Perhaps a humorous case of portrayal of minorities in media, or at least the discussions and controversy it caused, is “Lada controversy.” For those who are not familiar with Czech folklore painter and writer Josef Lada, he was born in 1887 in a village named Hrusice, which is closely linked to Lads´s work. He illustrated number of Czech fairytales as well as very famous novel Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka (The Good Soldier Švejk). The piece that caused the controversy is a classical Czech children book Kocour Mikeš (Mikeš the Tomcat) written in 1934 set in the environment of a typical Czech village of that time.Now, after almost 80 years, some Roma assicoations protest that “Mikeš is racist” and that the book should not be used in schools as a teaching device. Yes, I am talking about a story when Mikeš, the talking cat, was stolen by gypsies. On April 14th 2010 Václav Miko, chairman of association Roma Realita, wrote a letter criticizing the use of book Kocour Mikeš in schools. According to him Josef Lada was a racist and the book represents Roma people very negatively. Especially the part where Mikeš gets stolen, there appears the controversial sentence “dear children, the people were gypsies!”
However this doesn’t seem concern all Roma associations as others such as Romea for example consider Miko´s complaints to be a bad joke. Such comments are close to my reaction when I first heard about the “Lada controversy.” Furthermore, Petr Koubek, secretary to the human rights and minorities minister, said to Czech daily Právo "If we banned a work of art, we would return back to the communist era." And I have to agree, because banning of books like Kocour Mikeš would is a censorship.
But was Lada politically incorrect or even a racist? Probably not; sure, today it is not politically correct to call someone gypsy, but we have to take in account that Lada wrote those words in 1930s when there was not such a thing as political correctness. The one thing to do is to explain children that Lada did not mean to say that all gypsies steal talking cats. :)
Kamila, the example you mention here is maybe humorous, but for sure scary. I am the last person who would want to offend any minority (may it be racial, ethnic, religious or other); however, once we start to scrutinize childrens' stories for traces of racism (I am sure unintended in Lada's case), we are getting on a slippery slope to a society where no one can say or do anything just to be on a safe side (that is, not to be accussed of discrimination/stereotyping of some sort). For by the same token, all "Honzas" could raise their voices and perhaps sue all the relevant film makers and book authors, because it is usually men of their name who is the "less intelligent" character in a story...
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the more "jumpy" the minorities are - in the case you mention the Roma minority in the Czech republic - the more negative feelings towards them it can generate in the society. By this I by no means imply that in order to fit in the society the minorities have to remain silent when they feel discriminated against. I also understand that what constitutes discrimination can be very subjective. That being said, though, I see some of the reactions of the Roma minority in the Czech republic as petty complaints and unnecessary accusations...
If the author wanted the people who stole the tomcat to be Gypsies, he can make them gypsies. This is freedom of speach. Just because the gypsies are the bad ones in the story does not mean that the story is racist. i find it quite absurd that someone actually went ahead and comlained about this innocent traditional czech story for children. good one
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