"Persuade the Old Hag!": De-territorialised culture does not exist

8. 5. 2010 / Jan Čulík

Certainly in countries and communities which used non-globalised languages. I would argue that even today, communities are still strongly defined by their language and their cultures exist more or less in isolation. This is at least my own experience. What do you people know about what makes people tick in the Czech Republic, for instance? As the Russian specialists present here know, speakers of English do not have a proper awareness of what is happening in other language cultural areas. In fact, while there seem to be some cross-cultural influences, the filters which are used in each culture seem totally dependent on national, local customs and prejudices. These are usually defined strictly within a concrete language area. These customs and prejudices have been created throughout many decades and when taken together, they form strong cultural attitudes, which are extremely resilient.

It is fascinating to see that only those elements from other cultures are taken up in a given culture which are acceptable and/or conform to the set of values prevalent in the recipient culture. Remarkably, this happens even in the internet age, where one would think that cultural information percolates freely regardless of borders. It isn't so -- there are strong cultural boundaries, even in the internet, and they usually coincide with linguistic borders.

I will look more closely at an example of such one-sided, cultural cross-fertilization from the current Czech Republic. I feel this is a remarkable example of cultural transfer where only those features which were required by the prevailing local conditions were taken over by the local culture, from a foreign work. I believe it proves my point.

But before I do so, let me make voice some more general doubts. It is quite understandable that the English speakers talk about de-territorialised culture; the English speaking world on the internet is vast. But this doesn't mean that there are not other, quite separate cultural areas on the net, all of which are determined by the closely defined language community. What do we know, for instance, about the Portugese culture on the internet in Latin America? What do we know about the internet culture in China? In Russia?

My daughter, a graduate of Russian and French from Oxford University, now lives and works in St. Petersburg. Even the Russian internet is a separate world of its own. This is what she has to say about (the non-existence of) "de-territorialised culture" in contemporary Russia:

The fact that there each non-English language culture has a parallel discourse which is not accessible to those who do not speak a local language is obvious to anyone who visits an English language bookshop in Prague. There you can see works testifying to the fall of communism twenty years ago, there are shelves full of respectful biographies of Václav Havel, etc. etc. In fact, if you talk to anyone in the street in Prague about Havel, you will find that many people regard him as thoroughly discredited or, at least irrelevant for the contemporary Czech Republic. The Czech Republic doesn't live with Slavenka Drakulic or the Museum of Communism these days -- these are artefacts, put up purely for tourist consumption. The real cultural life goes on the inside, totally invisible to the outsiders. It highly controversial, shocking, stimulating. But it doesn't for a part of what the English speakers see as "de-territorialised culture".

I was first alerted to the existence of a double, parallel discourse related to the non-English speaking countries, about five years ago in Olympia in Greece, when I attended an American-sponsored seminar for gifted postgraduates from the world's conflict areas. A number of young participants from the countries of former Yugoslavia pointed out to me that there is a literature on the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s is English, and then a parallel literature in Serbo-Croatian, and Slovenian, which corrects the various mistakes and inaccuracies in the English-language works about Yugoslavia. But, it was pointed out to me, that these two discourses, the local one and the international, English language one, never meet, because the authors of the monographs written in English usually do not know the local languages and so they do not have any knowledge of the "other" discourse in the local vernacular.

The situation is exactly the same in countries such as the Czech Republic. No one in the outside world follows what is going on in these countries. The cultural achievements and/or political developments of these countries remain hidden. No one cares, there is no cross-fertilisation. All cultural traffic goes one-way, from the West to the East. Have you ever hear a name of a contemporary Czech rock-singer, for instance? Is this de-territorialised culture? John Tomlinson was telling us here yesterday that British television produces an English remake of the Swedish detective series about Kurt Wallander. How deterritorialised is that?

And it works the other way about as well. The Czechs talk only amongst themselves. The internet is supposed to be a global phenomenon, isn't it? Well, it isn't in the Czech Republic. The Czechs, remarkably talk about "the Czech internet", which seems to be a contradiction in terms, since the concept of the internet is supposed to be borderless? The Russians talk about the "Russian internet" -- and the English speakers shake their heads. Surely the internet is global, international...?

There is a election campaign going on in the Czech Republic, as we speak, and various manipulative means are being used. As an example to prove my point, I want you to have a closer look at an electioneering film clip, recently made and published on YouTube by the Petr Zelenka. Zelenka is a well-known feature film maker in the Czech Republic.

The clip is ZDE

The translation:

Now, what is remarkable about this clip is that it was almost 80 per cent copied from a US pro-Obama election clip, made by the American comedian Sarah Silverman. On the face of it, this seems to be a convincing example of deterritorialised culture: What Sarah Silverman made in the United States, was taken up by people in the Czech Republic. But is that really so? Have a look at the Silverman clip and compare it with its Czech copy. HERE

The American clip seems to me humane, self-ironic and affirmative. It respects human dignity.

Although the Czech clip seems to mimic it fairly slavishly, only those features are admitted in the Czech cultural environment, which bear significance within it. Other features are modified and enhanced. I feel it is an extremely interesting exercise to compare the two "texts".

Before we start, a little information about the context is needed. As Britské listy, a Czech-language cultural and political daily has pointed out - and the issue was then taken up by the Czech mainstream media - due to various cultural and social factors, there seems to be a huge generational gap in contemporary Czech society. The reasons for this may be various. One of them may be that Czech parents usually bring up their children in a fairly authoritative manner, so there is often little empathy between children and parents. There seem to be little contact between generations. The feeling of alienation between generations may be caused partially by the fact that older people have experienced from communism which younger people tend to despise. In their view, their own world, the one that exists now, is the best possible world.

The hangs up and prejudices of the younger generation in the smaller, non-English speaking cultures, are disseminated and greatly enhanced on internet social networks. Incidentally, here is yet another example of the non-existence of de-territorialised culture and of the existence of totally isolated parallel discourses. The discourse on Western social networks in small, generally "inaccessible" languages often contain gross infringements of decency and ethics, but these offences are not policed. As has been documented, in the Czech Republic, Wikipedia, Facebook and other social networking sites have developed clannish, mafia-like structures of local supervisors who push through their own political interests and block - not gross indecency or violence, but political views which differ from their own, and people whom the supervising clan regard as "part of our own mafia".

Britské listy has pointed to the fact that there is large group of Czech young people on Facebook who express hate against old people. The after it has been taken up by the mainstream media, has provoked a considerable amount of interest and soul searching. The hatred of young Czechs, felt towards the older generation now seems to be taken as a matter of fact.

The film director Petr Zelenka is a well-known author of filmatic mystifications. He is also a well-known right winger. If we can trust his statements in the Czech media, made over the past two weeks or so, the "Persuade the old woman" clip is not a mystification, though. He apparently genuinely fears the victory of the Czech left wing in the forthcoming election and has decided to act against it.

Let us leave aside whether his clip can be successful. In order to appeal to the younger generation as a whole, it must be fairly basic and provocative. It must be seen as breaking taboos and at the same time it must not be too intellectually demanding. These pre-requisites of course mean that the impact of the clip will be fairly counterproductive. The clip is just preaching to the converted - to the inveterate, semi-fascist right winger. More than 575 000 people have seen the clip on YouTube and many of them have been scandalised by it. Lots of people have said that the clip has persuaded them to vote for the left wing, even for the communist party. Some people have even speculated that the clip might be a left-wing provocation. This has incidentally been dismissed by most commentators? if nothing else, the actors featured in the clip are well-known right-wingers.

But let's leave all this aside. What is particularly relevant for the purpose of this conference, is, though, the deliberate use of the hatred directed towards old people as an important ingredient of the mix which the director uses to ingratiate himself to the Czech young people. The breaking of social, ethical and moral taboos has been used for manipulative purposes.

It has to be admitted that a critical attitude towards older people is latently present even in the original American pre-election clip; although Sarah Silverman presents her Jewish relatives who live in Florida in a fairly loving light. The relatives may be slightly confused, but they are still depicted quite lovingly in the American clip. There is none of the open disgust, disseminated by the Czech clip, which implies that old people are stupid, decrepit, cannot be trusted, are obnoxious and we will all give a sigh of relief when they are dead.

Bohumil Kartous, writing in Britské listy has listed the some characteristic features of the Czech clip. Notice how they differ from the American original. The clip has been fully adjusted to local Czech cultural requirements.

Kartous points out to the fact that the Zelenka clip is a complicated semantic conglomerate, made up of several layers. The impact of the clip is based on the interplay of the individual layers. The impact of the clip is complex, in spite of the fact that the commentary of the clip is extremely banal.

The following factors are at play:

- The message is communicated by two well-known young popular culture celebrities

- The clip uses a highly emphatic, personally persuasive approach of the speakers to the viewer

- There are frequent personal appeals to the viewer, these are "lightened" by elements of irony and humour. At the same time, the message is aimed to wake up the viewer.

- The clip is deliberately "different", so it stands out in comparison with normal, anodyne, political advertising.

- The sofa scene implies that the setting is casual: the message must be taken seriously exactly because it is not communicated in an official way.

- the accompanying images and graphic effects are a part of the contemporary clip culture, which fragments reality and creates the impression that this is the real "in" approach.

- some elements of the clip deliberately break ethical taboos. The aim is to make the clip feel "original" and "innovative", as an attempt "to provoke a debate"

The kitsch vulgarity and infantility, which is the source of energy of the clip seems more important than the verbal message, which is banal and factually incorrect.

What are the differences between this and the Silverman clip?

In spite of the fact that Sarah Silverman is well-known as a controversial comedian in the US, the pro-Obama clip does not break ethical standards. It is friendly, humorous, and self-ironic. There is maybe a hint of a threat when Silverman implies at the end, that the old relatives might die before the young ones come to visit. This hint is taken up and brutally enhanced in the Czech version.

Much more than the US clip, the Czech clip seems to play to local conditions, by highlighting aggression, mockery and brutality. On the whole it is an interesting example of how cultural cross-fertilisation works -- only those external influences are allowed in the receiving culture which are present within it in the first place already.