A Little Mole and So Much More

He is probably one of the most famous Czechs of all time: The Little Mole. This cute cartoon character made his film debut in 1957 in an adventure lasting just twelve minutes. The plot can be quickly summarized. The little mole owns many important things – a safety pin, a length of yarn, a bent nail – but nowhere to put them. One day, he sees a splendid pair of blue pants hanging on a washing line with beautiful, large and practical pockets. The little mole wants to have a pair just like them. But how can he get hold of some? First, he asks his friends in the forest and in the meadow, but nobody can help him. Only the bad-tempered crab offers to cut some linen for him, and the reed warbler says he could sew them, but only if the mole can bring him some fabric. So, the search continues, but eventually it pays off. The mole finds a flax plant, which turns out to be the raw material for linen, and so he decides to look after it. Eagerly he sets about pulling weeds, chasing away pests and watering the thirsty plant.

Eventually, the flax can be harvested and then soaked in water – a frog comes out to help with the task. The plants are then dried and processed, crushed and combed. The little mole is helped by the stork and hedgehog. A team of small spiders work the flax into a fine thread and the blueberries color it with their dye. Now the thread has to be turned into fabric: the mole asks the ants for help, and they diligently build a loom and weave a blue linen cloth. They are supported by the cricket and the bumblebee who play music – a trope borrowed from classical fables. Finally, the crab is able to do the work he promised and cuts the linen to size so that the reed warbler can sew a fantastic pair of trousers from it, complete with large pockets. The little mole couldn’t be happier.

The short movie can simply be seen as a cute fable, or, alternatively, as a manipulative socialist educational film. After all, it is a product of late Stalinist-era . In the film, labor is idealized, especially labor in a collective; it is no coincidence that ants, those very collaborative insects, help the little mole and also play a central role in other children's stories of the time. Moreover, the goal of this labor– a pair of pants with large pockets – is not an object of vanity, but a decidedly practical garment; after all, the mole wants to have his tools with him. _The Little Mole _can thus be seen as an example of the exploitation of childhood culture and the manipulation of children in dictatorial societies

However, this interpretation is not without its problems. Apart from being extremely unoriginal, it also lacks rigor. This is true both at the narrative level – the ants are the only ‘collective’ amidst numerous individuals – and in terms of context. Without any knowledge of the production location and year, the film could just as easily be interpreted as a testimony to other social systems, including neoliberalism with its celebration of unpaid work. Above all, however, the narrative – one in which a problem or conflict is solved by hard work, conversation and mutual help – is a classic pattern in modern European children's literature. And indeed_, The Little Mole_ has remained an enormously successful animation series in the years since it was made and across the world, which raises interesting questions about the social function of children’s media and the conditions for its success, as well as its potential use in socialist societies.

Children's literature and children's media in general have been perceived and treated in very different ways in historiography. Some have shown it complete disregard as a historically relevant genre (“you don't have to look for politics everywhere”) which others view children's books as perfidious instruments of manipulation in dictatorial regimes. In the search for a more differentiated perspective, however, children's media have become an important area of literary and cultural studies as well as in history in recent years. The central questions here are about how children’s media view, process, explain, perpetuate or criticize power relations, and how they deal with gender hierarchies, inequality, political and moral values, historical narratives, and trauma. What narrative and aesthetic means are used to educate children with media created especially for them – in other words, to help them adapt to an adult-dominated society? What are the goals behind this education? How do these change over time? How do these media work, and who do they appeal to?

Media specifically aimed at children have existed in the European context since the early modern period, when  primers

Primer

also:

Alphabet book

A primer is an early teaching book designed to teach children the basics of reading and writing, and in particular how to read printed text. To this purpose, primers were richly illustrated and equipped with numerous illustrative tables, and sometimes also with syllable tables, word lists or proverbs and mnemonics. They can be traced back to the beginning of the early modern period. In the following centuries they were among the most widespread printed works and, along with calendars, the few non-religious works to be found in numerous households. ,  catechisms

Catechism

also:

Catechisms

A catechism is a book that teaches the basics of Christian belief and presents them in a didactic way, often in the form of a dialogue or question and answer. In the early modern period, catechisms were among the most widely distributed religious printed works and were also aimed at children and adolescents. Along with primers and calendars, they were part of the basic inventory of even lower-class households well into the 18th century.  and reading books were introduced; in the 19th and early 20th centuries, magazines aimed at young readers appeared, along with adventure books and classic novels for adolescent girls. In the 20th century, the market for children's media virtually exploded, with a whole range of book genres, films and later also television productions. Socialist societies played an important role in this. From 1917 onwards, the Soviet Union, and from the 1940s onwards, the socialist countries of East-Central and South-East Europe, latched onto one of the central premises of the modern concept of childhood: children are conceived as extremely malleable and thus an essential resource for shaping society. In socialism, which saw itself as revolutionary and explicitly future-oriented, this “resource” was used intensively, for example through the organization of children’s and youth associations and in its major commitment to children's media of all kinds. In socialist Czechoslovakia, too, children became an important focus and a key medium through which the government could communicate its messages.

By 1949, a state publishing house for children's books had already been established, and a Slovak publishing house Mladé letá was added in 1953, although there were few connections between children’s literature written in Czech and Slovak. When Czechoslovak television went on air in 1953, an editorial department for children's programs was also set up. Within a few years, children's films had become the flagship of the Czechoslovak film industry. Children's media was not seen as a niche, but as an important responsibility for society as a whole. Stanislav Neumann, editor-in-chief of the children's book publishing house, declared: “Children's literature can be a powerful weapon, a powerful instrument that helps us to educate children to become the builders of a communist society.” The writer Josef Šlajer called authors of children's books “engineers of children's souls”. There were stories about Lenin's exemplary childhood, picture books about hard-working preschool children, comics featuring ants who propagated and even over-fulfilled the requirements of the country’s Five-Year Plan. Many books were translated from Russian. Nevertheless, the heroes of Czech children's literature were of a different kind. The children in Prague and Brno did not fight against fascists, but helped to renovate apartments and looked after sick classmates. This was, above all, the childhood of the helper, not the fighter; in this way, it corresponded more to what the 19th century bourgeoisie had intended for their children, a world labelled “childlike” in a traditional way.

The question of what was “childlike” or “child-friendly” was the subject of intense debate not only in specialist journals such as “Zlatý Máj”, but also in the mainstream media and at writers' conferences. This is reflected in children’s literature, too, including in the story of The Little Mole.

Its creator, Zdeněk Miler, had started out by producing a highly didactic work about the “poppyseed cake”, which explained production processes in agriculture and celebrated the tractor as a new miracle machine; at the end, a little boy happily holds a poppyseed cake in his hands. A few years later, Miler was commissioned to produce a similar work, this time on the subject of textiles. The result of this rather dry assignment was The Little Mole. Two films with the same message – that creating a product requires a lot of work, many stages and intensive collaboration – but very different styles.

Unlike the socialist style of the Poppyseed Cake film with its focus on technical explanations, the story and figure of the little rotund mole was based on a romantic image of childhood. Its association of children with anthropomorphized animals, the cuteness factor of the images, text and voices, the sense of joy in simple things, emphasizing the motif of innocence, and the backdrop of nature that is unspoilt and yet is modelled on human society – all these features drew on established traditions that were actually bourgeois if considered from a socialist perspective.

Miler was not alone here. The world of Czechoslovak childhood culture – and this included both media for children and media that was aimed at adults but was about children – changed significantly from the end of the 1950s. This was preceded by intensive discussions about how media for children could be used more sensibly and be better designed. Well-known writers such as Marie Majerová and Bohumil Říha, and later also journalists and sociologists, took part in these discussions. After the war, the aim of creating a socialist children's literature was established, with the “trash” of previous eras to be banished from the shelves. But this new literature was soon criticized for being too out of touch – boring, aloof, and not child-oriented enough. There were also explicit calls for a greater diversity in children's media, to correspond to the diversity of actual childhoods. According to new insights, children needed different stories depending on their age, where they lived, interests, gender and individual living conditions. This debate was driven above all by one concern: in its desire to serve socialism, had children's media possibly forgotten about the children?

And indeed, this period saw the development of a much more diverse media landscape for children. This included, for example, different children’s magazines for different age groups, and an increasing number catering to different interests and hobbies. The state publishing house for children's books also developed different types of publication over time. Book illustrations and the graphic design of magazines now exhibited great diversity and innovation – in a way, the children's media of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s is reminiscent of the avant-garde children's literature of the early Soviet Union.

The Little Mole also underwent an interesting development over time. The visual language became more romantic, even Disney-like, and the mole himself became increasingly chubby, reflecting a traditional ideal of childhood. Meanwhile, the themes became more diverse and the messages more complex. In the film The Little Mole and the Car (1963), the little animal lives no longer in the idyllic landscape of the local forest, but in a modern city. His life is dominated by cars, noise, dirt and pollution. This story takes a remarkable turn and, of course, also ends well for the mole. He discovers his enthusiasm for engines and, against all odds, sets out to get his own car. Interestingly, no one helps him this time; instead, his efforts are met with disbelief and ridicule. In the end, the mole adapts to this new world, builds himself a car, making use of the achievements of mechanization and finally drives through the streets in a chic sports car. The film is thus remarkably individualistic in its messaging, with a rather American aesthetic that idealizes modern technology.

Later Mole films addressed, among other things, ecological issues and explored the traditional connection between the idylls of childhood and the natural world in their visual language. These stories looked at the problems of garbage and the destruction of habitat in an almost dystopian manner. One example of this is the film The Mole and the Bulldozer (1975). Here the mole has created a beautiful home with a flourishing garden. He weeds and waters the flowers and looks after the bees. A cricket eagerly plays its violin and the moon rises over the idyllic scene. One day, however, the unthinkable happens: a bulldozer digs its way through the landscape, threatening to destroy the mole's beautiful little world. Unable to stop the machine (either with his trademark “haló” or with the help of the violin-playing cricket), the Mole is left with only one option: to outwit the monster. He diverts the bulldozer from its planned route and leads it around his home. In the end, the destruction of nature itself has not been stopped, but the mole has at least managed to save his own little patch.

In addition to the ecological one, the film carries another message. The style of the bulldozer in the 1975 film is strikingly reminiscent of the Soviet tanks of  August 1968

Prague Spring

The term “Prague Spring” refers to the political reform movements in Czechoslovakia that were violently suppressed by troops of the Warsaw Pact under Soviet leadership at the end of August 1968. The reform efforts were largely initiated by the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPČ) under its First Secretary Alexander Dubček (1921–1992), however, they were a reaction to an economic and social crisis that had already lasted several years. The reforms did not aim at a fundamental change of the government or the political system, but at the creation of a “socialism with a human face”. The liberalization and democratization program included, for instance, a reduction of the planned economy, the first market-economy freedoms and privatizations of companies, a reduction of bureaucracy, the strengthening of trade unions and works councils, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of travel, and the abolition of censorship of the press and art. The reform program soon met strong objections from the Soviet leadership and the governments of other Warsaw Pact countries (especially Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the GDR). During the night of August 20–21, 1968, more than half a million Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in “Operation Danube”. More than a hundred people were killed in the subsequent protests, and hundreds more were injured. The Politburo of the CPČ, including Dubček, were arrested, brought to Moscow and forced to sign the “Moscow Protocol” on August 26, agreeing to the reversal of all reforms and the long-term deployment of Soviet troops in the country. The subsequent phase of Czechoslovak history, in which the previously implemented reforms were rolled back and regime critics were persecuted on a massive scale, is referred to as the period of “normalization”. The term is already used in the “Moscow Protocol”. . It threatens to ruthlessly destroy the home that the mole, following a clearly socialist ideal, has laboriously built up. Neither language (“haló”) nor the artistic efforts of the cricket nor the desperate attack of two robins who throw pebbles at the machine can stop it. The mole learns what Czechoslovak society also had to learn: that it is not possible to resist such a superior force; the only option is to try to save what can be saved and retreat to private life, to one’s own small world. This interpretation certainly finds support in the fact that the plot had been suggested by Ivan Klíma, a former communist Czech author, who had protested against the Soviet invasion and experienced severe repression in the 1970s and 1980s. Seen in this light, The Mole and the Normalization_ of Czechoslovakia_ might be a fitting subtitle for this only superficially fairytale-like film; the seemingly happy ending leaves a bitter aftertaste.

English translation: William Connor, Gwen Clayton