The Czech right wing uses porn images and vulgar agression against old people to try to win the forthcoming general election

25. 4. 2010 / Jan Čulík

Czech feature film director Petr Zelenka has used two (youngish) Czech popular actors Marta Issová and Jiří Mádl to make a four minute YouTube clip in which they crudely mock Czech old people and people living in the countryside for allegedly being left-wing voters. The clip is a slavish copy of a US pro-Obama election video by Sarah Silverman, lifting even sections of Silverman's monologe; but while Silverman's video is witty, humane and self-ironic, Zelenka's Czech version is crude, vulgar and agressive.

The video appeals to young people to go and visit their geriatric relatives in the countryside to persuade them to vote for the right wing in the Czech forthcoming general election. If the old people refuse to do so, the youngster should tell them that they won't visit them again, and who knows, next time they come for a visit, the oldies "might be dead" (picture of a tombstone).

Several groups mocking and attacking old people have recently been formed on Facebook in the Czech Republic and they have a wide following. Since the groups communicate in Czech, the moderators on Facebook are obviously totally unaware that members of these groups are publishing hate speech and are mocking a large group of citizens in the Czech Republic.

Czech film director Zelenka has evidently decided to use the strong negative emotions, currently felt by many young people in the Czech Republic towards old age pensioners to ride on the crest of this "anti-old people" wave of resentiment in order to engage their interest.

Zelenka's clip mocks old people for being stupid and irresponsible. The two young actors (who had hardly experienced communism) explain to the old people in highly simplified terms how horrible communism was and accuse the old people and those individuals living in the countryside for "voting for left wing parties" who will destroy the country. The clip contains crude right wing propaganda.

The visual icon of the old people in the clip is a set of false teeth, which is repeatedly used in the clip for mocking the older generation. The old people are also visually associated with the picture of the Austrian rapist Fritzl.

The video contains a number of other crude and agressive "jokes", designed apparently to appeal to the younger generation. In one of them, the name of the Czech writer Milan Kundera (distantly reminiscent of the Czech version of the world "c.nt") is visually associated with an explicit image of female genital organs. (See the clip at 1'25" for the explicitly sexual image.)

At the end of the clip, Zelenka promises his viewers that if they go into the countryside and persuade their stupid geriatric relatives to vote right wing in the forthcoming Czech general election, the clip makers will reward them by showing them a "really explicit animal porn video with a female Italian MP and an eel".

In spite of repeated requests, YouTube has not acted and has not taken this offensive video down. On the contrary, YouTube editors have taken down videows which have criticised Zelenka's clip as being fascits, associating the neo-fascist commentary of the video with Nazi images of terrorising old people.

The Zelenka video has been to date seen on YouTube by some 200 000 individuals and has provoked a major controversy in the Czech Republic. A large number of people have been disgusted by the video, but there is a large following of mostly young people who like the video. The have formed a Facebook group to support the video and the ideas contained within it.

"Antigerontismus" - staří lidé v české společnosti | Mádl, Issová, Zelenka
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Obsah vydání | Pondělí 2.8. 2010