"Thievery is the worst disease which could afflict us." Reflecting misappropriations in the post-war Czechoslovak cinema.

Abstrakt

The mainstream practice of misappropriating the state and public resources have led in the last decades to dissatisfaction of the Czech society with the post-1989 political and economic evolution. Therefore, the promise of establishment of transparent and unimpeachable management of the state, which was the main political slogan of the post-socialist oligarch Andrej Babiš, was the main lure bringing him to the head of the state.

Despite this could look new, the longing for rectitude and transparency through criticizing the omnipresent thievery forms a long-lasting motive of the Czecho-Slovak political and public life and gave birth to rich cultural production. One of the strong moments was also the period between the second half of the 1950s and the end of the 1960s.

The context of destalinization with its political and economic liberalization opened space for the mainstream criticism as well. Expressed in the ironical proverb "Who's not stealing, is stealing from the family", the critique of omnipresent misappropriations of public property was reflected particularly in the cinema production.

Hence, the proposed text analyses the reflections and the representations of the thievery and misappropriations in the Czechoslovak movies produced between the second half of the 1950s and the end of the Prague spring. Some of the specific questions it addresses are: Who is the typical thief? What are his/her purposes? And how he/she is legitimizing the thievery? Finally, the question is also if these movies do not promote the thievery as a practical value to survive.

To answer, the text uses the method of discursive and contextual analysis, which is the classic method when analysing popular culture products. The text also looks for the parallels with the post-socialist nowadays.