Page 67 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 67
a distant view in michelle pfeiffer‘s smiling eyes
munism in Hungary. The formerly unimaginable event
happened with the communists’ self-abolition at a par-
ty congress, and now, with honest elections expected, it
is coming to fulfilment with peaceful parliamentary ses-
sions – with the prospect of voluminous foreign invest-
ments on the way. In short, no real spectacle, as would be
fitting for such an epochal event as the abolition of the
withered revolutionary social class: they did not shoot
anyone, they did not accuse anyone of counterrevolu-
tion – just as if nothing special had actually happened.
In a language of longing and envy, Štrajn then contrasted the cha-
os among the Yugoslavs with life in Hungary, suddenly so remarka-
bly unremarkable. In Budapest, the piece continued, a reader could
now simply pick up an issue of Newsweek and sink pleasantly into a
good read – for example, the recent cover story on the rise of actress
Michelle Pfeiffer and her work on a film adaptation of the latest spy
novel by John Le Carré, that great merchant of cold war mythology.
The film, Štrajn pointed out, was a co-production of a Hollywood
studio and the Soviet state enterprise Mosfilm. Moreover, the Rus-
sians planned to use their profits to film a novel by Bulgakov, previ-
ously banned! But while the Budapest reader could enjoy the luxu-
ry of indulging all this new East-West cooperation fairly mundane,
if a person were to live in Belgrade or Ljubljana, not to
even mention Pristina, he would make out in Michelle
Pfeiffer‘s smiling eyes a distant view of some sort of more
normal world. And if, in spite of everything, he were to
read an article about yet another incremental proof of
ever greater cooperation and decreasing enmity in the
world, during his reading his thoughts would run off to-
ward the ‘historic events’ in his own unfriendly home-
land of stubborn generals, vile secret agents, corrupt
authorities and, here and there, conditionally-existing
democracy (Štrajn, ‘Oddaljeni pogled Michelle Pfeifer’,
Mladina no. 40, 17 November 1989, 12).
The mood here captures perfectly how reformist victories elsewhere
in Eastern Europe made for bitter frustration among Slovenian
65
munism in Hungary. The formerly unimaginable event
happened with the communists’ self-abolition at a par-
ty congress, and now, with honest elections expected, it
is coming to fulfilment with peaceful parliamentary ses-
sions – with the prospect of voluminous foreign invest-
ments on the way. In short, no real spectacle, as would be
fitting for such an epochal event as the abolition of the
withered revolutionary social class: they did not shoot
anyone, they did not accuse anyone of counterrevolu-
tion – just as if nothing special had actually happened.
In a language of longing and envy, Štrajn then contrasted the cha-
os among the Yugoslavs with life in Hungary, suddenly so remarka-
bly unremarkable. In Budapest, the piece continued, a reader could
now simply pick up an issue of Newsweek and sink pleasantly into a
good read – for example, the recent cover story on the rise of actress
Michelle Pfeiffer and her work on a film adaptation of the latest spy
novel by John Le Carré, that great merchant of cold war mythology.
The film, Štrajn pointed out, was a co-production of a Hollywood
studio and the Soviet state enterprise Mosfilm. Moreover, the Rus-
sians planned to use their profits to film a novel by Bulgakov, previ-
ously banned! But while the Budapest reader could enjoy the luxu-
ry of indulging all this new East-West cooperation fairly mundane,
if a person were to live in Belgrade or Ljubljana, not to
even mention Pristina, he would make out in Michelle
Pfeiffer‘s smiling eyes a distant view of some sort of more
normal world. And if, in spite of everything, he were to
read an article about yet another incremental proof of
ever greater cooperation and decreasing enmity in the
world, during his reading his thoughts would run off to-
ward the ‘historic events’ in his own unfriendly home-
land of stubborn generals, vile secret agents, corrupt
authorities and, here and there, conditionally-existing
democracy (Štrajn, ‘Oddaljeni pogled Michelle Pfeifer’,
Mladina no. 40, 17 November 1989, 12).
The mood here captures perfectly how reformist victories elsewhere
in Eastern Europe made for bitter frustration among Slovenian
65
