Hacker Cinema
The Joke
Žert
1969 · Film · 77 min
Directed by Jaromil Jireš
In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.
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> Perfectly-well-meaning people, while supposedly building a bright tomorrow, create hell. Just like the 1950s Czechoslovakia. University execs scared not to cater to idiotic demands, public shaming, double-speak, government-sanctioned kangaroo courts.
After WWII, the Czechoslovak communists were faced with the problem of replacing the management of literally the whole country's public sector, as well as the newly nationalized formerly private sector, with people loyal to the new Republic. This meant no Nazi or Western collaborators, this meant purges. A lot of good people were chewed up, some died in prison or were executed. In the universities that had been closed since shortly after the beginning of the war, the students were allowed to take over, and run the administration, and later conduct the purges. This gave tremendous responsibility to people who had no qualification, no training, no life experience; and also tremendous power to people who by bribery or false testimony leveraged the system for personal gain or revenge. These drumhead hearings were not dissimilar to the Title IX hearings that take place on the campuses today. Here also are people with inappropriate training, perjury is rampant, the verdict is swift, but can it really be called just?
Read Kundera's The Joke[1] (also a 1968 movie), for a good illustration of the absurdity of it all.
The protagonist sends a letter to his girlfriend with a joke regarding something or other. She finds the joke offensive, shares her concern with some of her colleagues, a hearing is called, and our protagonist finds himself kicked out of the university, and branded politically unreliable. This means he can barely get the worst of jobs, and will in fact be forced to work in a penal colony for a few years. Never having been convicted of a crime, never having been given the opportunity to defend himself in a court of law. Because of a joke.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joke_(novel)