Remembering the Neoliberal Turn. Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989

0576294 - ÚSD 2024 RIV GB eng M - Monography Chapter
Pehe, Veronika
Privatization Comedies as Media of Memory of the Czech(oslovak) Economic Transformation.
Remembering the Neoliberal Turn. Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989. London: Routledge, 2024 - (Pehe, V.; Wawrzyniak, J.), s. 201-216. European Remembrance and Solidarity. ISBN 978-1-032-55333-7
EU Projects: European Commission(XE) 749475 - ATFM
Institutional support: RVO:68378114
Keywords : movies * privatization * memory
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

This chapter makes a case for reading Czech feature films from the 1990s as ‘media of memory’ that continue to inform the imaginaries of the early neoliberal transformation in Czech culture. Based on a corpus of popular films that have come to be known as ‘privatization comedies’, the chapter analyses the myths these films have helped to sustain about the introduction of capitalism in Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic. The analysis focuses on their most significant economic tropes, especially the portrayal of private enterprise and its gender dimension. It argues that the films of the 1990s form one part of a larger memory mosaic and their emphasis on ordinary people and their individual struggles to grasp the rules of the market provides a counterpoint to both the negative memory promulgated in the Czech public sphere, which views the 1990s as a period of large-scale economic crime, and to the facile pop culture memory of that decade as a period of laughable oddities.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0345864