Paradygmat czeskiego bohatera narodowego – wokół filmu Roberta Sedláčka Jan Palach
Czech national hero paradigm – around Robert Sedláček’s film Jan Palach

Summary/Abstract: In my article, I would like to reflect on the paradigm of Czech heroism based on the film by Robert Sedláček (2018) Jan Palach, which is a fact-based tale of a twenty-year-old student at the Charles University in Prague, who on January 16, 1969 self-immolated in Wenceslas Square in the centre of Prague in protest against aggression of the Warsaw Pact forces on Czechoslovakia and the growing apathy of Czechoslovak society. I will think about how his image is constructed in a film more than fifty years after his death. I will place my considerations in the context of the tradition of presenting the Czech hero in humanistic literature and the activities of official state institutions, as well as in relation to mythological structures, through which I will capture the most important elements of the composition of Robert Sedláček’s film. As a consequence, my fundamental research question will remain not only the question of the very construction of the hero, but also this construction in relation to other ideas of national heroes in contemporary Czech culture.

• Details
• Contents