An art prank by a Czech collective has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.
Quite an interesting story in the NYT: “That Mushroom Cloud? They’re Just Svejking Around.” It brings to mind my prankster days in high school, when I published (anonymously) a fake version of the school’s “Daily Bulletin” in which I lampooned the administration, teachers and fellow students who deserved it (IMHO). I had a small group of co-conspirators, and we snuck into the school very early, ran the fake bulletin off on the same mimeograph machine (remember the smell of mimeograph sheets? Ah, one of the pleasures today’s youth have missed!) used for the real one, and ran around sliding it under classroom doors before people arrived.
It looked just like the real one, so it caused some confusion, but all you had to do was read a few lines to realize it was a joke. No one ever caught me, and this is the first time I have admitted it publicly. So, Headmaster MacColl and the rest of the Moorestown Friends School faculty in the early 1980’s, if you’re reading this, now you know who your satirist was (if you had not already guessed, or even remember that). I still have copies of those fake bulletins in my files someplace.
Back to the point of the article about Czech pranksters — it fascinates me that an entire country would have a “tradition” of tolerating pranks. The article explains how that has come about, and how the case in point caused nary a concern among the public at large. Here’s what they did:
One Sunday, several months ago, early risers gazing at Czech Television’s CT2 channel saw picturesque panoramas of the Czech countryside, broadcast to the wordless accompaniment of elevator music. It was the usual narcoleptic morning weather show.Then came the nuclear blast.
Across the Krkonose Mountains, or so it appeared, a white flash was followed by the spectacle of a rising mushroom cloud. A Web address at the bottom of the screen said Ztohoven.com.
Ztohoven, to no one’s great surprise, turned out to be a collective of young artists and friends who had previously tinkered with a giant neon sculpture of a heart high atop Prague Castle, and managed (during a single night, no less) to insert announcements for an art opening inside all 750 lighted advertising boxes in the city’s subway system.
I meant, by the way, that no one was much concerned when it actually happened. After the fact, authorities decided to take legal action, so now there is a big fuss about it. But the country’s general reaction among the public was a mild shrug.
Now, if you ask me, there’s no way such an act would have caused little stir if it had been on TV here in the US. There would have been panic, outrage, self-righteous indignation, yes — and a minority of us who would have laughed out loud and thought, “That’s brilliant! How did they do that?” Maybe I need to move to the Czech Republic.
