Inhabiting the Post-Communist (Kontroll. Nimród Antal, 2003)

Abstract

Chapter 4 is about Kontroll (Nimród Antal, 2003), a film that came to cinemas only a few months before Hungary joined the EU. The film takes the viewer to these confused and confusing years, where some of the basic questions of Hungarian identity politics were asked again, as a result of the ambiguous experiences of the country’s change to consumer capitalism. Kontroll presents Eastern Europe as a (culturally constructed) land struggling with issues of (post-)coloniality, exploitation and inferiority complexes, at a time when coming to terms with the past and the evaluation of possible futures were tasks necessitated by the historical situation. The chapter (following de Certeau) explores the protagonists’ tactics of resistance in hostile places, and also theorises its non-idealised masculinities in line with Kaja Silverman’s theory of male subjectivity at the margins.