Muriel a oranžová smrt
Encyclopedia
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: Muriel and the Orange Death) is a Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
comic album written by Miloš Macourek
Miloš Macourek
Miloš Macourek was a Czech poet, playwright, author and screenwriter.- Biography :During his career, Macourek worked in various professions. From 1953 to 1960, he was a teacher of the art history; later he worked as a dramaturgist at the Barrandov Film Studios...
and drawn by Kája Saudek
Kája Saudek
Kája Saudek is a Czech comics illustrator. He is one of the most important exponents of the Czech comics since the late 1960s. He is the twin brother of the photographer and painter Jan Saudek.- Biography :...
in 1969/1970. The story was inspired by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...
in 1968. The album is the second and the last part of the planned cycle of adventures of young physician Muriel and her friend, angel Ró. It is considered one of the masterpieces of Czech comics
Czech comics
- History :The beginnings of the comics genre in the Czechoslovakia are connected with the popular magazine Mladý hlasatel , published in the 1930s. In 1938, the magazine began publishing a popular comic series Rychlé šípy, written by Jaroslav Foglar and drawn by Jan Fischer...
. The 1st edition of the album was published in 2009, forty years after its creation, and sold out in four days.
Background
Kája Saudek and Miloš Macourek first worked together in the early 1960s, as filmmakers. Inspired by the French Barbarella comic-book series, they began work on a cycle of graphic novels that featured a young, beautiful woman and a winged man (an 'angel'). The first installment, Muriel a anděléMuriel a andělé
Muriel a andělé is a comic album written by Miloš Macourek and drawn by Kája Saudek, originally created in the late 1960s and published in 1991. The album is considered one of the masterworks of Czech comics; it was voted the best Czech comic in a poll held by the newspaper Mladá fronta DNES in 2009...
(Muriel and Angels), was announced in 1969, but not published until 1991. While the second installment was being planned, Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
forces invaded Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, in August 1968, and occupied the country, ending the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
liberalization period, and bringing about a restructure of the Czechoslovak communist regime. Faced with official repression and censorship, Czech authors, filmmakers and musicians reacted with a spate of ingeniously subversive new works: Macourek was no exception, and wove his own experience and opinions of Czechoslovakia's occupation into a new installment of Muriel's adventures. In the tightened communist censorship of the period, both installments met with official disapproval. Under the "normalization
Normalization (Czechoslovakia)
In the history of Czechoslovakia, normalization is a name commonly given to the period 1969 to about 1987. It was characterized by initial restoration of the conditions prevailing before the reform period led by Alexander Dubček , first of all, the firm rule of the Communist Party of...
" of Czech society, comics - and particularly Saudek's - were considered bourgeois propaganda. Muriel a oranžová smrt was a flagrant satire against central communist authority.
Plot
Muriel a oranžová smrt follows its characters on from where Muriel a anděléMuriel a andělé
Muriel a andělé is a comic album written by Miloš Macourek and drawn by Kája Saudek, originally created in the late 1960s and published in 1991. The album is considered one of the masterworks of Czech comics; it was voted the best Czech comic in a poll held by the newspaper Mladá fronta DNES in 2009...
left them. The militaristic General Xeron, the main antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
, has managed to escape justice. Both Muriel and Xeron are captured by a spy from the Orange Planet. Once at the Orange Planet, Muriel is imprisoned, but Xeron, true to character, unhesitatingly joins its autocratic ruling regime, and persuades its leader, the Central Brain, to invade Earth. After a brief, hopeless resistance, Earth is defeated; but Muriel's boyfriend Ró (a visitor from an alien planet of the distant future) contacts his compatriots and allies, and together, they drive the invaders back. Ró journeys to the Orange Planet, destroys its Central Brain, frees Muriel, and liberates the Planet's ordinary inhabitants, who have been unknowingly enslaved all the while.
Symbolism
The Orange Planet reflects a prevalent Czechoslovakian viewpoint on SovietSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
life during the 1960s: its men are depicted as ugly, malformed orange monsters, who serve a life of comfortable routine in the Planet's enormous army. Its women live a life of drudgery, at the service of heavy labour and heavy industry
Heavy industry
Heavy industry does not have a single fixed meaning as compared to light industry. It can mean production of products which are either heavy in weight or in the processes leading to their production. In general, it is a popular term used within the name of many Japanese and Korean firms, meaning...
. The Planet is controlled by a dictator (The Central Brain) who brainwashes its inhabitants into obedience by means of implanted radio antennae. Saudek depicts the women with his characteristic sense of eroticism, usually half-naked and in sexually provocative poses. Czech comics expert Tomáš Prokůpek claims that this is probably the first Czech comic to depict naked female breasts.
By 1970, it was ready for publication but in the atmosphere of Husakian
Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák was a Slovak politician, president of Czechoslovakia and a long-term Communist leader of Czechoslovakia and of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia...
"normalization
Normalization (Czechoslovakia)
In the history of Czechoslovakia, normalization is a name commonly given to the period 1969 to about 1987. It was characterized by initial restoration of the conditions prevailing before the reform period led by Alexander Dubček , first of all, the firm rule of the Communist Party of...
", the publication of a comic whose main theme was an invasion of monsters from the Orange Planet invited "political suicide".
Despite the restrictions of "normalisation", Macourek and Saudek continued their collaboration, mingling film and comic-book artistic conventions. Saudek designed the 1970 film production Čtyři vraždy stačí, drahoušku
Čtyři vraždy stačí, drahoušku
Four Murders Are Enough, Darling is a 1970 Czechoslovak comedy film directed by Oldřich Lipský.- Cast :*Lubomír Lipský .... George Camel*Jiřina Bohdalová .... Sabrina*Iva Janžurová .... Kate Draxl*Marie Rosůlková .... Mrs. Harrington...
(Four Murders is Enough, Honey: screenplay by Macourek); the film employed graphic elements from a comic book developed in tandem. The influence of Muriel and the Orange Death is apparent in Saudek's next work, the comic album Lips Tullian
Lips Tullian
Lips Tullian is a comic series written by Jaroslav Weigel and drawn by Kája Saudek in 1972. The series was published by the popular Czechoslovak weekly magazine Mladý svět...
. Eventually, this too was banned. Muriel a oranžová smrt was published only in 2009, two years after Saudek suffered an accident and fell into a coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
, and forty years after its creation. It sold out in four days, and is considered one of the masterpieces of Czech comics
Czech comics
- History :The beginnings of the comics genre in the Czechoslovakia are connected with the popular magazine Mladý hlasatel , published in the 1930s. In 1938, the magazine began publishing a popular comic series Rychlé šípy, written by Jaroslav Foglar and drawn by Jan Fischer...
.
Style
Saudek employs visual techniques that were unusually inventive for their day, derived from film editingFilm editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
and story-boarding, with heightened and wide-screen perspectives, recurrent motifs and a strong narrative style. Leading characters are based on real-life models: Muriel herself was based on the Czech film star Olga Schoberová
Olga Schoberová
Olga Schoberová or Olinka Bérová born March 15, 1943 in Prague, Czech Republic , Czech-American actress, was often compared with Brigitte Bardot and Ursula Andress. She acted in 22 Czech, German, Italian and American movies. Olga was married to Brad Harris on 16 November 1967 and divorced in 1969...
(Saudek's former fiancée), and her antagonist, the militant general Ian Xeron, on Saudek's twin brother, the photographer Jan Saudek
Jan Saudek
Jan Saudek is a Czech art photographer.- Life :Saudek's father was a Jew and the family was therefore persecuted by Germans. Many of his family members died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. Jan and his brother Karel were held in a children's concentration camp located...
. A character called Nurse Haney is based on Saudek's wife, Hana. Other minor characters are taken from Western comic-books; Archie Andrews
Archie Andrews (comics)
Archie Andrews, created in 1941 by Vic Bloom and Bob Montana, is a fictional character in an American comic book series published by Archie Comics, as well as the long-running Archie Andrews radio series, a syndicated comic strip, The Archie Show, and Archie's Weird Mysteries.-Character and...
, Jughead Jones
Jughead Jones
Jughead Jones is a fictional character in Archie Comics who first appeared in the comic in December 1941. He is the son of Forsythe II; although in one of the early Archie newspaper comic strips, he himself is identified as Forsythe Van Jones II...
, Alfred E. Neuman
Alfred E. Neuman
Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot and cover boy of Mad magazine. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed and named by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman...
and Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
inhabit Muriel's world, which is rich with in-jokes, double entendre
Double entendre
A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....
s and hidden meanings, typical of Saudek's work.