Chapter 6

Be yon d Wor k a n d Se x i n
Czech Cinem a
David Sorfa

European cinema presents the issue of prostitution as closely linked

to capitalist modes of exploitation by corporations, in general, and
men, in particular. This exploitation is generally connected to violence against both women and the working classes. In the 1970s,
prostitution was seen through the lens of second-wave feminism as
inherently violent and abusive (Kempadoo 2005: xi) but there has
been a more recent move to define prostitution as a legitimate form
of work acknowledging the complex processes whereby poor women
become involved in a search for social and economic security in the
new world order (Kempadoo 2005: xii). Several recent European
films, including Ulrich Seidls Import/Export (2007) and Lukas
Moodyssons Lilya 4-ever (2002) present sex work as a way of crossing
borders in search of a better life in the new Europe. While represented
as horrific and degrading in these films, sex work in European cinema
is often a metaphor for the more general conditions of work, echoing
Karl Marxs dictum that, Prostitution is only a specific expression
of the general prostitution of the laborer (1844: 42). Earlier films
such as Nights of Cabiria (Le notti di Cabiria, 1957) by Federico
Fellini, and Jean Luc-Godards Vivre sa vie (1962) and Two or Three
Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je sais delle, 1967) depict
women working as prostitutes to be diligent, honest and, particularly
in the case of Cabiria, as innocent. Women are ripe for exploitation
because they take seriously the possibility of progress through honest

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labor. Extending Marxs formulation, workin the cinema at least

is generally represented as prostitutionliterally so in Human Traffic
(1999) by Justin Kerrigan, when Jip, while working as a sales assistant
at a trendy clothes shop, in a fantasy sequence, is anally raped by his
boss while he stuffs money into Jips mouth. The metaphor of work
being sex is literalized. Godard says of Two or Three Things :
The idea that, in order to live in Parisian society today, at whatever level
or on whatever plane, one is forced to prostitute oneself in one way or
another, or else to live according to conditions resembling those of
prostitution. (quoted in Milne and Narboni 1972: 239)

The argument is that while mainstream work masks its exploitative

nature, sex work cannot hide its problematic structures of exploitation. Sex work reveals a certain exploitative truth of work more generally but its representation on screen heightens this analysis by infusing
the system of exploitation with a sexual frisson. As in the white slave
films of the 1910s in which innocent bourgeois women are kidnapped, often while ironically attending a cinema screening on their
own, and sold into prostitution there is a certain hypocritical tension
between revealing the iniquities of sexual exploitation and the titillating revelation of the mechanics of sex work (Lindsey 1996, 1997).
In the one book dedicated to film and prostitution, Campbell writes:
prostitute characters in film are creatures of the male imagination
[and] the roles are usually written and the performances directed by
men (Campbell 2006: 5). Cinema exploits the subject of prostitution
while hypocritically condemning its exploitative nature.
I wish here, however, to trace rather less sensational representations of the intersection between sexuality and economics by considering various cases from Czech cinema. My contention is that while
overt prostitution as represented in film has been discussed extensively in several recent books (Brown, Iordanova, and Torchin, 2010;
Loshitzky, 2010)almost always in conjunction with considerations
surrounding trafficking and the transnational (harking back to the
debates around white slavery at the beginning of the last century)
less has been said about the more banal everyday forms of sexual
exchange that mark life more generally in contemporary Europe. I
concentrate here on Czech cinema since the country occupies a liminal space between East and West both geographically and historically.
I will discuss two important films from the 1960s Czech New Wave,
Loves of a Blonde (Lsky jedn plavovlsky, 1965) by Milo Forman,
and Daisies (Sedmikrsky, 1966) by Vera Chytilov, before moving

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on to consider the film versions of the most successful contemporary

Czech novelist, Michael Viewegh. His books have been adapted by
several luminary Czech filmmakers and the films present an interesting overview of contemporary sexual mores in the Czech Republic.
To state Vieweghs view broadly, all work is seen as corrupt and corrupting and thus using sex as an item of exchange or as a bargaining
tool is merely a clear-sighted way of functioning in the real world.
In many ways this attitude echoes Catherine Hakims recent and
rather reactionary positing of (and exhortation to exploit) erotic
capital. Hakim defines erotic capital as a combination of aesthetic,
visual, physical, social and sexual attractiveness to other members of
your society, and especially to members of the opposite sex, in all
social contexts (Hakim 2011: 17) and claims:
Erotic capital is just as important as human and social capital for
understanding social and economic processes, social interaction and
upward social mobility. It is essential for making sense of sexuality and
sexual relationships. In sexualized, individualized modern societies,
erotic capital is becoming more important and more valorized, for
men and women. (ibid.: 2)

Hakims simple pragmatism argues that since sexually attractive people are given more economic advantages in society, it is incumbent
on those who wish to improve their financial lot to make themselves
as attractive as possible. She sees erotic capital as an important asset
for all groups who have less access to economic, social and human
capital, including adolescents and young people, ethnic and cultural
minorities, disadvantaged groups and cross-national migrants (ibid.:
18). Rather than arguing for a change in a sexually exploitative paradigm, Hakim urges that those without power should exchange their
erotic assets for economic ones. In terms of prostitution itself,
Hakim announces that the puzzle is not why intelligent and attractive women become prostitutes, but rather why more women do not
choose this occupation, given the high potential earnings for relatively short work hours (ibid.: 159).
Hakims obtuse brutalism echoes a more negative analysis along
similar lines by Emma Goldman in her much earlier The Traffic in
Women:
What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white
women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course;
the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor,
thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With

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Mrs.Warren these girls feel, Why waste your life working for a
few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day? (Goldman
1917: 184)

Surprisingly, Hakim and Goldmans analyses are quite similar but

their calls to action are diametrically opposed. While Hakim complacently buys into the myth of the happy whore, Goldman takes the
opportunity to provide a scathing critique of the system as whole: As
to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish
that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values especially
the moral onescoupled with the abolition of industrial slavery
(ibid.: 200).
Theoretically, then, we are left with two options: accept the sexism
inherent in the system and exploit it for all we can, or radically change
the system itself. In Czech cinema there is a definite pessimism about
the possibility of the latter and a grudging acceptance of the inevitability of the former. However, I argue that there is a humane and
optimistic undercurrent in these filmsa humanity curiously lacking
in Hakims analysisthat offers some hope for a third possibility. In
Badious terms, such a possibility moves away from the narcissism of
exploitation and focuses on the existence of the other as such, on the
very being of the other, on the other as it has erupted, fully armed
with its being, into my life thus disrupted and re-fashioned (Badiou
2012: 21). This possibility is one of small kindnesses, laughter, intelligence and a naive belief in mutual recognition and reciprocal change
rather than brutal exploitation. Badiou goes on to argue that this
possibility, which he terms love, cannot be separated from politics
and he suggests that
future forms of the politics of emancipation must be inscribed in a
resurrection, a re-affirmation, of the Communist idea, the idea of a
world that isnt given over to the avarice of private property, a world of
free association and equality . . . In such a framework, it will be easier to
re-invent love than if surrounded by capitalist frenzy. (ibid.: 723)

This chimes interestingly with Han kovs discussion of images of

women in Czech cinema, which, she claims, were much more progressive under the totalitarian regimes of the 1950s and 1970s than
in the liberalized atmosphere of the 1960s. By progressive, Han kov
means that female characters,
have an active position in the narrative development of the story, enjoy
the place of a subject and not an object in the film, are not exploited

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and objectified as sexual targets, are pictured as having a fulfilling

professional life balanced with their private lives and/or escape the traditional definition of femininity as passive, dependent and irrational.
(Han kov 2011: 147)

Han kov, however, goes on to argue that these seemingly positive

roles made available to women under communist censorship and control come at the cost of the destruction of the private sphere in favor of
the scene of work: The private sphere is only pictured as a hindrance
on the way to a communist society; every important personal event in
socialist realist fiction and film must thus take place in public (ibid.:
152). These progressive representations lead to a de-sexualization
and the almost material obliteration of the body (ibid.: 52). It is the
New Wave of the 1960s that reinscribes sexuality into the cinema with
an emphasis on intense bodily encounters [and] heightened awareness of the body or bodily contact (Han kov 2011: 154). However
this, she argues, leads to female body becoming a site of possible
assault, control and exploitation and that women not only appear as
embodiments of male fantasies but also as targets of male aggression, exploitation and abuse (155). Han kovs analysis is extremely
suggestive and the paradox that it is only under totalitarian control
that sexual equality appears possible is one that needs further discussion in terms of the Czech New Wave whose films are often seen in
terms of freedom and liberalism.

Forces of P ure C onsumption: DA ISIES

V ra Chytilovs much discussed Daisies (Sedmikrsky, 1966) follows
the episodic exploits of two 17-year-old girls, named Marie I and
II (played respectively by Jitka Cerhov and Ivana Karbanov), who
lead a feckless life in Prague exploiting older men with promises of
undelivered sexual favours (Hames 2005: 191) in exchange for lavish dinners. kvoreck describes the films attitude to men as one of
mocking acrimony (kvoreck 1971: 108) and Hames writes:
The observation of men in all these scenes is unquestionably feminist and highly critical. They are shown as vain, preoccupied with sex
and assuming an automatic right to cheat on their wives with young
women. What is worse, these basic characteristics are cloaked with a
maudlin sentimentality. (Hames 2005: 193)

The two girls primary occupation does appear to be the ravenous

consumption of food and drink both in their small flat and out in

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expensive restaurants, and they joyously use their sexual charms to

blithely extract as much food as they can from their smitten admirers
before abandoning them at the train station. At the last such farewell,
Marie II tearfully observes, Thats the fifth one to leave. Its not
fun for me anymore. Marie I answers as their tears turn to laughter, Were going to have to think of something more interesting!
Clearly they decide to move onto exploiting love itself.
The cut from the previous scene is to a montage of butterflies
mounted in cases with a desperately earnest young mans voiceover
intoning melodramatically, I would never have thought it possible. Like some sort of visitation from another world . . . and yet, you
are of this earth, even though you are so divine, and the image
cuts from his restless hands to a flower garlanded Marie II coquettishly biting on her thumb with more dead butterflies in the background. Han kov describes the girls use of their sexuality in terms
that echo Joan Rivieres much earlier psychoanalytic discussion of
masquerade:1
They escape the defining vision and evade the male gaze because of
their staging, their masquerading as the embodiment of ideal femininitythus creating a distance from their real self by constructing their
image as a mask, an explicit lure for the gaze. (Hanakov 2005: 70)

The lepidopterist continues his ridiculously overwrought paean of

love to the girl he calls Julia as he plays the piano in sweating frustration while Marie II slowly disrobes and butterflies rapidly montage throughout this scene. Clearly, the Maries have decided that to
exploit men properly they need to not only rely on sexual attraction
but also on the clichs of romantic love. Now I know what love is!
he declares, removing a butterfly from one of the display frames that
the now naked Marie II holds to protect her modesty. However much
the young man would like to control Marie in the way he is able to
pin the butterflies in orderly rows, 2 he is himself now trapped by the
rapaciousness of the woman: Dont you have anything to eat? she
asks disingenuously.
In a subsequent scene, the young man telephones the girls flat
and as he professes further declarations of love out of the abandoned
handset, the two Maries set long strands of tissue paper on fire and
they revel in the compulsive reenacting/inflicting of castration in
ritualised scenes (Han kov 2005: 71), cutting up a succession of
phallically shaped foods with scissors: rolls, gherkins, sausages, eggs,

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a banana, and feasting with great relish on these titbits as if they

were an embodiment of the lovers emotion itself. They figuratively
perhaps even literallyfeed on his love with an absolute callousness.
They cut off his speech mid-flow as Marie II leans back luxuriantly
and says, I dont even know his name. For Chytilov, then, food
is a metaphor for desire and what these women desire is the others
desire, and this is perhaps as perfect a definition of exploitation as
is possible. Marie I and II require the desire of men not men themselves. Han kov reads their desire as a challenge to the psychoanalytic straightjacket of the Oedipal triangle where woman is merely the
object of exchange between men:
The inscription of female desire and gratification becomes undeniable
in the two filmspalpable in the eruption of the narrative, in the
breaks and fissures the characters disobedience to the oedipal triggers
in the clogged world of expected narrative conventions. (Han kov
2005: 71)

Throughout their various escapades in restaurants and nightclubs, the

Maries use the toilet as their base and there they relax, eat, of course,
adjust their clothing and have close relationships with the matronly
bathroom attendants. Their true kingdom is one of waste. In the
final sequence, the girls devastate a magnificent banquet and for the
first time appear ashamed of their actions and ineffectively try to put
everything back together again. kvoreck amusingly relates the outraged reaction of a minor politician upset by the films wastage of
food, at a time when our farmers with great difficulties are trying to
overcome the problems of our agricultural production (kvoreck
1971: 11). Owen adds that Daisies feckless heroines could even be
seen as satirical personifications of Czechoslovakias command economy, itself a monument to irrationality and waste (Owen 2012:197).
In this sense, the Maries are not avatars of rational Alices journey to
Wonderland but rather of the March Hare and Mad Hatter. Their
nihilistic tea party ends not so much in tears but in the realization
that nothing can be reversed and that what has been destroyed will
remain destroyed. In the final sequence of the film, the two Maries
industriously, but ineffectively, clean up the mess that they have made
and are finally crushed by a giant chandelier. In Daisies, the ecstatic
Id rules with a delirious work ethic until death arrives both for the
girls and for the world as Chytilov inserts the archival footage of
bombed Second World War cities.

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E xchanging Sex for Work : L OV ES

OF

B LONDE

The exchanges involved in prostitution may, perhaps, be understood

as follows: Someone works and is paid a salary. That person takes
some of that money and pays another person to have sex with. Work
is exchanged for sex. Here, however, I would like to trace a different
chain of exchange in which someone uses sex as a way of escaping
from the mundane necessity of work. It is in this sense that sex may
be thought of as work, not just as a way of raising money but as a
way of escaping the drudgery of industrialized labor. As an example I
would like to discuss here Milo Formans Loves of a Blonde, in which
Andula (Hana Brejchov) almost unwittingly uses her sexual attractiveness to attempt an escape from the boring factory town of Zru.
Young women predominate in the small provincial town. They
live communally in workers dormitories, attend edifying classes on
morality, work in the shoe factory in order to meet the needs of
the [socialist] economic plan (Hames 2010: 59) and dream of being
somewhere else. In an effort to meet the physical needs of the
young women, factory officials organize for the posting of a squad
of soldiers to the town and a celebratory dance offers an opportunity for the mostly middle-aged and married men to court the much
younger women. After escaping the attentions of these would-be
lotharios, Andula ends up in the bed of a young session piano player
from Prague whose band had been brought in specially for the social
event. The very next week and without warning she follows Milda
(Vladimr Pucholt) to Prague and has to spend an evening with his
parents since he is out gallivanting. She returns to Zru but evidently
holds out hope that she will be traveling to Prague frequently to be
with Milda. Han kov writes that
Andula can be seen as an inverted heroine, not actively moving the
community towards a (political) change, but rather passively accepting
the social practices of sexual exchange and exploitation and re-inscribing them into acceptable romantic fantasies. (Han kov 2011: 155)

Loves of a Blonde presents alternately tender and harsh views of life in

the small factory town but men are generally presented as devious and
potentially threatening while Forman reserves peace for those scenes
in which only women appear. There is solidarity and safety among the
young women and while they may imagine and talk of men, their true
happiness appears to be without them. The first and last scenes of the
film echo each other as Andula and a friend whisper quietly in their
shared dormitory while other girls sleep or softly play guitar. In the

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first scene, they discuss the ring that Tonda, Andulas mostly absent
boyfriend, has given her. In the last, they talk of Andulas escapade in
Prague and it is difficult to tell whether her hopes for a future with
Milda are realistic. The film ends rather pessimistically with Andula
working on the factory floor applying the finishing touches to fancy
shoes. For Andula, and all the other women in Zru, it seems that
the only way out of factory work is marriage and the available men
are either already married or, if young and handsome, have far more
choice than they can compete with. Formans ending is filled with
pathos as the working girls are trapped in but also blind to the allfemale utopia in which they already live. The implication is that while
most will move on to less-than-happy marriages, it is in the rather
unlikely communality of the dormitory, a contingent and makeshift
space outside of the brutal economics of work and sex, that a sensual
happiness reigns.

S exism and S uccess in M ichal V iewegh

While Czech cinema of the 1970s and 1980s is still to be explored in
more detail, especially in relation to Han kovs identification of the
visual paradox of communist representation, the problem of exploitation, the body, and capitalism comes to the fore once again during
the liberalization of the postcommunist era. I wish here to explore
the work of Michal Viewegh (born1962), probably the most popular
novelist in the Czech Republic today. Jan ulik describes his position
in contemporary Czech literature as
the only contemporary Czech author who makes a living from his
writing, is the author of more than twenty highly popular, as he calls
them self-deprecatingly, commercial novels, . . . which deal, often
in a comic and ironic style, with the life of the yuppie generation in
todays Czech Republic. Viewegh often uses various postmodernist
tricks with different levels of the narrative and various meta-narratives.
(ulik 2010)

Vieweghs only novel to be translated into English is one of his early

works, Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia, first published in Czech in
1994, and translated in 1997 by A.G. Brain for the niche American
publisher Readers International. Viewegh has published several short
story collections, essays, and novels in the postcommunist era (during
which time he worked as a schoolteacher, a figure that often features in
his stories). A number of his novels have been adapted into very financially successful films: Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia (Vchova dvek v

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echch, 1997), directed by Petr Koliha; Those Wonderful Years that

Sucked (Bje n lta pod psa, 1997), directed by Petr Niokolaev; A
Novel for Women/From Subway with Love (Romn pro eny, 2005),
directed by Filip Ren; Holiday Makers (astnci zjezdu, 2006),
directed by Ji Vejdlek; Shame (Nestyda, 2008), directed by Jan
H ebejk; The Case of the Unfaithful Klara (Il Caso dellInfedele
Klra/P pad nevrn Klry/ 2009), directed by Roberto Faenza ( in
Italian); and most recently A Novel for Men (Romn pro mue, 2010),
directed by Tom Ba ina.
Vieweghs palette is fairly narrow concentrating mainly on family
melodramastales of infidelity abound, usually featuring an affair
between a middle-aged man and a much younger womanas well as
stories of money, political power, and corruption. Perhaps, these ideas
are developed most sincerely in his autobiographical second book,
The Wonderful Years of Lousy Living, which follows the life of a family
from normalization in 1968 to the fall of communism in 1989/1990,
the so-called grey zone (Jandourek 2004: 199).
The overriding theme in his work is the problematic relationship
between money and value, particularly as it is expressed through sexual relations. His novels have been claimed as quasisociological by
both Jan ulk and Jan Jandourek. The latter perhaps rather unfairly
accuses Vieweghs literary sociology as evincing the narrow perspective of the author, who does not at all times maintain a critical
approach to the preconceptions that dominate in the society which
he is describing, but of which he is also a member (Jandourek 2004:
195). Jandourek perhaps misses the irony of accusing the novelist of
being a novelist, an accusation which Viewegh himself explores in his
work.
I am particularly interested in the manner in which Viewegh sees
the work of the author as similar to the work of a prostitute. While he
is immensely and vulgarly proud of his financial success, he does seem
to equate capitalism with prostitution. Put more clearly, Viewegh suggests that prostitution is the secret logic of capitalism. Returning to
Marxs maxim that Prostitution is only a specific expression of the
general prostitution of the labourer, we can understand Vieweghs
position as one that sees general prostitution as the logic of postcommunist Czechoslovakia. In this scenario, Viewegh is himself the
most successful prostituteone who betrays pure literature for the
monetary success of commercial pulp. The film version of Bringing
Up Girls in Bohemia is interspersed with title cards bearing various
mottos, one of which, ascribed to Oskar Wgh, clearly an avatar of
Viewegh himself, reframes the myth of the happy prostitute:

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One becomes a writer the same way one becomes a prostitute. First
he does it for his own pleasure, then for the pleasure of others, and
then finally for the moneyOskar Wgh3

It is this self-loathing (although Viewegh himself did not write these

words; as far as I have been able to ascertain, the words are by the
films scriptwriter, Vclav aek) that explains Vieweghs penchant
for self-reflexivity and overt claims to postmodernity. In the novel
Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia, Oskar, Vieweghs alter ego, discusses
with his wife the possibility of becoming a tutor to the daughter of a
wealthy businessman/gangster, to supplement his meager salary as a
schoolteacher:
You wanted to write a postmodern novel . . . she pointed out
ironically.
I was glad that she had said this because she could just as well have said
that we need every crown.
Both were true.
Well see, I said. (Viewegh 1997: 5)

In this short passage we clearly see Vieweghs three obsessions: money,

literature, and women.
What I would like to do here is to consider the beginning and
end of the film version of Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia and then
discuss the sexual politics of the two Roman novels and films in a
little more detail in order to tease out some general attitudes toward
prostitution in popular Czech culture. Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia
has two main structures: that of the fairy tale, and that of the metanovel. Beta (played by a young A a Geislerov) is the daughter of
Karel Kr l (literally King Karelthe film adaptation adds another
layer of fictionalism claiming that his real name is in fact Cisa , meaning Caesar) who has fallen into a lethargic depression and who only
comes to life once she is kissed by the teacher/prince Oskar Wgh,
who in fact, brings her to life through his writing rather than through
any real action. Oskar arrives at the Kr l mansion and stands in front
of the imposing gate. As he looks on, the film shows him entering the
grounds but the reverse-shot indicates that there is a bifurcation in
the narrative here as Oskar looks on at his bolder self. It is clear that
this active decision is one that the real Oskar does not take and that
much of what follows is in fact his own fantasy.
The novel ends with Wghs wife reading his completed manuscript
and commenting, Maybe you should have taken that work after all.

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Oskar/Wgh answers happily: You shouldnt take literature so seriously (Viewegh 1997: 154). Vieweghs arch knowingness here is
preceded by an even more precocious or annoyingself-awareness:
The English novelist Graham Green was known, among other things,
for sometimes problematizing with relish his preceding claims in the
final sentences of his books. In the case of this novel a Greenesque ending could, for example, look like this. (ibid.: 154)

Thus, Viewegh not only ends the novel on a familiar note of narrative
ambiguity, but gleefully trumpets his use of this technique. The novel
and the film are propped up by quotes and allusions (interestingly not
the same ones, and the film has one from Oskar Wgh himself as we
have seenand the surname only appears in the film) and there is a
sense that Vieweghs novels comprise a collection of cobbled-together
quotations. The author as worker is merely a bricoleur. At one point
in the novel (and the film) Beta responds to another one of Oskars
jokes:
Wisecracks, she said sadly. You see? You arent even capable of
speaking seriously anymore.
Those arent wisecracks. It isas Romain Gary wrotea way to neutralize reality when it is about to grab you by the throat.
Wisecracks and quotations, she dejectedly corrected herself.
(Viewegh 1997: 94)

This seems to summarize Vieweghs aesthetic style and general pessimism: nothing is original and nothing new is possible. Everything
is reduced to money and therefore everything is equivalentor has
an equivalenceto everything else. Viewegh romantically yearns for
something that is beyond valueand I think that traditionally this
has been called love or the sublimebut, as we see in his later
films, love is as reducible to money as anything else. It is this capitalist
pessimismwhich could be seen as a form of Marxist analysisthat
is the basis of Vieweghs work.
Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia ironizes the desire of the artist to
make a difference, to do something good and important. Jandourek
writes:
According to common perception, Czech teachers and authors
should occupy some sort of constructive role, but Viewegh obviously
mocks this conception. Attempts at education or art-therapy end

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in catastrophe. The word does not have the power that intellectuals imagine it has. Contemporary success comes only through Eros.
(Jandourek 2004: 200)

Jandourek goes on to argue that Betas movement from man to man,

from cause to cause to religion and then finally to suicide, is the logical response to a system which offers no resistance and therefore no
meaning. At least under communism there was something to fight
against, whereas in laissez-faire capitalism, especially if you are rich,
there is nothing to keep anyone alive.
While From Subway with Love has been widely criticized as a subpar Bridget Jones rip-off, there is a certain humor to the film that
rather disappears in its grimmer sequel. Twenty-four-year-old Laura
falls in love with Oliver who had been her mothers boyfriend two
decades ago. While the novel is written from Lauras point of view,
the film introduces a framing device: a hair salon appointment during
which Laura relates here tale to her hairdresser (who herself is given a
happy romantic ending with Lauras geeky office colleague). The film
presents a critique of Czech men who seem caught in a perpetual and
simultaneous quest for both mothers and daughters, trying to find in
their sexual conquests both infantile security and adolescent excitement (hence the seemingly unquestioned desire for much younger
womenbut interestingly in Nestyda the 42-year-old anti-hero falls
in love with a much older womanalthough she is a famous singer
in the film). The women are superficially attracted to wealth, sophistication, good looks, and mastery. Their success in the world is measured by their ability to parlay their sexual attractiveness into material
gain. The film finally presents a resolution of absolute clich it is
Christmas and three generations of women gather and two are paired
with men from the previous generation: one had dated the mother in
his youth and is now with her daughter, while the forty-something
mother is paired with their pensioner neighbor whose wife has conveniently died of cancer. There is something rather cold and calculating
about the film which celebrates youth, wealth, and sentimentality.
Yet, there does seem to be a certain warmth to this coldness. Oliver,
Lauras boyfriend and previous lover of her mother, writes:
Dear Laura
The only thing that remains of you are my memories.
When I write it like this it sounds like a line from some stupid American
pop song, which we used to laugh at togetherand suddenly for there
is in these clichs a deep truth. (Viewegh 2005: 167)

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A persistent theme in the narrative, and in Vieweghs books, is the

damagedand boorishnature of Czech men, especially those
brought up during communism (see ulks damning discussion
[ulk 2007: 328] but also Mazierskas more sympathetic consideration of the figure of the small Czech [Mazierska 2008: 245]).
Their behavior is characterized by an absolute selfishness, especially
when food replaces sexual desire. Jandourek again: The book is
nevertheless an implicit apology for Czech man. Communism and
postcommunism have deformed him, but Viewegh makes clear that
the burden placed on men and women in this social shift, is just too
heavy (Jandurek 2004: 203).
Jandourek argues that the expectation of perfection placed by men
and women on each other through myths of true love and happiness
is impossible to attain and so every relationship is doomed to failure.
Here, perhaps, we see another version of Milan Kunderas unbearable lightness of being since the romantic comedy is too slight to
carry the weight of its own expectations. Romance is the pharmakon, both the poison and its own cure, and this is perhaps why the
romantic comedy is such a derided genre since its clichs point to an
insurmountable fracture at the center of human relations.
In Tom Ba inas recent screen adaptation of Vieweghs Roman
pro mue (A Novel for Men, 2010), Ta a Pauhofov plays Tali, the
Slovak girlfriend of a local bar owner. A corrupt politician hires Tali
to accompany him, his sister, and their terminally ill brother, Bruno,
to the Tatra mountains as a gift for Bruno who has become obsessed
with Talis live Internet porn webcam. Bruno never quite plucks up
the courage to take advantage of his present, and his brother Cyril
(Miroslav Donutilwho usually plays more benign roles) takes Tali
for himself. She has, after all, been handsomely paid. Tali seems quite
content with the new arrangement although Cyril is much older than
her. A few months later, the family gathers again at Brunos funeral.
There is no love lost between Cyril and his sister, Aneta, especially
since she is now seeing Cyrils honest predecessor. Brother and sister
do not reconcile over their siblings grave but, quite surprisingly, Tali
is back in Cyrils car, heavily pregnant. Tali has managed to move away
from sex work to another sort of enslavement, marriage. Campbell
makes explicit the relationship between prostitution and marriage:
Patriarchy has thus created the institution of marriageto provide for
a mans nurturing and companionship and for the orderly production
of his offspring, and of prostitutionto supply the sexual pleasures he
might otherwise miss out on. (Campbell 2006: 3)

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However, Tali appears happy enough and the film ends with some
sort of bleak hope for this rather corrupt new family.
In the latest adaptation, Shame, Oskar (Ji Machek), a former
teacher who has deserted his wife and become involved with a much
older woman, visits a brothel where he meets one of his old pupils
who now works as a prostitute. She explains that she had trained as
a nurse but wound up in the club because of the money. She also
admits that she quite likes the work and Oskar says, That is the best
thing, when work becomes a hobby. In the final sequence of the film
Oskar takes his son shopping for their Christmas carp and they decide
to free the apparently dead fish into the Vltava river. The final shot
of the film shows the carp recovering and slowly swimming off in the
direction of Charles Bridge. Throughout the film Oskar struggles to
make a living in the new entrepreneurial culture of postcommunist
Czech society and the magical solution to the exploitation of capitalism becomes tradition. Both Oskar and his prostitute pupil are saved
by sentimentality.
In Vieweghs novels and their film adaptations, Czech men are
slightly pathetic but well-meaning creatures, hobbled by the past and
irrational in their desires. They never quite seem to be able to achieve
what they want and if a passing fancy is met, then frustration quickly
sets in. Unfaithfulness and jealousy are the norm. While there are
fleeting moments of happiness in peoples lives, in the end nothing
lasts and every value is betrayed. Capitalism has emptied the world of
meaning. In a Lacanian sense, there is no such thing as a sexual relationship (Badiou 2012: 18)in Vieweghs online collaborative novel
The Heart of the Home (Srdce domova, 2009) his heroine says: I am
certain of one thing, love does not existbut there is some sort
of truth in the clichs of happiness: in love, in marriage, in family.
Badiou comments on Lacan:
In sex, you are really in a relationship with yourself via the mediation
of the other. The other helps you to discover the reality of pleasure. In
love, on the contrary, the mediation of the other is enough in itself.
Such is the nature of the amorous encounter: you go to take on the
other, to make him or her exist with you, as he or she is. It is a much
more profound conception of love than the entirely banal view that
love is no more than an imaginary canvas painted over the reality of
sex. (Badiou 2012: 19)

Sex can be used as a commodity, an item of exchange. Hakim crudely

argues that women should take advantage of this and exchange their
erotic capital for as much as they can. In Daisies, the girls ruthlessly

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exploit men for all they are worth until they realize that they have
destroyed everything. Andula in Loves of a Blonde exchanges sex for
the possibility of a new life outside the factory while Tali in Novel
for Men moves seemingly easily out of prostitution into family life
with the richest and most powerful of her customers. In all these
scenarios, work, whether it be in the factory, the government, the
writing desk, or classroom, is seen as fundamentally unpleasant
and exploitative while sex work, or sex in exchange for security or
freedom, is presented as just one more way in which this economy
functions. ulik rather glumly summarizes the contemporary Czech
sexual attitude:
Men look for sex, not for a relationship. The more physical sexual
encounters with various women the male anti-heroes have, the greater
their self-confidence. Women, on the other hand, are primarily interested in forging stable relationships, and they reluctantly tolerate mens
incessant desire for sex. (ulik 2013: 8)

While this seems broadly accurate in the films discussed here, there
are however moments of understanding and joy which move beyond
this sexualized stalemate where sex is presented only as a commodity.
This is apparent not only in the narratives themselves which often end
on a downbeat but hopeful note but in the very aesthetic of the films
themselves. The irreverent smiles of the two Maries; the floating
camera in a dormitory of sleeping women; the possible redemption
of a corrupt politician through love; all these small moments, however insignificant and perhaps even clichd, point toward a pragmatic
eroticism rather than a naked exchange of sex. In Czech cinema, the
exchange of money for sex is used as a metaphor for capitalist exploitation but, while this runs the danger of normalizing or excusing
prostitution in general, the films finally offer a hope that human relationships are not necessarily or fundamentally exploitative. We might
call this hope love.

Notes
1. Riviere writes: Womanliness therefore could be assumed to be worn
as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert
the reprisals expected if she was found to possess itmuch as a thief
will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove that he has
not stolen the goods. The reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where I draw the line between genuine womanliness and the
masquerade. My suggestion is not, however, that there is any such

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difference; whether radical or superficial, they are the same thing

(1929/1966: 213).
2. Han kov explains that the Czech expression to invite one over to
see ones collection of butterflies (which means, to invite over for
sexual adventure) becomes literalized in one mans apartmentit is
actually full of butterfly collections (Han kov 2005: 73).
3. In an interesting post-modern turn, the internet now attributes this
quote unambiguously to a real author called Oskar Wgh. No such
person exists, but is now listed on numerous quotation sites, ready
for insertion into any number of lazy lectures or public talks.

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