CZECH DREAM. OR MAYBE POST-DATED CHECK DREAMS?

The Author saw an amazing film recently at the Guild Cinema in Albuquerque. The title of the film was “Czech Dream”, a documentary film produced by student film makers, Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda. The film was financed by a grant from the Czech ministry of Culture.

The set up is fairly straightforward. The two filmmakers set out to create, promote, market and “launch”, a fictional hypermarket. Hypermarket is the Czech tem for a superstore like a large Wal-Mart, Meyers, Target or any of the ubiquitous big-box stores that sell groceries, small appliances, electronics and sundry other consumer detritus. They develop a logo and marketing material for Czech Dream and have marketing research firms perform market research, including focus groups.

Prior to the store’s unannounced opening, the filmmakers make large ad buys, produce flyers with “brand name” items selling at low prices, and blanket Prague with television, radio and billboard ads for Czech Dream. But the content of the ads are deceptively honest. They say things like “Don’t Come [to the hypermarket]” and “Don’t Spend”. Czech consumers assume these ads are using “reverse psychology” creating a counterintuitive response in ad viewers. In other words, the more the hypermarket tells consumers not do something, the more consumers wish to shop at the store.

AND EMPTY FIELD AND A FALSE FRONT. A POST-COMMUNIST “POTEMKIN VILLAGE”?

The Czech Dream store is just a huge banner in an empty meadow. The banner is held up by scaffolding. But from a hundred meters away, it looks like a storefront.

The time and place of the “grand opening” of Czech Dream is intentionally kept secret until shortly before the scheduled time. On the morning of the “grand opening”, three thousand of people show up. They are all given small paper flags with the Czech Dream logo, and key chains. (The store ads promise shoppers that “no one will leave empty handed”.)

At the scheduled time, thousands of people make the long trek from across the field to the Czech Dream facade. Then comes the Punch line.

SOME PEOPLE WERE ANGRY, SOME AMUSED, AND A FEW WERE HAPPY JUST TO HAVE GOTTEN OUT OF THE HOUSE.

Many people were angry that they had been scammed by the Czech Dream. Others were amused and philosophical, noting that the got nothing more than was “promised” and seeing the irony through post-communist, preternatural consumer eyes. And some apparently well-adjusted folks took it in stride, noting that if they weren’t at the “grand opening”, they would be home cleaning house. Or shopping somewhere else.

The filmmakers, to their credit and at some physical risk, remained at the site and confronted some the angered “customers”.

The ironies were delicious. Vacuous consumerism, so derided by the former communists, and still derided by many in the pundit class, gets a coy comeuppance. Thousands of people, looking for a cheap deal on a camera, TV or laundry soap, got exactly what they were literally promised and forewarned about.

SEE THE FILM!

A Hypermarket is Hyperreality in the Desert of the Real!