Alternatív modernitás: Steampunk retrovízió Karel Zeman Az ellopott léghajó című filmjében
Alternative Modernity: Steampunk Retrovision in Karel Zeman’s The Stolen Airship

Summary/Abstract: Using a combination of live-action and various animation techniques (paper cutouts, drawing and puppet animation), the sci-fi film The Stolen Airship (Ukradená vzducholoď) was made in 1966, but under the guise of an airship stolen by children, it offers an (imaginary) panorama of the social effects of modern inventions of the late 19th century. The paper explores how the retrovision of the Czech steampunk film represents the perception of a metropolis, as well as the parallel stories of the revolutions of transportation and mass communication, and how they relate to the debate on ’modernity-thesis’ coined by David Bordwell and to the power methods of modern discipline. The film offers an encyclopaedia of alternative modernity of travel (railway, automobile, tram, airship, submarine, etc.) and media (fairground attractions, printed press, photography, telephone, poster, gramophone), which are examined by the study in terms of the early form of society of the spectacle, the Habermasian transformation of public sphere, and of surveillance techniques described by Michel Foucault and modified by Tony Bennett. Zeman, by imitating the style of early film, especially Georges Méliès (proscenium arch, stop-motion, cardboard sets, optical illusions, tinting), and by the metaleptic remediation of Jules Verne’s novels The Mysterious Island and Two Years’ Vacation, views the magic of technology ironically, in the spirit of affirming the power of imagination, interpreted on the basis of imagination emphasized in the modern Czech intellectual history.

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