I bought this postcard and others like it at the Museum of Communism in Prague because it lampooned Communism and made me laugh in the process. Steve's father, however, thought they were cynical. I paused and thought about it because that's not the first word I would use to describe them. Are they cynical? Cynicism has always had a negative connotation in my mind. I think it's more apt to say Communism is cynical rather than those attempting to poke fun at it, which is a very healthy response to the evil that was /is Communism. Perhaps the one positive definition of cynicism is when it's regarding Communism!
To be honest I had hoped for sensational stories of rescue and escape from behind the Iron Curtain, tales of heroism and subversion. But what we got were the pedestrian details of "normal" life lived under government scrutiny and control. It reminded me of that statement about the banality of evil. Evil can be so prosaic that we forget it's evil. The sensational details of arrests, interrogations, deportations, and gulags boil our blood and convict us to do something about the evil, like naming it such.
The Czech people got the last laugh since the Communist museum is squashed between a McDonald's (Go American Imperialism!) and a Casino (Yeah Greedy Capitalism!).
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