František A. Podhajský: Forces, conflicts, emotions: The Iraq War through the eyes of Hollywood

Description

We invite you to a lecture and subsequent discussion with teacher František A. Podhajský about the Iraq War through the eyes of Hollywood – from 6:00 p.m. in the Display gallery.

According to Brown University research, the 20-year War on Terror has cost around nine trillion dollars and claimed at least nine hundred thousand casualties. The Iraq War (2003-2011) was the most tragic conflict for American soldiars, during the war were 4.5 thousand killed and another 30 thousand wounded. It was a traumatic experience, processed in a number of stories. What genres did Hollywood studios choose to tell them? Which ones were financially successful? And how were the forces controlling the events of the war, the conflicts experienced by the protagonists, and the emotions aroused in the spectators sitting comfortably in their seats, shown in them?

The series of lectures is part of the process of creating the theater project Oh My Gun, which is a collaboration of the theater group 8lidí and the artist Jiří Žák. The project focuses on the past and present of the Czech arms industry. It traces the history of Czech weapons as a means of building diplomatic relations and their export to the Middle East region, especially Syria. Through the theatre’s performative possibilities, the creators of the theater will examine the influence of the Czech Republic, a small semi-peripheral state in the middle of Europe, on the war conflicts of today’s world. 


Date

12. 5. 2022, 18:00
Public

František A. Podhajský

František A. Podhajský is a university and school teacher, he mainly deals with narratology, cultural theory and the history of ideas. The books were prepared for publication by Julek Fučík – forever alive! (2012) and The Fiction of Jaroslav Hašek (2016). He contributed to the collective monographs “Zatemněno”: Czech literature and culture in the protectorate (2017), Dictionary of Literary Structuralism (2018), »Truth« and Fiction: Conspiracy Theories in Eastern European Culture and Literature (2020).