viewer to not be unthinkingly reliant upon objects, but rather, to be attentive to
the complex interrelations between humans and non-humans and to always
question the assumptions that the humans have absolute sovereignty over non-
human actants. Perhaps then the human protagonist, while not a fascist, is
punished for an anthropocentric arrogance common to all humans. Alison Frank

332
Kracauer, p.97 (brackets own).
333
Ibid.

148
argues that this complicates the humour of the film: 'when the audience's
sympathy leaves room for delight, it is not only because they sometimes take a
dark pleasure in the suffering of the protagonist; at some level they are led to
feel a complementary sympathy for the objects, and thus they share a defiant
pleasure when they see objects, which are usually the slaves of man, refuse
their servitude.'334 It is a credit to Švankmajer's considerable skill as a film-maker
that this universal political message can co-exist alongside the culturally specific
message decoded by Barker.
Although humorous, The Flat is also a frightening film. Apart from the
brief entrance of a gentleman holding a cockerel (Juraj Herz) who seems
sinister due to being rendered in slow-motion, all the threats in the film come
from objects. This chimes with a startling assertion made by Latour in Politics of
Nature that the categories of subject and object 'have been created to instil
mutual horror'.335 Over the course of several pages, Latour repeatedly writes of
the monstrousness of objects for subjects i.e. that humans experience objects
as repellent, frightening and abject. 336 The film of Švankmajer's in which this is
most clearly the case is A Quiet Week in the House.

Not Objects but Things ~ in Defense of Indeterminacy

A criminal, or possibly a government agent (one suspects Švankmajer
might not make a distinction) makes his way furtively to a grimy and dilapidated
house, clearly paranoid that he is being tracked. Once inside, he establishes
himself, opens his briefcase, hotwires a light bulb and using a hand-cranked
drill, bores a hole into one of the doors in the corridor. The man peeps
voyeuristically through the hole and inside the room a phantasmal spectacle is
revealed. Candy wrappers disclose juddering screws that manoeuver
themselves to stand upright upon the keys of a grubby typewriter. Moving away
from the door, the man crosses off the day on a calendar he has hung from the
wall, composes a bed from his suitcase and a pumped-up travel pillow and goes
to sleep. The next morning, an alarm clock wakes him and he continues about
his tasks. Over the course of a week, nightmarish scenes of objects interacting
reveal themselves in the dirty rooms of the house, all spied upon by the man. A
334
Frank, pp.97-98.
335
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.77.
336
Latour, Politics of Nature, pp.73-79.

149
slab of meat licks up the encrusted remnants of leftover food like a tongue, only
to feed itself into a mincer, producing coils of shredded newspaper. A colourful
clockwork hen, tethered to a rope, tries to reach a bowl of feed, but is pulled
back. When the rope breaks, the hen reaches the feed, only to be piled upon
and crushed under a wave of excretal clay. Birds fly from a drawer upwards
past the camera and then seem to shed all their feathers. Their plucked
carcasses are hung from a hook on the wall and the feathers appear coating a
wooden chair with wings. The chair attempts to fly but tumbles to the ground
and is smashed. A rubber hose snakes its way from a black suit to a flower pot,
whereupon its drains the flowers' water, pissing it back onto the floor. The
flowers ignite and burn to a crisp. A coil of wire swings a pair of chattering false
teeth, which it binds. A cupboard swings open, revealing a gristly assortment of
bound pigs' trotters.
The contrast between the man's bureaucratically-tinged subterfuge and
the surreal happenings in the closed rooms is heightened startlingly through
having the former live-action scenes shot in a sepia monochrome and the stop-
motion sequences filmed in colour that seems both garish and diminished all-at-
once. Additionally, the whir of a camera is constantly present in the live-action
scenes, creating a background hum. Although the sound effects are less hyper-
real than in much of Švankmajer's work, sounds of the drill boring into wood, the
suitcase being opened, the tread of shoes, are all present. By contrast, the
object vignettes are wholly silent, adding to their eerie oneiric quality.
On the last day of the week, the man places a stick of dynamite inside
the hole to each room and lights the connective wick. He dashes outside, only
to return, since he has forgotten his bureaucratic task of crossing off the day's
date on the calendar. He does so, runs outside again and, presumably, the
house explodes. The film ends.
A Quiet Week in the House was released in 1969, the year following the
Prague Spring under the liberalising reform government of Alexander Dubček
and the subsequent Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion, which ended the Spring.
Dubček's government had attempted to introduce so-called “socialism with a
human face”, under which censorship was loosened and a free press
authorised. Such plans were encompassed by the Action Programme, which
also included proposed reforms to the structure of the KSČ (the Communist

150
Party of Czechoslovakia) – including its central role within Czech society –
freedom of the press, economic reform and, more generally, a liberalising move
towards greater political openness, albeit not extending to multi-party
democracy.337 In terms of film history, the Prague Spring was when many of the
boldest and most experimental works of the Czech New Wave were
produced.338 In August 1968 Soviet troops with soldiers from other Warsaw Pact
countries lay siege to Prague, wounding hundreds of Czech and Slovak
civilians. Dubček and other Communists deemed “counter-revolutionaries” were
flown to Moscow and in a series of meetings the 'Moscow Protocol' was drafted,
congress was declared invalid and it was agreed that the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia would regain control of the media, purge the party and return to
a hard-line Soviet model of Communism.339
A Quiet Week in the House clearly allegorises these events. Simon Field
describes the film as 'the paranoid vision of a fugitive able to contemplate his
dreams only furtively, through tiny holes in closed doors, the visionary force of
what he sees confirming the revolutionary power of the imagination opposed to
everyday repression', these visions providing, 'a clear message … about the
annihilation of hope.'340 In a similar vein, Michael O'Pray argues, 'The horrors
witnessed in the various rooms […] suggest those of the unconscious mind
itself espied by the authorities. Equally, they could be symbolic of the horrors of
the Czech state under Soviet domination.' 341 However, I feel we can be even
more specific about the political meaning of the individual sequences. The
screws – giant in close-up – resemble militaristic machinery and recall the
occupying Soviet tanks of the invasion. The image of the screws sitting
dangerously upright upon the typewriter keys can be taken to represent the
retraction of press freedom, or perhaps more specifically, the arrest of several
“dissident” authors following the Writers' Congress of 1967. 342 Similarly, the
tongue represents freedom of speech, symbolically minced so that we are left
with party news speech and dogma. The hen strikes me as representing Czech
337
Williams, pp.15-27.
338
See Hames, The Czechoslovak New Wave (2005).
339
Korbel, pp.305-314 and Williams, pp.29-59.
340
Simon Field, 'A Quiet Week in the House', Monthly Film Bulletin, 659, December 1988
(ellipsis own).
341
O'Pray in Hames, p.50 (ellipsis own).
342
J. F. N. Barley, Czechoslovakia: A Short History (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1971),
p.192.

151
citizens – perhaps dissident artists especially – straining for personal and
creative freedom. Almost as soon as this nourishment is granted (the handful of
years in which FAMU film graduates could produce overtly political and
experimental films, with less censorship and limited reprisals) the Warsaw Pact
invasion and the subsequent purge of reformists from government, ensures that
this freedom is quashed. The plucked birds and the chair that fails to fly are
again images of creative and political freedom which is quickly suppressed.
Finally, the black suit represents conformity, bureaucracy and state machinery –
perhaps even State Security (Stání bezpečnost) – stifling the very life of
Czechoslovakia. Throughout the film there is no recourse to dialogue or voice-
over.
A Quiet Week in the House certainly works as a piece of culturally and
temporally specific political critique but, as ever with Švankmajer, there is
simultaneously a more universal and perhaps deeper political conflict at work,
such as exists between an ordering principle and chaos in Historia Naturae ~
Suite. In this case, the conflict is between ambiguity and certitude.
Kieran Williams writes that the process of normalisation that followed the
end of the Prague Spring was essentially concerned with 'restoring extreme
predictability, far beyond the certainty provided, for example, by the rule of
law.'343 The Prague Spring, through introducing a greater degree of freedom of
speech in the press and within public and political discourse, as well as
providing a space for creative expression in film and the arts, had introduced a
certain amount of unpredictability and novelty into Czechoslovakia that had long
been repressed. However, such freedom is not desirable for strengthening the
control of a single political party in a totalitarian state, as Brezhnev and the
Soviet Communist leadership were well aware. 'In an ideal normalized setting,
from the point of view of the rulers, all outcomes are intended, desirable, and
certain.'344 In A Quiet Week in the House, the man – who I assume to be a
government agent, though his body language is admittedly suggestive of a thief
– seeks to establish certainty upon the irregular and discordant happenings in
the rooms by sticking religiously to his calendar system. This is why, when he
forgets this act of protocol and does not cross off Sunday, he has to dash back

343
Williams, p.41
344
Ibid.

152
into the house to do so, at the risk of being caught in the explosion.
The difference between objects and things is one, perhaps, of
uncertainty. Jane Bennett argues persuasively that objects are things classified
through discourse.345 Objects have been codified according to human schema
that is imposed upon them. They are nameable and, as such, easily
distinguished from one another. They are permitted, by their human masters, no
expression of ambiguity, but are defined simply by their functional values.
Things, contrariwise, exist fundamentally on their own terms. They are radically
non-human, other and uncanny. In many of the films already discussed across
this chapter, a human protagonist wants to believe that he 346 is dealing with
objects, but actually finds himself grappling with things. So, the everyman of
The Flat wants to have a simple relationship with objects that allows him to go
about his daily tasks, but they thwart him at every turn. The unseen ordering
curator of Naturae Historia ~ Suite wishes to keep his objects and animals in
strict categories but they keep escaping from their boxes, literally and
figuratively. In A Quiet Week in the House, the agent wishes to bureaucratically
record the things that he voyeuristically spies upon before he eventually
destroys them, perhaps because they exceed his comprehension. František
Dryje sees the agent as a surrogate figure for mankind more generally, with
Švankmajer criticising man's 'inability to perceive, experience and interpret his
[...] cultural world not as one-sidedly subservient but as a polyfunctional and
multidimensional and transgressive whole'.347 That is, man has a tendency to
experience the world as a categorised collection of functional objects, named by
himself and suited to his own needs, rather than as a network of things that
exceed any utilitarian system of categorisation he seeks to impose upon them.
Peter Schwenger writes poetically that, 'The thing can be thought of as
the object with the screen removed.' 348 The screen is the human linguistic and
comprehensive system that attempts to codify objects according to its own
schema. It obscures the vivid, ontological thereness of the thing – its fleshy,
ineluctable reality. According to the terms of Schwenger and Bennett's

345
Bennett, p.2
346
It would take until Down to the Cellar of 1983 for Švankmajer to introduce a female
protagonist, in the form of a young girl (Monika Belo-Cabanová). Interestingly, female
protagonists are quite common in Švankmajer's later feature-length work.
347
František Dryje, 'Jan Švankmajer, Surrealist', in Schmitt, pp.219-320 (p.254) (ellipsis own).
348
Schwenger, p.47.

153
theorising, the phenomena that unfold themselves in private in the locked rooms
of the house are certainly things, not objects. They are dirty and hybridised,
often in a state of disrepair; aggressively non-functional and sometimes almost
wholly inexplicable in their strangeness. They are almost obscene in their
otherness from humanity (see fig. 4).
Bill Brown in A Sense of Things provides an anecdote of William James
relating to humans' phenomenological experience of objects. James argues that
when our habits are interrupted, our sense of things is disturbed in such a way
as to allow us to see objects in a new light. The example he provides is of
turning a painting upside down. When we do this, James contends, we lose our
understanding of the painting (i.e. knowledge of its content) while strengthening
our sensory perception of it, so that the colours and shades appear more vivid
and vital.349 In Schwenger's terms, the object suddenly drops its veil and its
thingness is revealed. In A Quiet Week in the House, the disruptive visual
practice that Švankmajer employs is to combine his stop-motion trick
photography with a series of rapid dissolves, meaning that the animated things
seem to be in a constant state of transformation, leaving ghostly trails behind
them. Brown writes that things reach being through a process of becoming 350
and refers to things that are 'not so much objects as [...] congealed actions'. 351
Brown could also be describing the mysterious things of the film, that
never seem to settle into a stable state of being and are always in a process of
becoming. They are things that we experience in glimpses through their
spasmodic, juddering movements. This visual trick is what provides the
animated stuff with its potent ambivalence. Since the winged chair, the wire-
entangled teeth, the typewriter with nails etc. are constantly in a state of visual
flux, they seem to resist stable categorisation. This makes them very
threatening to a mindset governed by regularity and dogma – the kind of
mindset that normalisation sought to instill in the Czech populace. Furthermore,
during these sequences there is only a slight hiss and crackle on the
soundtrack, with the things making no noise. This silence strengthens our sense
of these things as phantasmal and lacking a stable, singular material presence.

349
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.75, with reference to William James, Principles of Psychology
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), p.727.
350
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.60.
351
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.146 (ellipsis own).

154
They appear and sound more like ghosts of objects, than objects.
It seems reasonable to argue that such a stringent and unwavering
political programme as normalisation would have had no room for objects that
are not defined in terms of their utilitarianism. So, if we stop thinking in terms of
objects and instead think in terms of “things” or “non-humans” then, 'we allow
them to enter the collective in the form of new entities with uncertain
boundaries, entities that hesitate, quake, and induce perplexity'. 352 Latour is
writing here of how objects, if they are to be recoded as non-humans, must be
considered actors within actor-network-theory, with all the affective power that
the term implies. However, the things in A Quiet Week in the House don't just
'hesitate, quake, and induce perplexity' 353 metaphorically or metaphysically, they
also do so literally. As such, not only are they a challenge to a stagnant political
order and agents of freedom in their own right, they also – to borrow a phrase
from Graham Harman – 'burst all boundaries of space and time'. 354 It might not
even make sense to consider these things in the singular, since one of the
effects of the dissolves is to ensure that they always look multiple. It is only in
our mind that we are able to imagine the single, concrete objects that
Švankmajer must have had recourse to in the real world outside to achieve the
effects in the film. I assume, when I see the multiple clockwork hens bleed into
each other up on the screen that behind these phantasms sits a real object
perhaps purchased from a junk shop, or received in childhood, that the animator
has on display somewhere in his home. I make the assumption that I could hold
this object and that it would have a real tangible presence, as well as a date of
manufacture and location etc.
However, the film itself provides no indication that this might be the case
– that these spectacles were ever anything other than fleeting and multiple; their
behaviour is, to quote Jane Bennett's evocation of an idea of Deleuze and
Guattari's, 'better imagined through terms such as quivering, evanescence, or
an indefinite or nonpurposive suspense.' 355 Personally, I find this idea politically
radical, as it suggests that structures of power must be constantly open to
change, else they will be rendered moribund in their failure to apprehend

352
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.76.
353
Ibid.
354
Harman, p.65.
355
Bennett, p.55.

155
indeterminacy. Švankmajer's work gestures towards a system where it would
not make epistemological sense to speak of “revolutionaries” or “counter-
revolutionaries”; “reformists” or “regressives”; “dissidents” or “loyal comrades” –
such stable binaries would be doomed to failure in attempting to describe an
ever-shifting network of multiple, hybridised, unstable actants.
Although Švankmajer foregrounds the indeterminacy of the
aforementioned things through the technique of multiple dissolves,
indeterminacy is really inherent to the stop-motion form itself (and more broadly,
animation in general). Keith Broadfoot and Rex Butler, in Alan Cholodenko's
animation anthology The Illusion of Life write lucidly about a paradox central to
animation; namely, if a single frame of animation is still, then how does the
illusion of movement occur?356 Broadfoot and Butler explore this notion with
reference to Zeno's paradox of motion, which states that if Achilles were to race
a tortoise and give that tortoise a head start, Achilles could never overtake the
tortoise since once Achilles has reached the point that the tortoise started from,
the tortoise will have advanced a certain distance, occupying a further point in
space. Once Achilles moves forward to that point, the tortoise will have moved
forward yet again and so on etc. Although the distance the tortoise further
travels becomes regressively smaller, this new distance keeps infinitely
presenting itself between Achilles and the tortoise, rendering it impossible for
Achilles to ever pass the tortoise and win the race.
To apply this paradox to stop-motion animation, as Broadfoot and Butler
do, we must think of how stop-motion is achieved. An object or plasticine model
is put in place and then a single frame is taken. The object or model is then
moved and another frame is taken and so on. When run in sequence, these
frames give the illusion of movement due to persistence of vision.
Conventionally, film is run at 25 frames per second, which is the rate at which
the human eye will start to run these images together, rather than distinguishing
between individual images. Between these frames is, of course, movement that
goes undocumented. There is a gap between the frames. To “fill in” this gap,
one could take more frames, at ever more finite points of movement; like the
points between Achilles and the tortoise, frames could be infinitely interposed.

356
Keith Broadfoot and Rex Butler, 'The Illusion of Illusion', The Illusion of Life: Essays on
Animation, ed. by Alan Cholodenko (Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts, 1993), pp.263-298.

156
However, ultimately, to quote Broadfoot and Butler; 'these points or instants
could never give movement because any movement as such – as the
paradoxes of Zeno make clear – would always occur in between two points or
instances.'357 As such, there is always an ellipsis between frames, a void that
comes undocumented and unseen, however small. The implication is that
movement belongs to the gap itself. As such, an inherent indeterminacy is built
into the very mechanism of stop-motion animation.358
One might question whether within the unseen, liminal space between
frames where Švankmajer's manipulations take place, objects always adopt the
status of things, since they can never be known or seen and thus exceed
classification. The idea of a space integral to the very body of the film, but yet
necessarily unseen by the government censor, is appealing. While I am loathe
in a materialist study focusing on objects and things to over-theorise an
absence or read too much into a void, I believe there is a certain poetry to the
notion that this space that allows movement could be considered as equivalent
to the parallel polis – the political space theorised by Václav Benda, that
functions as a safe domain for dissidents, tucked away and hidden within the
totalitarian state.359 This might strike the reader as a fanciful notion, but I write in
hopes of evoking the notion that there is always something unknowable and
indeterminate within the very medium of animation itself. There is a potential
space for freedom built into its mechanism.
Paul Wells notes that cinema theoretician Sergei Eisenstein equated the
'apparent freedom of the animated form with personal and ideological
freedom.'360 That is to say, animation's proclivity towards constant transformation
and metamorphoses inherently puts it in opposition to rigid and unwavering
ideological dogma. This fact, combined with the imaginative scope that not
relying on live-action allows, a tendency for disruptive, scatological humour, plus
the aforementioned hidden space between its frames, makes animation the
ideal artistic medium for political dissent.
357
Broadfoot and Butler, in Cholodenko, p.267.
358
An indeterminacy that is also present in live-action film due to the flicker effect; though stop-
motion, especially when not smoothed over in post-production, dramatises this indeterminacy
because it is always clear to the viewer that there has been some manipulation between the
frames.
359
Palous, 'The Parallel Polis after 12 Years', Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, 2 (1990),
53-59 (p.53) .
360
Wells, Understanding Animation, p.22, with reference to Eisenstein and Leyda, 1988.

157
Three Films in which Things trump Categorisation
In considering Historia Naturae ~ Suite, The Flat, and A Quiet Week in
the House, I have looked at films in which objects present themselves as
dissident or resistant things, contrary to the ordering desires of humanity. The
latter two films also dramatise the psychological mind-set of a totalitarian state
in its efforts to limit imagination and freedom of expression. This critique was
especially pertinent in the months following the end of the Prague Spring and
the crushed hopes embodied by the Warsaw Pact invasion. Within these films
objects/things and humans interact in a state of perpetual conflict as actants
within ever-shifting networks of power. However, despite a certain reification of
the protagonist of The Flat, the viewer is never in danger of mistaking a human
actant for a non-human, or vice versa.

Concluding Remarks: Latour ← → Švankmajer

Across this chapter it has been demonstrated that Švankmajer's political
ideas are most often asserted through objects and things that make no recourse
to words. His political project strikes me as being very similar in kind to Bruno
Latour's – which is not, 'to treat humans like objects, to take machines for social
actors, but to avoid using the subject-object distinction at all in order to talk
about the folding of humans and nonhumans.' 361
As such, Švankmajer's cinema is most critical of those humans who
refuse to acknowledge that they are inextricably intertwined within networks of
non-humans and insist upon their right to use things as objects, in purely
human, functional terms. The hapless protagonist of The Flat finds that he
cannot exist within a complex and multiple network of forceful thingy actants
when he can only see these things as everyday objects that play their human-
directed parts in domestic rituals. The things revolt against him, resisting his
attempts at mastery through discordant bouts of violence. Likewise, the unseen
ordering curator of Naturae Historia ~ Suite is unable to maintain a stark divide
between civilisation and nature (with himself on the side of civilisation and the
non-human actants on the side of nature) since he, like the creatures he
categorises, will end up succumbing to the natural process of death and decay.

361
Latour, Pandora's Hope, pp.193-194.

158
The criminal-agent of A Quiet Week in the House is perhaps more successful in
his attempts to destroy the hybridised, abject, ambivalent, suspended things
that reside in the locked rooms, in a network outside human influence; however,
his pathological need for categorisation and control is such that he dashes back
into the house to complete a bureaucratic ritual, even at risk of death. Humans
using objects to communicate, as in 'Factual Dialogue', end up depleted, and
human progress outside of a co-existent network of humans and things is
doomed to repetition and failure (Et Cetera). Even networks of things that exist
wholly outside of the influence of humans, like the stone civilisation in A Game
with Stones, can get caught up in their own destructive rituals.
In conclusion, then, the only hope for politics and progress that
Švankmajer envisions lies with Bruno Latour's 'parliament of things' 362 and a
radical denunciation of anthropocentrism, as outlined in Švankmajer's
revolutionary manifesto To Renounce the Leading Role. Ultimately, we –
subjects and objects; objects and things; humans and non-humans – are all
equal actants, that exist on an equal footing. Since these actants are
infinitesimally multiple, it is impossible for human actants to control all the
variables in any given interaction. We can apply this fact to politics.
Communism was predicated upon a notion, its origins in Hegel and Marx, that
civilisation ascends through an ever-refined, forward-moving dialectical process.
A thesis and an antithesis come into conflict, eventually resolving in synthesis,
from which a new thesis and antithesis will be produced. A rational, scientific
society (as Soviet Communism viewed itself) can guide these forces towards
progressive and fruitful resolution(s) that will eventually reach an ultimate
synthesis at the point of utopia.
However, according to actor-network-theory and Švankmajer's films, this
is an unobtainable goal, since the interaction between actants is too complex
and the nature of these interactions too chaotic for their outcomes to be wholly
determined by even the most rational and scientific methods. In fact, attempting
to harness this network of things to run according to human desires is likely to
prompt further cycles of destruction and aggression. It is this observation that
the world, composed of actants that all wield their own effects upon one
another, is chaotic and essentially uncontrollable, that would have been so
362
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.227.

159
disturbing to the Party censors when they viewed Švankmajer's work, resulting
in his worked being censored. A view of the world as an inextricably intertwined
network does not allow for the simplistic configurations of revolutionary or
counter-revolutionary; socialist or bourgeois; subject or object. As soon as we
make a value judgement against one actant, we find ourselves making a value
judgement about those intimately connected with it. Concepts of blame and
intention are dispersed and with their loss, the notion that there exist only those
people and things that serve the cause of revolution and those people and
things that impede revolution becomes unpalatable.
If politics is the study of how humans can guide progress through micro-
managed processes of conflict resolution, according to ideals and ideology, then
Švankmajer's work is aggressively anti-political, since it regards the political
programme as essentially naïve and misguided. However, if we choose to
regard politics as any process of power relations and negotiations between
actants (whether human or non-human), however chaotic and destructive, then
we should regard all of Švankmajer's work as political. His cinema in which
things are given a starring role and persons are pushed to the background,
instructs the human viewer to pay heed to even the most seemingly minute of
actants – each stone, nail or leaf with its own desires, fluctuations and singular
and unique expressivity – and consider what role they might have to play within
a global and holistic parliament of things, in which we are all (humans and non-
humans) reliant upon one another.

160
Chapter Three: Jiří Barta and the Rhythmic
Difficulties of Living in, or with, Time and
Space
Introduction to the Chapter
The central critical text of this chapter will be Lefebvre's posthumous
work Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (Éléments de
rythmanalyse, 1992). Rhythmanalysis proposes a method for analysing the
ideology encoded in the spaces and times of daily-lived everyday life in order to
interrogate the rhythms of a given city or place. The rhythmanalyst must be able
to internalise these rhythms at an experiential, bodily level, while simultaneously
distancing him/herself from the action of these rhythms, observing them from
afar; detached yet receptive. As such, the rhythmanalyst combines the rigorous
objectivity of the scientist with the ecstatic subjectivity of the poet. 363 To quote
Claire Revol: 'This agent of observation, the rhythmanalyst […] listens to his
body as a metronome as he listens to the world.' 364 The comparison between
body and metronome communicates the idea that the rhythms of the body
provide the rhythmanalyst with a “baseline” against which he/she can measure
and compare environment rhythms. In this way, the body acts like a reference
oscillator, through and against which other rhythms are processed and defined.
In terms of the film spectator we should think of the fact that any given
audience member has their own specific bodily apparatus (the clarity of their
eyesight; the rate of their heartbeat; how their body allows them to sit, sloughed
or straight) that will influence and alter their experience of a film. Like the film
viewer, the rhythmanalyst is simultaneously aware of their physical
enmeshment within the environment, while able to observe the rhythms that
surround them (or, in terms of the film viewer, are before them on the screen).

363
Of course not all poets immerse themselves in the kind of ecstatic subjectivity favoured by
the Romantics, Walt Whitman or “mystic poets” like Rumi. Indeed, the Objectivist poets (with
whom William Carlos Williams was affiliated) deliberately sought to escape precisely this kind of
hightened, over-stimulated immersion in the world in favour of clarity and objectivity. However,
when Lefebvre speaks of the rhythmanalyst being like a poet, he clearly situates this aspect of
the rhythmanalyst's work in contrast to their rational, scientific rigour.
364
Clair Revol, 'Rue Rambuteau Today : Rhythmanalysis in Practice', Rhuthmos (06 April 2012)
<http://rhuthmos.eu/spip.php?article549> [accessed 24 April 2014] (emphases in original)
(ellipsis own).

161
As such, rhythmanalysis is the synthesis point between observation and
experience; the 'felt' and the 'conceived'.365
Lefebvre classifies rhythms as either cyclical or linear/alternating,
although sometimes what might be taken to be a single rhythm, will actually
contain both cyclical and linear rhythms in interaction. Cyclical rhythms are most
often observed in nature, such as in the passing of the seasons, or the rising
and setting of the sun, and are experienced afresh each time, as though new.
Linear rhythms, on the other hand, are accumulative and defined foremost by
difference and variation. The movement of cars down a street, for example,
accords to a linear rhythm of stops and starts, although this linear rhythm might
be seen to be contained within the larger cyclical rhythm of the working week.
Sometimes rhythms might act in harmonious accordance with one another (as
in polyrhythmia) while at other times the interaction of rhythms might be
characterised by discordance and dissonance (as in arrhythmia). Social
rhythms are maintained through expressions of power (such as via the
processes and agents of law and order) and dressage, by which humans have
their bodily movements disciplined through the repetition of homogeneous
socially-sanctioned rituals. These rhythms can potentially be oppressive,
unhealthy, or even pathological.
The chapter will begin with an explication of three different forms of time
– 'rational time', as measured by clocks and conformed to by the capitalist
workforce; 'charismatic time', as governed and transformed by the will of the
socialist worker; and 'natural time', as exists in variegated forms in the rhythms
of nature, such as the passing of seasons, the process of rusting, tropisms, tree
rings, or the budding of flowers. The very existence of charismatic and rational
time (in their relation to modes of production under capitalism and communism)
illustrates that time itself can be politically encoded. Space too is never neutral
or non-ideological, but is structured according to political hegemony. Some
particularly insidious forms of space as expressions of political power are polling
stations only reachable via stairs, not providing access to citizens in
wheelchairs; or, the recent appearance of retractable spikes on park benches in
London, to prevent their use by the city's homeless population.
Following a brief overview of Jiří Barta as a film-maker, I will consider five
365
Op cit. (italics in original).

162
of Barta's films produced under communism, which taken together will be
shown to argue that only through better acquainting themselves with the
variegated, heterogeneous rhythms of natural time, might citizens of
Czechoslovakia (or, indeed, any country) free themselves from the stifling
strictures of human-centred time, whether rational clock time, or charismatic
time under socialism. Likewise, Barta suggests, predictable, rectilinear spaces
will only produce citizens who live according to predictable, rectilinear rhythms.
For a revolution to truly transform everyday life, the people must produce new,
radical spaces and live according to a rich variety of times. The writings of Henri
Lefebvre, especially the methodology of rhythmanalysis, are ideally suited for
the analysis of the political meaning of space and time in Barta's filmography,
since they constantly interrogate the notion that space and time are non-political
and problematise simplistic notions of any one singular time or space.
Furthermore, Lefebvre's identification of different forms of rhythms (linear;
cyclical; arrhythmic; polyrhythmic etc.) provides the critic with a vocabulary with
which to write about rhythms in a given film scene, that compliments the
cinematic terminology already at the critic's disposal. It is essential that the
rhythmanalyst of cinema remembers that the rhythms of everyday life captured
on screen are transformed and augmented by the cinematic rhythms of editing.

Introducing Abstract Time, Charismatic Time and Natural

Time
In Karel Čapek's R.U.R., a comic dystopia play from 1920, concerning a
worldwide uprising of robots, the esteemed and eminently bourgeois Dr.
Helman holds the time-table in the highest of regards. 'If the time-table holds
good,' he instructs us, 'human laws hold good, divine laws hold good, the laws
of the universe hold good, everything holds good that ought to hold good.' 366 The
ants of the Čapek brothers' Pictures from the Insects' Life (Ze života hmyzu),
written the following year, have equally bold and even more triumphalist claims
to make over time. The ants' chief engineer proclaims that the ants shall
'conquer time', will 'reign over time.' 367 The ant goes on to inform a human visitor
that, 'The master of Time will be master of all!' and that, 'He who commands
366
Karel Čapek and Josef Čapek, R.U.R. and The Insect Play, trans. by Paul Selver (London:
Oxford University Press, 1961), pp.54-55.
367
Čapek, p.156.

163
speed will rule over time.'368 Thus a dialectic between two visions of time is
established. Dr. Helman positions time as the sovereign rule; it is the divine and
moral duty of life to consign itself to the order of time. Punctuality is the greatest
good. Contrariwise, the ants envision themselves as being able, with sufficient
speed, to transcend the time-table. Through industrial efficiency, time itself may
be conquered and bent to the will of the people. 369 Either, as in Dr. Helman's
conception, time is unsurpassable and life must fall in line accordingly, work and
industry bound strictly to unflinching clock time; or else, as the ants believe, a
sufficiently resourceful society can make time acquiesce to industry. Time, when
tamed, can be made subordinate to work. It is significant and telling that Dr.
Helman is in the business of manufacture; a scientist of industry and capital
working for a monolithic robotics company. The ants, meanwhile, work for the
collective. Their only industrial competition derives from the militaristic threat of
other nations, since industry in their society is wholly centralised. They seem, in
contrast to the director and governing parties of 'Rossum's Universal Robots', to
work, not for capital, but for the dream of increased efficiency itself.
These examples from two Czech plays written in the inter-war period, are
illustrative of the broadly divergent tendencies under capitalism and
communism regarding how time is conceptualised and treated. Stephen
Hanson describes this split elegantly in his Time and Revolution: Marxism and
the Design of Soviet Institutions, as follows: 'If the ideal of 'bourgeois'
economists is a system in which each unit of time is utilized in as productive a
manner as possible given scarce resources, the goal of Soviet socialism was to
organize production in such a manner as to master time itself.' 370 Hanson refers
to the bourgeois conception as 'rational' time and the conception under Soviet
socialism as 'charismatic' time.371 However, we are not dealing with a strict
dichotomy; later in his work, Hanson notes that Marx himself 'synthesized
charismatic and rational time'.372 Indeed, charismatic time is something of a
propagandistic fiction of Stalin's regime. Clearly, any situation in which workers
are required to adhere to a daily, weekly and yearly schedule, adapting their

368
Čapek, p.157.
369
Or, in this case, ants.
370
Stephen E. Hanson, Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p.viii.
371
Hanson, p.x.
372
Hanson, p.53.

164
biological rhythms to the demands of a factory or office, owes something to the
strictures of clock time. Stalin, no less than a bourgeois industrialist, required
his workers to produce as great a yield as possible in as small a time as
possible.
Moreover, we must ask, is there a discernible point at which a desire to
master efficiency becomes a desire to master time itself? Philosopher and post-
Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre writes in The Production of Space (1974)
that, '[t]he Soviet model has as its starting-point a revision of the Capitalist
process of accumulation, coupled with a good intention – the desire to improve
this process by speeding it up.'373 According to Lefebvre, then, socialism (at least
in its Russian incarnation) originally defined its conception of time, not in strict
opposition to that of industrial capitalism, but as an improvement that would
exhibit the superior efficiency of the Soviet system. Propaganda may have
claimed that this increased efficiency was to be realised through harnessing the
collective will of the people, yet as long as this will was conceptualised as a
means to an end (rather than the end in itself) it was still the servant, not master
of time. Yet, Hanson argues that the drive under Stalin to fulfil the production
quota of a Five Year-Plan (pyatiletka) within a four year period, 'meant literally
overcoming the force of time within the time-bound socioeconomic order.' 374
Here Hanson makes a bold and provocative leap of faith in assuming that the
metaphorical rhetoric of propaganda should be taken literally at the highest
metaphysical level, down to the very ground-level realities of production.
Achieving the first Five Year-Plan in four years could mean, in Hanson's terms,
literally compressing five years into four – condensing time through the sheer,
collective will of the Soviet work force – or it might quite simply be a matter of
increased speed, as per Lefebvre.
Further complicating this conundrum of rhetoric, is the fact that ideology
under socialism was often intended to be taken literally as reality (or rather,
what was demanded of reality) and this must be borne in mind, even when such
a reading seems counter-intuitive to the mind of someone living under modern,
western capitalism. Or, at the very least, citizens were expected to pretend that
ideology was reflective of reality. However, this dilemma can perhaps be
373
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden: Wiley-
Blackwell, 1991), p.421 (brackets own).
374
Hanson, p.152 (emphasis own).

165
stepped around (not entirely ungracefully) if we re-conceptualise Hanson's
argument in moderately more limited terms. Even if we don't agree that socialist
leaders or indeed, workers, believed that they could literally overcome time, or
feel that the concept of charismatic time cannot be stretched much further than
the Stalinist propaganda of the 1950s, it is clear that there was a qualitative
difference in the approach of the socialist nomenclature to that of their western
capitalist counterparts, in the simple fact of their belief (which may have been
only rhetorical, but to even express this belief, is to grant its possibility) that
clock time might be fallible; that there could, indeed, be another way of thinking
about time...
Which, of course, there is; since rational clock time and charismatic time
are not the only two ways in which we might conceptualise time. Though these
two notions of time are different by degrees (humans as subject to time vs. time
as subject to humans) they both centralise humanity's position as the ultimate
measure of time. Man is, after all, the inventor of the clock. Potentially, this
conception of time is plagued by the same fundamental mistake as a geocentric
model of the universe – it assumes that humans are essential to the existence
of time. However, Hanson gives mention to a third idea of time, more ancient
than both rational and charismatic time; that of 'traditional' 375 time, by which time
is measured by natural phenomena such as the passing of the seasons; the rise
and fall of the sun upon the horizon etc. These things occur without being
measured; the Earth would rotate and the trees grow and die, even without
humans bearing witness.
So, there is time as measured by humans (which may be ideologically
encoded) and time that exists and continues outside of the human sphere.
Broadly, natural or traditional time tends towards the cyclical (being seasonal in
essence) while human time tends towards the linear and accumulative.
However, when we come to examine the ideas of Henri Lefebvre in more detail,
it will become apparent that this categorisation of cyclical time as natural and
linear time as human, does not always hold true. To quote Yvette Bíro; 'the
present [...] accommodates an existence of multiple (parallel, criss-crossing)
layers and a future that points beyond itself. In other words, the present is not

375
Hanson, p.x.

166
stable at all; it is the dimension of unceasing change.' 376 In short, we must
always be wary of speaking of any one singular time and instead, be attentive to
the various ways in which different modes of time
(rational/charismatic/natural/linear/cyclical etc.) intersect.
Furthermore, time is always ineluctably intertwined with space; so to
speak about one is always inevitably to speak about the other. 377 Clearly, as with
time, we measure space with reference to ourselves as humans. Euclidean
space makes sense to us because we are phenomenological creatures, able to
travel through and experience space through our senses. As has been briefly
discussed with regards to time, space can also be ideologically encoded.
Lefebvre even goes so far as to state that, 'space embodies social
relationships'.378 This would mean, that time and space are never neutral, but
always encoded by political structures. At the most experiential of levels we can
immediately think of how buildings (homes; supermarkets; schools) and the
doors, chairs, tables and other objects within them, tend to be ergonomically
constructed to best fit the bodily dimensions of an adult, able-bodied male,
accommodating the very same people that have hegemony across the world.
Human space is literally built in the image of able-bodied patriarchy. Then, in
turn, this space is used in a certain way by certain people, further reinforcing the
meanings encoded in the space. For example, certain benches in London are
now fitted with a coin slot and spikes which retract when coins are inserted. The
design of these benches send a coded message that capital is valued more
than the harm/discomfort of the homeless and, more simply, that the benches
are reserved for paying customers. People who then pay to use these benches
further enforce this message, contributing to the alienation and
disenfranchisement of the city's homeless population. The public space of the
park is transformed.
So, time and space can be politically encoded, just as objects can. In
Chapter One, it was demonstrated that domestic objects in several films by Jiří

376
Yvette Bíro, Turbulence and Flow in Film: The Rhythmic Design (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2008), p.10 (ellipsis own).
377
Of course, this presupposes that there cannot be absolute space outside of time, or absolute
time outside of space. It is outside of my expertise to discuss this philosophical quandary in any
depth. Since we are dealing with cinematic depictions of time, these depictions inevitably
require space to render the processes of decay, repetition, slowness and speed visible.
378
Lefebvre, p.27.

167
Trnka (and, more briefly, Hermína Týrlová) were politically encoded by virtue of
their stubbornly non-ideological objecthood. These objects were metonymically
linked, through allegory, with an idealised, rural Czech past, free from Nazi –
and later, Soviet – influence. In the second chapter, we turned to the early,
mannerist films that Jan Švankmajer directed through the 1960s and early
1970s. It was argued that Švankmajer's objects forge a resistant political space
in the interstice between the frames on screen; in the unseen space-time where
his objects are manipulated between the shots taken by a stop-motion camera.
By turns, it has been demonstrated that objects (within an allegorical narrative
framework) can be politically encoded; as can objects moving in space and
time. In this chapter, it will be argued that space and time themselves can be
politically encoded and the animated films of Jiří Barta shall be used as case
studies to demonstrate this.

Jiří Barta: An Ambivalent Animator

Jiří Barta's films are not as immediately recognisable as the works of an
auteur as those of Švankmajer. While Švankmajer's thematic concerns are
viscerally tangible throughout his films – the grossness of food and
consumption; the strangeness and violence of childhood; the petty animal self-
interest that lies behind human behaviour – Barta's themes are, generally, more
nebulous. His films often deal with ritual and repetition, purging and sacrifice;
yet these may be formal structuring elements, rather than artistic or personal
obsessions. Jenny Jediny lists 'changing social climates, myths and legends,
and the organic' as representative of his themes, 379 but notes that this makes an
anomaly of The Vanished World of Gloves (Zanikly svet rukavic, 1982). I would
add that neither Riddles for a Candy (Hadanky za bonbon) of 1978, nor The
Last Theft (Poslední lup) of 1987-1988, deal with these concerns; which,
considering that Barta's non-commercial output numbers less than a dozen
films, indicates the difficulty in fitting his work within a limited number of
descriptors. Perhaps, the only indisputable theme of Barta's career is that of
greed, which operates throughout many of his films as the ultimate human vice,
discernible behind every act of human evil. Thematic concerns aside, while we
may recognise Švankmajer's films from their distinctive aesthetic tropes – the
379
Jediny, 2007.

168
intrusive, hyper-real sound design; the bulging, googly eyes of his stop-motion
creations; the high-speed editing composed of extreme close-ups – Barta shifts
stylistically between his films, often choosing to work within a different medium
of animation (whether stop-motion; traditional 2D animation; or C.G.I.) for each
of his projects.
Another difference between the two animators is that Barta never worked
under the system of formal censorship that existed prior to 1968. While many of
the changes of the Prague Spring were rolled back over the 1970s, censorship
during the period known as normalisation was enforced through bureaucratic
processes, such as requests for post-production edits, or via-self-censorship,
rather than through the direct threat of legal sanction or persecution. As such,
Barta may have felt less personal/artistic impetus to be a consistently political
director than an artist like Švankmajer who experienced a greater degree of
censorship throughout his career. While it will be argued that several of Barta's
films function as political critiques – especially of certain socially-licensed
models of time and space – taken as a whole, his filmography does not
comprise a politically radical body of work, but a series of provocative and
brilliant reflections upon a variety of themes. That is to say, they are as much
formal reflections upon the medium of animation as they are political works. Of
course, since animation was a comparatively marginal art-form, it potentially
allowed for a great degree of freedom than live-action film-making would have
permitted. That is to say, formal aspects of animation as a medium cannot be
wholly extricated from he political content of a given animated work.
In short, Barta's filmography resists generalised, all-encompassing
judgements and each of his films must be discussed by turns. It may seem
perverse, then, to be discussing the bulk of Barta's filmography with a view to
demonstrating that time and space can be politically encoded on film. It is
therefore important to note that time and space are not necessarily thematic
concerns of Barta's; rather, they are essential elements of the very medium
within which he is working (it is not for nothing that Gilles Deleuze's two books
on cinema are entitled The Movement-Image and The Time-Image,
respectively).380 As such, an analysis of the political encoding of time/space

380
Giles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (Cinéma 1. L'Image-Mouvement), 1983 and
Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Cinéma II: L'image-temps), 1985.

169
could potentially be performed on the films of any director or animator. In the
case of the majority of cinema, however, the conception of time/space provided
by the film, will also be that of the dominant ideology. So, for example, if we
think of a Hollywood action film, such as one of the Die Hard or Mission
Impossible series, the film will possess a rationalistic conception of time,
congruent with the capitalist system under which they were made. The concern
of these films is to pack increasing amounts of novelty and spectacle into
increasingly shorter times at increasingly faster speeds. Chases in cars, trains
and aeroplanes will be present to accentuate the audience's sense of speed
and acceleration. Count-down clocks and bomb-timers will likely feature to
remind the audience of the protagonist's need to complete their world-saving
tasks as efficiently and quickly as possible. Conversely, the propagandistic pro-
Soviet regime films of Sergei Eisenstein or Dziga Vertov are committed to a
charismatic conception of time. Time is presented as dynamic; forced into
acceleration by revolution or industrial practice. Time should be measured not
by the clock, but by the actions of workers.
By contrast, it seems especially pertinent to perform analysis of the
political encoding of time within Barta's films because they return again and
again to the theme of time and society's relationship to it. Barta's films are either
structured around natural rhythms and repetitions or, more often, they concern
how rational-charismatic time has warped natural sensibilities, leading to the
corruption of human society. Barta is not wholly unique in these concerns as a
Czech film-maker. For example, an interest in the changing of the seasons is
present in Vojtěch Jasný's Desire and All My Compatriots (Všichni dobří rodáci,
1968). It might be tempting to regard Barta as a champion of lost Czech
pastoralism, continuing in the same tradition as Trnka. However, while Trnka's
films were often allegories with a simple, singular message, Barta's work is
more ambivalent; essentially pessimistic about film's ability to impart moral
lessons. This is not to say that such ambivalence is incompatible with the
allegorical form; as Stephen Greenblatt notes in his introduction to Allegory and
Representation: 'Allegory may dream of presenting the thing itself – not
particular instances of sin or goodness, but Sin and Goodness themselves
directly acting in the moral world they also constitute – but its deeper purpose
and its actual effect is to acknowledge the darkness, the arbitrariness, and the

170
void that underlie, and paradoxically make possible, all representation of realms
of light, order, and presence.'381 Barta's allegories tend towards the obfuscatory
and multiple end of the allegorical spectrum introduced in the first chapter. Their
moral impetus is often clear (or at least it is made apparent which behaviour we
should be condemning), yet we receive meaning from the films in fragments
gained through partial glimpses. This experience perhaps stems from Barta's
working method, which he has explained in interview. Rather than taking a
complete and single story as his point of departure, or starting from a message
that he wishes to impart, Barta develops his films 'through still picture drawings
and images'; by these means, he explains, he is able to 'fill animated shots not
only with proper movements but also with metaphors, symbols and hidden
meanings usually seen in still pictures.' 382 These symbols, metaphors and
meanings may not always coalesce into an allegory proper, but rather, reach
towards a multiplicity of possible readings, some of which are related to the
political; others not.
In some respects Barta's films exemplify a form of cinematic engagement
which Pasi Väliaho argues is invoked by all cinema; 'a mode of consciousness
not as a homogeneous sphere but as a disjunctive assemblage of moving
contents that waver on an uncertain threshold and remain constantly
susceptible to falling into the unconscious.' 383 Väliaho argues for cinema as a
medium with a unique relationship to space and time. Since cinema induces a
state of consciousness in its audience that is wholly unique to the form, it also
requires viewers to adopt a certain way of seeing the world that honours the
disjunctive nature of the medium. We must, urges Väliaho, 'avoid recurring
traditional notions of the substance of the immutable being and, instead [...]
think of the world as dynamic and temporally constituted, and conceive of things
in their eventful and processual nature.' 384 This is wholly congruent with how
Lefebvre instructs the budding rhythmanalyst 385 to experience the world;

381
Greenblatt, p.vii.
382
Jiří Barta interviewed by Dan Sarto, 'The Magical Junk-Filled World of Jiří Barta' (Animation
World Network, 11 September 2012)
<http://www.awn.com/animationworld/magical-junk-filled-world-ji-barta> [accessed 20
September 2014].
383
Pasi Väliaho, Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), p.58.
384
Väliaho, p.187 (ellipsis own).
385
He or she who analyses the rhythms of the world.

171
understanding that if one looks out upon a landscape, all the elements therein
are working to their own time; 'each plant, each tree, has its rhythm, made up of
several: the trees, the flowers, the seeds and fruits, each have their time.' 386
Clearly then, the rhythmanalyst (or indeed, Väliaho's cinema-goer) must
sit squarely outside the realm of abstract, clock time. They should seek to
internalise the poly-synchronous rhythms of nature. The poly-synchronicity of
natural time is incompatible with both rational and charismatic time. It is
incompatible with rational time (as favoured by capitalist systems) because
industry requires the multiplicity of natural rhythms to be subordinated to an
unwavering time-table. For instance, we might consider that sleep cycles
naturally shift with the seasons and the rising and setting of the sun. However,
most jobs require that a individual's circadian rhythms be dictated by their
working hours. Natural time is in a constant state of flux and shift; the length of
days stretch out and then contract, while the ageing and decay of trees and
flora is variegated and moves in fits and starts. The rational time of industry and
human labour artificially portions up natural time into even segments that move
ever-forward through even increments.
As for charismatic time, Lefebvre notes that, 'the cyclical, repetitious
space-time of death and of life, has nothing in common with Marxist time – that
is, historically driven forward by the forces of production and adequately (to be
optimistic) oriented by industrial, proletarian and revolutionary rationality.' 387
There is a gross arbitrariness about natural time from a state socialist
perspective, since it is not dictated by the drive towards progress. The
repetitions of natural growth and decay do not build towards something, but
merely recur across millennia, insensate and undirected. 388 Nature does not
make use of time and space in any conventional sense; rather, nature and time
and space are one and the same. The rings in the trunk of an oak only become
a means of reading time once they are “read” by a forester or lumberjack; left
within the oak, unseen by humans trained in either rational or charismatic time,
they are not a signifier of time, but the spatial embodiment of time itself.
Unwatched and undisturbed by humans, nature has rhythms all its own. Barta

386
Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. by Stuart Elden and
Gerald Moore (London: Continnuum, 2004), p.31.
387
Lefebvre, Production of Space, pp.22-23.
388
God, of course, not formally existing under communism.

172
seeks to evoke and pay tribute to these rhythms in his 1983 short stop-motion
animated work A Ballad about Green Wood (Balada o zeleném drevu).
Honouring natural rhythms at the expense of charismatic or rational time, Barta
offers a vision of the world in thrall neither to communism, nor capitalism; but
instead evokes a bucolic past, rooted in Slavic folk-law. 389

The Loss of a Green Wood and the Defeat of Natural Time

A Ballad about Green Wood does not depict a single, canonical tale from
Slavic folk-law, but instead provides a loose amalgamation of several characters
and myths. That is to say, the film does not reference any specific folk tales,
though it is possible to trace potential antecedents for certain figures in the
work. It would perhaps be a misnomer to describe the film as even having a
narrative in the conventional sense (as previously related, several of Barta's
films are built up around isolated images and ideas), though it does consist of a
distinct series of rhythmic movements, that may be understood sequentially.
The first movement depicts a brief montage of wood-chopping in extreme close-
up. We begin, then, with the world of human labour, encroaching upon nature.
The second movement depicts – in time lapse footage – thawing, gushing and
sprouting, as spring passes over the land. The third movement depicts, through
still images, freezing and ossification, as winter spreads death and cold. The
fourth movement returns us to spring, as the cycle begins anew, after a ritual of
purification. Finally, the fifth movement returns us to the human sphere, as the
cut wood is burnt for fuel. So, a narrative depicting the human use/exploitation
of the natural world frames the ecstatic depiction of a natural fertility cycle that is
analogous to the passing of the seasons.
Two figures in the film seem metonymically to be linked to the summer
solstice and the winter solstice, respectively – metonymically, in the sense that
they are at once both the harbingers and the embodiments of summer/winter,
figuratively and literally ushering in the seasons, which they represent. The
figure which appears to be a summer deity is a splint of wood, with the face of a
beautiful woman carved into it. She is destroyed by the winter deity mid-way

389
Barta with Clarke, 1988. It is by a process of elimination that I have deduced that Barta's
somewhat cryptic reference to a film involving 'Slavonic mythology, which was animated on
location', must be in relation to A Ballad about Green Wood – location shooting being so
uncommon in Barta's filmography.

173
through the film, yet at the film's end is reincarnated and sprouts grass, which
consumes the winter deity, who is sacrificed (presumably, allowing the cycle to
begin again). Meanwhile, the deity associated with the winter solstice is a splint
of wood with wings and a death's head in its most stable incarnation; however, it
moves through a series of transfigurations. At first the figure is a raven, then a
hybridised figure between a raven and a piece of dead wood, then an icicle and
then, once again, the hybridised figure. The figure is also, of course, winter
itself. The equivalent of this figure in Slavic folk-law would perhaps be Koliada,
who is closely associated with the winter solstice. If so, the other figure of the
splint of wood with the maiden's face would be Kupalo, a deity of spring,
although traditionally Kupalo is a male figure. 390 Moreover, the bird-like form of
the winter creature may have been informed by human-bird hybrids such as the
Sirin bird, also found within Slavic folk-law. 391 However, it is hardly necessary to
match Barta's creations directly onto corresponding figures from Slavic folk
traditions, considering his improvisatory and collaged approach to narrative.
Indeed, mythological figures that embody the seasons can be found in folk
traditions from across the globe. Rather, what is worth noting in these regards,
is that Barta is drawing his inspiration from ancient myths that long pre-date the
political system under which he is working. This, arguably, gives the film a
universal aspect protecting it from accusations of specific political critique.
The temporal location of the film is, for the purposes of the film-maker, a
mythic time ... or more precisely, a time which exists outside of time. Since the
film enters into a natural cycle that occurs – so we are to believe – wholly
outside of human influence, it would be erroneous to place a date upon its
occurrence in calendar years. In the first chapter of this work, the dissident
writings of Václav Havel were examined. It was shown that Havel often
eulogises over the loss of a rural Czech past, that was being destroyed – or so
Havel perceived it – by the industrialisation brought about by the Communist
regime. Indeed, Havel's fears were scientifically substantiated. Milos Zeman,
speaking at the end of the 1980s, reported that 30 per cent of the forests in
Bohemia had been destroyed by acid rain; meanwhile, of the remaining 70 per

390
Natalie O. Kononenko, Slavic Folklore: A Handbook (Westport: Greenwood, 2007), p.11.
Elsewhere, Koliada is known as Morana/Morzanna and Kupalo as Jarilo. Slavic mythology has
an unstable pantheon and names differ, as one would expect, between the Slavic countries.
391
Kononenko, p.9.

174
cent, half had been partially destroyed. 392 Moreover, concern over these affairs
was not merely isolated to Havel and a small pocket of environmentalists. Maria
Dowling informs us that a survey of 401 people carried out in the November of
1989 into the social problems affecting the nation, found that 98% of those
canvassed considered the environment a foremost issue of concern. 393 So, at
the start of this 1983 film, when we are shown extreme close-ups of wood being
cut to pieces by an axe, we should consider that this wood might belong to trees
of the decimated forests of Northern Bohemia and that an audience watching
this film in a cinema upon its release (its screening preceding a feature-length
movie)394 may have had certain sentimental and politicised feelings concerning
the loss of their country's woodland.
Indeed, in this opening sequence Barta seems to hint that not all of the
woodland itself is willing to acquiesce to its own destruction. After a series of six
brief shots (inter-cut with credit/title cards), in which logs of woods are heartily
split, the axe swings down upon a piece of wood that does not yield to the
blade. Instead, the axe blade becomes embedded in the icy wood and the log is
smacked repeatedly against the chopping slab until it splits. At this point in the
film, the wood might be considered to be a resistant thing, like the egg or the
porous spoon that assailed the hapless protagonist in Švankmajer's The Flat, or
those mysterious unclassifiable things spied upon by the agent in A Quiet Week
in the House. The resistant thing seems to assert its mute otherness in the face
of a human subject. It resists the utilitarian designs thrust upon it. For the
frustrated human the stubbornness of the thing (whether a back-firing car or a
computer that is failing to start) is perceived as a challenge. It is refusing to
behave as it ought. The resistant thing exists fundamentally on its own terms
separate from the human. It does not acquiesce. While the first chunks of wood
are quite easily chopped to pieces and thus turned into nothing more than fuel
for human subjects, this final log resists its subjugation. When, eventually, it is
split, the splitting is depicted through stop-motion photography, as the log falls
into a dozen smaller pieces. As with the abrupt use of stop-motion to depict an
effect that might have been achieved with live-action in Revolution in Toyland
(the chirping on the hour of the cuckoo-clock), here the use of stop-motion
392
Maria Dowling, Brief Histories: Czechoslovakia (London: Bloomsbury, 2002), p.143.
393
Dowling, p.150.
394
Barta with Ballard, 2003.

175
signals a shift into a different mode of phenomenological reality – one of
animism and pagan ritual.
Václav Havel writes, in an early essay collected in Living in Truth, that
without social time humanity is cast back into a more primitive mode of
existence, in which time is measured 'by the cosmic and climatic patterns of
endlessly repeated annual seasons and the religious rites associated with
them.'395 Or, to reverse Havel's statement but retain its meaning, one might
recall Stephen Hanson's claim that under Soviet Communism (and here, as per
the rest of his work, Hanson is thinking of Communist Russia specifically, but in
this case, the argument has broader applications) there was a loss of natural
rhythms that came about with the uprooting of the peasant class to work in the
factories.396 Though such symbolism may well be unintentional, it is interesting
to note that the first shot of the film is an extreme close-up of the rings of a
severed piece of tree trunk, which, after an outwards zoom, is split into two by
the fall of the axe. An embodiment of natural time is violently broken to pieces
by human labour. The steady fall of the axe, marking the points between the
opening credits, keeps beat. The regular and monotonous rhythm of human
work, ever-linear, is introduced.
However, once the wood begins to resist, then we are plunged outside of
the sphere of human work, into a panoply of natural rhythms. The camera,
which had been static save for the opening outwards-zoom, becomes
immediately looser, panning across the fallen splints of wood. Streams gush
and burble, ice thaws and melts, and the splints of wood appear to dance in an
ecstatic, merry circle. Immediately, then, the circular rhythms of nature interpose
themselves. The splints of wood not only dance in a circle, but they also spin,
moving in circles within a circle. This creates a vertiginous and dizzying effect.
In contrast to the predictable and stable rhythms of the chopping, these rhythms
seem unshackled to any linear progression.
Through cutting between stop-motion footage of the wood and close-up
shots of water flowing, we experience a multitude of rhythms. These rhythms
are harmonious, yet chaotic. The water is shown flowing in different directions,
across the screen from right to left, then from left to right and then from the top
395
Havel, 'Letter to Dr Gustáv Husák, General Secretary of the Czechoslovak Community Party',
trans. unknown, in Living in Truth, pp.3-35 (p.26).
396
Hanson, p.208.

176
to the bottom of the screen, in a waterfall. As such, the water seems not to have
a linear progression (we are clearly not following these streams from source to
sea) but rather, the water embodies a natural eruption of life, unharnessed and
spilling over with energy. The diegetic sound of the rushing water on the
soundtrack heightens our sensory immersion in the scene. We are, as viewers,
placed at the centre of this jumble of busily-intersecting currents. We might
return to Yvette Bíro's remark about 'the present' – that it 'accommodates an
existence of multiple (parallel, crisscrossing) layers and a future that points
beyond itself.'397 The present isn't some single, static moment, but contains a
multiplicity of different rhythms, which each have their own time. It is difficult for
the individual human to access this “multiple present” since we are locked into a
linear forward-marching experience of time. However cinema, due to the
freedom that editing gives to the manipulation of time, allows the viewer to
experience time in a non-linear fashion. At this moment in the film, the repetition
of the nature shots and the circularity of the splints' dance (and at no point can
we locate ourselves along the river, or tell how far we are through the dance,
since the water is undifferentiated and the splints of wood are all alike) create
the impression of occupying a multiple present. Rather than sequentially, this
gushing forth of nature is occurring all-at-once, in some ecstatic moment
outside of rational time.
A curious and unintentional fluke in the film-making process also
serendipitously contributes to this perception. In the previously cited interview
with Jeremy Clarke, Barta speaks of the difficulty in filming stop-motion on
location, since it is impossible to regulate the light. 398 The sun keeps changing its
position in the sky; the intensity of the light dips and wanes. This creates a
flickering effect of rapidly changing dimness and brightness during the stop-
motion sequences, as well as causing the shadows of the wood to shift ever-so
slightly. This adds to the impression that what is unfolding is not taking place at
any one time of day and may even represent the passing of an entire season.
Väliaho notes of 'cinematic rhythms' that they 'are not measures of time but
rather contribute to our perception of time and the duration of things and
events.'399 These flickering, bustling and multi-directional rhythms resist being
397
Bíro, p.10.
398
Barta with Clarke, 1988.
399
Väliaho, p.12.

177
counted or divided. Instead of working sequentially in any traditional sense, they
offer us a holistic experience of a moment of seasonal change. When our eyes
dart across a painting, we do not assume – save in the case of cabinet
paintings, or others which suppose a narrative – that the order in which we pick
out objects and moments from the landscape, necessarily represents the order
of their occurrence. Rather, we tend to assume that a painting crystallises a
moment, idea or a span of time, but one in which many rhythms and alternate
times might be contained. Certainly, we do not assume that each painting is a
still life and the subjects and objects depicted always static. Paintings rarely
function as photographs – they often depict, not frozen moments, but over-laid
tableaux of different moments and actions, of an indeterminate time span.
Likewise, this is what is affected by the “spring awakening” montage in A Ballad
about Green Wood. All-at-once spring has arrived and wood dances, water
gushes, doors blow open and ice thaws.
Väliaho describes editing as 'a technique used to encapsulate material
variation and movement into a representation and draw a symbolic image of
duration.'400 Unless a work depicts so-called real time (a contentious assertion),
then this is indisputably the case. Generally, a film will depict days, sometimes
years, in the lives of its characters and we understand this to be the case, even
if we are only in the cinema for 120-odd minutes. As Barta's montage opens up,
it starts to depict more phenomena of nature, at alternate speeds and duration.
Mud is shown rising up and bubbling open, seeds are shown sprouting, and an
earth-worm, in extreme close-up, burrows through the earth. Some of these
shots are composed of time-lapse footage of micro phenomena. Some appear
murky and abstract and merely evoke pulsing or thrumming, without a clear
sense of what is moving on screen. Our sense of duration is, as in the first half
of the montage, not concrete, but 'symbolic'. 401 That is to say, the montage does
not depict a literal series of events in sequence. We are being presented with
an idea; an experience; that of the exhalation, or the breath of nature (see fig.
5). We begin to internalise these rhythms at the level of our body. Appropriately,
then, the following shot takes us to what must be assumed to be the point-of-
view of one of the splints of wood. The camera weaves dizzyingly around in

400
Väliaho, p.179.
401
Ibid.

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circles, moving up and down in waves, as on a carousel. The image blurs and
the sensation induced by watching the footage is exhilarating, yet queasy. The
idea that this is the point-of-view of one of the pieces of wood is communicated
by the viewer's ability to match a movement they have viewed from the outside,
looking in, to a movement they are experiencing from the inside, looking out.
Moreover, the sequence begins directly after a shot of one of the pieces of
wood and the location is seemingly the patch of icy grass where the splints
were performing their ritual. However, unless we are a firm believer in universal
animism, the notion of a point-of-view shot from a piece of wood seems
immediately incongruous. As such, one might posit that the point-of-view is not
even from the wood per se, but rather the point-of-view of the rhythm itself. It is
the inner experience of the dance of nature; felt on a gut-level by the audience.
At this juncture, it may be apposite to introduce the concept of 'vitality
affects'.402 The phrase originates in the work of developmental psychologist
Daniel Stern and refers to dynamic sensations that accompany many of the
activities of daily life. Väliaho radically re-purposes the idea, considering vitality
affects not in terms of the everyday, but as embodied sensations that are
elicited in the cinema audience by certain cinematic sequences or techniques.
Väliaho describes vitality affects as being, 'characterised in dynamic and kinetic
terms such as surging, fading away, fleeting, explosive, accelerating,
decelerating, bursting, reaching, and hesitating' and concerning, 'the force,
intensity, quality, form, or rhythm of experience'. 403
Vitality affects, then, are not so much properties of things, but belong to
the movement of things. The adjectives Väliaho uses to describe vitality affects
do not appropriately describe static objects, but phenomena in states of change
or flux. Lefebvre says that a rhythm 'is not a thing, nor an aggregation of things,
nor yet a simple flow. It embodies its own law, its own regularity, which it derives
from space – from its own space – and from a relationship between time and
space.'404 Perhaps, then, vitality affects are varieties of rhythm? This would
succeed in bridging the gap between Stern's conception of vitality affects as

402
Väliaho, p.92, with reference to Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View
from Psychoanalysis and Development Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 54 and
Daniel Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 2004), pp. 64-65.
403
Ibid.
404
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.206.

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being concerned with motor activities such as 'breathing, moving, sucking,
defecating, and swallowing' and Väliaho's sense that they are a form of
'cinematic embodiment'.405 When Väliaho refers to embodiment, the embodiment
is not that of the objects upon the screen, but of the audience member's bodily
internalisation of the rhythms (vitality affects) upon the screen. In the preceding
paragraph I broke down the shots in Green Wood's “spring awakening”
montage and then described the sense of queasiness experienced during the
weaving, rotating, wave-like, rocking camera movement that concludes it. The
vitality affects of the sequence can be positioned between what transpires upon
the screen in that montage (and how the footage is arranged to give a depiction
of time and space through editing) and the inner affects this elicits in the
viewer's body and mind. Some potential vitality affects of the spring awakening
montage (which, I suggest, will vary between individual viewers) are: a feeling
of release and exhalation; a desire for growth and movement; dance and
dizziness; plunging; a state of both emergence and “entering into” the world.
The soundtrack music on flute, string and horns also intensifies the atmosphere
and feeling of renewal and vitality.
The rhythms of spring are soon modified however by the coming of
winter. The music shifts to more ominous tones as the raven enters and pecks
the split of wood with the carved maiden's face to pieces. After this, a shot of
the raven standing upon the snowy grass, wings outstretched, dissolves to a
shot of the raven with a wooden death's head. As this creature then proceeds to
fly across the landscape, shots of grassland cut abruptly to frozen static images
of the now frosted landscape in monochrome. It is as though the vitalist pulse –
the very rhythms – have been sucked from the land. Winter has ossified the
landscape.
The shift from time-lapse footage to frozen, static shots is particularly
ingenious. Time-lapse is cinema in excess, exhibiting its ability to accelerate the
rhythms of life. By contrast, still photography has the ability to freeze life and
remove all movement from a vital, living landscape. It strikes me that this
sequence provides an exemplary example of Siegfried Kracauer's notion that
film acts as a gateway from the outer world to the inner, providing a means by

405
Väliaho, p.92.

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which the 'emanations' of an environment can be internalised by the viewer. 406
To speak more broadly, cinema allows an audience to reconnect with the vitalist
pulse of the world. So, for instance, watching the footage of water rushing, the
viewer starts to feel the currents of the stream, as though she were immersed in
the water. Lefebvre writes that, 'everyday life remains shot through and
traversed by great cosmic and vital rhythms: day and night, the months and the
seasons, and still more precisely biological rhythms.' 407 Now, Lefebvre's
Rhythmanalysis and The Production of Space are predominantly urban texts.
When “everyday life” is spoken of, it tends to be the life of the city; life that is
criss-crossed by the hustle-bustle of people. Perhaps then A Ballad about
Green Wood, by virtue of taking place determinedly outside of Prague, helps
reacquaint its viewers with the 'great cosmic and vital rhythms' 408 that Lefebvre is
writing of.
Lefebvre's statement very closely matches the reference by Havel in his
dissident writings, previously quoted, to 'cosmic and climatic patterns of
endlessly repeated annual seasons'. 409 Havel's project is essentially
nationalistic, in as much as his writings concern a vision for the nation, based
upon the notion of living in truth and returning to a more rooted, gathered
existence, in which the Czech and Slovak people would be reconnected to their
land. Lefebvre's project is certainly more theoretical, but its impetus is likewise
fundamentally political. Lefebvre wishes for a restructuring of social relations,
achieved through a restructuring of space, both in terms of how space is
philosophised and the material constitution of public space itself. Havel's
project, then, might have been achieved through Lefebvre's methodology. If
space, and the people's relation to space in the Czech lands, were restructured
according to a radical design, then a change in social relations would follow.
However, this is a fundamentally radical agenda and Havel, like Barta, was a
traditionalist. His desire was to re-establish a semi-mythical Czech past,
deemed lost under Communist rule. Havel's vision reached backwards towards
a peaceful, bucolic democracy, providing a space for culture and reflection, not
industrialisation.

406
Kracauer, p.287 and p.35.
407
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.73.
408
Ibid.
409
Havel, 'Letter to Dr Gustáv Husák', Living in Truth, p.26.

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 Eventually, the wood-raven hybrid alights in a cave. Small mammals
retreat into their holes. We have moved into deepest winter and the state of
hibernation. This represents a retreat of natural time. Plunged into darkness
there is no longer any way to measure change; indeed, it seems as though
change itself has ceased. The raven creature settles itself upside down upon
the ceiling of the cave, like a bat, and then the image dissolves to a shot of an
icicle hanging at the cave's entrance. There is a match in the two shots between
the form of the creature and the form of the icicle. It is not merely a parallel that
is drawn here, but a visual means of capturing the magical thinking present in
Slavic mythology. The crow's body is winter is dead wood is an icicle.
The sun rises over the horizon and an exultant fanfare of horns begins on
the soundtrack. A wooden knight, carved in light wood appears and its design
distinctly mirrors the recognisable aesthetic style of Trnka. Heroic figures in
Barta's films tend to be reminiscent of Trnka's. This of course could merely be a
nod of respect to the great animator; however, it also seems possible that in this
context the reference to Trnka represents simple innocence and virtue. In
Chapter One it was discussed how Trnka's works often invoked and celebrated
Czech rural living and the life of the peasant. These are the people who we
might believe to be best in contact with natural time. The knight, then,
represents the unfreezing of natural time from its slumber and the coming of
spring. Soon the wooden raven is defeated and the icicle falls from the mouth of
the cave. In celebration the wooden maiden, newly reborn, ignites the funeral
pyre of the fallen creature, which then teems with and is eaten away by verdant
grass.
Lefebvre notes that while cycles and rhythms are repetitive, each cycle is
still imbued with the sense of uniqueness – 'the dawn always seems to be the
first one.'410 This strikes me as being a function of the denial by so-called
“primitive man” of winter, in favour of the rejuvenatory potential of spring. 411 Or
perhaps it is not so much that primitive man was in denial of winter, but that he
had, in some sense, to understand death as a cyclical process – else, the harsh
losses of winter would have imposed too heavy a toll. Hanson expresses this

410
Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life Volume 3: From Modernity to Modernism (Towards a
Metaphilosophy of Daily Life), trans. by Michel Trebitsch (New York: Verso, 2008), p.129.
411
Bruce F. Kawin, Telling it Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film (New York:
Cornell University Press, 1972), p.91.

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idea succinctly; 'Birth and death in traditional cultures tend to be seen not as the
finite endpoints of a lifespan conceived in linear terms but instead as passages
in a natural process of generational renewal.' 412
It is clear from the ecstatic music cues and the sheer vitalist energy of the
central portion of A Ballad about Green Wood, that Barta believes there to be
value in this cyclical vision of time. At the very least there is an aesthetic
interest, but the abrupt violence and lifelessness of the opening and closing
sections of the film also hint that there is an added moral dimension to Barta's
interests. At the start of the film, an axe chopped up wood with monotonous
regularity. Now, at the end of this seasonal fertility ritual, all joy and animism is
stripped away from the wood – literally – as human hands rip the green shoots
from a piece of wood that has an indistinct carving of the summer maiden's face
upon it. Clanging, machine-like noises enter upon the soundtrack and the film
cuts to an unmoving shot of a chimney, smoke rising from its top. It lasts but a
couple of seconds and then the screen fades to the credits. Nature's cyclical
rhythms of purging and rebirth have been violently interrupted by the
encroaching of civilisation. To borrow terminology from Lefebvre, cyclical cosmic
rhythms have been superseded by human linear rhythms. 413 The wood was in a
cycle of birth, decay, death and re-birth, but in being burnt for fuel, it has been
removed from that cycle. There is the subtle hint of pollution – a phenomenon
which, as noted, the populace of Czechoslovakia were, seemingly, acutely
aware of in the 1980s.414
The ballad of Green Wood becomes a eulogy, a swan-song, mourning
the loss of both the woodlands of Bohemia and of natural time. On the wrists of
one of the two hands that collects the wood and strips it clean, is a wrist-watch.
The wood, the embodiment of natural time (the film, remember, opens upon an
extreme close-up of tree rings), has been thrown to the fire, superseded by
human subjects with emblems of rational clock time upon their wrists. As said,
there is a moral dimension to the notion that in being bound to abstract time, we
are disconnected from nature. Charismatic time cannot remedy this state of
affairs, since it is merely a modification of abstract time 415 that centralises human

412
Hanson, p.3.
413
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.8 and p.30.
414
Dowling, p.150.
415
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.421.

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will.416 Reconnecting with natural time means forgoing civilisation. The project is
essentially reactionary since it requires a return to nature. However, when the
state itself is engaged in a process of normalisation, reversing the progresses
made under the Prague Spring and seeking to implement, through bureaucracy
and censorship, what the Stalinist regime of the 1950s had achieved through
terror, then nostalgic, “reactionary” thinking actually becomes a provocative
means of envisioning a (past) utopia, neither reducible to capitalism or
communism. It is the loss of this non-political realm of embodied natural time
that A Ballad about Green Wood mourns and this section shall be concluded
with a eulogy by Lefebvre, which expresses in words, what the film expresses
with moving images and rhythms:

In nature, time is apprehended within space – in the very heart of

space: the hour of the day, the season, the elevation of the sun above
the horizon, the positions of the moon and stars in the heavens, the
cold and the heat, the age of each natural being, and so on. Until
nature became localized in underdevelopment, each place showed its
age and, like a tree trunk, bore the mark of the years it had taken it to
grow. Time was thus inscribed in space, and natural space was
merely the lyrical and tragic script of natural time [...] With the
advance of modernity time has vanished from social space. It is
recorded solely on measuring-instruments, on clocks, that are as
isolated and as functionally specialized as this time itself [...] Our
time, then, this most essential part of lived experience, this greatest
good of all goods, is no longer visible to us, no longer intelligible. It
cannot be constructed. It is consumed, exhausted, and that is all. It
leaves no traces. It is concealed in space, hidden under a pile of
debris.417

Designing Uniformity
So, according to Lefebvre, time, under modernity, has been used-up and
violently severed from space. Increasing abstraction has removed time from
'lived experience'418 and displaced it to clocks and measuring devices, which
convert time into space. A dis-synchrony has been opened up between the two,
with space having the upper hand (of the clock). However, this is not to say that
space too cannot be distorted and diminished. In two of Barta's early films The

416
Hanson, p.viii.
417
Lefebvre, Production of Space, pp.95-96 (multiple ellipses own).
418
Ibid.

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Design (1981) and Disc Jockey (Diskzokej, 1980) it is shown that space is
closely linked to human lived experience and that human interactions are
flattened and reduced by topographical thinking, as exercised through space.
The Design provides a short, effective critique of Soviet housing projects
in Czechoslovakia (single tower blocks are called a věžový dům and a long,
conjoined block is known colloquially as a panelák). These tower blocks are
ubiquitous enough within the Czech urban landscape, that Barta is unlikely to
be referring to a hyper-specific period of architectural design, though we can be
fairly sure that his critique is focused on post-war housing projects built under
the Communist regime since, as Kimberly Zarecor notes, '[f]rom the Communist
takeover in February 1948 through late 1950s, the doctrine of socialist realism
changed the tone and direction of architectural practice.' 419 The individual vision
of a single architect was de-emphasised and concordantly there was a
dwindling in avant-gardist aspirations. A more efficient mode of factory-based
production based on the Soviet model was introduced, leading to greater
uniformity in design.420 Later, in the 1970s, the panelák spread to non-urban
areas as the normalisation regime constructed hundreds of thousands of new
residential apartment blocks throughout the country. However, these were
cheaply manufactured and often lacked green, communal spaces. 421 Barta,
then, in The Design, was addressing a contemporary issue and a phenomenon
he would have grown up around.422
The building we see designed in the film is a 40-room panelák apartment.
The film begins with the architect's tool-kit being opened and the implements
within taken out and systematically laid upon the work surface. The implements
are positioned in a row; every object evenly spaced apart and horizontally
aligned. The rectilinear thinking of our unseen architect protagonist has been
quickly established. The kind of design that is to be drawn has already been
subtly determined. Barta's film literalises the idea that the diagram not only

419
Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia,
1945-1960 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), p.71 (brackets own).
420
Zarecor, p.113.
421
Zarecor, p.293.
422
An increasingly utilitarian approach to architecture was also characteristic of the urban
landscape in post-war Western democracies, including Britain. Architectural movements such as
'Brutalism' in the 1950s and 60s were adopted for governmental building projects and tended
towards repetitious, functional designs that were often relatively inexpensive to construct.

185
describes, but brings into being.423 At the most microcosmic level of the drawing
board, ideology and material reality are already determining one another. The
architect's straight-edged tools and measuring devices are only going to
produce rectilinear designs; they are ill-suited to drawing curves or irregular
shapes. The functional, utilitarian thinking that the architectural process
demands, which is ensured by the precise, rational and quantitative scales and
measures used for the job, pre-determines the functional design of the building
(see fig. 6). There is no gap between the ideology that dictates how buildings
are designed and the material facts of their existence, when built.
When the foundations of the building and its skeleton are sketched out,
the sounds of a construction site impose themselves. Clearly, these are non-
diegetic sounds, but they are not disconnected from what we see on screen;
rather, they bridge the moment of design and the moment of construction.
Since The Design is a graphical drawn animation, there is no discernible point
at which the drawning of the apartment block become the 'real thing'. The entire
framework of the building has been sketched out in black ink. Then the architect
(we see only his hands) opens a series of envelopes from which he takes tiny
paper drawings of household objects and consumer goods, as well as residents
for the apartments, and places them within their respective homes. What we
took to be a design (a mere representation of space) is now being treated as a
'real' place in which people can live. A representation of space has become
indistinguishable from the very thing that it was depicting. This highlights the
fact that the diagrammatic schemata was not a neutral representational tool;
because as a means of representation it was boxy, airless and unimaginative,
so too is the apartment.
Each resident or family is drawn in their own distinct style and each has a
specific taste in furnishings. There is a scholarly gentleman who sits at his desk
alongside a bookcase and an elegant grandfather clock. An artistic couple is
drawn in a cubist style reminiscent of Picasso. As each of the rooms of the
apartments is furnished, a distinct piece of music plays upon the soundtrack,
matched to the style of the individual or family. So, the artistic couple are
accompanied by modern piano music. A man, who seems to embody the
traditional, rural values of an older generation, is placed in his apartment to the
423
Väliaho, after Deleuze, p.11.

186
accompaniment of an accordian playing folk music. The music builds; the past
layers sink into the background and are overlaid with the music associated with
each new resident. This creates a cacophonous, but densely interwoven
soundscape, indicating the variegating rhythms of apartment life.
Still, not all individuality is honoured and concessions are made in the
name (presumably) of progress. The man who seems to be a Czech or Slovak
peasant brings with him a goat. The goat's horns and udders are promptly
snipped off by a pair of scissors and it is transformed into a dog. Likewise, a
traditional stove is removed, since the apartment is already fitted with an oven.
At first, some of these concessions seem innocent, since a number of the
objects simply don't fit the dimensions of a single flat. The scholarly gentleman
has the greater portion of his bookcase snipped away, for instance, since it
doesn't fit the room. However, this sense of “innocence” is contingent upon the
naïve idea that the design itself was only ever neutral and non-ideological. As
mentioned, designs do not merely describe reality, they actively construct it.
Lefebvre expresses this idea in The Production of Space as follows; 'The
graphic elements involved (in drawings, sections, elevations, visual tableaux
with silhouettes or figures, etc.) which are familiar to architects, serve as
reducers of the reality they claim to represent – a reality that is in any case no
more than a modality of an accepted (i.e. imposed) “lifestyle”'. 424 That is to say,
an architectural blueprint provides a certain, socially-constructed vision of
reality, which necessarily ommits certain details and includes others.
The uniformity of design under the tenets of socialist realism and, then,
the dreary ideologies of normalisation – these things ensure the uniformity of
the inhabitants of panelák buildings. Soon enough, the individuality of the
apartment building's inhabitants is erased. A second sheet of paper is placed on
top of first. The ink roller is taken and rolled across the second sheet which,
when removed, reveals the inhabitants of the apartment now stripped of colour,
their furnishings all alike. However, there are still some discrepancies and a
couple of apartment rooms have yet to be fully assimilated. A third sheet of
paper is rolled down. Then fourth. Now, all that remains, demarcating a final
room from all the rest, is a lone portrait of a couple. The hands peel the paper
portrait from the design and crumple it up into rubbish. The bossanova music on
424
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.338.

187
the soundtrack slows and stops and is quiet. A diminishment of space has taken
place and, with it, the daily lives of the inhabitants of space have been hollowed
and abstracted. 'The reduction with which we are concerned', writes Lefebvre:

[...] is directed towards the already reduced dimensions of Euclidean

space; as we have already seen, this space is literally flattened out,
confined to a surface, to a single plane. The person who sees and
knows only how to see, the person who draws and knows only how
to put marks on a sheet of paper [...] contribute in their way to the
mutilation of a space which is everywhere sliced up. 425

The topographical mode of thinking engaged in by the architect has

literally defined the urban space, abstracting it, so that the individuals within
experience no depth to their lives – both literally and figuratively. By the end of
Barta's film, the music, once vibrant and densely layered, has been reduced to
a low wind, or perhaps the roar of traffic. The camera zooms out and we see
that the apartment block was just one of many, arranged in endless rows, like
flat-pack furniture.426 The original blueprint design, measured and scored so
precisely with exacting implements, could only ever produce conformity.
Finally, as a nasty juxtaposition to the crisp whiteness before us, which
even extends to the design of the end-credits, the sound of a fly buzzing enters
intrusively and unpleasantly onto the soundtrack. The sense of abjection this
introduces, cements the viewer's feeling that there is something fundamentally
perverse, deathly, life-denying about the entire architectural project. The very
geometrical cleanliness of the design work somehow disguised the ideological
rot at the heart of a scheme that values making space cheaper, more efficient,
over individual human vitality and life and, in so doing, diminishes both space
and human life.
Disc Jockey, produced a year before The Design, strikes me as less
politically astute and more of a formalist experiment than The Design, yet there
are some interesting affinities between the two films. While The Design is a live-
action film with stop-camera effects and Disc Jockey is a traditionally-animated
two-dimensional work, both might be considered “graphical animations”, in the
sense that both often adopt a topographical view, which reduces objects to their

425
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.313 (ellipses own).
426
A not entirely frivolous comparison in terms of design, considering the Soviet tendency
towards prefabricated housing.

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elementary shapes and forms. In The Design, the structuring element is the
square. In Disc Jockey, it is the circle. Both films are concerned, at a thematic
level, with how the rhythms and practices of everyday life are modified by
design. In The Design the argument is made specifically in relation to Soviet-
style housing projects. In Disc Jockey, the broader and less nuanced argument
is made that the daily rituals that compose life in a late communist society are
determined by advertising and design. So, there are very fast, abrupt cuts
between advertisements for products and the products themselves being used.
Rarely do we see any actual spaces within the film. Instead, the spaces
are signaled for the viewer through their familiarity with ubiquitous icons, signs
and logos. A driving sequence provides a brief establishing shot of a road,
before reducing the journey merely to common road signs, the speedometer
and roadside advertisements. Usually, these are elements that might help
navigate or determine a journey; but here, they have superseded the journey
itself. These signifiers seem to dominate a landscape without objects, which can
be read, but not truly inhabited or experienced. The film strikes me as
fundamentally pessimistic, since any potential means of transcending this
topographic emptiness – drugs; music; natural time – is shown to be easily co-
opted or diminished. Natural time is represented at the start of the film by the
sun moving across the sky; but this is overshadowed by an enormous alarm
clock in the foreground, with a circular form that seems to both mirror and
parody that of the sun. Abstract time appears as a pastiche of natural time.
During a sequence in which the disc jockey plays records at a club, the wild
flights of fantasy evoked by the music merely end up being reducible to banal
domestic routines or the ubiquitous circle. Images that feature within the
montage of record playing are: meat being sliced, a combine harvester spitting
out bales at regular intervals, soup boiling, a stack of tumbling cans, boxing
gloves pumping forward, but never connecting. The images would be surreal in
their juxtaposition, but the way in which they all conform to the same circular
forms renders them banal. Even fantasy doesn't break from the regular
patterns. Indeed, all the different records sound alike – variants on the same,
tired old tune.
There is another sequence of the clock and the sun moving through the
Heavens, yet this time in the reverse direction. Again, they conform to each

189
other, as though the rhythms of man were unalterably dictated from above and
determined to conform to essential repetitive patterns. Cosmic rhythms are not
a means of escaping abstract clock time as in A Ballad about Green Wood; they
are merely one and the same, both conforming to the same cyclical repetitions.
Eventually, the disc jockey starts placing pill after pill into his
disembodied mouth; an action that was shown at the start of the film to be part
of his morning routine. With the consumption of each pill, the ink around the
mouth becomes smudged and the drawing cruder and more diminished. There
are two potential readings, both bleak. Either, drugs can deform and distort the
content of cycles, but ultimately cyclical forms will continue unabated; or else,
the eating of each pill represents the beginning of a new day and its routines
and repetition itself are shown to eventually diminish and deform the individual.
Either way, individuals cannot be freed from cycles and repetition in Barta's
early, pessimistic output.

Twisted Spirals and Swollen Shards: The Sickened

Rhythms of Hamelin
If Barta seems deterministic in The Design and Disc Jockey about the
ability of people to escape the infiltration of determining rhythms (whether
spatial or temporal) into their daily lived lives, his animated telling of 'The Pied
Piper of Hamelin', Rat Catcher (1985) is more pessimistic still in depicting a
society with rhythms that have become so warped and corrupted by greed, that
any persons displaying goodness or charity therein are destroyed. Barta
demonstrates throughout the film how repetition can allow sick, unhealthy
rhythms to become naturalised and socially-sanctioned. Two spatial forms that
are ubiquitous throughout Barta's Hamelin represent and embody this repetition
of corrupt rhythms: the spiral and the spire. The spiral conforms to an inwards-
moving rhythm towards ever-greater perversity and corruption and is to be
found within the very foundations of Hamelin; in the catacombs and under-
ground networks upon which the city has been built. It can be glimpsed in the
image of a rat chasing its own tail or an obscenely coiled string of sausages. It
is a regressive, anal symbol. The sausages, coiled, appear excretal. Spires rise
from many of the buildings of Hamelin, either pursed together thinly, or bulgingly
splayed apart. Spires have a 'phallic aspect', to quote Lefebvre's appraisal of

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monuments and, like towers, 'exude arrogance'.427 They capture the gross
hubris of the city and the greed of its inhabitants. In contrast to regressive
spirals, they embody misguided and grotesquely-unchecked progress. Spirals
(with their inwards-moving rhythms) and spires (with their outwards-moving
rhythms) spatially embody the corruption of the city and, so doing, ossify it,
forging paths that further predispose its inhabitants towards corruption (see fig.
7).
Barta's stop-motion film, which is feature-length at 53 minutes, is an
adaptation of a Viktor Dyk novel, 428 which is itself an adaptation of the famous
German folk-tale, which has its origin in Backhaus' Hameln Chronicle.429 The
most notable inclusion from Dyk to a viewer who is best acquainted with English
tellings of the story (such as Browning's) is a romantic sub-plot between the
piper and a young maiden called Agnes. A viewer most familiar with Browning's
poem will also note the absence of children from the town. Indeed, the only
child is a small infant, cradled by a fisherman who floats in a boat in a river
outside the borders of the town. The fisherman himself, named Sepp Jörgen in
the novel, is another addition by Dyk. Hamelin itself is, of course, plagued by
rats, which terrorise the citizens and consume the town's produce. The piper, a
mysterious and robed figure in the film, offers to rid the town of the vermin, for a
sum. He succeeds in so doing, but the town elders refuse to pay the previously
agreed amount. In Barta's version of the story, this insult is compounded by the
horror of Agnes' rape and murder, which drives the piper to transform the
townspeople into rats and, through the charm of his pipe, send them
plummeting into the river, where they are drowned. Only the fisherman survives,
with the small infant he has rescued.
It is, perhaps, familiarity with the basic structural elements of the story of
the Pied Piper of Hamelin/Hameln that lends to the experience of watching the
film a sense that things are unfolding to a pre-determined design that could not
be otherwise. However, I shall argue that this sense of pre-determination
derives from Barta's notable inclusion of motifs associated with abstract, clock
time and a cinematic use of repetition. The impression that the tragic and

427
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.49.
428
Barta with Clarke, 1988.
429
Košuličová, 2002, with reference to Miroslava Humplíková, 'Kronika Krysaře', Film a doba,
2.86 (1986), pp.115-119.

191
grotesque unfoldings of the plot conform to some mechanism and proceed like
clockwork, serves the impression given by the film that immorality is habitual
and derives from repetitions encoded in the very space of the city.
At the start of Rat Catcher, an extreme long-distance establishing shot of
Hamelin is inter-cut with extreme close-up shots of a clock mechanism – cogs
turning; a pendulum swinging. An intimate connection is immediately
established between the city and the mechanised forward-march of abstract,
clock time. Although the shots of the mechanism are soon matched to a great
clock-tower rising up from the city, the connection is not made immediately
apparent, so that the first impression is that the city itself might be mechanised
and that we are to watch unfold the drama of a clockwork Hamelin. As with the
shot in Disc Jockey that paired the rising of the sun with the rotating arms of an
alarm clock, the passing of a metallic sun affixed to one of the clock hands
seems to prompt the rising of the sun in the sky. We may also guess that the
clock charts the movements of Heavenly bodies and so is, like the clock in
Prague's Old Town Square (the Prague Orloj), of astronomical design.
Kawin in Telling It Again and Again notes that 'a clock can tell about time
but cannot express or be time.' 430 Kawin's statement strikes me as a little far-
reaching, as even a clock will decay with time and, if movement through space
is the measure of time, then the joke about the child who throws an alarm clock
and shouts 'See how time flies!', has a grain of truth to it. However, Kawin's
point seems to be that a clock is a signifier for time, but cannot be time itself. It
can merely defer to time; point towards it. As such, clocks take us outside of a
lived experience of time, since they always posit that time is “elsewhere”.
Ironically, a clock is the one place time is not – or at least, that is the clock's
pretense. So, by associating Hamelin so closely with the image of a clock, Barta
communicates something of the city's arrogance. Hamelin has attempted to
position itself outside of natural time, as though the city's clock that measures
the beginning and closing of the working day, were the only form of time worth
living by. Hamelin literalises the notion of clockwork. As soon as the bells above
the city chime in accordance with the clock, the inhabitants of Hamelin poke
their heads out of windows and they resemble nothing so much as cuckoos,
sticking out their heads on the hour, every hour. They are utterly tethered to and
430
Kawin, p.184.

192
unable to think outside of a routine which, in turn, is connected unfailingly to
ever-standard, unchanging clock time. Consequently, they are seemingly
unable to think or act for themselves and, in turn, are incapable of internal
change, unless imposed from outside.
This notion of the inhabitants of Barta's Hamelin being the slaves of clock
time – being, in a sense, mere functions of clock time – makes considerable
sense of a rather cryptic remark made by Barta in interview in which he refers to
the Pied Piper as a 'symbol of nobody, of death, of time, destiny and so on.' 431
Barta is speaking in generalities here, but what he captures is a sense of that
which exceeds clock time. The Pied Piper is not reducible to quantifiable
measures, or production quotas, or monetary value. He is an absent symbol. He
sits absolutely outside of the system of production and consumption of the city.
He is also, perhaps, a romantic symbol of the sublime artist who transcends the
banal and mean drudgery of daily working life. It is essential that he comes from
outside of the city (perhaps from a more pastoral existence; one can imagine
him stepping out of the Green Wood) since this indicates that he does not
belong to its mechanical rhythms. Visually, his design differs from the
inhabitants of the town – his face is more naturalistic and well-defined, less
warped and grotesquely stylised. However, his moral ambivalence is signaled
by the fact that he is carved from the same dark walnut-wood as the corrupt
citizens, rather than from the lighter wood of Agnes and the fisherman, that
signals their innocence.
My reading here is congruent with Barta's statement that, 'Agnes
represents a world of purity the same world as the fisherman because he is a
poor man who is also very naïve and simple. They are two main persons; the
other belongs to the city, which is the city of evil. The person of the Pied Piper is
somewhere in the middle, because he belongs to the world of time, of Saturn.' 432
Barta does not characterise the Pied Piper as a moral force, as per Lefebvre's
description of time as the 'greatest good of all goods',433 but rather as a neutral
figure, positioned between the absolute innocence of Agnes and the fisherman
and the absolute corruption of the city's other inhabitants. Furthermore, Barta

431
Barta with Ballard, 2003.
432
Ibid.
433
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.95.

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explicitly calls the city itself, 'the city of evil'. 434 How, then, is the city coded as
evil and how is this evil passed onto its inhabitants?
The most immediately striking aspect of the town is its slanted and
stylised design, inspired according to Barta by both German Medievalism and
German Expressionism.435 Both are symbolic modes of expression, in which the
form of a depicted city and its inhabitants is reflective of their moral or social
status.
Writing of German literature at the dawn of the 20 th century and then
applying her remarks to the classic Expressionist films of the same period, Lotte
Eisner remarks; 'What is internal and latent, hidden and coded is rendered
external. The interior becomes the exterior.' 436 What is hidden and coded is
made tangible and visible. So, this influence, cited by Barta, lends an artistic
precedence to the fact that in Rat Catcher the harsh, angular forms of Hamelin,
the way in which buildings lean and sag, seem to sprout from one another or
are stacked haphazardly in piles, all this embodies the moral warping of the city.
Likewise, the dark and gloomy colouration of the walnut wood indicates the
city's spiritual darkness. The fact alone that the inhabitants are composed of the
same angular, jutting, coarse shapes as the city and are carved from the same
wood, indicates their shared corruption, when we realise that Agnes and the
fisherman are carved from softer, lighter wood. Agnes in particular has a form
which is slight and composed, compared to the jutting, bulging bodies of her
fellow townspeople. As with the knight that defeats winter in A Ballad about
Green Wood, her design recalls those of Jiří Trnka, metonymically evoking a
nostalgic connection to films likely belonging to Barta's own childhood and the
artisanal practices of their creator.
The form of the spire and the form of the spiral are foregrounded through
match cuts and camera movements that mirror the shape present on screen. A
clear example of the former occurs at approximately four minutes into the film's
running time, where a tailor raises a pinched corner of fabric into the shape of a
spire and then cuts the thread that holds it; on the “cut” of the scissors, the film
cuts to an exterior shot of the building which itself takes the form of a conical
434
Barta with Ballard, 2003.
435
Barta with Clarke, 1988.
436
Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the
Influence of Max Reinhardt, trans. by Roger Greaves (California: University of California Press,
2008), p.15.

194
spire. Repeatedly, the form of the city's inhabitants and their labour closely
mirrors the form of the buildings in which they work and live, as though the one
determines the other. Regarding the recurring motif of the spiral, the
aforementioned sequence then cuts to an aerial bird's-eye-view shot of the city,
which resembles a warped spiral of broken shards. As the camera moves into
this spiral, it rotates and the screen fades across several brief shots of spirals
and openings, as though we were moving into the heart of the city. Of course,
moving spatially, we are also moving through time. Smriti Saraswat argues that
the spiral is a form uniquely suited to expressing time. Saraswat sees the spiral
as representing simultaneously a cyclical vision of time and an image of time as
growth,437 a repetitive ascension of ever-spiraling progress. Saraswat considers
the spiral to be an essentially progressive, not regressive form; however, I
would argue, that the spiral, like a clock-face, has the potential to be read both
ways. If we trace a spiral from its centre and move upwards and outwards, then
it is a form that communicates ever-increasing freedom and expansion.
However, if we trace a spiral from its outer rim through to its center, moving
ever-downwards and inwards, it is transformed into a regressive form,
representing a deterministic descent to a point of absolute limitation and
constriction. As Amelia Groom points out, the line of the spiral, 'curves
hypothetically towards microcosmic infinity at one end and out to macrocosmic
infinity at the other.'438 It is the direction in which we choose to trace the spiral
which determines whether it becomes a symbol of the micro or the macro; the
regressive or the progressive. Through having the spirals rotate counter-
clockwise in the opposite direction to that of a clock-face and creating the
sensation of descent and downwards-movement in the viewer, Barta utilises the
spiral as a regressive shape that evokes the stagnation of Hamelin.
In the Japanese manga Uzumaki (1998-1999), created by Junji Ito, the
inhabitants of the small sea-side town of Kurôzu-cho become increasingly
obsessed by the form of the spiral. Men collect shells and coiled springs;
inhabitants begin to contort their bodies into spirals; pupils and teachers
transform into snails and the town is plagued by hurricanes. Eventually, the

437
Ar. Smriti Saraswat, 'Studying the Spiral', Insite (May 2012), 24-26 (pp.24-26)
<http://www.insiteindia.in/2012/may/insite%20addons.pdf> [accessed 21 September 2014].
438
Amelia Groom, 'This Time Around' (Sydney: AmeliaGroom.com, April 2012)
<http://ameliagroom.com/?p=319> [accessed 21 January 2013].

195
cursed citizens of the town, under the absolute thrall of the shape, reassemble
the town in the shape of an enormous spiral labyrinth. When the project is finally
completed and all the inhabitants’ bodies compose spirals themselves, Ito's
narrator writes the following: 'And with the spiral complete, a strange thing
happened. Just as time sped up when we were on the outskirts, in the center of
the spiral it stood still. So the curse was over the same moment it began [...]
and it will be the same moment when it ends again [...] when the next Kurôzu-
cho is built amidst the ruins of the old one.' 439 For Ito, time stops at the center of
the spiral. It is a point of both utter stagnation and eternal recurrence, since it is
the point at which progress is impossible; the apex of absolute repetition; a kind
of degree zero440 of time.
In Uzumaki, it is the inhabitants of the city themselves who eventually
become the center of the spiral, but in Rat Catcher it is money that sits at the
spiral's center, that is minted in the black heart of the city. The mayor of the city,
with his angular pointed face and skeletal figure, is sat at a table marking the
insignia of the city into coins. The symbol is an iconographic representation of
Hamelin itself, composed of a couple of towers and shards. An extreme close-
up of the coin fades to a bird's-eye-view of the city's central “square” (actually,
more circular in form) and for a second, the coin appears superimposed upon
the square and the tiny figures milling about inside. The film then cuts to a
market scene. Symbolically then, this is a city determined by the lust for money;
its very architectural form utterly in thrall to the demands of capital. When
Lefebvre writes about gold, he theorises it as the stuff that anchors capitalism,
always positioned at the end of the 'chain' of commerce. 441 Gold is literally the
material foundation of the city – it composes its very heart; it is found at the end
of the spiral. However, as Uzumaki wonderfully illustrates, at the center of a
spiral can only be stagnation, since it is the point at which spatial and thus
temporal progress is impossible. As such, the money ever-minted in Hamelin's
heart actually blocks, rather than guarantees, progress, locking its citizens into
a pathologically greedy cycle of endless buying and bartering that is presented
by the film as being deeply morally ugly. In The Production of Space Lefebvre

439
Junji Ito, Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror, Volume 3, trans. by Yuji Oniki (San Francisco: Viz
Media, 2008), p.218 (ellipsis own).
440
To reappropriate Barthes' phrase.
441
Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 3, p.55.

196
writes, somewhat cryptically, that, 'in the absence of any dialectical movement,
a given logic [...] may generate a space by generating a spiral or vicious
circle.'442 The spiral form of Hamelin combined with the greed of its citizens
ensures the impossibility of dialectical movement, so instead it is stuck within a
vicious cycle of endless consumption and Barta shows us precisely how vicious
this cycle is in the market scene that follows.
The film cuts, moving through the market, between various transactions
taking place; people bartering for a chicken, a pear, a pastry. The bartering is
depicted by having a series of wooden, almost two-dimensional figures standing
either side of a pair of scales or the bartered-for object. The customers offer a
price represented by a coin (or several) issuing from their mouths and the
sellers offer their own price, again represented by coins issuing from their
mouths. However, with each transaction, the buyer and seller are unable to
come to a harmonious agreement and barely budge from their original amounts.
The faces of both become coarser and more deformed. The lips inflame and the
teeth buckle, while the head grows increasingly red. The figures communicate
in animalistic grunting or clucking noises which become more insistent and
discordant as the transactions continue and increase in pace. Interestingly, the
noises of the buyer and seller start to match those we would expect to come
from the animal they are bartering over. So, the pair wrestling over a chicken,
make gabbling, clucking noises; the pair arguing over a dead pig, grunt
gutturally.
The transactions and their sheer ugliness come close to transforming
tradesman and customer alike into the objects of purchase. This recalls Bill
Brown's notion, after Marx, of how a process of reification (versachlichung)
occurs to people under capitalism. 443 This process may be attributed to
consumerism and the notion that if an individual starts to desire commodities
too intensely they are at danger of becoming reduced to a commodity
themselves. However, instead, I would be inclined to attribute the process to the
repetitive nature of the bartering that takes on a mechanical quality. A sentence
from Lefebvre may help elucidate my meaning: 'We contain ourselves by
concealing the diversity of our rhythms: to ourselves, body and flesh, we are

442
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.374 (ellipsis own).
443
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.114.

197
almost objects.'444 The process of bartering enforces monotonous, regular
rhythms and so fatally reduces rhythmic diversity, which marks individuals out
from one another. The greed of the townspeople stops their empathy and so
they are unable to recognise the rhythms of others. Instead, they treat each
other as means to a transaction. Forced by one another into these diminishing
roles, they become little more than objects, since they become functions of
capital, component parts that facilitate trade, rather than individuals, calmly and
rationally in control of their transactions. They are buying and selling machines.
As has been strongly hinted, greed is the most intolerable, unforgivable
sin within Barta's work – as gold anchors capitalism, so greed anchors all
immorality. The moral warping that greed induces in the citizens of Hamelin is
shown very clearly in the grotesque, physical deformities that present
themselves during the market sequence and through repeated cross-cutting
that demonstrates the equivalences between the townspeople and the rats that
overrun their city. The townspeople haggle greedily over sausages; the rats
greedily steal the sausages. The townspeople hoard gold; so do the rats. As
Jack Zipes succinctly phrases the matter in his review of the film; 'The
townspeople's transformation into rats may be supernatural, but it is anything
but arbitrary.'445 Fundamentally, gold is corrupting and prompts this
transformation. However, the obscenity of gold and the greed it produces would
not register with viewers if kept abstract. It is hard to be disgusted at something
wholly intangible. As such, Barta constantly emphasises the objectness of gold,
of money, to increase the sense that it is not transcendent or an ideological
ideal, but mere stuff that humans pathetically lust after and hoard. Seeing the
coins minted by the grotesque mayor certainly strengthens this impression, but
perhaps the most ingenious method is through substituting the language of
trade for money itself. Through having coins, rather than words, issue from the
mouths of the traders, the ideological issue of capital is brought down to ugly
material reality. When the arguing reaches fever-pitch, coins are fired from the
mouth of one of the customers like bullets; she literally spits coins in anger.
Again, this is exponentially more effective than having her use harsh words,
since by emphasising the physical damage that the coins could do through their

444
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.10 (italics and bold in original).
445
Zipes, p.215.

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cold, metallic hardness, Barta bluntly reminds the viewer of the violence of
money – cutting someone's wages or stealing from someone's purse; these are
not abstract crimes, but on a real, physical level, deprive an individual of food
and material goods. Money is used to disguise and soften our sense of the
violence inherent to a consumerist system.
Emphasising the object status of gold in order to communicate the
material horror of greed is a device used most effectively by Barta in his 1987
work The Last Theft. The Last Theft concerns a thief (Frantisek Husák) who,
while on a job, inadvertently stumbles into a crypt of aristocratic vampires, who
deceptively allow him to win a game of cards, before leading him into a back
room and draining his blood using medical equipment. The pace of the film is
slow and stagnated, as though the film were glutted with greed. The use of
shallow focus means that objects and characters bulge obscenely towards the
screen and generally creates the sense of a warped moral vision. Many objects
in the film (particularly jewelry and golden trinkets) are given an incandescent
after-image, as though illuminated by the frozen glow of greed. Likewise, there
is something obscene about the soft-focus of the camera, something gauzy,
pornographic and over-decadent.
The most striking visual effect is perhaps borrowed from Erich von
Stroheim's Greed (1924) in which golden objects are tinted yellow. Rather than
painting or printing directly onto the film, Barta projected the already shot
footage and then phased colour into it. 446 Visually, this causes images to appear
sickly and diminished, both too gaudy and drained of vitality all-at-once. As in
Greed, things which are the object of unwholesome desire (an elegant carriage
clock, for instance) glow, as though radiating and reflecting the greed projected
by the subject. The allure of these objects is made visible and an internal desire
is rendered external. Writing about McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris, the novel
upon which Greed was based, Bill Brown writes of the character Trina, who
hoards money, that her 'mode of possession – her habitual interaction with the
coins – preserves the gold from being a function and maintains its status as a
thing.'447 This is the effect that Stroheim's colouration achieves, as later used by
Barta. Gold is enshrined as a material thing, which reminds the viewer that

446
Barta with Clarke, 1988.
447
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.66.

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greed is, at heart, a base desire for base things. Even the clock (that recurrent
motif in Barta's work) appears less to be signaling the restrictive hegemony of
abstract time, but rather has been reduced to a thing in itself. Even a symbol of
time has been ossified by greed.
Greed is contaminatory. By the end of the film, the thief's body glows
golden. It has become the unwholesome and glutted body of greed. When his
body is then drained of blood, Barta tells us that greed is also parasitic. It is no
coincidence that the vampires resemble French aristocrats from a cheap
dramatic performance of Les Miserables. In life these creatures sucked the
blood from the living and now they do the same in death. Bruce Kawin makes a
curious aside about vampires and other ghouls in Telling It Again and Again;
'Unable to die,' he writes, 'they are doomed to repetition.' 448 Repetition is, for
Barta, that which encodes greed within the material structure of the city and
allows for its continuation. This argument is made forcefully in Rat Catcher,
partly through having the inhabitants of Hamelin repeat the same gestures over
and over, but also through having the rats repeat the behaviours of the
inhabitants.
So, the major and his cohorts gobble chunks of meat – an abject
spectacle as real viscera are forced down wooden mouths – while, under the
table, stop-motion animated dead rats do the same. A man and a woman are
shown courting, but as the man gropes the woman's breast the woman reaches
out for the man's purse. The film cuts to a rat sniffing the bottom of another rat,
following it into a burrow. The man pays a coin to the woman and they retreat
into an apartment. The rats are shown in sleeping, drunken stupor; so are the
town dignitaries. Underneath Hamelin, at its foundations, the rats burrow
through the earth forging networks, as though they were the life-blood of the
city. However, as in all things, the rats are merely following the rhythms of the
city. It is not so much that equivalences are being drawn between the rats and
the inhabitants of Hamelin (though of course, this is being done) but that the
rats are shown to merely repeat the behaviour on display. They are not a cause
of the city's degradation, but a symptom.
However, the same might even be said of the citizens of Hamelin, that
they merely follow the rhythms already imposed by the city. After a montage in
448
Kawin, p.49.

200
which the film cuts between images of rats scavenging and the people of
Hamelin sleeping, the day begins again and the shots that were used at the
start of the film, when the bells rang and the citizens of Hamelin awoke, are
repeated once again. The people appear to wake in the same order, cross the
same paths through the city and go about the same business. At the market
people work through the same motions, as though preordained, slotting
themselves into the roles of buyer and seller. These socially-sanctioned and
regulated rhythms conform to the codified behaviours imposed by industrial
capitalism. The process by which these rhythms become ubiquitous, in
accordance with the demands of capital is referred to by Lefebvre as dressage.
Joe Kember provides the following succinct definition of dressage: 'Dressage
tends to stand in for our initiative, since it makes each unique moment in our
lives appear to be the repetition of another, and enables us to respond to these
in an equally repetitive socially sanctioned manner. At the same time it gives us
a use value coordinated with that of other individuals, one that is today most
often tied to capital.'449 Kember makes the point here that dressage tends to be
associated with pre-determined behaviour, though not in such a way as is
neutral, but so that the behaviour conforms to the demands of capital. So, the
townspeople at the market play through the rehearsed gestures of haggling –
they raise their arms; they shout down prices, they make the tiniest of
concessions – and can be expected to do this every time they go to market. The
specific products they are buying; the amounts of money exchanged; these
things are immaterial. The process itself, one that requires both a buyer and a
seller, is one that endorses and enables a consumerist society, founded on
greed.
These repetitive tasks are 'homogenizing factors' that maintain the
continuation of the society as it is – such factors often take the form of repetitive
tasks and may be linked to law, regulation, clock time, or bureaucratisation. 450
By contrast, the rats function as 'fragmenting factors' 451 that interrupt the cyclical
daily rhythms of commerce. They spill barrels and knock open cages, steal food
and break eggs. Despite the fact that the rats' rhythms mirror those of the
449
Joe Kember, 'Child's Play: Participation in Urban Space in Weegee's, Dassin's, and Debord's
Versions of Naked City', in Adaptations in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities, ed. by
Rachel Carroll (London: Continuum, 2009), pp.72-84 (p.75).
450
Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 3, p.61.
451
Ibid.

201
people of Hamelin, the over-layering of the two rhythms creates disruption and
chaos. The Pied Piper, by charming the rats into the sea, is able to preserve the
homogenous rhythms of Hamelin but it becomes apparent that these rhythms
are inherently sick and founded upon greed.
Ultimately, the Pied Piper decides that the townspeople should endure
the same fate as the rats and the sequence of the rats' drowning is repeated,
but this time, it is the people who are sent to their deaths. A city that was
characterised by the repetition of corrupt rhythms is finally purged by an act of
absolute repetition. This evokes, for this viewer, a passage by Bruce Kawin, in
which he expresses a visionary conception of repetition. 'Repetition', Kawin
propounds, 'is also the objective correlative of sin and purgation, of stopped
time and the intense investigation of time: the ultimate trap, and at the same
time the way out of that trap; the cage and its key; the labyrinth and its
solution.'452 Repetition (as embodied by the spiral form of the city and the
spiracular movements of rats beneath it) enabled the corruption of Hamelin and
prevented its moral growth – it was a trap; yet repetition as induced by the Pied
Piper (the symbol of cosmic time) allows for the purging of the city and the
potential for its rebirth in the form of the innocent fisherman and child left
behind. It provides the key to escape from the cage of greed and corruption.
Barta provides us with two visions of repetition, one positive and one negative.
The repeated rhythms of consumerism are negative, since they operate through
dressage, which encourages reactive, unreflective and greedy behaviour. The
repetition of cosmic rhythms which are truly cyclical (in the way that human
imposed rhythms fail to be) is positive, since it returns life to a pre-lapsarian
natural order of things that precedes the existence of consumerist society. Clock
time and the emblems thereof (such as the giant clock tower that shadows over
Hamelin) should be treated with suspicion, since they enable the rhythms of
work and commerce, which are almost invariably corrupt. Natural time (in the
form of the sun and the Pied Piper) should be respected and adhered to, since
it transcends the egocentric desires of humans and so is not ideologically in
thrall to either work or consumerism.
It should perhaps come as little surprise, considering the previous
reading of A Ballard about Green Wood, that the film ends with clock time (as
452
Kawin, p.83.

202
embodied by the great clock tower) ceasing and, after the townspeople have
been transformed into rats and drowned, the fisherman with the child in his
arms enters an oil painted landscape first glimpsed when the Pied Piper played
his pipe for the maiden Agnes, and disappears along a long, winding road into
the frozen pastoral scene of natural, bucolic promise, free from the greed of
consumer society.

Repeating the Past in the Club of the Laid-Off

Ivana Košuličová in Kinoeye expresses the view that Rat Catcher reflects
the decay and decline of late-period Czech socialism. 453 However, Barta in
interview with Jeremy Clarke explicitly refutes the notion that the film has
anything specific to say about Czech society, but rather is a universal parable of
the destructive quality of greed, which he envisions as common to all human
societies.454 A repetition of this process of critics reading a specifically Czech
political meaning into one of Barta's films, while Barta refutes such a reading in
interview, occurs when we turn to articles and interviews on The Club of the
Laid-Off (Klub odložených) of 1989. Jenny Jediny in a retrospective piece on
Barta's work for Not Coming unambiguously refers to The Club of the Laid-Off
as an 'expression of the Velvet Revolution'. 455 However, in interview with Phil
Ballard, Barta repeatedly stresses that the film was completed before the Velvet
Revolution, stating that, 'Of course, this is a metaphor for the Prague society we
were living in. It was a society before the [Velvet] Revolution; it was a conformist
system, and everything was very boring, everything was very empty, everything
was very average and closed in rooms and boxes.' 456 Later he repeats this fact:
'We finished this film in 1989 and it was before the Revolution.' 457
However, I would be hesitant to accuse Jediny of naivety since the film
seems so explicitly to concern the transition between a socialist-style society
and a capitalist, consumerist one. For such a film to be made in Czechoslovakia
in 1989, it seems almost counter-intuitive not to read it as an allegory of the
Velvet Revolution. Yet, Barta stresses that the film was completed before those
historic events transpired – are we to accuse him of clairvoyance? Perhaps the
453
Košuličová, 2002.
454
Barta with Clarke, 1988.
455
Jediny, 2007.
456
Barta with Ballard, 2003.
457
Ibid.

203
riddle can be partially resolved by turning to Kierkegaard's visionary
understanding of repetition. Edward Mooney provides lucid insight into
Kierkegaard's theorising, writing that repetition, for Kierkegaard, 'means getting
our cognitive and moral bearings not through prompted remembering, but quite
unexpectedly as a gift from the unknown, as a revelation from the future.' 458 This
statement points towards what Lisa Trahair calls the 'aporetic relation' 459
between repetition and difference; as Trahair explains: 'The problem with the
concepts of repetition and difference is that you cannot know difference without
repetition nor repetition without difference'. 460 Trahair deploys Zeno's paradox to
elucidate this notion, which she is exploring in relation to the gap between
animation cells – though, as she reminds us, 'the persistence of the gap, that
which animation elucidates for us [...] is nevertheless also found in live-action'. 461
In short, 'repetition creates difference in cinema.' 462 If we think of animation cells
taken in series, each cell seems to repeat the image of the cell preceding it,
however there are subtle differences in the repetition, so that progress is made.
However, say we wanted our animation to be smoother and the illusion of life
more real, then we might draw some additional cells between those cells, or
take some extra stop-motion stills between those already taken, to “fill the gap”,
so to speak. But now there are new gaps between those additional cells/stills
and so more can be drawn or taken, ad infinitum. This then makes movement
through repetition an impossibility since, to quote Keith Broadfoot and Rex
Butler writing in the same anthology as Trahair, 'these points or instants could
never give movement because any movement as such – as the paradoxes of
Zeno make clear – would always occur in between two points or instances.' 463
So, we might be moved like Kierkegaard to invoke prophecy to explain
repetition, for there is something inscrutable in the metaphysically impossible
fact that movement and change can arise through stagnation.
Yet this is precisely what happened in the case of the Velvet Revolution.

458
Edward F. Mooney, 'Introduction', in Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition and Philosophical
Crumbs, ed. by Edward F. Mooney and trans. by M. G. Piety (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009), pp.vii-xxix (p.viii).
459
Lisa Trahair, 'For the Noise of a Fly', in The Illusion of Life, ed. by Alan Cholodenko, pp.183-
208 (p.196).
460
Ibid.
461
Trahair, in Cholodenko, p.189 (ellipsis own).
462
Väliaho, p.97.
463
Broadfoot and Butler, in Cholodenko, p.267.

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There was no violent uprising, but rather the giving way of a system that had
stagnated. What Barta is describing in interview with Ballard is a society that
had become tired, that was no longer moving. By 1980 the net hard currency
debt of the country stood at £3.6 billion and with the economy no longer
growing, money was being spent simply on sustaining the standard of living that
had increased in the early 1970s. The hundreds of thousands of panelák
apartments and the consumerist lifestyles of its inhabitants needed to be
maintained, diverting money away from modernising processes of further
industrialisation.464
By 1989, the year The Club of the Laid-Off was released; economic
stagnation was so dire that the State Planning Agency recommended that thirty
per cent of Czechoslovakia's enterprises cease production on account of being
unprofitable. This was perhaps unsurprising, since earlier in the year one
hundred enterprises had been declared bankrupt by the government. 465
However, as with the barely imperceptible changes between animation frames,
surface-level stagnation can disguise subtle shifts. By 1989 there were signs of
growing unrest. Dowling notes that '[s]tudent discontent and dissent' grew 'in a
subdued manner throughout the year', ultimately culminating in the violent
police suppression of a 15,000-strong student protest on the 17 th November,
upon the anniversary of the funeral of anti-Nazi student protestor Jan Opletal. 466
More generally, 'loss of international support from a powerful military ally, the fall
of neighboring Leninist states, eroding legitimacy of the old regime', all
contributed to a growing sense of the state's vulnerability. 467 Note here John
Glenn's choice of words to describe those factors that undermined the security
of the regime – 'loss'; 'fall'; 'eroding' – the words evoke a structure worn away by
a multitude of factors, both internal and external, perhaps unseen to the eye,
but holistically creating a certain impression of the potential for change. It would
be overly precious to suggest that an artist has any greater proclivity towards

464
Bradley Adams, 'Buying Time: Consumption and Political Legitimization in Late-Communist
Czechoslovakia', in The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence
of History, ed. by Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2012), p.401, with reference to, J.F. Brown, Eastern Europe and Communist
Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), pp.399-422 (p.507).
465
Dowling, p.142.
466
Downling, p.146 (brackets own).
467
John K. Glenn, 'Competing Challengers and Contested Outcomes to State Breakdown: The
Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia', Social Forces, 78.1 (September 1999), 198-211 (p.193).

205
sensing such change than any other citizen; I think we need not subscribe to
the mystic powers of art to suggest that Barta may have suspected a gathering
paradigm shift, without precisely putting his finger on the revolution that would
have occurred by the end of the year.
The Czech title of Barta's film is Klub odlozenyc. The translation provided
by the Kino Video distributed DVD collection Labyrinth of Darkness as part of
the 'Kimstim Collection' is The Club of the Laid-Off. Elsewhere on the Cartoon
Noir DVD collection (First Run; 2000) the title is translated, perhaps more
elegantly, as The Club of the Discarded. Alternatively, we might translate
'odlozenyc' as delayed or postponed. Clearly, all possible translations are
suggestive of uselessness – of this being a club of used-up things – but they
have different temporal implications. Both 'laid-off' and 'discarded' suggest that
something has been left behind and are backwards-looking words; 'delayed' or
'postponed' meanwhile, suggest a suspension or arresting of progress, looking
forward to a delayed future. Thus, the paradox of temporal movement inherent
in repetition (that difference is generated through sameness) is contained within
the very title of the film itself. The protagonists of the film are at once remnants
of the past and figures that may yet catch up with the future.
The protagonists of the film are manikins – those peculiar hybridised
creatures beloved by the Surrealists that occupy the uncanny region half-way
between humans and objects. These particular manikins have been left in
storage and have become worn, dirtied and eroded. However, despite their
dilapidation, they still move stiffly through grotesque parodies of domestic
routines, which the viewer must imagine that they have been repeating for
months, if not years, on end. Indeed, the fifteen minutes of the film are given to
the display of the manikins' repetitive routines. A husband rises from bed and
bids farewell to his wife, striding to work, where he sits motionless at a desk.
The wife stands in the kitchen and monotonously stirs a pot until a later part of
the routine, in which the paint from the pot is poured over crumpled balls of
newspaper on plates, which the family mime eating, but never actually
consume.
Some of the rituals appear fetishistic in nature and evoke curious, tactile
sensations in the viewer. The inherent subjectivity of these sensory responses
means that by providing specific examples I would either lapse into anecdotal

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detail, or else I would have to necessarily assume that my personal experiences
were common to all viewers; a rhetoric manoeuvre that would be both
assumptive and speculative. That said, the intimacy of the camera to filthy and
corroded surfaces provokes a sense of abjection (a physical tensing; withdrawal
from the screen; distaste or even nausea) that can be assumed upon the
precondition that the viewer is immersed within the film (and so experiencing
the camera's eye as their own, or else feeling “drawn in” to the film world,
physically and emotionally) since basic human instinct combined with social
taboos around hygiene and dirt would ensure that few people would bring their
face into such close proximity to such dirty and contaminated surfaces in the
real, material world.
In terms of specific, fetishistic movements or actions performed by the
manikins, without making assumptions about how an individual viewer might
respond, the hyper-sensory and tactile aspects of these moments adhere within
the film itself. A shot of an open, white jelly-like eye peering through a hole is
followed by a shot from the back of a manikin, leaning forward, eye to the hole,
so that cold plaster and warm flesh are intimately connected as one-of-the-
same, even while the material differences in imagined texture provide a visceral
juxtaposition. Plastic fingers caress the coarse, broken, rusted strings of a harp
in obscene close-up. A manikin's neck squeaks unpleasantly as it is turned in
jagged stop-motion, the sound like nails down a black-board. An elderly manikin
holds a single white feather with which she makes sewing motions, despite the
futility of the action; another manikin pokes a phallic finger through a piece of
fabric to spy voyeuristically upon another manikin's bathing rituals.
If this behaviour seems pathological, it has also become normalised and
banal through repetition. If one recalls Freud's account of the Fort-Da game in
which a child rehearses the trauma of parental loss by throwing away a toy only
to retrieve it and to once again throw it away, it is clear that repetition can create
the comforting illusion of control and stability. Bill Brown expresses this concept
thus: 'By doing the same thing with the same things you create the illusion of
sameness and continuity over and against the facts of disorder and change'. 468 If
the manikins sense in any way that revolution is in the air, they are certainly not
going to admit as much through the alteration of their domestic routines.
468
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.64.

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 The routines are cyclical in form, in as much as they repeat almost
exactly, over and over. Previously, in this chapter, cyclical rhythms have been
equated with natural time. However, dressage is also able to forge cyclical
rhythms. Lefebvre almost strikes a warning tone when discussing dressage, as
though advising us not to underestimate its insidious influence. 'Dressage can
go a long way', he informs us, 'as far as breathing, movements, sex. It bases
itself on repetition. One breaks-in another human living being by making them
repeat a certain act, a certain gesture or movement.' 469 Dressage is the means
by which humans are induced to follow the social contract and may even extend
as far as, Lefebvre argues, bodily rhythms. The term implies adhere to an
ideology – in this case, I would argue, the manikins are living in accordance with
the rational ideology of clock time and the rhythmic conformity that this implies.
The way in which the husband rises in the morning, the time at which he rises,
the position of his body as he embraces his wife, all of these are in accordance
with social codes, which have become ossified through repetition. If there is a
pathology in this habitually ingrained behaviour it is in the fact that it subsumes
human will. As such, there is a morbidity to the repetitiveness of everyday life. 470
This morbidity is communicated visually by Barta through his choice of manikins
as protagonists, which are less than human. They are deathly in their pale,
unchanging countenances and corpse-like in the stiffness of their movements
and their absolute stillness in sleep.
Although the daily routines of the manikins (and, interestingly, judging by
the light outside their dusty loft apartment, they manage to fit several “daily
routines” into one day) are broadly cyclical, the minutiae of their behaviour
within these cyclical rhythms is often linear and variegated. One manikin plays
on a broken stringed instrument. She may play the instrument at precisely the
same time within her routine, but her fingers may cause the strings to vibrate in
different ways; the instrument will gradually become more dilapidated and the
sounds it produces will change. Likewise, upon entering the room he uses as an
office, the father manikin shoos away gathered pigeons. Clearly, the amount of
pigeons in the room, where they have settled themselves, will subtly determine
his actions. This produces an uncertainty in the viewer regarding the

469
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.39 (emphasis in original).
470
Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Vol. 3, p.65.

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cognisance of the manikins with regards to their environments. While they
seemingly proceed through their routines unthinkingly (the futility of many of
them, such as cooking without the possibility of eating, or the fact that the father
enters the office each day and does no work, suggests this) they can also be
seen to react to external stimuli. In the most dramatic example of this, the
manikins freeze when they hear a cat entering the apartment until one of the
manikins takes the initiative of throwing a spoon to scare it off. Clearly, our
plaster protagonists are not wholly insensate.
Perhaps the most interesting case of difference through repetition within
the film is the descent of the father figure down a flight of stairs leading to the
office room. Each time this process occurs, the manikin trips and he tumbles
down the steps. However, upon each repetition, he also progresses a step or
two further down the staircase before he trips. This recurrent sequence almost
dramatises the process of stop-motion animation, by which movement is
accomplished through small incremental changes that pass virtually unseen.
However, the entire process only works due to the viewer's own persistence of
vision and persistence of memory. We are able to step, light-footed, between
one frame and the next without tripping over. The failure of the manikin's
repetition is reliant upon the success of the repetition inherent to the film
medium. Of course, in a sense, the manikin both succeeds and fails in his
repetition. He succeeds in the repetition of his failure (he trips in the same
manner every time) while simultaneously failing to achieve an exact repetition
(the trip, while itself visually identical, occurs at a different temporal point every
time, happening later than the one before and also at a different spatial point
every time, happening one step lower than the time before). More simply, the
manikin succeeds in navigating the previous step, seemingly having learnt from
his mistake; but subsequently fails, in then tripping over in the same way as on
his previous descent. Brown notes that 'the failure of repetition can call attention
to what we might call the thingness of the object'. 471 This is to say, the manikin's
ungraspable otherness presents itself through the failure of its repetition.
However, simultaneously, its humanness is foregrounded by the learning
process and the fact that he seems to be slowly but surely mastering the

471
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.73.

209
staircase, suggesting the manikin is possessed of a rudimentary memory. 472 This
vacillation between our understanding of the manikins in the film as humans or
objects (he/she or it) increases the sense of their uncanniness and also drives
home the point previously made in Rat Catcher that humans can be rendered
object-like through a monotonous adherence to the banal repetitive rhythms of
daily life.
As with Rat Catcher the daily rituals of the humanoid figures seem to be
triggered primarily by clock time; although there also seems to be a rhythmic
connection between the time-tabled passing of electric trams outside the
apartment and the routines of the marionettes inside. The father manikin first
hoists himself out of bed when the vibrations of a tram knock an alarm clock
onto the floor, setting the daily ritual in process. This occurs later a second time
in a near-exact repetition of the first instance. Clearly, the adherence to clock
time (or at last, what is taken to be clock time) has no relation to natural time, or
indeed, the working routines of the world outside of the apartment. The second
time the father manikin rises it appears to be growing dim outside and it is
certainly no longer morning. Cooped up within an interior space, the manikins
have no awareness of the sun and no way of even being acquainted with
natural time – the passing of the seasons would perhaps be wholly unknown to
them. Interestingly, on the third repetition of the “daily cycle”, the father manikin
has been in bed for all of a second. The bed covers have become trapped
under the cabinet on which the alarm clock is placed. Pulling the covers shakes
the cabinet causing the clock to fall to the floor and forcing the manikin to start
his routine all over again. This highlights the absurdity of a strict adherence to
clock time. It also reverses the relationship between man and time. In this
instance, the manikin has inadvertently dictated the start of his day and the
moment at which his alarm clock “goes off”. It would be a stretch to argue that
we shift at this point in the film from a system dictated by rational, clock time to
a system dictated by wilful, charismatic time; however, the sequence clearly
demonstrates that both a mode of existence in which humans are in thrall to
clocks and a mode of existence in which clocks are in thrall to humans are
equally absurd. Far better perhaps if the manikins were outside, where the sun

472
Of course, an animator like Jan Švankmajer and a theorist like Peter Schwenger would argue
that objects do indeed have material memories.

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might dictate their routines.
Though some fleeting intrusions interrupt the manikins' routines, they
resume their cycles unabated until the arrival of a new group of manikins. These
are brought in a crate up to the loft apartment by a couple of workmen and
resemble cyborgs, with silver and gold bodies, bedecked with American
apparel. Perhaps Barta is critiquing a Westernisation of late-period Czech
socialism. Bradley Adams argues convincingly in 'Buying Time: Consumption
and Political Legitimization in Late-Communist Czechoslovakia' that the number
of citizens who owned consumer goods such as a colour television or an
automatic washer rose throughout the country across the 1970s and 1980s, but
also notes that by the 1980s many citizens still owned the same items they had
purchased in the preceding decade and the rate of purchase had, for many
items, slowed.473 As such, if Barta is critiquing a sudden influx of newness into
the country, then his critique may have come a decade too late.
In a dynamic montage composed of close-ups and point-of-view shots,
the two groups of manikins fight and manage to dismember each other in the
process. However, when the daily ritual begins again, it becomes clear that the
manikins have reassembled themselves into hybridised figures and while some
of the qualitative elements of the routines they enact may have changed, their
essential cyclical form has not. Allegorically, instead of dissolving into
fragments, the social body has simply assimilated the new pieces and resumed
its old routines. So, the father is now plastered with stickers for various brands
and wears leopard-print shorts, but he still rises from his bed and embraces his
wife precisely as before and again trips upon the staircase, this time beginning
once again from the top stair. Barta's argument seems to be that the progress of
civilisation is illusionary; any change in a political regime, or social upheaval
(such as the shift from a socialist to a capitalist society), will soon become banal
through repetition. The behaviour of the manikins is determined primarily by
dressage and their unthinking adherence to clock time, not by ideology or any
form of political engagement. The moment of historic resistance (the fight
between the two groups – certainly more outwardly violent than the Velvet
Revolution was to be) is quickly forgotten and socially-sanctioned everyday life,
with all its predictable rhythms, resumes.
473
Adams, pp.405-406.

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 It strikes me that here Barta extends Václav Havel's 'principle of outward
adaptation'474 across ideological borders. Havel's theory was that communist
conformity functioned as a series of social gestures. As such what was
important under communism if one wished to preserve “the quiet life” (klid) was
essentially dressage – to follow the rhythms of state-sanctioned behaviour;
going to party meetings on occasion; not complaining too loudly; not reading
samizdat literature. Inwardly one could rebel as much as one desired, as long
as one's outward, social gestures were in accordance with the state. The Club
of the Laid-Off suggests that these behaviours of 'outward adaptation' cannot be
easily thrown off, but will stick fast even in the face of a dramatic political or
ideological shift. Lefebvre's fundamental argument in The Production of Space
is that in order to change our way of relating to one another and how we behave
as social animals, it is not merely enough to change ideology; we must alter our
very rhythms and to do that our relation to time and space must be changed. As
long as Barta's manikins are living in accordance to clock time, taking the same
old paths down the same old broken stairs, then any revolutionary behaviour
they display will only ever be a temporary aberration, quickly normalised by a
return to comforting, social and domestic rituals that have been hard-wired
through repetition.
Brown asserts, in a somewhat gnomic statement, that 'repetition is the
mode of becoming historical'.475 If Brown is correct, then it is fallacious to think
that revolutions and uprisings define history, or to speak of the 'return to history'
to Eastern Europe after communism – a phrase that Abby Innes critiques
eloquently in her prologue to Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye.476 Rather,
history is composed of the dullness of routine, of things being repeated and
repeated until they hold true in our memories. In the face of such repetition,
political engagement can begin to seem futile. We might become locked within,
to borrow a phrase from Merlin Coverly, an 'eternal stasis that renders all
political engagement redundant.' 477 Coverly is writing about the notion of eternal
return, yet Barta's vision seems far less transcendent. Barta's films provide us
with a weary vision that humans are destined to eternally return to the same
474
Havel, 'Letter to Dr Gustáv Husák', Living in Truth, p.9 (italics in original).
475
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.73.
476
Abby Innes, Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001),
p.x.
477
Merlin Coverly, Psychogeography (Harpenten: Pocket Essentials, 2010), p.127.

212
tired routines, the same greedy vices, the same old times and spaces.

A Hopeful Repetition for the Future?

However, repetition might yet be liberating. Bruce Kawin notes that while
repetition 'can lock us into the compulsive insatiability of neuroses' it can also
'free us into the spontaneity of the present tense'. 478 Repetition as defined by
rational, clock time fails to promise a sense of renewal. It is merely
accumulative, working towards targets and end-points that are endlessly
deferred. The repetition in The Club of the Laid-Off appears so dismally futile
because it accomplishes so little; it is repetition without growth. However, the
fertility cycle of A Ballad about Green Wood is no less repetitious, yet, because
it adheres to natural time, it seems verdant and ecstatic. Moreover, the film
immerses us in the variegated rhythms of nature (vegetation budding and
sprouting; ice thawing; water running) to create a symphonic 'vitality affect'. 479
Without one thing to measure time by, we are taken out of time, to experience
the eruption of life, holistically, in and of itself.
Hope, in Barta's film arises from the human potential to return to these
rhythms and cast-off the alienation of abstract time. This is an evolution of
Havel's invocation of rootedness as displayed decades earlier in Trnka's films
(as discussed in Chapter One) and the notion that humans should cast off
technological advancement and return to the simple life of immediate
phenomenological existence as enjoyed by children and peasants. It is a more
evolved form of this thinking since Havel and Trnka's vision is essentially static
and reactionary – it seeks to simplify rhythms until they are manageable. This is
why objects in Trnka's films so rarely transform, but are appreciated best when
they are functional and easily defined – a ball; a beet; a pot – all these things
are simple objects, with a simple shape, a simple function and simple rhythms.
By contrast, Barta's films show us that adhering to singular, simple rhythms is
nullifying at best (The Club of the Laid-Off) and leads to vice and corruption at
worst (Rat Catcher). The simple, cyclical, repetitive rhythms of these films are
likely so destructive because they are encoded within spaces (such as Hamelin;
the panelák apartment; or the isolated apartment of the manikins) that are cut
478
Kawin, p.5.
479
Väliaho, p.92, with reference to Stern, The Interpersonal World, p. 54 and Stern, The Present
Moment, pp. 64-65.

213
off from nature and that restrict the potential for complex movement and play.
Hamelin with its warped spires and regressive spirals elicits greedy, competitive
and destructive behaviour. The flattened, cuboid form of the panelák apartment
flattens the lives of its inhabitants, until they are all alike.
Moreover, wooden figures that move like clockwork and dusty manikins
are ideal subjects for dressage. Their forms dictate their restricted lives. They
are spiritually imprisoned by the stiff, constricted rhythms of their bodies. The
Practice of Everyday Life (originally published as L'invention du quotidien. Vol.
1, Arts de faire in France in 1980) by Michel De Certeau evokes the human void
at the heart of Barta's cinema. Though De Certeau, like Lefebvre, believes that
human social relations are determined by the space(s) in which they live, he is
often optimistic about the potential for humans to transform this space and the
way they inhabit it. After all, while one might be “put in one's place”, it is equally
possible to “forge a space” for oneself. De Certeau's faith in the common man
allows him to imagine tactics such as 'la perruque' 480 (in which an employee
uses her time at the office or factory to accomplish her personal work rather
than that of the company) which a person can have recourse to in order to resist
the pre-determinations of space. We can choose to walk along the wall of a
building, rather than the path. We can secretly grow vegetables in the soil of a
communal park or sit backwards, facing away from the screen, at the cinema.
Barta's humans fail to have recourse to such tactics because they are
fundamentally not playful. They are too rhythmically bound to dressage to move
outside of the routes and paths that space has predetermined for them. The
most imaginative attempt to escape this pre-determination amongst Barta's
humans is the Disc Jockey's drug taking, but even this merely diminishes and
distorts experience, rather than renewing it.
Perhaps the only playful figures in all of the work Barta produced under
Communist rule in Czechoslovakia are the wooden splints in A Ballad about
Green Wood. Their rhythms are genuinely unpredictable and, as they whirl and
dance, they seem at play. Barta's adherence to natural time in A Ballad about
Green Wood is not just incompatible with the values of communist society; it is
also at odds with the predominant values of capitalism. Although it would be

480
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Stephen Rendall (California:
University of California Press, 1988), p.25.

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presumptive to expand the conclusions reached concerning a single film to be
indicative of an artist's general philosophical outlook, it is worth noting that while
Barta's other films do not serve as outright celebrations of natural time, the
absence of natural time in The Club of the Laid-Off and Rat Catcher (an
absence reinforced by the presence of the sun-lit world outside the attic in the
former and the pastoral vision of the countryside conjured by the piper's music
in the latter) seems to be connected to these societies' stagnation and essential
lifelessness.
However, returning to a wholly pastoral existence is not the only way in
which we can radicalise our relationship to time and space. Writing during the
period of late-communism Lefebvre speculated about a society that was neither
capitalist nor socialist, but found the notion impossible to concretise. 'What
might an “alternative society” be,' he asked rhetorically, 'given the difficulty of
defining “society”, and given that all such words lose any clear meaning if they
do not designate either “capitalism” or “communism” – terms which themselves
have now become equivocal?'481 After the Velvet Revolution animators in the
Czech Republic, including Jiří Barta, continued to make films, despite struggling
for funding under a system that was now privatised. 482 Many of these films
reflected upon the city of Prague and how its residents might go about forging
new relations with time and space within its walls. The next chapter shall turn to
these films, holistically taking the city (with all its variegated inter-crossing
movements and rhythms) as its object of enquiry.

481
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.381.
482
Barta with Ballard, 2003.

215
Chapter Four: The Golem Wakes –
Reconstructing Prague and Czech Identity
after the Velvet Revolution
Portrait of a City
Pavel Koutský's Portrait of the Man in the Street (Portret, 1989) depicts
the (ubiquitously male) Czech citizen on the eve of the Velvet Revolution as a
figure who, in spite of an outwards appearance of drab conformity, comprises
irreducible multiplicities. Koutský's animated short presents his anonymous
street-walker (shown as one of many among other pedestrians and shoppers in
the live-action shot that ends the work) variably as a mild and benevolent do-
gooder; a harshly-scribbled thuggish monster; a softly-drawn romantic; a beak-
nosed statistician; a blue-eyed hero; a tremulous coward; a noble dissident; a
conformist, pliant to the point of complete elasticity; a careful spender; a
debauched reveller; a laughing fool; a tragic suicide; a peaceful protester; a
war-monger; a clean-living athlete; and a bleary-eyed drunkard.
Koutský's film may have been intended as a universal portrait of the
vicissitudes of men the world over, or it may have been intended as a more
specific examination of the moral make-up of the Prague citizen circa-1989. The
difficulty in making this distinction with any certainty is due to the fact that the
film's vignettes unfold against a series of blank, anonymous backgrounds. The
concluding live-action footage suggests retrospectively that all the film's action
has taken place in a shopping district in Prague, but for the vast bulk of the
short we could equally be watching citizens from Kraków, Budapest or
Bratislava. Indeed, since many of the animated pedestrians are naked or else
clothed generically, the street(s) walked by these figures could even be those of
Paris, London, or some other Western European city. Or course, where there is
void or anonymity, there is space for supposition – the very fact that the viewer
can't discern the city to which the street belongs might hint to the fact that by
the end of the communist era, increased commercialisation and Gorbachev's
policies of Glastnost and Perestroika meant that the East was becoming slowly
less distinguishable from the West. More simply, Koutský's film indicates that a

216
portrait of a city's populace – whether the solitary individual or the bustling
crowd – is incomplete if removed from the physical, spatial and architectural
context of the city. A city is composed not only of its inhabitants, but of its
buildings, streets, spaces, signs etc. and the seasonal, daily and hourly
interactions between all of these things. If you wish to construct an accurate
portrait of the man in-the-street, then you must remember to include the street.
The films I shall explore in this chapter are concerned with the city of
Prague and the emotional and political bonds between the city's inhabitants and
the city itself as a network of physical things. Although the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia (KSČ) was composed of Czech and Slovak apparatchiks, it
was always, in a sense, a Soviet import – a fact strongly communicated to the
citizens of Prague by the Warsaw Pact Invasion of 1968. As Milan Kundera
wrote later, the 'situation in Czechoslovakia' was the 'conflict between the
imported political system and the entire culture of a country.' 483 Of course, the
Czech lands have been subject to millennia of disputed boundaries, cultural and
imperial assimilation and dramatic regime changes. The inter-war democracy of
the First Republic under Tomáš Masaryk was, until 1989, the only period in
modern history that citizens, philosophers and historians could recall
nostalgically as one of a clearly demarcated Czech nation democratically ruled
by the Czechs.484 Czech film-makers in the 1990s found themselves living in a
country newly freed from Soviet influence, 485 attempting to establish itself as a
European democracy with a specifically Czech past.
However, as the philosopher and Czech dissident Jan Patočka asked,
'What are the Czech?'486 – a question to which we might add that of the Czech
national anthem, 'Where is my Home?' As the editors of The Czech Reader
note, 'That the song is framed as a question makes the Czech national anthem
unusual.'487 It is suggestive of a certain national uncertainty about identity. Jan
Patočka's answer to the question was pessimistic – that the Czech nation was

483
Kundera, in Havel, Living in Truth, p.238.
484
Of course, such nostalgia cannot be wholly extricated from Czech nationalism, so often at the
expense of Slovakia.
485
At least, from direct political influence; cultural influences, however, would recede rather more
gradually.
486
Jan Patočka, 'What are the Czech?', in The Czech Reader: History, Culture, Politics, ed. by
Jan Bažant, Nina Bažantová and Frances Starn (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010),
pp.419-428.
487
Josef Kajetán Tyl, 'Where Is My Home?', in Bažant, Bažantová and Starn, p.142.

217
small in a spiritual and moral sense. 488 Patočka also diagnosed the reason for
this “smallness”, that it was due to the fact that the Czech people – 'those
slaves liberated from above' – had never fought for their independence. 489 It
might be easy to perform one's own diagnosis on Patočka and read his almost
chauvinistic nationalism as a necessary corrective to the spiritual stagnation of
his country in the 1970s and an acute disappointment at the failure of the
Prague Spring. Patočka died of apoplexy in March 1977 just a week-and-a-half
after police interrogation over his activity within the Charter 77 movement. It is
impossible to know whether he would have revised his opinion of the Czech
character following the events of the Velvet Revolution, or whether he would
have considered the revolution too bloodless and the subsequent regime too
compromised to be worthy of any accolade of “greatness”. That said, it is clear
that the question 'What are the Czech?' must have remained indelible and ever-
present in the years following the Velvet Revolution and the formation of the
Czech Republic in January 1993.
For the Czech film-makers considered in this chapter – Jan Švankmajer,
Jiří Barta, Jan Balej (with Ivan Arsenjev) and Michaela Pavlátová; along with the
aforementioned Pavel Koutský – the matter of determining a specifically Czech
cultural identity after the end of communism is necessarily linked to Prague
itself, the city where each of these creators have predominantly worked.
Through setting their films within the city's public and private spaces, the film-
makers consider what it is to be a “citizen of Prague” and the way in which this
identity is negotiated with and against the material reality of the city. The
protagonists of the films are shaped by the city, just as they in turn shape the
environment around them. It will be argued that the films discussed enact a
dissident repossession of the immediate tactile world through forging a tangible
space which the viewer (and director) can imaginatively inhabit, at a time in
history in which Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic had been wrested from
hegemonic political control through a popular revolution. In these works, each
director seems to take up the city in his or her hands, like a lump of clay, and
mould it according to an idiosyncratic view of what it is to be Czech –
emphasising some aspects of the city, while neglecting others. As such, each

488
Patočka, in Bažant, Bažantová and Starn, p.427.
489
Patočka, in Bažant, Bažantová and Starn, p.428.

218
work presents a highly subjective portrait of Prague and the films register the
tension between the way the city, on the one hand, yields to this moulding,
pressed into a shape that embodies the desires of each director for the city
post-1989; while, on the other hand, resisting through an insistence on its own
irrevocable materiality. Animation, as employed by these directors, can
transform outer reality in much the same way as André Breton felt was possible
under the force of Surrealist imagination; however, the ineluctable city also
remains, weighed down by the history of its recent communist past.
The first films to be considered in the chapter will be three feature length
works by the Surrealist artist Jan Švankmajer. These films, Faust/A Lesson
from Faust (Lekce Faust, 1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (Spiklenci slasti,
1996) and Little Otik/Greedy Guts (2000), combine live-action sequences with
stop-motion animation of puppets and objects. Similarly, Jiří Barta's aborted
Golem project, of which only a provocative trailer exists, dating from 1996,
sought to combine live-action footage with clay animation. The other works,
meanwhile, tend to stick to a single form of animation, rather than a
hybridisation of different media. Jiří Barta's 2007 short film Cook, Mug, Cook! is
a C.G.I. animation. Jan Balej's and Ivan Arsenjev's One Night in One City
(Jedné noci v jednom městě, 2007) – a portmanteau film composed of Balej's
shorter works, thematically arranged – is almost exclusively stop-motion
animated. Michaela Pavlátová's Tram (2012) is a more traditional 2D animation,
albeit animated and coloured using computer software. Finally, Jan
Švankmajer's Surviving Life (Přežít svůj život, 2010), with which we will
conclude the chapter, is somewhat a departure from the director's previous
works, animated using paper cut-outs for reasons of expense (according to
Švankmajer's own dead-pan and perhaps disingenuous introduction to the film).

Methodological Thickness
A city is a complex network of intersecting people and things. As such,
the methodology for this chapter will touch upon the methodologies of each the
preceding three chapters. An approach to the city that is informed by thing
theory is justified by the fact that the majority of the films considered in this
chapter make some use of stop-motion animation, ensuring the manipulation of
real things. Actor-network-theory reminds us that each city is a network of

219
bustling actors, in which interactions are often negotiated with, and between,
objects and things. Finally, the writings of Henri Lefebvre, whose theories
underpinned the methodology of the third chapter, illustrate that cities are
rhythmically complex, often combining both cyclical and alternating rhythms in
dense harmonies. All three of these methodologies are, of course, materialist in
approach, privileging the physical stuff of the world. As such, they are well
suited to grasp the material city itself, treating the streets and bricks and spires
of Prague as objects and things that have a real, physical relationship with one
another.
To ensure that the analysis across the chapter does not become too
fragmentary, broader “city texts” will be used as a critical umbrella, under which
these three different critical approaches – thing theory; actor-network-theory;
rhythmanalysis – can be gathered. Several texts that specifically deal with
Prague will be applied throughout the chapter, including Angelo Ripellino's
Magic Prague, Derek Sayer's Prague: Capital of the Twentieth Century – A
Surrealist History, Alfred Thomas' Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory and the
City, and Cynthia Paces' Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred
Space in the Twentieth Century. Throughout the chapter, it will not be forgotten
that the discussion is of filmed representations of cities – so, for instance, when
speaking about the rhythms of the Prague, what is being discussed is the way
in which the rhythms of Prague have been interpreted through cinematography
or constructed through editing. These films do not provide pure, un-mediated
access to the material reality of Prague, despite their notable tactile and haptic
qualities.
Although the aforementioned methodologies offer rich perspectives upon
how a critical practitioner might “read” a city, this chapter does not represent a
perfect synthesis of methods. While Bill Brown, the foremost thing theorist,
Bruno Latour, the “creator” of actor-network-theory, and Henri Lefebvre, the
philosopher and sociologist, all make some claim to being materialist,
Lefebvre's post-Marxist materialism is very different in kind to Bill Brown's
“thingy” materialism or Bruno Latour's “new materialism”. Simply, these theorists
do not exist in perfect harmony with each other and it would misrepresent their
theories to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, the purpose of this thesis is to
demonstrate how Czech animators have expressed political ideas in their work

220
with little recourse to narration or dialogue. The theories are in service to the
films. The intention has not been to produce a new unifying film theory
comparable to – for instance – affect theory, psychoanalytic theory or feminist
theory, but to demonstrate that it is possible to provide an engaged, political
reading of a given film while attending to the materiality of the content depicted
on screen. The films discussed in the thesis are especially suited to this kind of
analysis due to the way in which they foreground the material world, through the
attention they give to objects and things. If this chapter can be said to have a
methodological approach, as per the previous three chapters, it is one in which
post-communist Czech animated (or part-animated) films are analysed in terms
of the vision of the city they provide and what this suggests about Czech identity
in the wake of the Velvet Revolution and the transition to a consumer-capitalist
state.

Historicisation of Objects of Prague

Any given city is made up of a plethora of objects that develop layered,
sometimes contradictory, meanings and associations through time. This is
especially true of Prague, with its history so rich with material fascination –
home to Rudolf II's kunstkammer; the junk dealers of Gustav Meyrink's The
Golem (Der Golem, 1913-1914); the astrological clock (the Prague orloj); the
statues on Charles Bridge; and, of course, after 1989, a whole new array of
consumer goods. The historicisation of objects both involves the means by
which objects gain iconographic status, so becoming historical things, and the
way in which the meanings of objects shift and change through time, acted
upon by material, historical processes. Objects should be considered not merely
in but also through time.

The historicisation of objects plays out most clearly within the public
sphere. Cynthia Paces' Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred
Space in the Twentieth Century (2009) has been previously mentioned as a
work that considers how monuments and buildings within public spaces in
Prague have been encoded with nationalistic meaning. Czech literary scholar
Vladimír Macura devoted much of his career to semiotic “readings” of myths
and objects that structure and inform Czech daily life. His essays on this theme

221
are collected in the 2010 volume The Mystifications of a Nation: "The Potato
Bug" and Other Essays on Czech Culture, in which he examines the
significance of “the bridge” to Czech national identity (as a thing that joins two
disparate elements together, such as West and East); the potato bug
(leptinotarsa) as a symbol of American imperialism; and the iconography of
Stalin, particularly as expressed through statuary; amongst other objects.
Macura's reading of the Prague metro will be used when examining Jan
Švankmajer's 1994 adaptation of Faust in the next section.

There is limited historicisation of objects in this work (with a few notable

exceptions, such as the Prague metro; “panelák apartments” in the discussion
of Barta's Design; and briefly when discussing the myth of the Golem and the
changing meaning of the Jewish district in Prague. The primary reason for the
lack of extensive historicisation is that many of the films examined focus upon
domestic objects within private, not public, spaces and the material histories of
these objects are less immediately accessible than such a history would be, for
example, for the Prague astrological clock. One can track the specific histories
of some of Švankmajer objects due to the way in which they circulate within his
work. For example, the hybrid bone animals of Švankmajer's Alice originally
belonged to the artist's encyclopedic 'Kunstkamera' project, begun during the
1970s during his period of tactile experimentation; they then persecuted Alice in
the 1988 film and more recently have appeared on display as art objects in the
exhibition 'Jan Švankmajer: The Inner Life of Objects' at the University of
Brighton in late 2013. The specific history of the Little Otik puppet (also
displayed at the Brighton exhibition) will also be related in this chapter as it has
been detailed in the artist's published diaries. However, Švankmajer's choice of
objects is often determined by his interest in some tactile or emotive quality
within the object that he wishes to communicate. For instance, his choice of
cherry tree wood to form the base of Otik was determined, as will be clear when
we come to the diary, more from pragmatic and artistic concerns, than any
specific historical meaning that the cherry tree might hold for Czech culture.

Jiří Barta meanwhile places references to specifically Czech cultural

objects within a few of his works, though these references primarily serve the
thematics of the film, rather than the film's thematics working in service of a

222
historicisation of the objects. For example, the spires in Barta's depiction of the
town of Hamelin have been analysed in terms of their architectural meaning and
how this relates to the theme of the malign influence of rational time and the
drive towards progress at the expense of community or a deeper relationship
with natural rhythms. Spires are also associated with Prague, the city of a
thousand spires. Clearly spires have a religious function (they reach towards
the Heavens and proclaim the might of the Church) and Prague is a city filled
with contrasting statuary of Catholic and Protestant martyrs. However, while
religious indoctrination or the influence of religion upon the urban landscape are
both themes that would fit comfortably within Barta's Rat Catcher, neither is
explored. Rather, the spires enhance the German Expressionist aesthetic of the
film, clarify its Medieval setting and provide a visual marker of Barta's home city,
which will likely have informed his approach to city design.

Similarly, the C.G.I. short Cook, Mug, Cook! contains the fleeting image
of a box of matches branded 'The Key: Safety Matches', a genuine brand of
matches produced by Wooden Soho safety matches in Czechoslovakia. Cook,
Mug, Cook! concerns the loss of traditional Czech modes of life (traditional
Czech dress is shown; Czech beer; wood cutting with a hack-saw; broth being
made) in exchange for modern consumer goods available under capitalism
(pornography; computers; soy sauce). The film was released in 2007 so it is
interesting to note that the following year in 2008 Wooden Soho's production
plant was forced to shut down due to falling profits, relocating abroad. 490 While it
is unlikely that Barta knew that the manufacturer was soon to shut down
production, his reference to a specifically Czech brand of matches signals
nostalgia for the past (before electric ovens) while simultaneously signalling the
decline of traditional Czech businesses in the modern Czech Republic. Similar
concerns over the transition to a consumer-capitalist state are present in Jan
Švankmajer's feature length adaptation of Faust.

Undermining the “Magic City” of Tourism

Švankmajer's 1994 feature-length Faust/A Lesson from Faust is a

490
Jan Velinger, 'Famous match manufacturer to close down Czech plant' (Prague: Radio
Praha, 15 October 2008) <http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/famous-match-manufacturer-
to-close-down-czech-plant> [accessed 24 June 2015].

223
modern retelling of the story of the scholar-magus Faust, who sells his soul to
the devil in exchange for occultist knowledge of the universe and magical
power. Folk versions of the Faust myth have been performed on the puppet
stage for centuries.491 Wandering German puppeteers brought the play over to
Bohemia in the 19th century where in 1851 the first recorded Czech version of
Faust was performed.492 The ur-text for these plays is Marlowe's late 16 th century
work Doctor Faustus, in turn inspired by the Faustbuch of 1587, which collects
various folk-stories about the magus. Marlowe's play and the puppet variants
that were performed across Germany in the 19 th century inspired Goethe's epic
works Faust, Part I and II (1806 and 1832) which in their turn gave rise to
Gounod's opera of 1859 and Grabbe's Don Juan und Faust (1829).
As Victoria Nelson remarks, over the course of its history, Faust has
'ricocheted from popular legend and puppet show to high drama and back to
puppet show.'493 Such a proliferation of texts, spanning cultural forms both high
and low, increases the temptation to view Faust as an archetypal myth, more
expansive than its socio-cultural particulars; a view Švankmajer would seem to
endorse when he speaks of Faust as 'one of the basic morphological or
archetypal situations in which both humans and civilisations find themselves.' 494
Švankmajer's belief in the adaptability of the Faust myth is reflected in his
decision to re-stage the story in late 20 th century Prague and to quote from all of
the aforementioned sources across the film, resulting in a collaged work that
sometimes disorientates as the script jumps from text to text. Stringed
marionettes mingle with actors in marionette-costume; the film moves from
staged scenes to location shooting with little explanation; sequences in modern
Prague sit alongside others that unfold in Renaissance-period surroundings;
sometimes the events seem little more than a theatrical re-enactment within the
fiction of the film, while at other times, they seem deathly real.
It is the city of Prague – or perhaps, rather, the idea of Prague495 – that
helps bind these fragments together into a cohesive whole. The same might be

491
Peter Arnott, Plays Without People: Puppetry and Series Drama (Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1964), p.119.
492
John McCormick and Benny Pratasik, Popular Puppet Theatre in Europe, 1800-1914
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p.174.
493
Nelson, p.76.
494
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.122.
495
(in addition to a great deal – albeit by no means a totality – of continuity editing).

224
said for national identity in the years following the Velvet Revolution, when
every citizen must have had their own idea about the direction in which their
country should, or would, develop after stultifying decades of the 'homogeneity
of communism'.496
To give some indication of the fracturing of consensus amongst
seemingly homogeneous political groups around the time of the film's
production, we should consider the fact that across the summer months of
1991, Civic Forum – the dissident movement that evolved into Czechoslovakia's
governing political body after 1989 – splintered into five groups: the Citizens
Democratic Party; the Citizens Democratic Alliance; the Citizens Movement; the
Club of Social Democratic Orientation; and the Club of Independence 497 –
despite their common repudiation of the KSČ. The sheer preponderance of
similarly named parties with markedly similar goals and beliefs in the post-
communist period, testifies to a certain difficulty in containing small, but
legitimate difference. It is not merely that politicians had differing ideas about
the direction the country should take after communism (i.e. the degree of state
intervention in the economy; precisely how democracy was to work etc.) but
also, that politicians would have been completely unpractised in how to allow
space for political disagreement, working in a country in which, previously, you
had either agreed with the Party and its values, or disagreed and were thus
labelled a counter-revolutionary or dissident. Wheaton and Kavan express this
problem eloquently:

The installation of democracy in circumstances of radical economic

change is extremely difficult. It is not only concerned with the rule of
law and formal democratic structures and human rights but also with
developing a political culture to encourage a democratic mind-set.
This implies not simply establishing a spirit of tolerance but setting
limits to legitimate disagreement, providing a framework for the
expression of conflicting interests sufficiently broad to cater to all
major groups in society and allow for their resolution or management
by a constant process of bargaining.498

Considering the above, it becomes understandable that Czech citizens in the

496
George Lawson, Negotiated Revolutions: The Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile
(Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), p.84.
497
Bernard Wheaton and Zdeněk Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988-1991
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p.134.
498
Wheaton and Kavan, pp.184-184.

225
early 1990s, including artists and film-makers, would turn to nationalist myths,
pre-communist history, traditions, or a renewed interest in the city itself, in order
to forge a sense of national coherence in the face of such radical change.
After the splitting of Czechoslovakia in 1989, Czech and Slovak
puppeteers also had to adapt to the new economic system, with many
companies cutting their payrolls to a quarter of the number of those employed
before the Velvet Revolution.499 Švankmajer himself no longer had access to
state funding and for the production of Faust was working with BBC funding
secured by producer Keith Griffiths. Even for a dissident artist who had worked
under numerous variants of the communist system (Stalinism; the Prague
Spring; normalisation) it does not seem disingenuous to presume that the shift
from a state-funded system of film production to one in which artists compete
for funding within a capitalist, market economy, would have given Švankmajer
much to grapple with. Perhaps resultantly, while a significant portion of Faust
unfolds in the streets, pubs and cafés of then-contemporary Prague, the film is
also imbued with a great deal of nostalgia for the city's past. 'Faust' itself is one
of the oldest of Czech puppet plays and to a citizen of the Czech Republic it will
likely evoke the semi-mythic days of late 16 th century Prague, under the rule of
Rudolf II – a time remembered in the popular imagination as one of alchemists,
magic and the Golem. Although Švankmajer's film is not explicitly set within this
period, the influence of Rudolfine Prague is clear, from the alchemical
equipment of alembics and crucibles in Faust's laboratory, to his creation of a
clay homunculus. The use of traditional Czech puppet designs in Faust is a
gesture of nostalgia that seeks to arrest the decline of a national tradition at the
point where Czech national identity was at the greatest risk of fragmentation.
This fragmentation is borne out by the architecture of the film's space, which
Faust traverses across the film.
Dan North and Pavel Drábek characterise Švankmajer's film as a
bricolage of unassimilated fragments.500 This characterises not only the
disjointed nature of the film's script, which moves across different vernaculars of
dialogue due to the historically disparate nature of the texts being quoted, but
also the film's architectural/spatial structure. When we first meet Faust (Petr
499
McCormick and Pratasik, p.209.
500
Dan North and Pavel Drábek, '“What Governs Life”: Švankmajer's Faust in Prague',
Shakespeare Bulletin, 29 (winter 2011), 525-542.

226
Čepek) he is exiting a subway tunnel into a crowded street in then-
contemporary Prague. Vladimír Macura has examined the Prague underground
semiotically, providing a thorough-going historicisation of the subway as a
coded sign, noting that national scepticism over technological progress,
combined with the comparitive lateness of Czechoslovakia's adoption of a
subway system (in 1971) meant that the diabolical and uncanny connotations of
the metro were never able to be fully repressed. 501 He asserts: 'the underground
evokes disturbing associations: mystery, inaccessibiliy, the "other world,", the
"underworld," and the "realm of shadows." [...] It is an attempt to seize control of
a realm that that is essentially "inhuman" and in which different rules apply –
different distances and a different sense of time.' 502 It is appropriate therefore
that our introduction to Faust is of arising from such a Hellish place and a
provides a degree of dramatic irony since we, as viewers, recognise that this
seemingly innocuous man ascending from a seemingly innocuous subway
station is destined to make a deal with the devil. Moreover, under Macura's
theorisation, the subway could be said exist in synecdochal relationship with
Švankmajer's depiction of Prague, which is not only grimy and subterranean,
consisting of basements and back-alleys, but also accords to curious spatial
and temporal logic, as will be later discussed.
Peter Hames notes that 'Švankmajer avoids any exotic images of “tourist
Prague”, preferring nondescript streets and down-at-heel cafés serving
nauseous food.'503 The fact that Švankmajer's shooting script describes the
opening shot as being of an 'ordinary busy street' 504 testifies to Hames' sense
that, when it comes to Prague in the 1990s, Švankmajer's focus is upon the
mediocre and mundane. Charles Bridge, statues of religious martyrs, the
astronomical clock, Prague Castle – none of these feature in the film. Rather,
the streets filmed are gloomy back-alleys, pedestrian crossings and grey high-
streets lined with concrete buildings. There is bird shit, dustbins, cars, trash,
advertisements and even an animal corpse or two. Švankmajer's footage of the
city resolutely does not belong to the inquisitive, roaming gaze of Walter

501
Macura, 'The Metro', The Mystifications of a Nation, pp.73-84.
502
Macura, pp.73-74 (ellipsis own).
503
Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, p.181.
504
Jan Švankmajer, Švankmajer's Faust: The Script: Including a Preface by the Author and
Excerpts from his Diary Kept during Filming (Wiltshire: Flicks Books, 1996), trans. by Valerie
Mason, p.1.

227
Benjamin's flâneur and lacks the yearning and intoxication characteristic of
Surrealist city texts, like Aragon's Paris Peasant (1926) – an investigation of the
city's arcades – or Breton's densely poetic Nadja (1928).
There is little sense of the marvellous within Švankmajer's footage of the
streets of Prague. The word 'marvellous' is chosen deliberately here. Aragon
speaks of his 'sense of the marvellous suffusing everyday existence'. 505 The
word is suggestive of the magical or that which is “too good to be true” i.e. that
which incites wonder and awe in a spectator. That is to say, it transcends
banality. Sometimes stop-motion photography elicits precisely this emotion,
while simultaneously maintaining the everyday-ness of its materials. Likewise,
many of the great spectacles of Prague (Prague Castle; St. Vitus Cathedral;
Charles Bridge etc.) – the city of one hundred spires – should cause a spectator
to marvel. Švankmajer's footage of grey buildings and harried-looking
pedestrians do not provoke this reaction. Aragon's experience of Paris is one of
mysterious illuminations that appear like ephemeral chimeras from dingy
alleyways and storefronts. The marvellous, experienced at the level of the body
and the senses, is a liminal, perceptual state, close to the sublime but
essentially grounded in that which is knowable. That is to say, it is entirely
possible for marvellous things to be not imaginary, but real. So, it is not merely
that Švankmajer disabuses the viewer of magic, but that he also engages a
cynical, pessimistic mode of viewership in which the audience member is
constantly brought down to the ground level of the city and that ground level is
shown to be cold, drab and boring. For Aragon, even boredom seems reckless
and dynamic, personified as an 'exquisitely beautiful young man' who 'goes into
a girl's place […] gets out of it. He disrupts a life: he gets out of it. He might very
well kill: he gets out of it.'506 The image here is of the flâneur of which Walter
Benjamin was so enamoured and he is young, not old; fleet-footed, rather than
a figure of drudgery. However intemperate and fickle he might be, he is
essentially engaged in the stuff of life, his gaze falling upon points of interest
and distractions: an illuminated window; an advertisement for the Theatre
Moderne; a flea market; the ending of a film.
Aragon was writing in Paris in the mid-1920s at a time when the Parisian
505
Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, trans. Simon Watson Taylor (Boston: Exact Change, 1994),
p.11.
506
Aragon, p.128.

228
boulevards were on the cusp of redevelopment, noting: 'it is only today when
the pickaxe menaces them, that they have at last become the true sanctuaries
of a cult of the ephemeral'.507 Švankmajer, writing in Prague at the end of
communist rule in Eastern Europe, wrote as though sight had been degraded to
the point that it was no longer possible for the idling flâneur to imaginatively
engage with his city. 'Our sight is being corrupted', he lamented, '[d]aily it is
drowned and blunted by the most banal consumerist culture […] To force the
eyes to “stop”, to rest on an object and to enable its comprehension by our
visual perceptions, is becoming more difficult with our increasingly superficial
powers of observation.'508 Švankmajer's corrective to this degradation is to
artistically work with the neglected sense of touch in order to provoke a
revitalised engagement with the world, as can be seen across his tactile
experimentation and artworks. However, the street scenes of Faust make it
clear that this radical practice is not within the grasp of the contemporary
consumer-citizen who passes through the city on his/her way to and from work,
or shopping, without authentic engagement in the external world, which has
been rendered banal and homogeneous through commercialisation.
Švankmajer's choppy editing, lack of establishing shots and the sheer
lack of colour or vitality in his footage of the city's streets, prevents a
contemplative gaze or tone of reverie from ever being established. Moreover,
the frame is – during these exterior scenes – often densely crowded, making
Prague's citizens seem in uncomfortably close proximity and making the city
itself appear claustrophobic and dirty. The film rejects the marvellous not merely
through its unromantic view of the city, but even in how Švankmajer chooses to
frame his own stop-motion puppeteering and trick photography. Švankmajer's
skill is such that he certainly has the ability to impress a feeling of wonder and
suspended disbelief upon his audience, as he does in Alice (Něco z Alenky,
1987). However, in Faust, he constantly undermines his own spectacle. A fiery
carriage that strikes us as a dark portent, summoned by a black magic ritual, is
“put out” with a fire extinguisher.
The magicians Valdes and Cornelius appear possessed of pupil-less
eyes, until it is revealed they are wearing trick contact lenses. Generally, this

507
Aragon, p.14
508
Švankmajer, Touching and Imagining, p.1.

229
technique emphasises the film's unromantic view of the city. Perhaps this
represents a cynical reaction to the promise of hope brought by the Velvet
Revolution. Interviews with Švankmajer from the period of Faust's production
reveal a cynicism about the utopian potential of the new Czech Republic. In
interview with Hames, Švankmajer speaks derisively of capitalism as a system
that, through advertising, creates 'unified consumers' devoid of free will. 509 This
criticism surfaces in Faust when we first encounter Valdes and Cornelius,
handing out maps on the street which direct Faust to the underground puppet
theatre where the major events of the film unfold. Faust is lured to his doom, not
through a desire for greater knowledge or through the acquisition of some
fabled grimoire, but by taking a photocopied street flyer – an advertisement.
Later, hidden amongst a sheaf of junk-mail, the map is indistinguishable from
the pamphlets and flyers it is disguised between. It could have been any other
Czech pedestrian walking past to take Valdes and Cornelius up on their offer (at
the end of the film, we see a new “Faust” entering the same puppet theatre that
our protagonist entered at the start of his diabolical journey, suggesting an
endless stream of consumers willing to sell their soul to the devil). Indeed, in a
land of infinitely exchangeable consumers and consumer objects, one “Faust” is
just as good as any other.
Perhaps part of the film's curious resistance to the marvellous, in which
spectacle is undermined at every turn, is due to an awareness on Švankmajer's
part that Prague is marketed to Western tourists in terms of its “magical” appeal.
It is the 'golden city' 510 of 'a thousand spires'. 511 Indeed, Vladimír Macura reminds
us that the image of 'hundred-spired Prague' has a long historical precedent
that had become emblematic 'as early as the 1920s', 512 so late 20th century
marketing bodies and tourist boards were working within an already historically
established tradition. As Derek Sayer says of Prague, 'the city has hitched its

509
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.127.
510
Justin McCauley, 'The City of a Thousand Spires', 'On the Road' (Vienna: The Vienna
Review, 01 March 2012) <http://www.viennareview.net/on-the-town/on-the-road/the-city-of-a-
thousand-spires>
[accessed 22 September 2014].
511
Author unknown, 'Czech Republic incl. Český Ráj, Jičín & Prague Holidays', 'Discover
Europe' (Brighton: Holiday 'N' Adventure, 2014)
<http://www.holiday-n-adventure.co.uk/czech-republic-tours/prague-holidays.htm> [accessed 22
September 2014].
512
Macura, 'Prague', p.39.

230
economy and its identity to marketing its magic.' 513 Avoiding tourist Prague is not
simply a matter of neglecting to show its iconic sights or monuments; it also
requires ensuring that the streets and cafés that the film does show are
presented as genuinely dingy and uninspiring. As mentioned, the aggressively
anti-magical, anti-tourist tone the film adopts, may derive from a personal
cynicism on the part of the film-maker about the newly capitalist state – that
artists and politicians alike will be willing to sell out their country for the highest
stake, re-branding and re-packaging its history and culture for the greatest
amount of tourist appeal and integration into Europe. One need only compare
Václav Havel's 'New Year's Address to the Nation' of 1990 to the one he made
in 1994 to note a radical shift in rhetoric away from the question of traditional
“Czechness” and towards an emphasis upon making the newly-formed Czech
Republic more European. In 1990, Havel talked about the 'humanistic and
democratic traditions' of the Czech nation, a nation that 'should never again be
an appendage or a poor relative of anyone else'. 514 In the speech of 1994, he
asserted that 'the nation's “Czechness” cannot be the sole or even the chief
point of its existence' and spoke of accepting the 'spirit of civic Europe'. 515
Whether one chooses to read this change in rhetoric as an elderly dissident's
capitulation to neo-liberal politics, or as the words of a man acutely aware of the
dangers of nationalism and its horrific toll across the 20 th century, Havel's
willingness to embrace Western European capitalism as the political, social and
economic model for the country should be clear.

The Mythic City beneath the Contemporary City in

Švankmajer's Faust
Early in Faust our every-man protagonist travels to the location provided
by Valdes and Cornelius' map, to what Alfred Thomas identifies as the Jewish
quarter of the city, 516 perhaps magically preserved from the late 1800s, just

513
Derek Sayer, Prague: Capital of the Twentieth Century – A Surrealist History (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2013), p.102.
514
Václav Havel, 'New Year's Address to the Nation', Prague Castle, 01 January 1990
Speech archived at: <http://old.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/index_uk.html> [accessed 22
September 2014].
515
Havel, 'New Year's Address to the Nation', Prague Castle, 01 January 1994
Speech archived at: <http://old.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/index_uk.html> [accessed 22
September 2014].
516
Thomas, p.172.

231
before the ghetto was razed.517 Here, he descends some stairs to enter a
mysterious cellar and dressing room, where he picks up a script for Goethe's
Faust – Part 1. From thereon in much of the film unfolds in underground
spaces, connected by corridors and tunnels. Some events, such as Faust's
signing away of his soul, or much of a scene in which Faust protects a group of
slumbering girls from the predatory advances of a farm labourer (a sequence
taken from Gounod's 1859 opera), transpire upon a theatre stage seemingly
located underground, with painted canvas backdrops and life-sized puppets (or
rather, actors in wooden puppet masks).
The scenes located in contemporary, everyday Prague, such as those
that take place at the start of the film before Faust travels to the Jewish district,
or any interlude that occurs within a café or pub, are not only edited according
to fairly conventional narrative editing patterns (save for a lack of establishing
shots and a high preponderance of extreme close-ups), they also conform to
everyday spatial knowledge. Thus, the door to an apartment opens onto an
apartment foyer and stairwell; an outdoor pub backs onto a street etc. While the
editing patterns themselves do not change in those sequences set underground
that transpose scenes directly taken from the Faust myth – except for a higher
reliance upon stop-motion photography – the spatial logic of these scenes
changes to something more dream-like and associative, in comparison to those
set in every-day contemporary Prague. Doors open to unexpected spaces.
Faust's dressing room, seemingly backstage, opens directly onto a communal
toilet, which opens onto a waiting area for theatre-goers. Stranger still, a
theatrical backdrop, when sliced through with a knife, discloses a long corridor,
beyond which lies an alchemist's kitchen.
Sometimes spaces radically transform. When Faust recites the
incantation to summon Mephistopheles, his surroundings change inexplicably
from a dusty loft to a gloomy wood and back again. In the middle of the ritual,
an outwards zoom suddenly relocates Faust as standing at the top of a pillar of
stone; where before he had been standing in a loft. Next, he is isolated within a
snowy landscape. A waterfall that gushes down upon his head then segues into
a torrent of water seemingly falling from the ceiling of the loft, to which Faust
has been inexplicably returned. As such, the borders between the external
517
Paces, p.250.

232
world (rocky pillar; darkened woods; snow-bound landscape; waterfall) and the
interior world (the loft; the theatre) are blurred. However, this all happens so
persistently and so rapidly and with such rhythmic editing, that it becomes
difficult to keep track of the changes. Depending on the immersion of the
specific viewer, one begins to accept experientially, on a remarkably visceral
level, that outdoor spaces can exist underground and that theatres may disclose
seemingly endless corridors back-stage. These spaces are structured according
to dream logic, even while they disclose locations that metonymically evoke
historic Prague, such as the alchemist's kitchen, or even the Jewish quarter
itself.
Drábek and North argue that '[b]y interpolating the spaces of the city and
the puppet theatre […] Švankmajer confronts Prague with an interpretive realm
that grafts the old Faustus myths onto the modern city and reveals them as a
summation of the challenges facing the contemporary subject.' 518 While
somewhat integrated, the scenes in the modern city strike a markedly different
tone to the scenes in the puppet theatre and its surrounding environs. Not least,
as discussed, the city is depicted as a space conforming to conventional,
architectural, spatial logic; while the puppet theatre is connected to its diverse
environs magically and associatively. The impression is of a commercial,
contemporary city that obscures its mythic double, which exists in the collective
subconscious of its inhabitants where the myths, stories and legends of a place
survive, while simultaneously exploiting this mythic double for commercial and
economic gain. Drábek and North accurately evoke this impression when they
refer to a 'Magic Prague' that lives 'alongside, even within, the real city.' 519 The
'real city' is necessary for this 'Magic Prague' to exist, but the two do not quite
intersect, since Magic Prague is more of an internal state than an external
reality, belonging to the associative spaces and blurred borders of dream and
imagination. By contrast, real Prague, at the end of the 20 th century, is depicted
in Faust as homogeneous, banal and absent of magic, especially when
divorced from an awareness of the city's mythological and cultural history.
In conclusion, Švankmajer's vision of Prague circa-1994 appears
pessimistic. Its citizens – as judged by the portrayal of every-man Faust – are

518
Drábek and North, p.539 (brackets and ellipsis own).
519
Drábek and North, p.532.

233
characterised as easily-manipulated consumers, shown in anonymous crowds
walking through grey concrete districts of shops and apartments. The
'interpretive realm', as labelled by North and Drábek, is the sub-conscious of the
city, where myths and history intermingle. At a material level the architecture
that belongs to historic Prague may have been co-opted by tourism, erased
through regeneration and redevelopment, or simply ignored and forgotten, but it
nonetheless informs the subconscious-imaginary of the citizens of Prague. The
people of Prague are Faustian figures not merely due to the vicissitudes of post-
communist capitalism, but due to cultural myths deeply-entrenched within the
architecture of this haunted, gloomy, magical and eminently marketable city.

Networks of Desire in Conspirators of Pleasure

“Desire paths” are those paths trodden into the ground by a repeated
decision by pedestrians not to take the “official” state-sanctioned route to their
location, but some short-cut instead, motivated by their desire – likely, for
greater expediency, but sometimes because crossing a field or patch of grass
simply seems more pleasant, more desirable, than sticking to the foot-path. Jan
Švankmajer's third feature-length work Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) tracks
the desire paths of six secretive fetishists, whose routes through the city cross
and intersect across a short number of days. These individuals live their lives
furtively, dedicating all their spare time to the collection and assembly of objects
which they use in highly idiosyncratic erotic rituals.
In Jarvis, Pratt and Wu's The Secret Life of Cities we are reminded that,
'[t]he city is not only morphology, nor is it just people […] cities and people
actively constitute the lived experience that is the city, rather than the planner's
vision. Significantly, people commonly find ways of being in cities that were
either not expected or desired by their planners.' 520 In Chapter Three of this
thesis, Jiří Barta's The Design (1981) was discussed. The film seemed to argue
that the apartment blocks common across late-communist Prague stifled
individuality and personal expression. The ubiquitous functionality of their
designs enforced and maintained ubiquitous and functional modes of living. The
two central characters of Conspirators of Pleasure – the secretly sadistic and
520
Helen Jarvis, Andy C. Pratt and Peter Cheng-Chong Wu, The Secret Life of Cities: The
Social Reproduction of Everyday Life (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2001), p.28
(brackets and ellipsis own).

234
mutually desiring neighbours, Mr. Pivoine (Peter Meissel) and Mrs. Loudalova
(Gabriela Wilhelmova) – both live in such an apartment block, as does Mrs.
Malkova (Barbora Hrzánová) the post-officer, who snorts and funnels balls of
bread into her nose and ears to reach a state of orgasmic bliss. Her role as a
post-mistress ensures a number of meetings and intersections with Mr. Pinoine
and Mrs. Loudalova, in the corridors of their apartment block, where ritual
eroticism gains a greater potency against the banal, concrete surroundings.
Meanwhile, two other characters – Mrs. Beltinska (Anna Wetlinská), a
newsreader and Mr. Beltinska (Pavel Nový), a police inspector – live together in
a modest house; although Mr. Beltinska spends the majority of his home life
working on erotic tactile constructions in his shed. Finally, Kula (Jirí Lábus), a
newsagent, is only ever seen within his shop or its connected back room, where
he builds a robotic masturbation machine to caress him whilst watching Mrs.
Beltinska's news broadcasts. The secret lives of these characters, built around
obscure desires, masturbation aides and fetish objects, pose a challenge to the
homogeny of their surroundings – the grey apartment blocks criticised by The
Design or the unremarkable, crowded streets recognisable from Faust. Indeed,
at least three commentators maintain that the conspirators' sexual perversity is
politically rebellious.521 These characters are all engaged in the pursuit of erotic
freedom in the face of dull, unyielding reality. Although each character is
beholden to their own specific fetish, the commonality of their shared pursuit
ensures that their lives become entangled, though sometimes only in the most
incidental of ways.
To begin, Mr. Pivoine walks past Mr. Beltinska in an antiques shop, where
the latter is purchasing saucepan lids and the former umbrellas for an elaborate
bird costume. Pivoine not only meets the post-mistress Malkova in his own
apartment building, but also on the street near a television shop, situated next
to an aquatics store. Pivoine stops to watch Mrs. Beltinska make a broadcast, in
521
Renfreu Neff, 'Conspirators of Pleasure', (Film Journal International, date unknown)
<http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/esearch/article_display.jsp?
vnu_content_id=1000698569> [accessed 19 September 2014]; Jeremy Heilman, 'Conspirators
of Pleasure (Jan Svankmajer) 1997', (Brooklyn: Movie Martyr, 19 December 2001)
<http://www.moviemartyr.com/1997/conspirators.htm> [accessed 22 September 2014] and
Stephen Holden, '"Conspirators of Pleasure": Manipulating Characters Like Cartoons', The New
York Times, 22 August 1997
Archived at: The New York Times on the Web <http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/pleasure-
film-review.html>
[accessed 22 September 2014].

235
which she has her toes sucked by carp live on air. Malkova, perhaps inspired,
enters the aquatics store after spying some fish in the window. We might
assume that this is the very same shop in which Mrs. Beltinska made her own
purchase. Without knowing the exact locations of the apartments and shops in
Conspirators of Pleasure (which are all relatively anonymous) it is not possible
to map out precisely the journeys taken by our protagonists through the city of
Prague. However, The Secret Life of Cities makes this seem like a seductive
prospect. The reader is asked to imagine the maps produced if every inhabitant
of a city trailed a kite string behind them as they walked:

To understand the full significance of the points of connection and

crossing in the kite-line maps, it is necessary to recognise that each
and every day […] is not only spatially arranged but also closely
ordered by time. Further, the temporal ordering of each day typically
follows a “critical path” whereby events have to occur in specific
sequence or are bound by a fixed timetable.522

Even with the acceptance that any mapping of the film without the exact
knowledge of location shooting is an imperfect exercise at best, the amateur
cartographer finds themselves in a position akin to the mathematician
attempting to solve the classic “water, gas, and electricity” logic puzzle, in which
three houses are to be linked up to the three different utilities without those lines
ever intersecting. It is impossible to solve. If every house is to be connected to
water, gas and electricity, then there will inevitably be a point of intersection at
which two lines cross. This seems to be the case with the mapping of the film.
Even if one discounts the moments in Conspirators of Pleasure in which
characters intentionally or serendipitously meet, many will still cross a path that
another character has crossed earlier in the film. The only clear exception to
this rule is Kula, the news-vendor, who stays within his shop for the film's
running time and only meets Mr. Pivoine in person and fantasises about Mrs.
Beltinska, who he watches on his television screen. However, if the gazes
exchanged between Kula and Mrs. Beltinska, between television set and viewer
are considered their own “path of desire” then there are still more intersections,
especially when we consider the broadcast radius of the television station. Even
as all the characters in the film pursue their own individual passions, their desire

522
Jarvis, Pratt and Wu, p.92 (ellipsis own).

236
is collectively entangled. This gels with Švankmajer's contention in interview
that the two central protagonists of the film, 'are communicating secretly, not
directly. They are in fact isolated, but at the same time, they are conspirators.' 523
Indeed, each of the so-called conspirators of the film actively enable the
others' erotic activities, as noted by Stephen Holden. 524 Mr. Pivoine purchases
the pornographic magazines with which he coats his chicken mask from Kula's
store. Mrs. Malkova delivers the bread balls to Mrs. Beltinska, with which she
feeds her fish. Indeed, the process of gathering materials for the characters'
masturbatory objects always relies upon mutual involvement, to some degree.
Only during the erotic activities themselves do the characters seem to move
outside the social network into spaces of private, clandestine desire – Mrs.
Loudalova secretes herself in an inconspicuous chapel; Mr. Pivoine escapes to
the countryside; Mr. Beltinka hides himself away in his shed. Only Kula and Mrs.
Beltinska seem to transcend their isolation. At the point of her television
broadcast, Mrs. Beltinska is indulging her fetish for having her feet sucked by
koi carp, while Kula watches this broadcast on the screen of his masturbation
machine. The rapid editing between close-ups of the two characters' faces in
sexual ecstasy alternating with close-ups of the “arm” of the machine as it
pleasures Kula, creates a coalescence of man, woman and object in pleasure,
which in its visceral and comic immediacy transcends, if only momentarily, the
mediated basis of their encounter, offering a glimpse into a communality
between subject and object, human subjects and the non-human machine,
founded on erotic desire.
My – perhaps utopian – reading of this scene stands in contrast to Gary
Morris' argument that the absence of any binding 'social fabric' in the Prague of
Conspirators of Pleasure, 'has inspired some of the more driven of the citizenry
to weave a new kind of fabric, one where they can replace human warmth and
interplay with a mocking mechanical version.' 525 Morris' comment might be read
politically i.e. the citizens of Prague, no longer ideologically united under
communism (at least, theoretically) are free to pursue their own personal
desires, but in so doing, become little more than desiring machines, in a
523
Švankmajer with Jackson, 1997.
524
Holden, 1997.
525
Gary Morris, 'Conspirators of Pleasure', Bright Lights Film Journal, 20 (November 1997)
<http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/20/20_conspirators.php#.VCCPXvldWfc> [accessed 22
September 2014].

237
network of mutual exploitation. Under such a reading, Švankmajer's political
message is ultimately acerbic – condemnatory, even. This is certainly the
reading offered by Bertrand Schmitt, who sees the film as a 'denunciation of the
scourges and perversions represented by television and technological
enslavement'526 and insists that the film's characters are governed by 'false
desires, false beliefs and false exchanges'. 527 Contrariwise, I would question
whether desire itself can be false – it strikes me that the conspirators' desires
provide a locus of undeniable truth within an alienated and fragmented
civilisation. However, ludicrous the conspirators' labyrinthine and pernickety
preparations, at the moment of orgasmic release, they are all invariably
awarded a look of absolute satisfaction that is enviable and undeniable. Indeed,
one might add that if Švankmajer intends to mock or condemn his characters for
their erotic desires, it is remarkably self-effacing to have the characters use the
results of his own tactile/sensory experiments in their masturbatory rituals.
Schmitt points out that Švankmajer has the character of Mr. Beltinska use the
very same rolling pins lined with pins, wool and latex that he created for his
New Eroticism (Nový erotismus, 1978) series of sculptures and that Kula's
masturbation machine is clearly based upon the designs found in Švankmajer's
Roman Mobile Ipseic Machine/Ipsateur-ER F (Ipsační automat 'Roman'/ipsátor
– ER-F, 1972) project.528 While neither of these works are free from a satirical
element, they are also clearly products of the artist's own obsessional desires,
so it seems reasonable to posit that a certain empathy for these characters'
obsessions on behalf of the film-maker would preclude his outright scorn.
Arguing along the same lines as Schmitt, Michael Brooke 529 and David
Sorfa530 both agree that while the film offers an affirmation of sexual liberty, it
condemns the acts of perversion shown in the film as ultimately destructive.
While I submit that this may be true for those practices that involve the ritual

526
Schmitt, 'Detailed Biography with Commentary (III) 1990-2012', in Schmitt, pp.323-429
(p.349).
527
Ibid.
528
Ibid.
529
Michael Brooke, 'Conspirators of Pleasure: DVD Video Review' (The Digital Fix: Film, date
unknown)
<http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/3381/conspirators-of-pleasure.html> [accessed 22
September 2014].
530
David Sorfa, 'The Object of Film in Jan Švankmajer', Kino Kultura, Special Issue 4 (2006), 1-
17
<http://www.kinokultura.com/specials/4/sorfa.pdf> [accessed 22 September 2014] (pp.13-15).

238
debasement of humanoid puppets in the film (enacted by Mr. Pivoine and Mrs.
Loubalova), the masturbation machine creates a serendipitous moment of
sexual communion between Mr. Kula and Mrs. Beltinska. Of course, the fact
that Mrs. Beltinska happens to reach sexual pleasure at the same moment as
Kula may just be a matter of coincidence, since the former is completely
unaware of the latter. However, such a moment of miraculous coincidence is the
very germ of surrealism – the ecstatic heart of the Surrealist impulse. There is
unarguably something ludicrous to the scene, but it feels like a triumph,
pleasure fulfilled. Mr. Kula is banging his head up against a television screen,
sweat pouring form his face, while Mrs. Beltinska orgasms from the pleasure
given to her from two wholly oblivious fish, but it is us, as viewers and critics,
who are locked outside this sublime moment of pleasure, forced into the
unenviable role of smirking voyeurs. Surely, it would be better, more
pleasurable, to be invited into the network of desire, than forced to merely
observe it through a screen (which, as it happens, makes us rather like Mr.
Kula, but without his orgasmic pleasure, depending upon how one chooses to
watch the film).
Steven Shaviro does not stop at seeing Mr. Kula and Mrs. Beltinska as
being united by Kula's machine, but goes further, asserting that 'the
conspirators themselves are also parts or components of these machines that
they have constructed, rather than fully active subjects who simply use the
machines instrumentally. Their orgasms are functions of the machine, parts of
its functioning, rather than autonomous ends for which the machines would be
simple means.'531 Švankmajer's use of close-ups when we might expect mid-
shots; the lack of establishing shots that situate characters in clearly defined
space; and his generally fragmentary editing style that cross-cuts regularly
between disparate scenes (though the takes are far longer in Conspirators of
Pleasure than in his shorter film work) ensures that the protagonists of the film
always feel somewhat less than fully realised characters. One might consider
this a weakness of the script, or indeed performance, but the lack of
identification we feel for the film's characters appears to be congruent with
Švankmajer's professed approach to live-action film-making and his treatment

531
Steven Shaviro, 'Conspirators of Pleasure' (Detroit: The Pinocchio Theory, 11 February 2007)
<http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=555> [accessed 22 September 2014].

239
of actors. In interview with Wendy Jackson, Švankmajer admits that he makes
no distinction between the human actors and the objects in his films. 'I don't', he
reports, 'select my actors as to whether they are famous, or "good actors",
rather I select actors who fit in the vision that I have for that particular picture.
Then I work with them and I use the camera to photograph them as inanimate
objects.'532
We might relate this statement back to the conclusion of the second
chapter of this thesis, in which it was posited that Švankmajer's conception of
politics is one in which all actors, humans and non-humans, objects, subjects
and things, must be given equal importance, the needs of each considered,
every actor in the network listened to in turn. In his manifesto To Renounce the
Leading Role, he urges humans to divest themselves of anthropocentric
assumptions in the midst of the construction of a new democratic state. 533 For
humans to achieve this, they must begin by ceasing to believe in the hierarchy
that places them above the non-human. As such, they must rid themselves of
this false elevation and reposition themselves at the level of objects/things.
We might imagine that Švankmajer would be broadly sympathetic to
Siegfried Kracauer's contention in Theory of Film that the cinematic shot can
strip the audience of certain verbalised preconceptions about reality 534 (such as,
in this case, the abstract belief that humans are indelibly separate from the rest
of “nature”, somehow other and above the other animals, plants, materials and
elements that compose the world). The phrase “nature” is used with hesitation
here, despite Švankmajer's own use of the term to distinguish civilisation from a
'natural world' to which humans must be reconciled. 535 As Latour argues, there is
really no sphere of nature that humans are either inside or outside of, since
“nature” only comes into being once it is filled with actors. There is no a-priori
field called “nature”, from which humans have been able to extricate
themselves.536 When Švankmajer writes of returning to nature he is, it seems,
referring to a double definition that Latour identifies: 'on the one hand, the
multiplicity of beings making up the world; on the other, the unity of those

532
Švankmajer with Jackson, 1997.
533
Švankmajer, 1990.
534
Kracauer, p.97.
535
Švankmajer, 1990.
536
Harman, p.13.

240
assembled in one single undisputable whole.' 537 When Shaviro proclaims that
'human spirit' does not exist in Conspirators of Pleasure, 'only an intensive,
affective materiality'538 I believe he is referring to a sense that Švankmajer
affords his humans no special aura of “human-ness” that allows us to separate
the film's subjects from the machines and hybrid-objects that they build. Rather,
what we observe is the construction of ever-more-complex networks of
pleasure, in which humans and non-humans both partake.
Shaviro frames his conception that Conspirators of Pleasure depicts a
network of isolated yet interconnected actors in political terms, as follows:

Svankmajer proposes a strange new sort of social bond, one that is

irreducible either to Communist solidarity and communitarianism, or
to capitalist atomism. There is no common interest, no togetherness;
but also no competition of rationally calculating, autonomous
individuals in the marketplace, and no Hobbesian war of all against
all. Everything is irreducibly particular; but all these particularities are
incomplete and uncontained, not to mention too compulsive and too
partial to be recuperated as attributes of a “self.” 539

Perhaps in 1996, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into two distinct separate

states three years previous was still too recent for any stable assertions about
Czech cultural identity to be made. Any identity, whether individual or
communal, would be necessarily partial and transitory. However, generalised
statements can be made about how Švankmajer depicts Prague and Czech
identity in Conspirators of Pleasure in the light of all we have discussed. While
Faust depicted the city as a banal reality that retains a sense of magic through
its mythic subconscious, Conspirators of Pleasure depicts Prague as a network
of competing desires that pose a challenge to consumer-capitalism, even while
their fulfilment is dependent upon the exchange and sale of goods. The
pornographic magazines, pots and pans, fish, brushes and umbrellas bought
and stolen in the film are not used for the purposes for which they were
intended (an affront to both utilitarianism and advertising) but neither are they
banished from the network altogether. Likewise, each of the individuals in the
film may be pursuing their own idiosyncratic, unique and essentially selfish
desires, but they can't help but form a kind of hodge-podge, ad hoc community
537
Latour, Reassembling the Social, p.254.
538
Shivaro, 2007.
539
Ibid.

241
in this pursuit. Even in the absence of collectivising ideology, humans and non-
humans alike can't help but remain entangled.

Consumption – A Desire Older than Consumerism

Little Otik (2000) is based upon an old Czech fairy-tale most famously
recounted by folklorist Karel Erben as 'The Wooden Baby', which he published
in a story collection in 1865. 540 In this tale, a childless man chances upon a root
that resembles a baby, which he presents to his wife. The wife swaddles the
root and treats it as a real infant. Consequently, it comes to life, but with a
voracious appetite. It consumes all the food given to it and subsequently
devours its own adoptive parents. It then makes its way through the Bohemian
countryside, eating any peasants or animals unlucky enough to cross its path.
Eventually it meets with an old woman who is hoeing cabbages, which the
wooden baby eats. The old lady strikes the wooden baby with the hoe, splitting
its stomach open, releasing the people and animals trapped therein. Little Otik's
plot broadly follows these events, but Erben's own telling is also interpolated
within the body of the film, as a two-dimensional animated short illustrated by
Jan's wife Eva Švankmajerová.
The film has typically been read as an allegorical critique of
contemporary Czech consumerism. Fairy-tale theorist and translator Jack Zipes
characterises Little Otik as a 'harrowing filmic critique of voracious
consumerism'.541 Similarly, Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times calls the film 'a
constant assault on the commodification of everything', asserting that, 'Otik is
the worst-case-scenario version of the media-created consumer.' 542 G. Smalley,
in his review of the film, also notes that Otik himself 'could also be seen as an
indictment of consumerism' and provides support for this reading through the
fact that a central character in the film, Mr Štádler (Pavel Nový), is repeatedly
shown watching (parodic) commercials on the television. 543 Interestingly,
amongst these commercials is Švankmajer's own 1989 short Meat Love
540
Zipes, p.352.
541
Ibid.
542
Elvis Mitchell, 'Little Otik (2000) Film Review; Demand-Feeding Becomes another Extreme
Sport', The New York Times, 19 December 2001
Archived at: The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?
res=9B01E3DE153EF93AA25751C1A9679C8B63> [accessed 22 September 2014].
543
G. Smalley, '125. Little Otik (2000)' (366 Weird Movies, 19 September 2012)
<http://366weirdmovies.com/125-little-otik-2000/> [accessed 22 September 2014].

242
(Zamilované Maso). Its re-contextualisation as a television advert in Little Otik
may express a certain dissatisfaction on the part of the artist that the short film
was produced for MTV. Peter Hames also mentions Mr Štádler's television
watching and comments that 'it's no accident' that Otik's father, Karel (Jan
Hartl), 'has a nine-to-five job and a small family car', while Otik's mother,
Bozena (Veronika Zilková), 'shops at the local supermarket'. 544 In short,
Švankmajer is careful to show the viewer banal, everyday aspects of
contemporary Czech life in a post-communist consumer-capitalist society. At
first Otik himself is integrated into this world (taken in a pram to the supermarket
with his mother; fed conventionally by bottle) but, once his size and appetite
have grown, he is locked away in the basement, as though he were the
embodiment of some shameful desire – the desire to consume.
Interestingly, Otik's movement from the family home and surrounding
community to his status as an imprisoned, monstrous pariah, locked away in the
apartment cellar, mirrors the disintegration of the apartment as a focus for
community over the course of the film. While, at the start of the film, Bozena's
apparent pregnancy is celebrated at Karel's work and the pair are charitably lent
the use of the Štádlers' guest home with the assurance, 'We're neighbours.
Today I help you and tomorrow you help me'; by the end of the film, the
apartment dwellers are either dead or otherwise isolated from one another, with
the Štádlers barricading themselves in their front room. Any sense of
neighbourly sympathy or community has all but disintegrated – as one resident
comments, 'People are disappearing and nobody's interested.' Of course, in
terms of the story, this is a logical progression. The apartment block is being
terrorised by a cannibalistic baby, so it makes sense that the residents would
take to locking themselves away in their respective flats. However, it also hints
that any sense of collective citizenship and shared community experienced in
the wake of the Velvet Revolution might have been precarious and short-lived.
As soon as people face a crisis, Švankmajer seems to hint, it's every man and
woman for themselves. The only exception to this rule is the young Alzbetka
(Kristina Adamcová) who seeks to protect Otik, but she does this at the expense
of her family and neighbours.

544
Jan Švankmajer and Peter Hames, 'Bringing Up Baby', Kinoeye, 2.1 (7 January 2002)
<http://www.kinoeye.org/02/01/hames01.php> [accessed 22 September 2014].

243
 While it might seem at first glance that Little Otik is positioned towards
the uncomplicated end of the allegorical spectrum outlined in the first chapter,
with a singular meaning that is communicated clearly (i.e. consumerism is
infantile, monstrous and out-of-control and that any togetherness felt by the
Czech people after the Velvet Revolution has been short-lived); as an
allegorical figure and symbolically encoded object, Otik himself is surprisingly
hard to tie-down. He can hardly be said to be literally a product of Czech
consumerism, since his appetite develops long before his exposure to the living-
room television, or any socialisation. Likewise, if this was the meaning
Švankmajer intended, then he could easily have strengthened it through having
Karel and Bozena ply their child with plastic, non-traditional toys, or having Otik
consume goods more ubiquitous to post-revolution consumer-capitalism than
broth and hunks of meat, both of which would have been available under
communism. More importantly, Otik, as an animated creature, simply does not
feel to the viewer (or, certainly not this viewer) like a product of modern
consumerism. Aga Skrodzka notes perceptively that, '[t]he awkward movement
that animates the organic monster in stop-motion is pre-industrial, made
possible by careful manipulation of the animator's hand. Cinematic technology
is used here by the filmmaker to lead the viewer beyond the technological
vision, into the slow optics that intentionally fails to master the unknown, instead
preserving its horrifying alterity.'545 Consumer-capitalism may have worked as a
catalyst upon Karel and Bozena's desires for a baby, but these desires are
ancient, older indeed than the fairy-tale itself – Otik seems more like the
embodiment of desire itself (the same pure desire that motivated the
protagonists of Conspirators of Pleasure). The fact that Otik is devoid of all
sense organs, save a mouth (which can, at times, function as an eye) is telling.
Otik's primary, perhaps only, mode of engaging with the world is through
devouring it, incorporating the outside other into himself – endless consumption.
The film critiques consumerism for being a grotesque hyper-realisation of this
desire but the consumerist desire itself is surely one of those phenomena that
moves below any transitory, surface manifestation of political ideology (such as
capitalism or communism), for which Švankmajer professes interest. 546 Anikó
545
Aga Skrodzka, Magic Realist Cinema in East Central Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2012), p.114 (brackets own).
546
Švankmajer, in Hames, p.127.

244
Imre is correct to state that 'all of Svankmajer's films have an almost universal
allegorical dimension that cannot be reduced to a representation of the
Communist regime'547 (with the notable exception of The Death of Stalinism in
Bohemia, as discussed in Chapter Two). More specifically, she writes of Little
Otik that the horror of the film is in 'the difficulty of pinning down the meaning,
the origin of the horror.'548 This argument perhaps borders on the circular, but its
nihilistic logic rings true. Otik as an allegorical figure (or politically encoded
object-subject) cannot be easily contained or pinned down, either literally or
figuratively. He escapes from the basement where he is locked much as he
escapes our attempts to tie him to a singular meaning.
Of course, the sentiment that Little Otik cannot be reduced to a simple
allegorical reading could be applied to much of Švankmajer's filmography.
Skrodzka writes that, 'if one chooses to view Švankmajer's images in their
palpable, multisensory richness, the allegorical perspective becomes harder to
grasp [...] The material texture, so important in all the filmmaker's works, short-
circuits the allegory.'549 The haptic pleasures of the films subsume their
allegorical content. The ambiguity of allegory in Švankmajer's early short work
has been discussed in Chapter Two, but I think that the very difficulty of reading
Otik as an allegorical figure serves a specific ideological purpose for the
filmmaker.
Little Otik might conceivably unfold in and around the city of Prague, but
the city does not appear essential to the film as it does in Faust or Conspirators
of Pleasure, by virtue of the fact that the majority of the film takes place within
the rooms and stairwell of an apartment building, rather than out in the streets
of the city. Indeed, much of the filming, such as a sequences in a butcher's, a
police station and footage in the stairwell and cellar, took place in buildings in
Slaný, a small town north-west of Prague. 550 The animation, meanwhile, would
have been filmed in Švankmajer's studio in the village of Knovíz, also north-
west of Prague. The interiors of the two flats in the film – belonging to Otik's

547
Anikó Imre, Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the
New Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), p.208.
548
Ibid.
549
Skrodzka, p.115 (ellipsis own).
550
Jan Švankmajer, 'An Alchemist's Nightmares: Extracts from Jan Švankmajer's Diary', 'diary
extracts 21 April and 27 April 1999', Kinoeye, 2.1 (7 January 2002)
<http://www.kinoeye.org/02/01/svankmajer01.php> [accessed 23 September 2013].

245
parents and the Štádlers – were constructed in Knovíz inside pre-existing
rooms.551 Švankmajer's diary extracts from the period of the film's production
prove interesting in the details they provide of the assemblage of the Otik
“puppet” itself. He seems to have been assembled from branches taken from
cherry trees along the path to Knovíz. 552 A particularly interesting entry regards
how the figure was constructed – Švankmajer recalls; 'We cut several
"skeletons" of Otesánek (three sizes) from the branches, which after certain
adjustments and additions could be the real "true" Otesáneks. I also tried
various wooden knots and spare chips from which Otesánek’s face could be
built up and in this way (by switch and change) reach[ed] a certain "wooden"
and "thus natural" mimicry.' 553 What I find interesting here is the fact that Otik
was built up artificially in order to achieve an effect of naturalness. He is both
real, authentic and “in nature”, while also being a construct, an assemblage
systematically layered up. This could easily serve as a description of how
folktales are transmitted. They have an “authentic” origin within oral traditions of
folk culture, but they are also changed, adapted and translated by writers,
folklorists and even academics.
G. Smalley hits the nail on the head when he describes Little Otik as a
'coded fairytale'.554 At one level, Švankmajer is doing the same thing that Jiří
Trnka did with The Czech Year (1947) and Old Czech Legends (1953) by
turning to the legends and myths of Bohemia in order to reaffirm Czech identity
– legends and myths that existed before both modern capitalism and modern
communism. Jiří Barta attempted something similar with his Ballad about Green
Wood (1983). However, I feel that what Švankmajer achieves in Little Otik is far
closer to Barta's achievements with Rat Catcher (1986), in that he does not
merely evoke an Eastern-European folktale to forge a link between some
mythic, pre-modern Czech identity and the current time, but also shows how
that folktale can be used to critique consumerism. The important thing is that
both are achieved simultaneously. So, 'Little Otik' can, as both a figure and a
story, be re-contextualised to modern Prague, but he and the story
simultaneously resist this re-contextualisation. 'The Wooden Baby' both fits and

551
Švankmajer, 'An Alchemist's Nightmares', 'diary extract 13 February 1999' (see footnote 548).
552
Švankmajer, 'diary extract 26 January 1999' (see footnote 548).
553
Ibid (brackets own).
554
Smalley, 2012.

246
does not fit the Czech Republic of the late 20 th century, since fairy-tales are
always already 'a rebellion of the imagination against the way things are' 555 in
the here-and-now. As such, Švankmajer indicates that the Czech people can
never return to some mythic culture that existed before communism and before
consumer-capitalism. That culture has been irrevocably lost. However, at the
same time, these myths continue to pulse darkly under the culture in such a
way that resonances between then and now can still be found. This is similar to
how in Faust the old alchemical stories of Prague remain potently alive in the
collective imagination and in the city's ancient brick-work, even when much of
the modern city appears banal and commercialised. Traditional Czech culture
(in the form of the folktale) can never be wholly assimilated by consumer-
capitalism, Švankmajer's film-making suggests. I believe it is for this reason
that, while the film itself might be nominally set within the city, 'Otik' as a
character can never become a naturalised, urban citizen, with a home in
Prague; his roots are in the now pollution-decimated forests of Northern
Bohemia and in small villages and towns like Knovíz and Slaný. The kind of
desire embodied by Otik is too unrestrained, primordial even, to be assimilated
into the network of modern Czech civilisation. To quote Švankmajer, Otik is the
embodiment of something that 'goes beyond' civilisation; 'something primal'. 556
It is telling that the film ends with Otik's defeat at the hands of an old lady
protecting her cabbages. Urban bourgeoisie like Otik's adopted parents are too
ill-acquainted with their country's rural folklore to know what to do when faced
with an ancient monster of Old Bohemia; only the old woman – who resembles
a traditional Bohemian peasant – retains a connection to her country's pre-
communist past strong enough to ensure her survival. Being able to navigate
the new demands of consumer-capitalism isn't enough; one must also know
one's history. A country's history is not only retained in the minds of its citizens,
but is also held in its buildings and its streets – the very material fabric of a
country. Jiří Barta's aborted adaptation of Gustav Meyrink's The Golem is
uniquely interested in the connection between a country’s history and the
individual citizen's sense of national identity and the trailer which he produced
for this ill-fated project is inextricably intertwined with the city of Prague.
555
Ibid.
556
Švankmajer, in filmed interview with Michel Leclerc and Bertrand Schmitt, Paris, June 1997,
quoted in Schmitt, p.383.

247
The Golem is Prague and Prague is The Golem
In 1991 Jiří Barta began work on his adaptation of Gustav Meyrink's early
20th century novel The Golem; as of 2015, the project still remains incomplete
due to lack of financial investment. In interview with Phil Ballard, Barta wryly
notes that while under communist rule, filmmakers had access to state funding,
but found themselves with limited artistic freedom due to censorship; under
capitalism, artists can theoretically produce any work they choose, but find
themselves unable to realise their vision without the funding and distribution
previously provided by the state. 557 Barta's Golem – of which only a pilot dating
from 1996 exists, if one discounts storyboard and script – has attracted the
attention of several producers (French, German and Japanese) but, following
each expression of interest, every producer has withdrawn from the project.
One of the reasons Barta suggests for this is that he is not interested in
producing an adaptation of the “traditional” Golem legend, in the vein of Paul
Wegener's The Golem: How He Came into the World (Der Golem, wie er in die
Welt kam, 1920) or Julien Duvivier's The Golem (Le Golem, 1936) – a project
that would likely be more commercially viable than the film he intends to direct.
Barta envisions his Golem not as a singular clay homunculus, but rather as 'one
shape' that 'forms something which is everywhere.' 558 Barta's somewhat esoteric
statement suggests an elision between the Golem itself and the city in which he
is birthed, Prague. After all, if the Golem is forged from clay from the river
Vltava, then he quite literally belongs to the same foundations that compose the
city. Barta suggests as much in the trailer for his film, through having the brick
buildings of Josefov – first shown in live-action footage – transform into gigantic
claymation animated figures. This notion of the Golem and the city of Prague
being inextricable from one another, combined with the anthropomorphising of
the city's buildings, is an aspect of Barta's film clearly lifted from Meyrink's
novel. At this juncture, the basic mythology of the Golem will be described and
Meyrink's departure from this traditional legend outlined.
The story of the Prague Golem first appeared in a 'collection of myths,
anecdotes and curiosities of Jewish life', published across 1847 to 1864 by the

557
Barta with Ballard, 2003.
558
Ibid.

248
Czech-Jewish publisher Wolf Pascheles.559 As recounted in Alfred Thomas'
Prague Palimpsest, according to the legend, the Golem was created by
Jehudah Loew ben Bezalel, the head rabbi of Prague under Rudolf II. The
Golem was a figure of a man formed from clay and Rabbi Loew placed a
talisman inscribed with the Hebrew for God (emeth) into his head/mouth/chest
(depending on the variant of the story recounted), bringing him to life. The
Golem was created in order to serve the Jewish people of the ghetto; however,
as with the story of the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice', the Golem eventually
malfunctions and runs amok. To reduce the Golem back to its inanimate state,
Rabbi Lowe erases the first Hebrew letter from the talisman, transforming
emeth to meth, thus taking life away from the Golem, rendering him dead. 560
In contrast with the legend recounted above, Meyrink's The Golem does
not transpire in the late 16th century; but rather, in the 19th century, sometime
before the 1893 Slum Clearance Law was passed. The novel's central
protagonist is a man by the name of Pernath, who is generally believed by
others to be mentally incapacitated. Pernath works as an engraver, and one
night a figure, who may or may not be the Golem, delivers to his apartment a
book, the Book of Ibbur, for him to work upon. The events of much of the novel
are cryptic, ambiguous and disorientating, as the narrator slips regularly
between states of dreaming and wakefulness. Pernath eventually finds himself
in the labyrinthine tunnels underneath Prague and fits himself with a dirty shawl
that resembles that worn by the Golem (or indeed, is the very same shawl worn
by the Golem). The distinction between the identity of Pernath and the Golem
becomes increasingly unclear, as citizens mistake him for the latter. Indeed, the
Golem is often discussed in the novel not as a singular creature, but as the
collective sub-conscious of the ghetto's inhabitants, or as the embodiment of
the spirit of the ghetto itself.
As mentioned, one of the ways in which Meyrink gives expression to the
concept that the Golem, the ghetto, and its people are closely inter-linked (even,
perhaps, undifferentiated) is through anthropomorphising the buildings of
Josefov. He describes a 'half house, crooked, with a receding forehead' 561 and

559
Angelo Maria Ripellino, Magic Prague, trans. by Michael Henry Heim (London: Pan
Macmillan, 1995), p.134.
560
Thomas, pp.44-45.
561
Gustav Meyrink, The Golem, trans. by Mike Mitchell (Sawtry: Dedalus Limited, 1995), p.42.

249
later, houses with black doors, 'gaping mouths in which the tongues had rotted
away'.562 Ripellino must have been thinking of Meyrink's novel when he wrote of
the ghetto: 'one [...] imagines the crooked houses moving, bunching together,
driven by the sheymes stuck in the maws of their disturbing ogee doors.' 563
In Barta's film, houses, rendered in clay, stretch themselves up and
outwards with great groans of exertion, revealing giant, toothed mouths in
doorways; an ear spins up a spiral staircase; jacket-clad torsos bulge from
walls. It is not merely that these buildings resemble people, but that they too
partake, in a bodily sense, in the sensory life of the city; as though Prague itself
were some great sensorium – a living, breathing organism in which humans
reside like parasites within a larger host. This is not quite congruent with the
claims of actor-network-theory, since Barta is not attempting to demonstrate that
a city is composed of a multitude of actants, the movements of which are all
inter-connected. The film's visuals are too murky for this to be the case. The
claymation sections of the trailer consist almost entirely of different shades of
brown. The lines in the clay marking out windows and doors are often crudely
and imprecisely scored. Moreover, it is hard to pin-point precisely the moment at
which a door becomes a mouth; or a wall a shoulder. The impression given is
one of writhing, organic, undifferentiated clay, which at times resembles a city,
but always remains first and foremost the primordial clay itself. Indeed, by the
end of the pilot, a wet sucking whirlpool of clay swallows a random assembly of
rocks and domestic objects (a chair; a doll; a grandfather clock) so that the final
image that appears on screen before the credits, is a blank vortex of clay, which
then becomes the 'O' in 'GOLEM', the title of the film.
This is a highly complex moment since the Golem is differentiated from
inert clay precisely through the inscription of language upon the clay (or upon a
talisman placed within the clay). The Golem is not merely animated by the word
emeth, he also partakes of the word emeth – in a sense, is the word emeth, in a
similar way to how we, as humans, are not merely animated by our heart and
lungs and brain, but actually are these things also. So, when the clay of Barta's
city (his version of Prague) is reduced to a kind of oblivion and then
reconstituted as the word 'Golem', this is the apex at which the city becomes

562
Meyrink, p.51.
563
Ripellino, p.109 (ellipsis own).

250
indistinguishable from the Golem. Alfred Thomas informs us that Jorge Luis
Borges in his poem 'El Golem' reads the legend of the Golem as evoking: 'a
vague memory of the mythic union of the signifier and the signifier'. 564 Barta,
through his use of claymation, presents this union and renders it physical,
tangible and legible.
The transformation of the Czech Republic into a modern consumer-
capitalist state has led to the commercialisation of many of its historical sites.
The Jewish district of Josefov, once a slum district, is now a hugely popular
tourist area, as documented by Rob Humphreys. 565 However, it remains the site
of The Old Jewish Cemetery (Starý židovský hřbitov), the Maisel Synagogue
and the Spanish Synagogue (Španělská synagoga). All of these sites one must
now pay to access and additionally a visitor can pay for a guided tour or even a
disposable paper yarmulke. Cynthia Paces has wrly noted that 'much of
Prague's Jewish history has been pre-digested for tourists', 566 leading one to
wonder whether Jewish citizens of Prague have been alienated from their own
local history by a combination of redevelopment, commercial interests and the
sealing off of heritage sites. David Sibley's comment about Western
democracies also has resonance for the democratic Czech Republic: 'Exclusion
may be an unintended consequence of commercial development.' 567
Barta's pilot begins with a shot portraying spiritual, if not physical,
exclusion. An elderly Jewish rabbi walks down Maiselova street, identifiable
through a point-of-view shot in which both the distinctive Old-New Synagogue
(Staronová snagoga) and the Jewish Town Hall (Židovská radnice) are seen.
Rob Humphreys in The Rough Guide to Prague identifies Maiselova as the
main street of Josefov. He notes: 'The sheer volume of tourists – over a million
a year – that visit Josefov has brought with it the inevitable rash of souvenir
stalls flogging dubious "Jewish" souvenirs, and the whole area is now
something of a tourist trap.' 568 Some of these stalls can be seen in Barta's
opening shot, including racks of souvenir postcards, by which tourists take
photographs. The sound of a camera shutter clicking is heightened on the

564
Thomas, p.45.
565
Rob Humphreys, The Rough Guide to Prague (London: Rough Guides, 2011), pp.99-108.
566
Paces, p.250.
567
David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London:
Routledge, 1995), p.xii.
568
Humphreys, p.99.

251
soundtrack, overlaid upon a background of chattering tourists. If one were to
describe the rhythms of these milling tourists, they might be said to be chaotic,
yet stagnant. Their chatter is densely variegated, yet dully repetitious. Without
the ability to distinguish between different languages, voices or words, the
sound becomes equivalent to white noise. The only regular, steady rhythm that
imposes itself above the cacophony is the careful tread of the rabbi. The beat of
his steps seems to herald a different mode of being in the world to that
experienced by the restless tourists.
Derek Sayer, in his book that links Prague to the history of the Surrealist
movement, mentions 'the surrealist dérive, a meandering stroll' 569 as a mode of
inquisitive, yet aimless walking, that leaves the pedestrian open to serendipitous
encounters, hidden passageways and revelations. We might think also of the
“desire path” mentioned previously, trodden into the ground by people who
choose to cut across a patch of mud or grass, rather than take the pre-
designated route one is “expected” to walk. The same distinction presents itself
between how a tourist might move through Josefov compared to a Czech-
Jewish rabbi. A tourist is likely to follow a tour guide, visit the most noted
attractions and keep to the paths identifiable from a map. Someone more
intimately acquainted with the area will likely orientate themselves via memory
and, unless they are en route to a specific destination, should (theoretically at
least) be more open to the whims of casual exploration.
Merlin Coverly in Psychogeography notes that: 'Walking is seen as
contrary to the spirit of the modern city with its promotion of swift circulation and
the street-level gaze that walking requires allows one to challenge the official
representation of the city'. 570 While it is worth commenting that Barta's tourists
hardly move in 'swift circulation', the rabbi's mode of slow, contemplative
walking is later shown to be in direct conflict with faster and more direct
methods of transportation, when a car driver pulls out of a side-street and
angrily gestures and honks his horn at the man as he stands, in nostalgic
reverie, in the middle of the road. This sequence may also be a playful
reference to the story that Rabbi Loew stood in the middle of the road before
the carriage of Rudolf II571 in order to petition the emperor to help the Jewish
569
Sayer, p.5.
570
Coverly, p.12.
571
A story told in Vitalis' The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories of the Ghetto (Prague: Vitalis, 2004),

252
people of Prague, stopping the carriage dead in its tracks, as Barta's rabbi
inadvertently does to the car.
The rabbi572 is shown to be more familiarly acquainted with Josefov than
the crowd of tourists, whether in cars or in crowds upon the street. After the
establishing shot that shows the rabbi walking down the street towards the
camera, the film cuts to a close-up shot of the rabbi's shoes upon the
cobblestones. The intimacy of this shot – the rabbi's hand, arm and right leg are
very close to the camera lens – provokes a sense that these are stones that the
rabbi has walked across many times before. The rabbi, however, whose face is
now shown in close-up, looks with apparent confusion at the scene. At first his
knotted brow seems to be in response to the commercialisation before him, but
then, his point-of-view shot fades into a sepia-toned photograph and back
again. A possible reading of this sequence might follow from an assertion made
by Susan Sontag about the nature of photography, quoted by Suzanne Buchan,
namely: 'as photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is
unreal, they also help people to take possession of a space in which they are
insecure.'573 Under this reading, the rabbi feels insecure faced with the
commercialisation of the Jewish district and its bustling crowds of tourists and
so summons a photograph in his mind, depicting a period in which Josefov was
still predominantly Jewish, to enable to him to take back 'possession' of a street
(and by extension, Josefov in total) from which he has been dispossessed.
However, such a reading does not quite square with how the scene is
acted. After the sepia-toned photograph fades back to colour live-action film, the
rabbi blinks twice, as if he cannot trust his eyes. Even when the sepia
photography extends in longer sequences, the rabbi looks confused and
disorientated. The impression is not that these photographic memories are self-
willed, but that they are experienced involuntarily as spontaneous visions or
hallucinations. These longer sequences clearly take place in the Jewish ghetto
prior to its demolition and combine live-action sepia photography with
claymation. They represent a shifting or distortion of spatial-temporal reality for
the rabbi. This hallucinatory quality is enforced by the hyper-real sounds

p.35.
572
Barta's credits for the trailer do not, unfortunately, link the on-screen characters to the names
of the actors playing them.
573
Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p.17, in Buchan, p.92.

253
(including whispering, creaking, groaning, laughter and the sound of dripping
water) that accompany these visions and the way in which the clay walls of the
buildings shift and bulge. The rabbi is never shown within these scenes and, as
viewers, our relationship to the reality depicted on screen is ambivalent. The
claymation sequences are visceral in their immediacy. Barta makes no effort to
disguise where the clay has been marked or scored with a knife, which
increases the harsh tactility of these scenes. However, we are never fully
immersed into this world. We gaze through a keyhole at sweating washer-
women.
The most recurrent motif is that of faces peering out through high
windows, which then turn to meet the gaze of the viewer. These scenes may be
vivid, but they are experienced as voyeuristic, clandestine. We are never fully
invited into a space of “authentic” experience. The sepia photography constantly
reminds us that what we are watching is past, not present. In The Practice of
Everyday Life Michael de Certeau writes: 'Like those birds that lay their eggs in
other species' nests, memory produces in a place that does not belong to it.' 574
For de Certeau, memory is always displaced. Of course, in Barta's trailer, this
displacement is temporal, rather than spatial. A place belonging to the past has
imposed itself over the present. The analogy of the cuckoo that de Certeau
provides, communicates something of the violence of this act. Memory is an
interloper; a thief that steals the present from us, only to replace it with a fake; a
counterfeit antique. The rabbi may be granted visionary access to Josefov's
past, but this experience is always already one of loss and alienation.
Bruce Kawin in Telling it Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and
Film asserts that 'involuntary memory', memory of the kind experienced by the
rabbi, 'is a time-warp that not only returns the past to us, but returns us to the
past, makes us who we were when we lived in that time.' 575 Kawin does not
acknowledge that this return, as with any repetition, will never be perfect – it will
always be marked by difference. Moreover – Barta seems to gloss over this fact
– even the oldest rabbi in the late 20 th century would have been born long after
the old Jewish ghetto was demolished. The rabbi is, in a sense, something of a
tourist himself.

574
Certeau, p.86.
575
Kawin, p.84.

254
 One should, however, not be too hasty to establish a strict dichotomy
between the “fake” tourist and the “authentic” citizen, since both may
experience the past vicariously. Furthermore, one can belong to a city's past in
a multitude of ways. A relationship between a citizen and their city fostered
within the imagination, bolstered by myths and legends should not automatically
be dismissed as inauthentic, even while it is mediated by fictions. Aviezer
Tucker reminds us that: 'Home is usually a multilevel structure that combines
several single-level homes, such as an emotional home, a geographic home, a
cultural home, etc.'576 The idea of a city being one's home is, like the
architectural city itself, a palimpsest. 577 Cultural and historical images, ideas and
memes about a city, densely intermingle with one's own personal lived
experiences within that same city. In a geographic sense, the rabbi does not
belong to Josefov of the 19 th century, although architectural elements of that
period do still remain in tact – notably those buildings preserved for tourism.
However, the reflective, contemplative attitude he strikes as he walks down
Maiselova street, as images from distant history are conjured in his mind,
attests to the validity of the concept of an enduring “emotional home”. It is,
perhaps, this kind of home that Franz Kafka experienced when walking through
Josefov with his friend, the poet Gustav Janourh.
Ripellino provides an extract from Janourh's book, citing Kafka's
reflections upon his own relationship with the district:

In us all it still lives – the dark corners, the secret alleys, shuttered
windows, squalid courtyards, rowdy pubs and sinister inns. We walk
through the broad streets of the newly built town. But our steps and
our glances are uncertain. Inside we tremble just as before in the
ancient streets of our misery. Our heart knows nothing of the slum
clearance which has been achieved. The unhealthy old Jewish Town
within us is far more real than the hygienic town around us. With our
eyes open we walk through a dream: ourselves only a ghost of a
vanished age.578

In this reverie Kafka turns the notion of spiritual displacement upon its head. It is
not so much that he, as a Czech Jew, is in the right place at the wrong time (i.e.

576
Tucker, pp.253-254.
577
Certeau, p.202.
578
Franz Kafka, in Gustav Janourh, Conversations with Kafka, trans. by Goronwy Rees (New
York: New Directions, 1971), p.80, in Ripellino, p.125.

255
a couple of decades after the clearance of the slums), but rather that he
remains – imaginatively and spiritually – located in the past, while the Jewish
Town mislocates itself in the present. The key to Kafka's statement is his claim
that the 'old Jewish Town within us is far more real than the hygienic town
around us'. Kafka gives a kind of ontological pre-eminence to the spiritual
Josefov that supersedes the architectural Josefov of the present. In this way,
Kafka is more optimistic than the Švankmajer of Faust. For Švankmajer,
working in the late 20th century, the magic of 'Old Prague' has been swallowed
up by the banality of the present. Ironically, the kitsch marketing of Kafka to
tourists has played none too small a part in this. Yet, as the quotation from
Kafka illustrates, 'Old Prague' was always something of a construct, more felt
than “real” in any kind of objective-materialist sense. Derek Sayer makes the
acute observation that: 'Magic Prague is not just a projection of foreigners'
desires for the esoteric and exotic [...] Gustav Meyrink, Franz Werfel, Jiří
Karásek z Lvovic, Jaroslav Vrchlický, and many other Prague authors accreted
just as generously in both Czech and German to the ghetto's mystique, which
lent itself equally well to the fecundity of the decadent or the expressionistic
imagination.'579 Through adapting Meyrink, Barta is not necessarily harking back
to a historically real Prague that existed before the advent of communism, but
rather, a Prague that is already literary and cinematic.
Notably absent, of course, from the entirety of Barta's trailer, is any figure
that could be seen to embody the Golem in the traditional sense of it as a clay
homunculus. Barta, it seems, is a canny interpreter of Meyrink since, as Alfred
Thomas writes, in Meyrink's novel, the Golem's 'absence [is] as significant as
his presence […] he is the exotic other not only of the narrator but also of
Western liberalism'.580 This absence is felt all the more potently in modern
Josefov, where the influence of “Western liberalism” is undeniably present.
Thomas also calls the Golem 'a ghostly emanation of the destroyed ghetto' 581
and suggests a 'correlation between the mutating layers of the golem (sic.) and
the partial demolition of the ancient Jewish district in the late 1890s.' 582
If the Golem of Barta's film is the memory of the ghetto itself, then it can

579
Sayer, pp.63-64 (ellipsis own).
580
Thomas, p.51 (brackets own and ellipsis own).
581
Thomas, p.50.
582
Thomas, p.43.

256
also be said to consist of 'mutating layers', considering the grotesque
transformations of the houses rendered through claymation. Wood buckles and
the clay warps and shifts. When the houses seem to birth/contort into sense
organs (a mouth, a tongue, an ear) and even fully-formed, yet ossified human
figures reminiscent of the preserved citizens of Pompeii, the effect is
fragmentary and heterogeneous – a kind of visual heteroglossia; a collage of
sense-memories and images belonging to the historical/literary/mythic ghetto. In
this light, it makes a perverse sense that Barta's film remains unfinished. If the
Golem is not a singular creature but the ghetto itself, the film that bears the title
'Golem' must never be finished, as such a project must keep transforming,
accruing new layers of meaning as financial investors come-and-go and
Josefov itself changes under the weight of commercialism and tourism, even
while new histories are being written and imagined. Walter Benjamin's vision of
history was of a pile of debris, upon which wreckage after wreckage is
continually piled.583 In Josefov, we can think of the Old Jewish Cemetery with its
twelve layers of graves, stacked one upon another over the centuries. Tourist
kitsch calls us to pay no heed to the centuries of death that mark the ghetto.
Thomas reminds us that despite its 'physical intactness […] Prague is a ghostly
city from which many of its citizens have vanished: its long-standing Jewish
population, which was transported to the east and murdered in the years 1941-
44; its German population, deported after the end of World War II; and many of
its leading intellectuals, who were imprisoned and perished during the Stalinist
Terror of the early 1950s.' 584 The power of Barta's pilot for a never-completed
project is that it reminds us that our relationship to a place (whether as tourists
or citizens) is structured not merely according to those material things that are
present, but equally according to those things that no longer are.
Finally, the things themselves remain, whether in the past or the present.
Although much of thing theory concerns itself with how humans relate to things
(often through keeping them within strictly designated roles as “objects”) it is
also interested in the things themselves, outside of human subjectivity – an
interest that places the thing theorist in a rather paradoxical situation. Clearly,
things abide, whether humans choose to write about them or not. The material

583
Benjamin, p.249.
584
Thomas, p.1 (ellipsis own).

257
world maintains its ontological thereness quite apart from human intervention.
Thing theorist Peter Schwenger contemplates whether a house can somehow
'release' the steps trod upon it by its human occupants. He muses: 'If things
absorb the lives of their owners, then, they also relinquish those lives, returning
to their fundamental indifference.' 585 One might think of the cobblestones so
intimately trod upon by the feet of Barta's rabbi. Those stones might hold a
sentimental meaning for the rabbi, and a quite different, exoticised meaning for
a tourist but they are also simply the stones themselves; hard, meaningless,
indifferent matter. At the end of Barta's trailer all the objects of the ghetto –
even, seemingly, the buildings themselves – crumble into a sucking whirlpool of
undifferentiated mud. Objects with defined names and functions – a doll, that
presumably held precious meaning to some child; chairs used to carrying the
specific weights of their owners – break into pieces to become mere things;
perhaps, even something less, more primordial: mud; sediment; residue;
humus; the void from which things, objects and humans are birthed and to
which they will, eventually, return.
In a motif typical to Barta, traced through the previous chapter, even a
grandfather clock succumbs to the sucking gravity and is pulled to pieces,
disappearing into oblivion. The human conception of abstract, sequential time,
of one thing following another, cannot hold in the face of nothingness. The
Golem, perhaps, belongs to this place before and after meaning. Josefov can
never be destroyed because it was always already absent. The Jewish people
were never permitted a home in Prague. The high, locked walls of the ghetto
disclose nothing.

Just Orbiting Bodies in Abstract Space

The first thing that is immediately noticeable when watching Barta's
Cook, Mug, Cook! from 2007, is that real objects have been replaced with
C.G.I. models. Instead of the solid materiality of stop-motion animation, which
allows the viewer to imagine grasping the real stuff on display, computer
generated shapes, resembling household objects, hang suspended in abstract
space. The sharp contrast between stop-motion and C.G.I. animation is made
clear through the use of a very brief framing device. At the start of the film, a
585
Schwenger, p.95.

258
real hand winds up the clockwork key for a toy house/money bank. The doors of
the house open in stop-motion and then the camera moves in through these
doors into the abstract black space in which the bulk of the film takes place.
Immediately then, we know that we are moving into a kind of domestic space –
although, curiously, one in which objects and people (who closely resemble
jointed wooden puppets) hang suspended like dust motes beneath a light-bulb.
In his paper 'Things Analog and Digital', Patrick Crogan asserts that the
computerisation of special effects in film means that special effects no longer
equal 'the making of something out of something else in an immense labour of
the transformation of materials'. Special effects instead become, 'the
transformation of materiality per se'. Digital effects are 'pure potentiality'. 586 To a
degree, I think Crogan is confusing what C.G.I. affects with what it actually
does. C.G.I. may appear to be pure, self-willed potentiality, able to transform
itself into any 'amorphous'587 form, but in actual fact there is always physical
hardware behind the software and, moreover, a team of digital animators
directing the form the C.G.I. takes. That said, the objects of Cook, Mug, Cook!
certainly look less like real things that might be found about the home and more
like abstract forms that represent objects. It is hard to imagine cooking in the
perfectly cylindrical blue pot which a female cook tends to on a stove. Many of
the “objects” are nicely textured, but one never has the sense that we are
intended to believe that a C.G.I. tree is a real living tree, but rather, a signifier of
the thing itself. This is, in part, due to the lack of any background or
environmental details that might help anchor these objects, or provide a sense
that they are rooted in a real, living environment.
The plot of Cook, Mug, Cook! follows, in the broadest possible sense, the
Germanic fairy-tale 'Sweet Porridge', in which a girl is given a magical cooking
pot that can create an infinite supply of porridge upon speaking the word 'cook'.
To cease the production of the porridge, the pot-wielder must cry 'stop'. The
girl's mother tells the pot to cook, but does not know the word to stop the
cooking. As a result, the whole town is consumed by porridge and chaos
ensues. Only when the girl returns, is the porridge production able to be
stopped.

586
Crogan, 2000.
587
Ibid.

259
 Although Barta's film prominently features a woman cooking at a pot, she
is hardly the only actor/actant in the tale. A man works at a typewriter; another
man cuts through a log; a collector examines a mushroom; a bank robber
cracks a safe; a couple dance; the soup from the pot is served; the man at the
typewriter stops to take a smoke; eventually the cook and the lumberjack, who
seem to be married, retire to bed. The camera pans back to an extreme-long
shot to show all these actors as minuscule particles under a light-bulb that,
perhaps, represents the sun. An angel, a devil and a figure of death (recalling
the characters that mark the hour for Prague's astrological clock) glide about
through the stratosphere, observing the action, and the day begins again. The
stiff, regimented movements of the little actors, combined with the repeated
motif of a pocket-watch gliding across the screen, communicates to the viewer
that these characters all live their ordered, routine lives according to abstract,
clock-time. In the previous chapter I demonstrated how much of Barta's
filmography critiques a strict adherence to clock time, in favour of a closer-lived
proximity to the variegated rhythms of nature. The rhythms of these characters
are reminiscent of the mannequins in The Club of the Laid Off. One has the
sense that the characters are anchored to their routines – that they move
through the day on auto-pilot. All of these routines are closely connected to
specific objects. The lumberjack is bound to his log and his saw; the cook to her
pot and ingredients; the robber to the safe and bank notes etc.
In A Sense of Things, thing theorist Bill Brown asserts, after William
James: 'From the pragmatist point of view, it is the nature of things to develop
habits, and the habits they develop constitute their nature, which humans
acknowledge through their habits.'588 Bill Brown's contention seems to be that,
rather than humans conscientiously developing routines which employ things,
the reverse is true – things develop habits in which humans become entangled.
Our behaviour is dictated by the objects we use. What else could the
lumberjack do but cut with his saw, or the cook, but stir with her wooden spoon?
Henri Lefebvre would seem to be in broad agreement with Brown when he
complains that domestic appliances have made the world a more closed,
predictable place, 'by reinforcing repetitive everydayness and linear processes

588
Brown, A Sense of Things, p.53.

260
– the same gestures around the same objects.' 589 Certainly, the impression we
are given by Barta's film is that the figures we are watching likely repeat the
same routines, day-after-day, with little variation.
Interestingly, while there are clearly myriad actors at work within this little
society (a microcosm for Prague, a microcosm for the Czech Republic, or a
microcosm for the world, it is hard to know) they do not appear – at least
superficially – to be networked. One might be reminded of the pleasure seekers
of Conspirators of Pleasure, each one isolated in their own singular pursuit of
erotic gratification; however, as was demonstrated, the fulfilment of their desires
was wholly contingent upon the interaction of myriad different actants. Parts for
the sex machines were bought, delivered and exchanged. Characters passed
each other in hallways and in shops. By contrast, the figures in Cook, Mug,
Cook! seem to exist within their own private universes. This atomised society,
composed almost exclusively of private and domestic rituals, depicted in Cook,
Mug, Cook!, finds its perfect expression in computer generated imagery since,
to quote Lefebvre: 'Computerized daily life risks assuming a form that certain
ideologies find interesting and seductive: the individual atom or family molecule
inside a bubble where the messages sent and received intersect.' 590 Lefebvre
goes on to explain: 'Users, who have lost the dignity of citizens now that they
figure socially only as parties to services, would thus lose the social itself, and
sociability.'591
Lefebvre's predictions might seem a little naïve in the face of truly
reciprocal global networking. Many would argue that societies can flourish
through and upon the internet, for instance. A computerised society need not
always be top-down. However, in Barta's film, society does break down in the
face of computerised abstraction and domestic isolation. Yet, what prompts this
social disintegration is not the lack of communal bonds between the actors, but
rather, an increased speeding up of the rituals of everyday life and the insertion
of newer and more diverse actants. The lumberjack cuts through his log with an
electric chainsaw, not a hand-saw. The cook shakes oriental seasoning and soy
sauce into her broth. A digital clock replaces the mechanical pocket watch.
Then, suddenly, a drunken man in traditional Bavarian costume stumbles into a
589
Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 3, p.61.
590
Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 3, p.151.
591
Ibid.

261
golfer, sending his golf ball careening into a television set and all chaos ensues.
A car smashes into a tree. The angel and devil are smashed into one another,
so that their heads switch bodies – possibly a symbolic jibe at moral relativism.
Money from the bank heist rains down upon a homeless busker. The music
increases in speed and, as the tempo changes, so does the pitch, the sound
becoming ever more manic and intense. Social order has been thrown into
disarray and the simple, predictable daily rituals are wholly disrupted.
Eventually, it appears that the whole society is a simulation running within a
computer programme, which a police officer desperately tries to shut down. The
system crashes and the light-bulb is smashed.
Now, it might be possible to read Cook, Mug, Cook! as a reactionary
allegory for technological advancement, multiculturalism, shifting gender roles
and, generally speaking, the increased complexity of the modern world – or,
more specifically, the democratic Czech Republic. As long as the woman cooks
at her stove with traditional ingredients; the lumberjack works with an old-
fashioned hand-saw; the beggar is kept in his position of poverty; the bank
robber is easily identifiable by his striped shirt and eye-mask; basically, if
everything is kept in its right place, then the social system can operate smoothly
with no disturbances. Alternatively, the film might be seen to share a basic
philosophy with Terrence McKenna's so-called 'novelty theory', by which the
novelty and complexity in the universe are understood to be exponentially
increasing in tandem with one another. Eventually, this ever-increasing
complexity – we might think of a Latourian network to which ever more actants
and ever more inter-connections between these actants are perpetually added –
leads to a point of singularity, either envisaged as apocalyptic (so, the system
shutting down and the light-bulb going “pop”) or as a kind of omega point – a
teleological moment of transcendence. Barta's pessimism – think of the
drowning of the avaricious townspeople in Rat Catcher; the irresistible march of
homogenisation in The Design; or the transcendent nihilism of Golem – would
insist upon an apocalyptic, rather than celebratory, reading of the chaos and
disorder that ensues in Cook, Mug, Cook!
Barta's short film has been analysed in this chapter because it seems to
provide an allegorical portrait of community break-down that can be read as a
critique of the increased freedom and diversity heralded by consumer-

262
capitalism. However, where Cook, Mug, Cook! differs in relation to the other
films discussed, placing it somewhat outside the discourse of the rest of the
chapter, is in its lack of environmental signifiers. As with Koutský's Portrait of
the Man in the Street, we are given no indication whether the figures in the film
are inhabitants of Prague, or indeed, the Czech Republic (with the exception of
a couple of figures wearing “traditional” dress). If we are observing Prague, then
it is a Prague stripped of all historical and geographical signifiers. The domestic
routines engaged in by the characters exist in a vacuum.
As I have already argued, I believe that Barta's use of abstract
computerised space is intended to reflect the atomisation of modern consumer-
capitalist society; yet, if Barta had intended the space to be read as digital, not
real (which the shutting down of the laptop at the end of the film indicates), then
he chooses not to make recourse to a host of popular visual codes to indicate
the fact. There is no glowing green grid as in Disney's Tron (1982 and 2010).
The figures are clearly designed to resemble puppets, which helps allegorise
their automated movements, but they could easily have been made to look
more pixelated or formed from vectors. The soundtrack does not sound cold,
synthesised or technological, like the soundtrack to Trnka's Cybernetic
Grandma.
The essential point is perhaps not that the routines we are watching are
digital simulations, but rather, simply that they occur in “no place”. Barta's
essential point might be that routines un-anchored from place lose their
meaning, which leads to the destabilisation of traditions. Without communal
spaces for the inhabitants of this floating community to exist (remember, they
literally hover beneath an exposed light-bulb), there can be no community.
Networks, according to Barta's film, do not function well within a void. Without
shared experience, we are merely orbiting bodies. The absence of Prague in
Cook, Mug, Cook!, like the absence of the Old Jewish Ghetto in the modern
Josefov of Barta's Golem, is the central absence about which the meaning of
the film is structured. After a revolution, it is not enough to maintain the
traditional rituals and routines of a national culture to ensure a national revival;
the spaces where the revolution has taken place (the streets of Prague) must
be newly revitalised and engaged with anew, for the society to hold together as
a stable, flourishing network.

263
 Indeed perhaps, in a sense, Barta's film is a refutation of the chaos of
revolutions. Graham Harman, in his book on Bruno Latour and actor-network-
theory, reminds us that 'we cannot say that time passes in terms of irreversible
revolutions, but only that it whirls and eddies according to shifts in the network
of actants.'592 Barta, as was discussed in the previous chapter, is an adherent of
the variegated rhythms of natural time. Revolutions, I would argue, tend to
adhere to a linear conception of time, since they depend on the idea of a clean
split between the “before” and “after” of the revolution. Year Zero can only exist
if time is not a palimpsest and if fragments of earlier times do not remain
embedded in the present time. Barta's Golem suggested that we are always in
conversation with our past, reshaping it anew, even while modern society might
seek to repress or ignore it. The message of Cook, Mug, Cook! (and it is not a
film positioned towards the clearest end of the allegorical spectrum) is, perhaps,
that even after a revolution (that moment when the golf ball smashes into the
television set and all the rhythms and harmonies are disrupted) it is important
for a people to remain engaged with its past, its community, and the material
reality of the place in which it lives.

Life amongst the Dead in One Night in One City

Jan Balej's and Ivan Arsenjev's One Night in One City was released in
2007. It was produced with support from a government subsidy of 2 million
crowns – one seventh of the total production costs 593 – but is mostly composed
of several short films released independently by Balej over the preceding six
years. Shells (Ulity), which depicts the isolated lives of a group of eccentric
residents of an apartment building, was released in 2003. Gin (Džin), screened
three years earlier in 2000, focuses upon the buffoonish antics of two drunkards
who summon a genie from a bottle of gin. In 2006, the same year One Night in
One City was released, a section from that work, Mr. Fin and Mr. Twig (Větvička
a Ploutvička), was also exhibited independently, a film that depicts the
friendship of an apartment-dwelling tree and fish through the changing seasons.
Since One Night in One City is a portmanteau film, it does not present a
592
Harman, p.68.
593
Christian Falvey, 'Animator Jan Balej Wins Record Subsidy for New, Gloomier Little Mermaid'
(Prague: Radio Praha, 18 May 2009)
<http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/animator-jan-balej-wins-record-subsidy-for-new-
gloomier-little-mermaid> [accessed 23 September 2014].

264
cohesive, over-arching narrative. Instead, the works are thematically arranged –
the one factor uniting these disparate strands, is the working class district of
Žižkov, the location where all of the films take place. 594
The fact that One Night in One City is feature-length and, arguably,
marketed as a feature (certainly the Czech DVD packaging gives no indication
that the film is composed of shorter works) has led some reviewers to complain
of a lack of narrative cohesion across the film. Jon Hofferman, writing for
Animation World Network, found the plot, including the motivations of the
characters, 'often murky'.595 He speculated whether this murkiness was due to
difficulty for a non-Czech viewer deciphering the film's cultural references,
problems with successfully communicating the emotions of characters, or
simply bad plotting. If one comes to the film with an awareness of its status as a
portmanteau work, then the film seems less confusing, since as a viewer one
feels less compelled to attempt to assemble each fragment into an articulate
whole. However, where Hofferman sees the indecipherability of the characters'
motivations as a weakness of the completed film, it strikes me that as viewers
we are forced to relate to these characters in much the same way as they relate
to one another.
Many of the characters who live in the apartment in the first part of the
film never leave their flats. Each concerns him or herself with some obsessive,
idiosyncratic hobby – conducting miniature circus performances with a cast of
dead insects; taking photographs of terrified dogs before a mock-up cremation
furnace; dressing their dog in a lion costume and then pretending to be a big
game hunter; snorting lines of sugar/cocaine filled with living ants – that other
characters find disturbing, ridiculous, or alienating. These hobbies recall the
erotic rituals of Švankmajer's Conspirators of Pleasure, with which they share a
perverse performativity. These hobbies are exhibitionist, though often performed
for no-one, enacted within closed-off, domestic, private spaces. Moreover, the
insect circus (little more than a circle of wooden building plots within which the
insects are manipulated) or the fake jungle (complete with stuffed animals and

594
Eddie Cockrell, 'One Night in One City', Variety, 18 July 2007
Archived at: Variety <http://variety.com/2007/film/reviews/one-night-in-one-city-1200557735/>
[accessed 24 September 2014].
595
Jon Hofferman, 'Fresh from the Festivals: February 2002's Film Reviews' (Animation World
Network, 22 February 2002) <http://www.awn.com/animationworld/fresh-festivals-february-
2002s-film-reviews> [accessed 6 June 2014].

265
fake plastic trees), are tiny microcosmic worlds complete in and of themselves.
They are also dead worlds composed of dead things. The insects, even when
passed through a hoop or loaded into a toy cannon, are always obviously,
pathetically dead. The jungle's grass is clearly carpeting and the little dog is
awkward and lumbering in his bear-skin costume – not wild or beastly in the
slightest. When real life, in the form of ubiquitous black ants, enters the frame, it
is immediately brushed aside or snuffed out. The man with the circus batters an
ant with a newspaper, destroying his circus in the process. The safari hunter
finds an ant on his toy gun, which he sweeps to the floor. The drug addict is
pleased to encounter ants in his room, but only so he can inhale them. More
obviously, the dog photographer has a toy crematorium within his own flat,
alongside fake urns and memorial photography. These apartment-dwellers can
only cope with life when it is ossified, mortified.
Hobbyists may not be strictly equatable to collectors, but they typically
share a similar sense of focus to the exclusion of the rest of the world. The
hobbies depicted in One Night in One City are, for the most part, pursued in
isolation.596 Jean Baudrillard argues that the kind of private, personal world
constituted solely through objects, as favoured by hobbyists and collectors,
'always bears the stamp of solitude.' 597 'Because he feels alienated and
abolished by a social discourse whose rules escape him', Baudrillard writes, 'the
collector strives to reconstitute a discourse that is transparent to him, a
discourse whose signifiers he controls and whose referent par excellence is
himself.'598 The morbidity of the hobbyists in One Night in One City is
appropriate and inevitable since such a person is already 'dead', 599 their objects
performing 'the work of mourning', 600 like the burial objects of an Egyptian
Pharaoh. Rather than engage with the outside world, the hobbyists of the film
have created stagnant microcosms, over which they can exert ultimate control
and, in doing so, protect from a lack of change.
What though might have led these fictional citizens of Žižkov to their

596
Exceptions are an exhibitionist who strongly recalls Mr. Pivoine, the chicken man, from
Conspirators of Pleasure and the dog photographer, who seeks dog owners in order to capture
dogs for his bizarre funereal photography.
597
Baudrillard, p.114.
598
Ibid.
599
Baudrillard, p.104.
600
Ibid.

266
sequestered, lonely lives? Lee Johnson, Joseph Hraba and Frederick Lorenz
assert in their article 'Criminal Victimisation and Depression in the Czech
Republic' that crime levels in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic rose after the
fall of communism and that this, combined with a growing belief in the
ineffectuality of the police, led, in some cases, to an increased adoption of
avoidance strategies, by which citizens avoided leaving the house at night, or
visiting certain streets, due to their fear of criminal victimisation. 601 This might
partly explain why the characters in the 'Shells' portion of the film rarely stray
outside their apartments. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the number of
pensioners in the Czech Republic has been on the increase since 1997 602
which, combined with a sizeable growth in unemployment in the latter part of
the 1990s,603 has led to an increase in the number of citizens remaining within
the home for longer periods. In support of this fact, Johnson, Hraba and Lorenz
refer to data taken from 4,000 households interviewed in a 1994-1995 survey
conducted by the Czech Census Bureau Division of Family Budgets that found
that 20.1% of men interviewed and 50.5% of women used avoidance strategies
in response to crime.604 These are strategies that limit the time spent outside of
the home, such as 'not going out after dark'. 605 Regarding the correlation
between unemployment and the time spent at home, while research specific to
the Czech Republic is limited, a report from January of 2015 on unemployed
British youth conducted by the Prince's Trust found that over 40% of
respondents declared that anxiety caused by unemployment stopped them from
leaving the house.606
Of course, such claims should be balanced with the recognition that the
statutory retirement age was raised across the 1990s 607 and that as of 1998
Michal Illner could write that 'contrary to pessimistic forecasts, unemployment

601
Lee Johnson, Joseph Hraba and Frederick O. Lorenz, 'Criminal Victimisation and Depression
in the Czech Republic', Czech Sociological Review, 8 (Fall 2000), 195-209.
602
Ladislav Rabušic, 'Why Are They All So Eager to Retire? (On the Transition to Retirement in
the Czech Republic)', Sociologický Časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 40 (June 2004), 319-
342 (p.324).
603
Rabušic, p.329.
604
Johnson, Hraba and Lorenz, p.199.
605
Johnson, Hraba and Lorenz, p.196.
606
Aisha Gani, 'More than half unemployed young people anxious about life – report' (London:
The Guardian, 14 January 2015) <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/14/more-than-
half-unemployed-young-people-anxious-about-life-report> [accessed 25 June 2015].
607
Michal Illner, 'The Changing Quality of Life in a Post-Communist Country: The Case of Czech
Republic', Social Indicators Research, 43.1/2 (February 1998), 141-170 (p.148).

267
has been kept so far to a low level in Czech Republic, its rate being among the
lowest in Europe'.608 Finally, it might be worth considering that Žižkov, the district
where this first part of the film is set, was, to quote Ivana Edwards, 'a cauldron
of local Communist Party support'609 for most of the 20th century. Neil Wilson and
Mark Baker in their Prague City Guide also characterise Žižkov as a working-
class area with strong left-wing political sympathies.610 One might imagine that
for many citizens of Žižkov, the decline and eventual overthrow of the Czech
Communist Party and the subsequent loss of certain state institutions and
securities (such as the responsibility of the state to provide citizens with jobs),
was a shattering, potentially traumatic experience. Perhaps the citizens of
Balej's Žižkov have retreated into their stagnant, solitary, domestic lives in
response to the loss of employment, local party meetings, or more broadly-
defined ideological certainties.
While the characters of One Night in One City's opening vignette have
ossified themselves through their pursuit of morbid hobbies within closed
rooms, other characters in the film experience the resurrection of the dead
alongside the living. In the eponymous section of the film entitled 'One Night in
One City' (Jedné noci v jednom městě), a tuneless accordion-player is given the
gift of a severed ear by a mysterious stranger. Severing his own ear, he sews
the new ear in its place. However, instead of providing him with musical ability,
the new ear bestows the accordionist with prodigious artistic talent. The
musician and the audience are quickly led to realise that the ear was the one
famously severed by the painter Vincent van Gogh. Through the dead ear's
reattachment to a living host, van Gogh's talent can live again. This is a
ghoulish joke, but it is also a playful reflection upon the way in which we
fetishise disembodied parts of an artist (van Gogh's ear; Dali's moustache;
Warhol's glasses) in our attempts to understand creative genius, as well as a
loose adaptation of Gogol's The Nose (Нос, 1835-1836).
In the next episode of the film, 'Stopped Time' (Zastavený Čas), a man
holding a wilted bouquet of flowers enters a seemingly-empty café. The waiter
places a bronze disc in a small player piano. As the piano music plays, ghostly
inhabitants of the café, their dress suggesting the inter-war period, fade into
608
Illner, p.152.
609
Ivana Edwards, Praguewalks (London: Boxtree, 2004), p.202.
610
Neil Wilson and Mark Baker, Prague City Guide (Melbourne: Lonely Planet, 2010), p.129.

268
view. Soon, a flapper can be seen alone at a table stirring her tea; a newly-wed
couple sit together at a table, as the groom sleeps; a man plays a solitary game
of chess; a woman with a feather-boa flirts with a one-handed stamp collector.
The waiter interacts with these customers and the man with the bouquet sits
amongst them, bewildered. He tries to wave at the young woman, only to be
ignored. This is clearly a resurrection of the dead, who occupy the same space
as the living, but cannot be interacted with – except by the waiter, the magical
gatekeeper of the past. The inter-war costuming of these ghosts may be
significant since, as Alfred Thomas reminds us, 'Prague is a ghostly city from
which many of its citizens have vanished' 611 – most tragically, the majority of its
Jewish population during the Second World War; but also, at the end of the war,
much of its German population, who were deported. Balej and Arsenjev are
perhaps evoking this absence to remind us of its presence, while also
acknowledging the fact that Prague can never go back in time to recover its lost
people.
Finally, One Night in One City also concerns itself with rhythms –
specifically, the rhythms of the city. In the section of the film concerning the
accordion player who cuts off his ear, a policeman is shown to be a pin-jointed
puppet who moves with squeaking, mechanical rigidity. In his Rhythmanalysis
Lefebvre writes of 'the cop at the junction' who 'induces the discourse of
Order'.612 However, Lefebvre posits that the cop might also arouse an
'anarchistic discourse', when one considers that despite the constant street
presence of the officer of the law, the officer himself does little – his 'presence
arouses no protestation' since every citizen already knows of 'its uselessness in
advance.'613 This comment is certainly borne out in Balej's and Arsenjev's film in
which the paper-thin cop, in spite of noticing disturbances, seems unable to
move from his place and so can only waggle his limbs ineffectually while
blowing fiercely on his whistle. The filmmakers thus establish the cop's
presence in the street as an emasculated 'linear' 614 rhythm, cut off from the
'cyclical'615 rhythms of the city's night-life. The staccato quality of the cop's

611
Thomas, p.1.
612
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.42.
613
Ibid.
614
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.40
615
Ibid.

269
whistle blowing emphasises the 'alternating' 616 character of his rhythmical
presence. He is firing out flat, monotonous instructions, straight as arrows, while
around him people walk their pets in circuits around the block. The accordion
player's rhythms, though discordant, are effectively repetitive and cyclical. The
cop seems out-of-place amongst the night-life of Žižkov, which is underlined by
the fact that he is depicted as a paper-style pin-joint puppets, while all the other
characters are full-bodied stop-motion puppets.
In Cityscapes Ben Highmore reminds us: 'Nature in all its forms is
present in the city, but one of its forms predominates – its human form.' 617 In the
section of One Night in One City that concerns the friendship of a tree, Mr. Twig,
and a fish, Mr. Fin, nature has taken on humanoid form and exists in a curious
balance between natural and human rhythms. 618 So, we observe a tree living
according to the rhythms of clock time. He rises in the morning and gets
dressed, but he also sheds his leaves according to the seasonal cycle. Mr. Fin
and Mr. Twig observe the ritual of Christmas, dressing Mr. Twig with tinsel and
baubles so he can stand as a Christmas tree; however, this has also been
enabled by the fact that Mr. Twig has, quite naturally, lost his fruit and leaves
across the autumn and winter months, leaving him primed for decoration. The
section's tone is charming and whimsical, but there is also a sense that nature
(in the form of the tree and the fish) has been modified by human rhythms. The
linear rhythms of the social world – Lefebvre calls linear rhythms 'the daily
grind'619 – have imposed themselves upon the natural order. We might think of
Barta's filmography and his critique of abstract, clock time in favour of cyclical,
natural rhythms that express themselves in terms of variegated decay and
transformation. However, the tone here is far less cynical. The viewer is
presented with a fantasy utopia (this is easily the lightest section of the movie)
in which trees and fish can live in perfect harmony with the human world. The
absence of soil or salt-water from the network of their lives is not shown to be
important. The city can provide a living, vibrant ecosystem of its own. Indeed,

616
Ibid.
617
Ben Highmore, Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p.152.
618
Of course, Bruno Latour would dispute this distinction – however, at the very least we can
speak of rhythms that are enforced through culture and rhythms that exist amongst actants
independent of human influence.
619
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.40.

270
the filmmakers' interest in actants out of place from their usual network seems
likely to continue in their upcoming adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's
The Little Mermaid, with the girl of the title literally a fish out of water.
Intriguingly, the little mermaid (or 'little fish girl' in the terms of Balej and
Arsenjev) is to be characterised as a 'displaced immigrant' 620 so it will be
interesting to see if any connection will be drawn between the intersection/clash
of different cultural rhythms and the intersection/clash of the rhythms of nature
and the rhythms of human society.

Desiring Rhythms
Kyna Morgan, in her interview with animator Michaela Pavlátová,
describes Pavlátová's animated film Tram (2012) as being about the pleasures
of rhythms.621 The rhythms in the film are those of a tram journey through
Prague, which take on an erotic quality as they harmonise with the bodily
rhythms of the (female) driver. As with Koutský's Portrait of the Man in the
Street, the film lacks background detail so the location is only recognisable as
Prague from the design of the tram cart (combined with the knowledge that
Pavlátová is a resident of the city). The film was commissioned by French
production company 'Sacrebleu Productions' as part of a project in which
directors were invited to produce work on the topic of female desire. 622 As might
be gathered from this brief, Tram is concerned primarily with the subjective
experience of an individual woman, rather than a more integrated examination
of the relationship between Prague's transportation system and its citizens.
Moreover, while the second wave feminist mantra that the “personal is political”
could provide reasonable theoretical grounding for an interrogation of the
phallocentricity of the tram driver's erotic fantasies, the film is not political in the
way in which the other films discussed in this chapter are political – it has little
to say on the topic of Czech national identity.
However, the film warrants a brief discussion, even while it marks
620
Falvey, 2009.
621
Kyna Morgan with Michaela Pavlátová, 'Sundance, Day 7: Interview with Filmmaker-Animator
Michaela Pavlátová' (Her Film Project, 23 January 2013)
<http://www.herfilmproject.com/blog/sundance-day-7-interview-with-filmmaker-animator-
michaela-pavltov> [accessed 24 September 2014].
622
Laura-Beth Cowley with Michaela Pavlátová, 'Interview with “Tram” Director Michaela
Pavlátová' (Skwigly, 22 January 2014)
<http://www.skwigly.co.uk/michaela-pavlatova/> [accessed 24 September 2014].

271
something of a digression. Firstly, the fact that Tram focuses on the inner life of
a female protagonist might, in part, counter-balance the use of the male Czech
citizen as a kind of “neutral” everyman in many of the films already discussed,
illustrating the constructed nature of this gender disparity. Furthermore, this
chapter is concerned with the way in which modern Czech animators position
the citizen of Prague in relation to the city. As seen, this depiction can constitute
something of a political argument (for instance, in Faust, Švankmajer is
responding to increased commercialisation in the city, as a result of the Czech
Republic's entry into Europe; both political concerns) but it can also be more
intimate and personal, a reflection by the artist upon the daily lived experience
of the Czech citizen in the 21st century. Indeed, simply presenting the erotic
inner life of a working-class, middle-aged woman in a film might be considered
a political act, especially in the wake of decades of censorship (both formal and
informal; enforced by the regime and self-imposed) in which such a project
would have been unthinkable, save perhaps, in the years of the Prague Spring.
It is telling, for instance, that while Věra Chytilová was able to produce the
avant-garde feminist films Daisies (Sedmikrásky, 1966) and Fruit of Paradise
(Ovoce stromů rajských jíme, 1969) in the late 1960s, it was over seven years
later that her following film, The Apple Game (Hra o jablko, 1977) was released
and later, under normalisation, her work moved towards a more realistic, less
agit-prop style.
In the introduction to Cityscapes Ben Highmore asserts that giving an
analytical emphasis to 'movement, mobility and rhythm' can be a way for the
analyst/academic/writer to constantly remind herself 'that the city is a dynamic
and living object that orchestrates a variety of competing rhythms.' 623 In Tram the
mechanical rhythms of the tram as it travels through Prague and the repetitious
rituals of the driver's job interact with her bodily rhythms creating libidinal
pleasure, leading to an orgasmic fantasy sequence. Music on the soundtrack
heightens our own enjoyment of the tram's rhythms, but the film enacts a
transformation, finding an erotic playfulness in a commuter journey that might
otherwise be seen as dull or banal. The tram chugs along slowly, bouncing
gently as it moves, with the stamping of tickets creating a regular “chunking”
sound that interpolates the rhythm.
623
Highmore, p.xiii.

272
 Although the route of the tram is likely cyclical, the two-dimensional
animation style (in which the tram is shown horizontally across the screen,
moving from right to left, its passengers and driver exposed in a cross-section
view) combined with the staccato rhythm of the passengers boarding the tram
and stamping their tickets, provides an impression of linear, rather than cyclical,
travel. Lefebvre, in Rhythmanalysis, expounds upon the concept of linear
rhythms as follows: 'The linear […] consists of journeys to and fro: it combines
with the cyclical, the movements of long intervals […] The linear is the daily
grind, the routine, therefore the perpetual, made up of chance and
encounters.'624 Tellingly, Lefebvre refers to 'the daily grind' (or, rather, its French
equivalent) hinting at the potential tediousness imbued inside linear rhythms, in
contrast to the more restorative and rejuvenating potential of cyclical rhythms.
Indeed, our tram driver's job seems rather tedious. Her customers are grey and
humourless and all look alike. The job involves a very high degree of repetition.
The 'chance encounters' to which Lefebvre refers provide only momentary
diversion – a screeching halt before a busy intersection; a stop at a zebra
crossing while a kitten licks itself idly in the path of the tram – and seem to
annoy and frustrate the homogeneous mass of commuters. In a review of the
film for Nisi magazine, Ali Deniz describes the protagonist as being 'stuck in her
job'.625 It is female sexuality and imagination, which is able to transform banal
repetition into erotic fantasy. We might think again of Švankmajer's
Conspirators of Pleasure, the protagonists of which were able to transform
ubiquitous household goods into bizarre and imaginative masturbation devices.
Indeed, in Tram, the whole vehicle is transformed. Deniz provides an erotic
inventory: 'Tram, roads, male passengers on tram, “stick” of tram's panel board,
vibrating driver chair become objects of sexual desire for the main character …
The tram becomes an organic extension of the character.' 626
It remains obscure as to whether the rhythms of the tram, despite
outward banality, are possessed of some innate eroticism, or whether the
imagination of the tram driver is such that she is able to transform even the
most banal of rhythms. That is to say, is the driver's erotic reverie an escape

624
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.40 (ellipses own).
625
Ali Deniz, 'Tram by Michaela Pavlátová' (Nisi Magazine, 06 June 2012)
<http://www.nisimazine.eu/Tram.html> [accessed 26 September 2014].
626
Ibid (ellipsis own).

273
from the rhythms of daily lived reality, or a continuation of them? Lefebvre might
help illuminate the answer to this question through his comment in
Rhythmanalysis that, '[r]hythm appears as regulated time, governed by rational
laws, but in contact with what is least rational in human being[s]: the lived, the
carnal, the body.'627 Deniz' statement that the tram 'becomes an organic
extension of the character' is precisely right. There is a harmonious
intermingling of mechanical and organic rhythms so that the body of the driver is
not easily distinguished from the body of the tram.
Notably, over the course of the film, the tram's levers – which the driver
grasps and rubs her hands up and down in a masturbatory fashion – become
increasingly fleshy and phallic, as though responding to her touch. At the start of
this chapter, I spoke of directors picking up the city of Prague like a lump of clay
and moulding it according to their desires. In Tram it is as though the erotic
imagination of the driver is powerful to the degree that part of the city's
transportation network becomes an erogenous extension of her body. We might
think of David Cronenberg's 1996 film Crash (and the 1973 J.G. Ballard novel
upon which it is based) in which cars become phallic extensions of their drivers,
in which libidinal energy is projected outwards into the vehicles themselves.
Indeed, ergonomics – the way in which cars, trams and other vehicles are
literally moulded around our bodies, so that we “slot into place” within them –
might already be said to be possessed of an erotic element. Even the
commuting businessmen are wholly consumed by the driver's erotic imaginings,
transformed through animation into faceless pink phalluses, which the driver
cavorts among and joyfully grasps and mounts. They become dehumanised into
a pink seething mass of phallic cilia that move in caressing waves – the
commuters' movements, once mechanical, staccato and linear, transformed into
organic, orgasmic, cyclical rhythms.
When Lefebvre writes about the body, he tends to stress its
'polyrhythmic' and 'eurhythmic' qualities. 628 In short, the body (and by extension,
self-hood) is never one single, unitary entity, but is a complex harmony of
different rhythms, all inter-linked. The beat of our heart keeps a different time to
the rhythm of our breathing. As an animator, Michaela Pavlátová seems aware

627
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.18 (brackets own).
628
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.77 (bold in original).

274
of this polyrhythmia which extends to her working methods. Tram was animated
in the computer software 'Flash', in a series of stacked visual layers. Pavlátová
informs Laura-Beth Cowley that as she was working on the film she 'realised
that everything [was] moving and bopping and all the movement [was]
happening one after the other.' 629 To animate the tram driver she separated her
body up into different sections – each leg and each breast was animated
separately, yet they move together rhythmically. Pavlátová states that this was
'difficult to sequence' while maintaining 'that feeling of bouncing on the tram,
even though it was only one woman and the same men being driven along.' 630
Although somewhat pre-determined by her working methods (that said,
we have already interrogated the supposed neutrality of working methods in our
discussion of Barta's The Design), it seems as though in her film Pavlátová is
essentially honouring a Lefebvrean conception of the body, as being ineluctably
intertwined with the rhythms of the city. Citizens of Prague do not merely ride its
transportation network, they partake of it, bodily. The poetics (if not the politics,
which are elusive) of Tram are in agreement with Lefebvre's contention that,
'there is neither separation nor an abyss between so-called material bodies,
living bodies, social bodies and representations, ideologies, traditions, projects
and utopias. They are all composed of […] rhythms in interaction.' 631 The tram
driver's fantasies do not merely take place within her head, but within the public
arena and the rhythms of the tram and the Czech commuters each play their
part in contributing to her erotic experience, whether intentionally or not. The
imaginary lives of a city's citizens are never fully divorced from the material
reality of the city and its rhythms.

The Flattened City of Surviving Life

Much of Švankmajer's 2010 film Surviving Life: Theory and Practice
unfolds amongst the streets of Prague. Occasionally street signs can be
glimpsed, so the viewer can recognise that a given scene transpires, for
instance, in Prague 3 (Praha 3) in Žižkov (the location of One Night in One
City). As such, one might imagine that Surviving Life would provide a very rich
site of analysis for the thing theorist, actor-network-theorist or rhythmanalysist
629
Pavlátová with Cowley, 2014.
630
Ibid.
631
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, p.51 (ellipsis own).

275
seeking to better understand the relationship between the citizen of Prague and
their city in all its material detail.
However, one reaches into the film armed with these critical theories and
comes back empty-handed. Why? I posit that the reason for critical failure in
this instance is due to an aspect of the film's form unprecedented in
Švankmajer's feature film career – although the technique may be glimpsed in
shorter works like Castle of Otranto (1977) or briefly in Virile Games (Muzné hry,
1988) – namely, that Surviving Life is animated through the use of paper cut-
outs in a style reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's contributions to Monty Python's
Flying Circus (Švankmajer being a regularly cited influence upon the American
director). As such, the thing theorist lacks any tangible, thingy objects at which
to grasp. There are barely seconds of stop-motion animation in the film. The
actor-network-theorist is confronted with a beguiling sparseness. Rarely do the
static backgrounds – photographs of city streets – actually feel occupied in any
real sense. Their monochrome colouration gives them the feel of frozen
memories and their two-dimensionality precludes them from feeling “lived-in”.
Likewise, the film lacks actants. Whole scenes might involve two characters
talking within a frozen street, absent of any objects. Surviving Life is surely the
Švankmajer film with the least amount of stuff on display. It is surprisingly
uncluttered.
The rhythmanalysist is somewhat stumped by the immobility of the flat
backgrounds. There is very little movement and so very little rhythm (see fig. 8).
Finally, someone who wishes to talk about the depiction of Prague in the film –
a city theorist – could do little more than name-check places from street signs
and discuss the city as a heterogeneous, post-modern, fragmentary space. An
illustrative quote from Lefebvre, if one imagines he had lived to watch the film,
reads: 'We are confronted by an indefinite multitude of spaces, each one piled
upon, or perhaps contained within, the next'. 632 The technique of paper cut-out
animation means that backgrounds are often assembled from a jumble of
different buildings that may, in reality, be geographically separated. The main
thing that unites the spaces of the film – besides from the combination of
architectural monumentality and crumbling plaster that somehow seems to
signify Prague – is the ubiquitous graffiti that marks so much of the brick work.
632
Lefebvre, Production of Space, p.8.

276
The Prague of Surviving Life matches Ripellino's description of the city as 'a
heap of singed and stained rubbish'.633
Surviving Life shares an approach to the city with Ripellino's Magic
Prague. Derek Sayer writes of Ripellino's tome that the writer 'refuses to admit
the distinctions of reality and imagination, present and past, that construct the
surfaces and planes of the modern world'. 634 This description would have readily
applied to Švankmajer's Faust as much as Surviving Life. Yet, Faust is a film of
deep subterranean passages and densely networked spaces. It provides a rich
tapestry of mythic and local history through its evocations of the Faust and
Golem myths, even while it deliberately undercuts the re-appropriation of these
stories for tourism. By contrast, Surviving Life conjures up nothing from mythic,
Rudolfine Prague. There are not even any crowds of tourists. The city seems
sparse, silent and dead; gutted. There may be a political critique at work in this.
Erazim Kohák's polemic 'After the Revolution', anthologised in Bažant,
Bažantová and Starn's The Czech Reader, accuses the Czech people of having
become, in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, 'an ethnic conglomerate marked
by impatience with thought, unwillingness to accept responsibility, indifference
to others and utter disdain for our cultural heritage or our land, motivated by
nothing higher than immediate individual short-range gratification.' 635 Still, such
complaints are not new. Ripellino was able to declare in 1973 (when Magic
Prague was originally published in Italian) that the people of Prague, 'are slowly
turning into goylemes for having made too many pacts with the devil. The
sausage sellers, the tram shunters, the tapsters, the waiters at the Café Slavia,
the regulars who leave the Barbora at dawn – they all have something Golem-
like about them.'636
The Czechs are not new to accusations of servility and lack of
revolutionary fervour. The protagonist of Surviving Life, Eugene/Evzen (Václav
Helsus) seems to meet this stereotype. He works a tedious and bureaucratic
office job; lives haunted by confused, anxious, partially-erotic feelings about his
family members; and escapes from conflict at any given opportunity. So far, so
Kafka. Eugene's central obsession is his dreams, where he meets with a

633
Ripellino, p.18.
634
Sayer, p.45.
635
Erazim Kohák, 'After the Revolution', in Bažant, Bažantová and Starn, pp.493-499 (p.496).
636
Ripellino, p.148.

277
younger woman Eugenia/Evzenie (Klára Issová) who turns out to be his anima
and an incarnation of his mother. By the end of the film, Eugene opts to leave
his wife (Zuzana Krónerová) and pursue a life wholly in his dreams, in a
decision that (considering the morbid mature of his maternal obsession – his
mother attempted to drown him in the bath as part of a suicide attempt) seems
like a suicidal, life-denying expression of his death drive.
Eugene's imaginative dream life is rich and wild (humans exist with
chicken heads; dogs walk upright wearing suits; giant hands appear from high-
storey windows) but it only ever imposes itself upon the city, rather than
achieving a full integration. His dream life is personal, obsessive and
idiosyncratic, but it is not shared. When Eugene's wife tries to enter his dream
world, he ultimately rejects her. Sleep is not an entry into the outside world of
public space, but a retreat into the private world of inner space. Švankmajer
seems to remain fundamentally ambivalent towards Eugene's decision and it is
clearly a position he has some sympathy for, often noting his tendency towards
infantile (uterine) regression in interviews. Personally, however, Eugene's
decision appears to be a retreat from community and a retreat from personal
relationships that exist outside of his mind. It is a solipsistic position, even while
the character of his dreams is necessarily influenced to some degree by the
environment of Prague. Indeed, perhaps the nature of his retreat has been
subtly determined by the city itself. In the introduction to Cities after the Fall of
Communism, John Czaplicka, Nida Gelazis and Blair A. Ruble note:

In the Soviet period, new cities were built alongside the old, with little
or no relationship to the structures of the past. The “historic” city was
often neglected […] it is an irony of history that such neglect, which
meant to make history vanish, would ultimately help to conserve the
historical “substance” that now literally invites attempts to return to
some “radiant past”. It is the once modern and subsequently
dilapidated Socialist city that now belongs to history. 637

The monochrome monuments of Surviving Life seem resolutely to be stuck in

the past. There is no sense of a living, breathing, present city, but merely a
forgotten historical city, frozen in time. If Eugene lacks a living city in which to

637
John Czaplicka, Nida Gelazis and Blair A. Ruble, 'Introduction: What Time Is this Place?
Locating the Postsocialist City', in Cities after the Fall of Communism: Reshaping Cultural
Landscape and European Identity, ed. by John Czaplicka, Nida Gelazis, and Blair A. Ruble
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009), pp.1-16 (p.7) (ellipsis own).

278
exist, no wonder he retreats to the vibrancy of his dreams.
A charitable reading of the film might suggest that Švankmajer is
engaged in the Surrealist project of disrupting the viewer's understanding of
Prague as a stable, homogeneous space, consisting of identifiable landmarks
and historical sites. David Sorfa in 'Arcitorture: Jan Švankmajer and Surrealist
Film' argues that '[i]n a political sense the work of the Czech Surrealists in and
on Prague can be seen as undermining the concept of a rational city that could
be perfectly designed and planned.' 638 However, once again, this rings more true
of Faust than it does of Surviving Life. The Prague of Surviving Life does not
disclose irrational spaces – rather, irrational fantasies are super-imposed upon
a banal, flattened-out city, of grey brick and lacklustre graffiti.
Although I would be wary of providing an autobiographical reading for
any Surrealist artist, the tone of the film may have been influenced by the death
of Eva Švankmajerová, Švankmajer's wife and creative collaborator. The film,
although light in its humour, feels marked by trauma. It is a wounded,
anaesthetised film, at least in comparison with the frantic, hyper-real works of
Švankmajer's relative youth. One has the sense that Prague has somewhat
spent its mysteries for the artist, who has renounced a material fascination with
the city, for an intensive investigation of his own unconscious mind. It will be
interesting to see if Švankmajer's upcoming and purportedly last film Insects
(Hmyz), based on Karel and Josef Capek's 1921 play Pictures from the Insects'
Life, continues this trend.

Conclusion: The Citizen's Inner Life is Collective, Public and

Dependent upon Myths and Stories 639

So, with Surviving Life: Theory and Practice we come back to the city as
mere backdrop for the psychological portrait of the individual citizen, as
witnessed at the beginning of the chapter with Pavel Koutský's Portrait of the
Man in the Street. However, the other films discussed were considered, to
various degrees, to engage deeply with the city of Prague – sometimes in a
concrete sense, as in Švankmajer's Faust/A Lesson from Faust, Conspirators of
Pleasure or Barta's Golem; sometimes in a more abstract mode, such as with
638
David Sorfa, 'Arcitorture: Jan Švankmajer and Surrealist Film', in Screening the City, ed. by
Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (London: Verso, 2003), pp.100-112 (p.103) (brackets own).
639
Although sometimes, in private retreat, it is not.

279
Barta's Cook, Mug, Cook!/Sweet Porridge. The three methodologies of thing
theory, actor-network-theory and rhythmanalysis, united in their shared
materiality, tend to favour the concrete city over the abstract, but also insist that
the relationship between the individual and their environment is not merely pre-
ordained by the material world, but simultaneously governed and influenced by
psychological needs and desires. All of the films in this chapter have depicted
the daily lived life of the Czech citizen as being composed of repetitious rituals
and sometimes banal routines. Prague is shown to be a place co-opted by
tourism and commercialisation, but where strange or perverse activities happen
behind closed doors. All of these films are admirable in their tendency to depict
these activities with a sympathetic, non-judgemental and humorous eye.
The body of films we have examined, taken as a whole, provide two
possible responses to the increased homogenisation of Prague due to tourism
and consumer-capitalism. One is to retreat from the city like the apartment
dwellers in One Night in One City or Eugene in Surviving Life and fixate on
one's own personal obsessions in isolation; however this can lead to loneliness
and dysfunction. Better, to enact one's imaginative fantasies within the public
space of city itself, like the perverts of Conspirators of Pleasure or the
protagonist of Tram – this necessitates social interaction in which other citizens
become part of the fulfilment of one's fantasies and sometimes unwitting actors
in each other's games. Anxiety about increased tourism and consumerism, and
the homogenisation resulting from both of these things, characterises the work
of all of the filmmakers discussed; and yet, there is a recognition among these
artists that the city itself was always already mythic and constructed through
stories such as the story of Otesánek or Faust or the Golem or even the fairy-
tale of 'Sweet Porridge' as recounted in Cook, Mug, Cook! According to these
films, the entry of the Czech Republic into Western consumer-capitalism along
with the increased tourism this has brought to its capital city – even the material
reconstruction or redevelopment of the city – cannot wholly efface the meaning
of the city for its inhabitants as long as these stories and myths persist and the
citizens of Prague choose to engage with their collective history, rather than
retreat from it.

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Conclusions

This thesis posed the question, what are the political messages
communicated by Czech stop-motion and animated films from the end of the
Second World War to the present day? Secondly, how are these messages
communicated to the viewer? My research has sought to argue that rather than
being conveyed through dialogue or voice-over, these messages are instead
transmitted via objects and things (i.e. non-human actors) in time and space, as
well as time and space themselves, structured according to the rhythms of
editing.

Political Messages
In answer to what political messages the films communicate, this is
dependent upon the historical period in which any given film was produced.
Those films created by Jiří Trnka (and to a lesser extent Hermína Týrlová) in the
immediate post-war period provide simple messages of national unity in the
wake of the defeat of Nazism. Trnka's later films, produced after Stalinist-style
communism in Czechoslovakia, celebrate small-scale artisanal work and
simple, grounded relationships between humans and their environment over the
abstractions of ideology and technological progress. They constitute a defence
of the quiet life, unmolested by political power.
Jan Švankmajer's films, meanwhile, suggest that even if dominant forms
of political power were to be done away with, the anthropocentric position of
humanity in relation to its non-human others, would ensure the continuation of
cycles of repetitious violence, leading invariably to entropy and destruction.
Švankmajer's central political argument is that humans must not be considered
as more “important” than non-human actors. One of the ways in which humans
express their power over non-human others is through the imposition of
systems of classification and control (such as language or science).
Švankmajer's films suggest that these systems are doomed to failure. Instead,
truly reciprocal networks must provide space for what Bruno Latour calls a
‘parliament of things’.640 As such, Švankmajer offers a corrective to Trnka's and
640
Latour, Politics of Nature, p.227.

281
Týrlová's work – it is not enough for the individual citizen to live a quiet,
unmolested life, surrounded by simple, domestic, non-abstract objects, if the
relationship between the humans and the objects is merely one of functional
servitude.
If Švankmajer offers an antithesis to Trnka's thesis, the films of Jiří Barta
can be seen to provide a synthesis of their two political positions. Like Trnka,
Barta believes abstraction to be alienating at both an individual and a societal
level and celebrates a direct, grounded relationship between man and his
environment. However, while Trnka considered technological advancement to
be a major cause of alienation, Barta's films argue that the cause of alienation is
society's adherence to rational clock time and the flattening of space through
urban planning and advertisements. It is not enough for people to live simply
and humbly alongside objects that anchor the individual to their environment –
the environment itself must be re-shaped and the human conception of time re-
imagined. In a sense, Barta's argument is similar to Švankmajer's, in that both
are suggesting that humans should not seek to differentiate themselves from, or
set themselves outside of, nature. Švankmajer considers the existence of
utilitarian objects to be most symptomatic of this tendency (i.e. humans are
alienated from their tools), while Barta is most suspicious of the pocket watch
(i.e. humans are alienated from the natural rhythms of life). Both are politically
more radical than Trnka, since neither of them proposes some kind of return to
the pre-lapsarian life of the peasant class, but rather, a restructuring of ideology
through a changed relationship to one's material reality. To help accomplish
Švankmajer's vision, one might construct non-rational, non-utilitarian objects (as
indeed Švankmajer, as a sculptor, does). To help accomplish Barta's vision, it
would be necessary to construct new non-rational built environments that
implicitly foster healthy, community-building rhythms. Moreover, there must be
an attentiveness paid to the variegated rhythms of nature. Humans should not
live like clockwork manikins in a darkened attic, but be receptive to the ways in
which time ebbs, flows and repeats quite irrespective of human calculations or
clocks.
The fourth chapter of my thesis introduced films that use Prague as a
setting in which to envision and interrogate the relationships between citizens
and their city. As such, it was explicitly concerned with Czech national identity

282
and how this operates in relation to the city of Prague (similar projects might be
attempted with films set in other Czech cities). Realistically, the people of
Prague are not about to tear down the city's spires and clocks, or refuse to use
utilitarian objects for their intended purposes. The political message of those
Czech animated films made since the Velvet Revolution is that consumer-
capitalism has led in the Czech Republic to isolation and alienation, in which
individual citizens pursue their own desires irrespective of the greater good of
the community. Moreover, escalating tourism in the city has increased the
potential for residents to be alienated from their own built environment/s and the
myths and legends of old Bohemia to be transformed into kitsch commodities.
The films variably propose two potential solutions to this malaise – the first
solution is to retreat into the collective imagination of the city (as in Faust or
Golem), or the obsessive life of the hobbyist (as in One Night in One City and
Conspirators of Pleasure). Eugene in Surviving Life combines both of these
approaches through making a hobby out of the exploration of his own
imagination. The other solution – more potentially transgressive, but also more
engaged with the rhythms of everyday life – is to ensure that one's personal
pleasure is contingent upon a networked relationship with other city actors (as
in both Tram and Conspirators of Pleasure). Those actors that fail to do either
(Otesánek or the citizens of Cook, Mug, Cook!) are not merely ostracised or
alienated, but destroyed.
While these are all manifestly political ideas, they are specific to a Czech
political context. Trnka's pastoralism for instance is inextricable from the rural
history of Old Bohemia with which he is engaging. The reason why it is possible
to trace affinities between Trnka's film-making and the political rhetoric of Václav
Havel, such as their avocation of “simple living” in direct relation to one's
material environment, is that they both build upon a semi-mythic agrarian folk
history, part of which is that the ancestry of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown
can be traced back to the dynasty of Přemysl the Ploughman. The close
relationship between the Czech people and their lands is a foundational myth
that both Trnka and Havel build from. Their political ideas are closely tied to an
idealised conception of “Czechness”. Likewise, the film-makers of Chapter Four
are specifically interested in the notion of Czech identity in the wake of the
Velvet Revolution. Though their political messages may sometimes hold

283
universal relevance, it is this concept of what it means to be Czech that is
among their foremost concerns.

Communication of Political Messages

So, the political messages of the films have been defined; as for how
these messages are communicated, it is generally through a combination of
editing, cinematography and sometimes the use of hyper-real or exaggerated
sound effects. These are generally cinematic techniques, rather than specifically
animation techniques, although certainly animation can allow for a greater
degree of manipulation, especially with regards to specific objects. For example,
Trnka makes the simple, functional red rubber ball in The Cybernetic Grandma
seem eminently attractive to the eye through editing the surrounding
technological landscape in a disjunctive, disorienting way and including optical
illusions like Necker cubes as part of the film's visual design. As such, the bright
red ball provides a point of visual stability within the mise-en-scène, meaning
that the viewer experiences it as something of a curative to the nausea and
dizziness engendered by the film's visual design and editing patterns. The
things in A Quiet Week in the House (the minced coils of newspaper; the
clockwork hen; the winged chair) seem uncategorisable and nameless due to
Švankmajer's canny exploitation of exposure length, meaning that these things
each trail an after-image after themselves, ensuring that they look less like
stable objects and more like ever-transforming and unstable phenomena. Barta
edits the “spring awakening” sequence in A Ballad about Green Wood to
undermine the viewer's stable perception of the forward march of linear clock
time. The river flows backwards, forwards, up and down; buds sprout; the earth
breathes. The use of a choppy editing rhythm with real-life footage interspersed
with moments of time-lapse photography gives rise to vitality affects in the
viewer, such that they feel immersed in simultaneously experienced moments of
time. Instead of writing an essay upon the beauty of the variegated rhythms of
natural time, Barta makes us experience them. Likewise, Otesánek's
movements are filmed through jerky primitive stop-motion, overlaid with crude,
hyper-real rustling noises on the soundtrack. As such, he/it viscerally feels
uncivilised and uncivilisable. Long before Otesánek is destroyed, we intuitively
know that he will not be assimilated into the network of consumer-capitalism of

284
modern-day Prague.

Three Methodologies
Three methodologies – thing theory; actor-network-theory;
rhythmanalysis – assisted in answering the question of how Czech animators
have encoded political ideas into the objects and things of their films. The use of
these methodologies within a framework of film theory has been innovatory
since it has considered the material objects and environments of the films
examined as the primary communicators/conduits of the works' political
message/s, rather than as sheer background material against which the more
important processes of dialogue and narration are played out. Moreover, these
methodologies have provided a model with which to approach the exegesis of
film texts that builds from micro, materially-grounded examples, rather than from
a top-down imposed ideological position, through which films are decoded.
Fundamentally however, this has been a work of film theory rather than
of animation studies. Often it has been aspects of editing or cinematography
that have been considered, rather than how a given puppet might have been
manipulated. There has been minimal attention given to specific animation
techniques. This has, in part, been due to the fact that this is a theoretical,
rather than a practical work. Additionally, lack of access to the sets and objects
themselves have limited my knowledge of the specifics of each animator's craft.
This has been a restriction, but not a weakness of the thesis. The work has
been concerned with how a viewer (unschooled in the pragmatics of animation)
might receive the political messages of the animators' given films and has not
been written from the perspective of a practitioner of animation. If this work is to
be classified, it would be as a theoretical work of film studies, rather than an
investigation into animation practice or the specificity of animation as a medium.
The three methodologies of thing theory, actor-network theory and
rhythmanalysis would prove equally illuminating if applied to the non-animated
films of the Czech New Wave, for example; although it is also true that thing
theory seems of particular value to the study of stop-motion animation since, as
a medium, it is almost exclusively concerned with real-life material objects and
things.
Indeed, thing theory justified a near-exclusive focus upon the objects and

285
things in the films that were considered. It also provided the impetus to consider
foremost the materiality of these objects and things before assigning them
symbolic interpretations, ensuring that any political readings grew out from
material reality, rather than the imposition of a predetermined ideology. Actor-
network-theory helped destabilise hierarchies of human and non-human within
the films and my own critical assumptions as a viewer. The concept of the
network consisting of actants and mediators, neither one of which is considered
a-priori to be more important than another, allowed for a politically engaged
reading of Švankmajer's work, since it destabilised the idea that the “political”
must be human-centric. Although I did not always think or write as an actor-
network-theorist (owing, in part, to a lack of access to sites of filming and
information about material conditions on set), the ideas of Bruno Latour enabled
me to explicate the political meanings of Švankmajer's work due to shared
metaphysical and ontological assumptions between the two thinkers.
Thing theory was still in play in the second chapter as I built upon Bill
Brown's distinction between things and objects to develop a language with
which to discuss those slippery, resistant things in Švankmajer's work that seem
to defy human categorisation. Rhythmanalysis, meanwhile, challenged any
naivety I might have held regarding the “neutrality” or non-ideological nature of
spaces and times as depicted in and structured by film. Henri Lefebvre's
Rhythmanalysis and The Production of Space were essential texts for the
development of the idea that Jiří Barta interrogates capitalist-bourgeois models
of time and space across his filmography. Rhythmanalysis also provided me, in
the fourth chapter, with the vocabulary to describe the city of Prague as a
network of intersecting currents, rituals and repetitions. In short, all three
methodologies exposed aspects of the films that might otherwise have been
neglected, taken for granted, or considered neutral/non-ideological, by other
critical approaches.

Previously Neglected Animators

As was mentioned in the introduction, most of the film-makers discussed
in this thesis (with the exception of Jan Švankmajer) have previously been the
subject of little to no English-language academic writing. Admittedly, one
potential weakness of this work is my own lack of fluency in the Czech language

286
meaning that, for lack of a translator, academic articles and books on the
animators that exist in Czech – especially Jiří Trnka – have remained unread.
Jiří Barta, meanwhile, has received minimal academic attention in either
language. Those academics who have written briefly upon Barta, such as Jack
Zipes or Peter Hames, restrict their allegorical readings to surface-level
symbolism. Both writers accurately characterise Barta's Rat Catcher as an
allegorical critique of late-communist consumerism, but I believe that my
analysis has developed this reading further by showing that it was not merely
consumerism, but the politically-coded spaces that engender consumerism, that
were being critiqued. Through being attentive to recurrent visual motifs in the
film, such as the spiral and the spire, while analysing the film's rhythms and
editing patterns, using the language of rhythmanalysis to add to the traditional
vocabulary of film editing, I not only illuminated the messages of the film, but
further illustrated how these messages were cinematically communicated. This
was my intention for all of the films discussed and while some films were more
amenable to my methods than others, these methods surpassed – at least in
analytic depth – the more descriptive overviews offered by many of those who
write on animation, such as Giannalberto Bendazzi, Andrew Osmond or
Maureen Furniss, even if this choice of depth over breadth of enquiry resulted in
the neglect of several important Slovak animators from my study.
As Ewa Mazierska noted in her 2010 review of the second edition of
Peter Hames' The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy: 'Despite the fact
that, in its heyday during the 1960s, films made in the Barrandov studio marked
the high point of European cinema's history, and that even now Czech and
Slovak cinema is thriving, this is not reflected in the quantity of work published
in this area.'641 This thesis has, in its own modest way, addressed this lack. As
such, it makes a strong contribution to Czech film studies, with a focus upon
animation, even while it remains limited in its application to animation studies or
political theory.

A Materialist Turn
Academics such as Hames, Michael O'Pray and František Dryje have, in
641
Ewa Mazierska, 'The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy. Second edition. Directors'
Cuts by Peter Hames', The Slavonic and East European Review, 88 (October 2010), 734-736
(p.735).

287
the aforementioned volume by Hames, situated Švankmajer's work within its
Surrealist/mannerist context, illuminating Švankmajer’s interactions with and
responses to the Czech Surrealist Group. The observation made by Vratislav
Effenberger, commenting upon Švankmajer's Jabberwocky, provides a self-
contained micro example of the kind of materialist reading I have attempted to
perform more broadly upon the artist's filmography:

It is only when the symbol can preserve its original unclouded

freshness and its happy lack of restraint that the imagery becomes a
great bestower of associative perception […] An old kitchen stove,
without losing its objective importance, is at the same time a hell full
of sinful souls […] It is not only a comparison with hell; in its everyday
use it is a hellish object itself.642

An essential aspect of this work has been to build my symbolic analysis from
the material objects themselves, rather than simply translating these filmed
objects into abstract symbols, as though the objects were mere place-holders
for meaning. This has followed in the footsteps of such thing theorists as Bill
Brown and Elaine Freedgood, yet while these writers have primarily focused
upon the literary object (with a couple of exceptions made by Brown for Toy
Story and Spike Lee's Bamboozled)643 my own writing has focused upon the
cinematic object.
While this thesis makes academic headway into the comparatively under-
explored areas of Czech cinema and animation studies more generally, it
cannot be said to propose any new, over-riding, grand theory with which one
might approach the analysis of films. The similarities between the three
materialist methodologies with which I chose to work – thing theory; actor-
network-theory; rhythmanalysis – have been mapped out in the introduction
and, it is hoped, the fourth chapter has illustrated how each of these theories
can work in dialogue with one another.
It has been demonstrated that all three methodologies can be made of
service in the close analysis of film and that the materialist turn in film studies
need not be restricted to more “traditional” phenomenological approaches. I
contend that thing theory is more appropriately used in the analysis of stop-

642
Effenberger, in Dryje, in Hames, Dark Alchemy, p.159 (ellipses own).
643
Bill Brown, 'How to Do Things with Things (A Toy Story)', Critical Inquiry, 24.4 (summer 1998),
935-964 and Brown, 'Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny', 2006.

288
motion films if only because of the sheer amount of physical stuff on display
within the medium. However, it would be interesting to see film historians and
theoreticians consider single objects within live-action films with the kind of
scrutiny that I have attempted to apply to the objects in the animated films I
have considered here. Precisely what model of radiator does the Lady in the
Radiator live within in David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977)? Were the furnishings
in Alex's bedroom in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) made
specifically for the film, or were they pre-made and purchased, or did they even
belong to a previous owner? Such enquiries would follow from A.N.T.'s edict
that the researcher must give attention to all actants, no matter how banal or
incidental they might seem. Hollie Price, an academic based at Queen Mary, is
currently producing work in this vein such as her 2010 publication 'Visconti’s
Curtains: Framing Risorgimento Realities in 'The Leopard'' or her unpublished
'Furnishing 1940s Films Noir: Disillusion and the Armchair' (2011); indeed, film
scholars with an interest in domestic interiors will often investigate the social
history of objects within the home. University College London's 'Autopsies
Project', for example, examines obsolete objects in films and literature, as well
as found objects in the possession of the student researchers. 644 As such, this
thesis can be situated within an emergent movement in film studies that focuses
upon material culture within a historical and culture context (in the example of
this thesis, Czechoslovakia/The Czech Republic from 1946 to today).
Although A.N.T. may prove most appropriate for use in those studies in
which a researcher has access to ground-level production, as in Anita Lam's
Making Crime Television: Producing Entertaining Representations of Crime for
Television Broadcast (2013), its use in this study has illuminated political ideas
implicit in Švankmajer's work and addressed most comprehensibly in his 1990
manifesto To Renounce the Leading Role. Giving focus to Švankmajer's critique
of anthropocentrism reveals a later work like Conspirators of Pleasure to be the
fulfilment of the decentred networks of desire first glimpsed in A Games with
Stones, The Flat, A Quiet Week in the House or Picnic with Weissmann. While
in these shorter works, human actors are either not present or are in direct
conflict with non-human actors, in Conspirators of Pleasure non-human and

644
'Autopsies Research Group' (University College London: Autopsies Project, 2011)
<http://www.autopsiesgroup.com/> [accessed 01 June 2015].

289
human actors become intertwined and inseparable in the creation of
masturbation machines.
Rhythmanalysis, meanwhile, can provide a poetic augmentation to
current analyses of editing patterns. Previous works of rhythmanalysis, or those
that use the ideas of Henri Lefebvre more broadly, tend to simply consider the
material city as experienced at the level of the street, unmediated. Of course,
one might explicate the rhythms of Berlin without having to even consider Wim
Wenders' Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987), but film is able to
probe areas of a city that the pedestrian, city-planner, citizen or tourist may be
unable to reach. Moreover, films can provide that exquisite balance between
distance and immersion that Lefebvre considers necessary for rhythmanalysis
to work. Such analysis need not be political, but due to the way in which time
and space are regularly exploited in the name of political power, or help
structure and uphold political hegemonic, it is likely that politics will often be a
contributing factor to any work within this area. In general, this thesis
demonstrates that film-making can be political even without the involvement of
human actors on screen and, moreover, that politics need not always be
centred upon the human. A political reading of a film can be rooted in the
objects within a scene that might otherwise appear non-political.

A Silent Language
The central argument of my thesis has been that the political messages
of Czech animations are not “spoken”, in the sense of being conveyed through
dialogue or voice-over, but are instead transmitted via non-human actors.
At the end of the study, it is perhaps this very silence that proves most
articulate. The SS Officer of Jiří Trnka's Springman and the SS may attempt to
arrest innocent objects as political dissidents, forcing upon them ideological
readings; but ironically, it is the sheer springiness of the Springman's springs –
their essential material reality – that enables his defeat. Likewise, in The
Cybernetic Grandma, the silent, dependable, eyeline-guiding red ball is placed
in eloquent contrast against the chattering banality of the technological robot-
grandma hybrid. The gloved hand and television set in The Hand perform a
flurry of gestural and symbolic significations, but neither possesses the simple,
utilitarian beauty of the artist's flower pots. Likewise, in Švankmajer's The Flat,

290
A Quiet Week in the House and Naturae Historia, it is the tendency of humans
to attempt to impose linguistic categorisations upon mute things, trying to tie
down abject and unspeakable stuff, that proves their undoing. That same
anthropocentric desire for structured meaning comes under attack in Barta's
filmography, with clock time shown to be hopelessly reductive in comparison to
the ecstatic rhythms of natural time in A Ballad about Green Wood. The citizens
of Rat Catcher secure their own demise through their greedy tendency to
translate everything into monetary value, as pre-conditioned by the brutalising
design of their city. In the fourth chapter, film-makers like Barta and Švankmajer
seem to be expressing their dismay at a constant re-articulation of certain
national stories and myths for the benefit of tourists flooding to a newly
Europeanised Prague.
In short, the materialist methodologies of thing theory, actor-network-
theory and rhythmanalysis have led to a certain valorisation of the material
world over the semiotic world – a valorisation present in the work of the film-
makers themselves, who have sought to use objects, not words, to express
their meanings. These meanings and the means of their communication have
been illuminated by the use of thing theory, actor-network theory and
rhythmanalysis, providing an innovative approach to a work of film studies
concerned with Czech national identity.

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Appendix (illustrations)
Figure 1:

(The Hand/Ruka, Jiří Trnka, 1965)

The stills above depict four

sequential gestural attitudes of the
hand: courtesy, menace, desire,
threat.

292
Figure 2:

(Kybernetická Babicka/The Cybernetic Grandma, Jiří Trnka, 1962)

The simple, playful, reliable red ball helps the viewer and child to navigate the disorienting and
abstracted technological interiors of the cinematic space. The ball acts as a locus of ontological
and emotional stability.

293
Figure 3:

(Dimensions of Dialogue/Možnosti dialogu, Jan Švankmajer, 1982)

Two Arcimboldoesque networks of actants fail to communicate.

Figure 4:

(Tichý týden v dome/A Quiet Week in the House, Jan Švankmajer,

1969)

Juddering indeterminate things rather than stable, categorisable

objects.

294
Figure 5:

(A Ballad About Green Wood/Balada o zeleném dřevu, Jiří Barta, 1983)

The eruption of spring in Green Wood is an ecstatic panoply of rhythms experienced

non-sequentially. The world spins and the ground heaves with innumerable actants
surging, flowing, thrusting and thawing.

Figure 6:

(The Design/Projekt, Jiří Barta, 1981)

The tools of the designer and his ideological world-view predetermine the
design and, thus, material reality. The way in which the diagram shapes
reality is shown by placing the inhabitants within the numerically ruled
design, to which they are forced to live in accordance.

295
Figure 7:

(Rat Catcher/Krysař, Jiří Barta, 1986)

The town of Hamelin is composed of engorged

phallic spires and anal regressive spirals that
both embody and maintain the arrogance and
greed of the town's inhabitants.

Figure 8:

(Surviving Life: Theory and Practice/Přežít svůj život, Jan

Švankmajer, 2010)

The flattened and monochrome city of Prague – its depths

inaccessible.
296
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319
Filmography

A Ballad about Green Wood (Balada o zeleném drevu), dir. by Jiří Barta
(KimStim, 1983) [on DVD]

A Game with Stones (Hra s kameny), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (B.F.I., 1965) [on
DVD]

A Little Speckle-Ball (Míček Flíček), dir. by Hermína Týrlová (distributor

unknown, 1955) [on YouTube]

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Sen noci svatojanske), dir. by Jiří Trnka (Ustredni
Pujcovna Filmu, 1959) [live B.F.I. screening]

A Quiet Week in the House (Tichý týden v dome), dir. by Jan Švankmajer
(B.F.I., 1969) [on DVD]

Alice or Something From Alice (Něco z Alenky), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (First
Run Features/B.F.I., 1988) [on DVD]

Castle of Otranto (Otrantský zámek), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (B.F.I., 1977) [on
DVD]

Conspirators of Pleasure (Spiklenci slasti), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (Zeitgeist

Films/New Wave Films, 1996) [on DVD]

Cook, Mug, Cook! (Domečku, vař!), dir. by Jiří Barta (distributor unknown, 2007)
[on YouTube]

Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (Konec stalinismu v Cechách), dir. by Jan

Švankmajer (First Run Features/B.F.I., 1991) [on DVD]

Disc Jockey (Diskzokej), dir. by Jiří Barta (KimStim, 1980) [on DVD]

Down to the Cellar (Do pivnice), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (International Film
Exchange/B.F.I., 1983) [on DVD]

Et Cetera, dir. by Jan Švankmajer (B.F.I., 1966) [on DVD]

Faust or The Lesson of Faust (Lekce Faust), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (Athanor,
1994) [on VHS]

Flora, dir. by Jan Švankmajer (M.T.V./B.F.I., 1989) [on DVD]

Food (Jídlo), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (Zeitgeist Films/B.F.I., 1992) [on DVD]

Historia Naturae ~ Suite (Historia Naturae ~ Suita), dir. by Jan Švankmajer

(B.F.I., 1967) [on DVD]

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Home (Dom), dir. by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica (distributor unknown,
1958) [on YouTube]

Jabberwocky, or Straw Hubert's Clothes (Žvahlav aneb šatičky Slaměného

Huberta), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (STM Productions/B.F.I., 1971) [on DVD]

Knot in the Handkerchief (Uzel na kapesníku), dir. by Hermína Týrlová

(distributor unknown, 1958) [on YouTube]

Little Otik (Otesánek), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (Athanor, 2000) [on VHS]

Meat Love (Zamilované Maso), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (M.T.V./B.F.I., 1988) [on
DVD]

Old Czech Legends (Staré Ceske povesti), dir. by Jiří Trnka (distributor
unknown, 1953) [unseen]

One Night in One City (Jedné noci v jednom městě), dir. by Jan Balej, and Ivan
Arsenjev (Falcon, 2007) [DVD]

Picnic with Weissmann (Picknick mit Weissman), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (B.F.I.,
1968) [on DVD]

Portrait of the Man in the Street (Portret), dir. by Pavel Koutský (distributor
unknown, 1989) [on YouTube]

Prince Bayaya (Bajaja), dir. by Jiří Trnka (Státní Pujcovna Filmu, 1950) [on
YouTube]

Rat Catcher/The Piped Piper of Hamelin (Krysař), dir. by Jiří Barta (Ustredni
Pujcovna Filmu/KimStim, 1986) [on DVD]

Revolution in Toyland (Vzpoura Hracek), dir. by Frantisek Sádek, and Hermína

Týrlová (distributor unknown, 1946) [on YouTube]

Riddles for a Candy (Hadanky za bonbon) dir. by Jiří Barta (KimStim, 1978) [on
DVD]

Springman and the SS (Pérák a SS), dir. by Jiří Trnka (distributor unknown,
1946) [on Youtube]

Surviving Life: Theory and Practice (Přežít svůj život), dir. by Jan Švankmajer
(Bontonfilm/New Wave Films, 2010) [on DVD]

The Chimeras of Švankmajer (Les Chimères des Švankmajer), dir. by Betrand

Schmitt and Michel Leclerc (France 2, TV 10 Angers, Canal 8 Le Mans and 24
Images, 2001) [on DVD].

The Club of the Laid-Off (Klub odložených), dir. by Jiří Barta (Ustredni Pujcovna
Film/KimStim, 1989) [on DVD]

321
The Cybernetic Grandma (Kybernetická Babicka), dir. by Jiří Trnka (distributor
unknown, 1962) [on Vimeo]

The Czech Year (Špalíček), dir. by Jiří Trnka (Krátký Film Praha, 1947) [unseen]

The Day of Reckoning (Den odplaty), dir. by Hermína Týrlová (distributor

unknown, 1960) [on YouTube]

The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (Konec Stalinismu y Čechách), dir. by Jan

Švankmajer (First Run Features/B.F.I., 1990) [on DVD]

The Design (Projekt), dir. by Jiří Barta (KimStim, 1981) [on DVD]

The Devil's Mill (Certuv mlýn), dir. by Jiří Trnka (distributor unknown, 1949) [on
YouTube]

The Flat (Byt), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (B.F.I., 1968) [on DVD]

The Hand (Ruka), dir. by Jiří Trnka (Image Entertainment, 1965) [on DVD]

The Last Theft (Poslední lup), dir. by Jiří Barta (KimStim, 1987-1988) [on DVD]

The Merry Circus (Cirkus Veselý), dir. by Jiří Trnka (Image Entertainment, 1951)
[on DVD]

The Vanished World of Gloves (Zanikly svet rukavic), dir. by Jiří Barta (KimStim,
1982) [on DVD]

Tram (Tramvaj), dir. by Michaela Pavlátová (undistributed, 2012) [On YouTube]

Virile Games (Muzné hry), dir. by Jan Švankmajer (B.F.I., 1988) [on DVD]

322