The Measures Taken

One of the most startling moments in the film Czech Dream occurs almost by accident, we are shown something so uncinematic that it seems to whisper some obscene secret.  its nothing ostensibly remarkable- a few ordinary looking people walk round a hypermarket, their choices being examined by market researchers.  what startles is the hypermarket itself.  its odd contours, the blinding light, the abundant goods- on a large screen this is suddenly terrifying.  this isn't the markets or boutiques that we supposedly spend our time in, this is the overlit reality of actually existing capitalism.
 
its a ridiculously simple idea, a film school prank.  two callow prague students commission a full-scale advertising campaign for a hypermarket that doesn't exist.  the film begins with footage of the opening of prague's first supermarket in the early 70s, with portraits of party leaders in the window- followed by riot police guarding the opening of a hypermarket 30 years later.
 
They go about their campaign much as you'd expect- they commission ads telling people not to turn up to their opening, they embarassedly force themselves into executive suits and keep a schoolboy naivete about them at all times.  There's a scene where they talk to a young mother about what she wants from a supermarket.  As they leave she suddenly compliments them- this is something good you're doing here, something positive.  Shaken momentarily from their cynicism, one asks back 'what are your passions?'  'my passions?' she looks into the middle distance.  'i'm trapped by circumstances.  i like....reading....drawing....i like to sing.' 'sing the english song!' cries her son, and they both sing in a bizarre czechlish together.
 
'after work, i think its me that rules the world' 

in prague, walking down somewhere like wenceslas square, its interesting how the czechs haven't worked out how to make capitalism look nice yet, to make it look like anything other than a disfigurement.  the layers of irony that hang over advertising in, say, the UK, are almost absent.  the ad agency suddenly baulks at the proposed slogan 'you'll leave empty handed'.  on being asked why they eventually say, straight faced, 'we won't be dishonest in advertising'.
 
'when i read those adverts, i thought the government had come up with something dumb again'
 
at the opening of the czech dream hypermarket the people you don't see are lined up.  not the young, thrusting oppressed,not the picturesquely dishevelled of the favelas- the people you might see at an out of town asda on a sunday.  middle aged or elderly, mostly overweight, dressed in brightly colured sportswear, not a cause anyone would want to fight for.  afterwards comes the inevitable media shitstorm, but here they crowd expectantly in front of a huge stretched canvas, promising dreams.