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A postmodern critique of relationships and gender roles in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness

in Current Issue/Reviews

by Karin Nestešová 

Even if you are not a regular cinemagoer, chances are you have heard of the 2022 movie Triangle of Sadness which has been a hit not only in the European cinemas but also at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival where it has won the Palme d’Or award. This most recent satirical black comedy film written and directed by the Swedish director Ruben Östlund, whose previous movies Force Majeure (2014) and The Square (2017) have also been critically acclaimed, deals with the themes of beauty standards, gender stereotypes, and predominantly social and class inequalities. Although to some, the satirical poke at the wealthy’s incompetence to survive without reliance on their wealth and the lower- and working-class service workers can seem too obvious, the reversal of hierarchy and social roles in the third act of the film shows how even in a situation, where survival is at the top of the priority list, rather than creating an egalitarian system, the community replicates the capitalistic patterns of the default society. However, perhaps the most prominent way the themes of class and social hierarchy are explored in the movie is through the relationship of the two main characters, Carl and Yaya, reflecting how modern relationships, gender, and capitalism are closely intertwined. This portrayal of post-modern relationships mirrors the capitalistic patterns of society and the inequalities that Östlund criticizes through the wealthy guests’ interaction with the middle- and lower-class crew. 

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Fighting the Good Fight: Review of Netflix’s Grand Army

in Current Issue/Reviews

by Linda Krajčovičová

“We’re still here”. “I need to do something”. “I’m marching into a battle.” The intro of Grand Army’s first episode immediately hints that the show will attempt to address more serious issues than might be expected from a TV show about teenagers. The very first scene, showing Joey, one of the protagonists, helping her best friend take a condom out of her body, only supports the argument that the series is there to make people uncomfortable by pushing boundaries and talking about things that others avoid. 

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Victoria Hislop: The Island. A Beach Book or a Source of Societal Questioning?

in Current Issue/Reviews/Views

by Eve Filée

“A society is defined by what it rejects”, asserted Michel Foucault. This sentence is perfectly illustrated in the case of Spinalonga, a Greek island located east of the Cretan coast of Elounda. This small island of barely eight hectares has become the main scene of Victoria Hislop’s novel entitled “the Island”. The British author’s novel has been a bestseller since its publication in 2005, and two years later has won the Newcomer of the Year award and was shortlisted as the Book of the Year at the 2007 British Book Awards. This paper aims first to analyze Victoria Hislop’s writing style and the way in which she develops her plot, and secondly, the manner in which The Island leads the reader to ruminate questions of the societal organization through subjects of marginality and social exclusion. Drawing on theories of famous philosophers, we will conduct a discussion on the important themes addressed by the British author and compare them with our recent actuality. Indeed, Victoria Hislop’s novel is reminiscent of the pandemic from which we have just emerged. Themes such as epidemics, quarantines, civil, public and media responsibilities have also lived, after COVID-19, at the heart of our daily lives. Let us explore together how this humble book goes beyond simple holiday reading by turning itself into a mirror that reflects society in a perhaps unflattering way.

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The Prague Orgy:
An American Writer’s Take on Communist Czechoslovakia

in Current Issue/Reviews

by Bryan Felber

“What good is socialism if when I want to nobody will fuck me?” (Prague Orgy 37). Biting one-liners like this are packed tight into the novella, The Prague Orgy, penned by the irreverent yet reputable Jewish American writer, Philip Roth. The book, which has recently been adapted for the screen by Czech filmmaker Irena Pavlásková, is inspired by the real-life visits Roth made to Prague during the mid-70s. In the fiction, the essence of his many yearly visits is distilled into a single dramatic journey behind the Iron Curtain where Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s alter ego, is attempting to rescue the unpublished manuscripts of a dead Yiddish writer from the clutches of its maniacal keeper, Olga Sisovska, and past the ever-looming surveillance of the communist authorities. In real-life, Roth was meeting with writers like Ivan Klíma, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Ludvík Vaculík, and Karol Sidon, compiling the works of these Czech dissident writers to be published in America. So the idea of saving literary talent from obscurity was an actual feat Roth successfully performed, but his visits did not leave him unscathed.

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Heartstopper: Balancing Teen Entertainment with Education

in Current Issue/Reviews

by Tereza Šišková

With all the criticisms TV shows for young children and teenagers often receive from experts and the public for being too violent, sexual, or affirming stereotypes, the television and new streaming platforms which profit from teen audiences often get labelled as a social evil. Scalvini, in his analysis of the controversial show 13 Reasons Why, highlights the responsibility producers have to consider potential harms and heed warnings from counsellors. Being critical of what sort of shows teens are watching is not unwarranted. Recent inquiry by the British Film Institute shows children and teens see TV as an extension of their education and that it continues to play an important role in their lives for the “shared viewing experience.” This clearly indicates that teen shows are not mere entertainment, but they often form a crucial part in adolescent development. Therefore, since teen audiences expect to learn more about how things work in society and inter-personal relationships through watching shows, it stands to reason the shows produced for them should deliver on that premise. In this article, I present the queer high school drama Heartstopper as an example of a teen show that incorporates positively reinforcing important social skills into its narrative – particularly in the realms of finding one’s identity and building friendships.

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Gender Roles in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

in Reviews/Views

by Arya Dixit

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (dir. Jacques Demy), was met with mixed reviews when the film premiered in 1964, during the French New Wave movement, but has steadily grown in both popularity and appreciation for its timeless, artistic vision. In Umbrellas, Demy infuses his cinematography with a fairy-tale-like quality. The musical numbers, bold use of colors, and choreographed movements make the visuals and storytelling dream-like. Fairy tales come with stereotypes: the audience expects happy endings, an other-worldly, pure romance, a knight in shining armor who wins over the girl he loves, and the girl who slowly grows to love him back. Similarly, in Hollywood cinema, as Backes states: “everything was larger than life. From the large scale sets, soaring visuals, and grandiose love that always ended with everything in its place”. Demy manages to break almost all of these preconceived notions of fairy-tale (and Hollywood rom-com) cinema and brings to light the inherent class structures, gender roles and expectations, and the reality of romance without losing the brilliancy and charm of a dreamy world. He carefully uses settings, colors, and dialogue to work together and illustrate the complexities of society, especially when gender norms come into play.

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Happily Ever After?

in Reviews/Views

by Alena Gašparovičová

And they lived happily ever after is undoubtedly a well-known phrase that can be found at the end of many a romantic fairy tale. It rounds up the story and suggests that after a period full of struggle, the protagonist(s) are finally getting to a period of peace, prosperity and marital bliss. 

Shared by Willgard under Pixabay License via pixabay.com

The conception that marriage is a state of ideal bliss that is perpetuated in romantic fairy tales is not without issues. The phrase and they lived happily ever after suggests that with marriage, all the problems that the protagonists have faced in the course of the story will come to an end, and no new problems will arise up until they die. The aim of this paper is to discuss the theme of marriage in Naomi Novik’s novel Spinning Silver, focusing on the main female protagonist, Miryem, to show how the author demonstrates that marriage does not necessarily mean that one will live happily ever after. 

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Motherhood Is a Brutal Experience. Why Shouldn’t You Be a Beast? Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch

in Reviews

by Blanka Šustrová

 

The image of motherhood we are being served through the media, be it in advertisements or film, depicting always happy, fresh looking, never tired young mothers with perfect bodies who feel no other thing whatsoever but pure love for their babies and seem to be on top of every task that motherhood brings is often a derision of the real experience and may bring feelings of insufficiency in mothers and primary carers. If you would like to read about motherhood from a very different point of view, a very well-crafted one that goes from satirical and darkly funny to magical realism to absurd to horror and leaves you baffled in the end, try Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch. Keep Reading

Once Upon a Modern Time: Fairy Tales as a Way to Address Modern Issues

in Reviews

by Alena Gašparovičová

Shared by creatifrankenstein under Pixabay License via pixabay.com

 

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young woman in a desperate situation and in need of a prince to rescue her. However, she is the protagonist of a different story. Despite the name of the famous fairy-tale character Cinderella in the title of the book, Laura Lane’s and Ellen Haun’s Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling: And Other Feminist Fairy Tales offers adaptations of a range of well-known traditional fairy tales. The authors use the familiarity of the fairy-tale settings and characters and mould them into a new form. Aimed at a more mature audience, these stories not only present self-sufficient female characters who do not need any man to save them, they also address issues like class, ethnicity and gender identity that resonate through today’s society. All of that is packaged in the form of a fairy-tale rewriting in a humorous and parodic manner. This article offers a review of the collection as well as an analysis of how selected stories in the book challenge the traditional fairy tale stereotypes and address the issues of modern society. Keep Reading

Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: Wes Anderson’s Cinematography Breakthrough

in Reviews

by Rastislav Domček

 

Ever since its conception in the early 20th century, film as a story telling medium has gone through constant changes. Filmmakers have always drawn their inspiration from the works of their predecessors, in turn providing inspiration for new generations. When Orson Welles decided to use low camera angles to capture the magnitude of his characters in Citizen Kane in the early 1940s, the world of film did its typical dance of repulsion and adaptation. When Stanley Kubrick introduced the world to his hypnotic masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey in the late 1960s, he guided the sub-genre of ‘little green men’ sci-fi to the brave new world of thought-provoking visual splendour. By the late 1990s, Hollywood was dominated by the high-budget blockbuster mega-film. How do you find success following the likes of Steven Spielberg or James Cameron? The answer is to think outside of the box. Keep Reading

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