Political oppression and resistance in Jiří Trnka’s Ruka/The Hand (1965)

Ruka/The Hand (Jiří Trnka, 1965)

In 1965, the Czech draughtsman, book illustrator, puppet and toy designer, painter, animated film-maker and sculptor Jiří Trnka released his last short animation film Ruka/The Hand (1965). The silent 18 minute animation delivers a powerful and chilling dynamic; allegorically and metaphorically representing the influence of the communist political regime on the freedom of people through the framing of Trnka as the main character (a harlequin) and the accompanying image of the hand, which overpowers harlequin’s agency). Whilst remaining a communist state, Czechoslovakia experienced a short period or freedom under Alexander Dubček leadership during which the opposition against political repression was communicated through the arts (see Stoneman 2015). Trnka used animation to both record his reality and condemn it. Nonetheless, Ruka was meant to deliver a critique of Stalin and for this reason, it was banned in the Czech Republic until the end of communism as it was thought to be a negative commentary on the regime (Joshko and Morgan 2008, 71). In this blog post, I will focus on the symbolic valence of the short and how Trnka’s stop motion animation style portrays the themes of oppression and resistance. In particular, I will focus on the 10 second sequence where the main character is manipulated by the hand into crafting a sculpture of the latter, which shows the effects of totalizing powers on free-thinking individuals and questions the notion of resistance as a solution.

Over the span of the short film, spectators watch the main character sculpting flower pots which are suddenly destroyed by the tyrannical interruption of a hand. Through its multiple attempts of seduction and manipulation, the hand gradually leads the character to exhaustion and is able to force him to craft a sculpture in its honour. The selected clip is situated at this breaking point, where the character suddenly appears in a bird cage and is coordinated by the hand into sculpting an enormous sculpture of a hand identical to that which torments him.

The harlequin represents Trnka the artist; his appearance further highlights the central theme of the short by offering a euphemistic and “penetrative” representation (Wells 1998, 122). Nonetheless, alongside the absence of dialogue the harlequin maintains the same inexpressive facial expression throughout. This allows for an emphasis on the attacks exerted on him by the outside force of the hand, particularly as his lack of expression reflects such actions back passively. The protagonist is anthropomorphic with some exaggerated traits including a big nose and huge eyes surrounded by dark lines. Yet the character is still able to deliver fear and panic; the only sign of change is witnessed when the black lines around his eyes become more pronounced with the progression of the story.

Fig. 1 - The harlequin collapses in the darkness.

Trnka’s collaborator Břetislav Pojar described his puppetry style as full of character; the characters changes emotions and transmit them through body movements and silhouettes (Howard, Lukas and McKim 2015; see also Vránková 2015). Moreover, the apparently empty facial expression allows for the physical gestures to stand out; his face becomes a shield against the manipulation of his agency and his body counteracts the enemy. The harlequin’s physicality is also key in representing his troubled journey since to each attack on behalf of the hand there is a response of resistance. In the selected sequence, his body merges with the stillness of his face and becomes controlled by the hand. This indicates that his numerous attempts of resistance have been in vain since the hand overwhelms him with its totalizing power. The harlequin’s reluctant conformation is temporary since he will continue to attempt to escape from the hand and resist it. The frame-by-frame characteristics of stop motion and the particular labour that define puppet aesthetics creates a staggered movement, which highlights the main character’s difficulty in escaping his condition, induced upon him by the hand (see Gasek 2011; Purves 2018). The rhythmic and mechanic sculpting gestures match the hollow drum tones of the musical score, delivering a sense of continuous and harrowing monotony. The fragmented movement of the stop motion style is then further highlighted by the monotonous motion of sculpting, from which the harlequin’s body suddenly collapses from exhaustion (Fig. 1).

Fig. 2 - The harlequin is manoeuvred by the hand into sculpting.

Trnka’s personal experience of totalitarianism under the communist regime is projected and rearticulated in the meaning and knowledge he transmits through his short. The state-run studios had the power to approve or censor certain topics and control funding accordingly. Trnka was thus dependent on their funding, yet resistant to their politics, and this ambiguity limited the freedom of expression in his work. In the selected clip in particular, he is the harlequin who becomes a marionette itself, pulled by the hand from above through strings. This is ironic, as the puppet master himself is being treated as a puppet and loses agency over his work and life. Charged with power and symbolic meaning, the white-gloved hand is the harlequin’s oppressor, with its size highlighting the decisive influence it has on and over the harlequin. The model hand sculpted by the harlequin is pointing up with its index finger – a gesture to freedom, but in this case, to the live hand that is controlling the process (Fig. 2). As the hand floats ominously over the cage and pulls the strings that make the harlequin move in specific ways during the sculpting process, its movements are decisive, bold and caricatured; it appears to have a life of its own and resembles the physicality and flexibility of a human body. In the case of Ruka, the hand becomes the representation of a regime of oppression and of all those who make it up.  Nonetheless, caricatures of figures of a high status have the power to lower it through exaggerating their traits and portraying their vulnerabilities (Herhuth 2018, 172).

The choice of not representing a human exponent of communism is effective in truly dehumanizing the movement and exalting its negative tendencies and implications. The white colour is like a blank canvas which fulfils a similar function to the harlequin’s blank expression; its gestures and movements fill its lack of colour with enormous potency and mechanized tyranny (on the “aesthetics of gesture” found in puppet animation, see Mohamed and Nor 2015).

In Ruka, the cage is another significant symbol, bolstered by its location and surroundings; a bird’s cage immersed in an empty space resembling a static sky. The harlequin is cut out from the world and his life, imprisoned in a cage where he needs to obey to orders. This is another reference to the lack of freedom under the communist establishment since it conveys the loneliness of the artist in facing something which is bigger and more powerful than him (Fig. 3). The colours have a symbolic potency as well; the sky changes its tonality and gets darker, mirroring the controlling hand as it changes from its white cast colour to black during its climax of controlling power. The transformation of the background reflects the harlequin’s emotional state, and the shadows of the cage railings and low-lit light from the candle, equally project a bleak tone onto the harlequin’s face. These stylistic elements highlight the unwilling subordination that the harlquin character undergoes. The medals the hand puts on the harlequins costume when he finishes the sculpture are red, a colour associated with the communist party and the soviet union. Moreover, the hammer that he receives from the hand is not only a tool for sculpting, but also evokes the Soviet Union symbol of the hammer and sickle, which usually appears on a red background. The latter was seen as a representation of solidarity, yet in Trnka’s short it is a medium through which the harlequin is pushed into force labour and idolatry.

Fig. 3 - The “helping” hand.

Ruka functions as an oppositional representation of political ideology and its limiting effects on human freedom. The short is a political allegory portrayed through a captivating animation style, which engages social representation and criticism through symbolism. In the figure of the harlequin, Trnka crafts a character through which he not only portrays himself as the artist, but any free-thinking individual who gets robbed of their agency and induced into following and acting according to an ideology and regime. The animation short becomes a revolt against the political environment of Trnka’s time, rendered evocative through the stop-motion puppetry style, its subtleties and symbolic elements, which position stop-motion animation as an effective of representation and protest against political oppression and power. The lack of dialogue and simple facial design of the harlequin precludes movement, the main medium through which the story is otherwise expressed. The harlequin’s changing emotional states are imposed upon him by the oppressive and insisting hand and its gradually more direct and aggressive gesturalism. His numerous physical responses express his resistance and powerlessness against this dominating force. The fact he is being controlled like a puppet by the tyrannical hand whilst locked in a cage into sculpting is ironic given his condition as an artist and criticism against Stalin. Moreover, the apparent help provided by the hand by giving him light is an indicator of the utopia sold by communism, which disintegrates when the harlequin is rushed back into completing the hand’s purpose.

**Article published: July 29, 2022**

References

Purves, Barry J.C. 2018. Stop-Motion Animation: Frame by Frame Film-Making with Puppets and Models. London: Fairchild Books. 

Gasek, Tom. 2011. Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques. New York: Routledge.

Herhuth, Eric. 2018. “Political Animation and Propaganda.” In The Animation Studies Reader, edited by Nichola Dobson, Annabelle Honess Roe, Amy Ratelle and Caroline Ruddell, 169–180. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Howard, Cerise, Karli Lukas, and Kristi McKim. 2015. “The Passion of the Peasant Poet: Jiří Trnka, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Hand.” Senses of Cinema, August 9, 2015. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-passion-of-the-peasant-poet-jiri-trnka-a-midsummer-nights-dream-and-the-hand/.  

Joschko, Lucie and Michael Morgan. 2008. “Learning from the Golden Age of Czechoslovak Animation: The Past as the Key to Unlocking Contemporary Issues.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 3, no. 1: 66-84.

Mohamed, Fauzi Naeim, and Nurul Lina Mohd Nor. “Puppet Animation Films and Gesture Aesthetics.” Animation 10, no. 2 (2015): 102–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746847715587425. 

Stoneman, Anna J. 2015. “Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring.” The History Teacher 49, no. 1 (2015): 103–25.

Vránková, Kamila. 2015. “Dreams and Magic in the Illustrations and Puppet Movies of Jiři Trnka.” Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies 7: 93–106.

Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London Routledge.

Biography

Renée-Marie Pizzardi is a recent King’s College graduate where she obtained a BA in Liberal Arts, majoring in digital culture. Through this course she further developed her passion for film, approaching the medium from different perspectives and leaning on the knowledge she previously acquired during her Foundation Diploma in Acting at the London Academy and Dramatic Arts. She strives to pursue a career in the creative industries. This piece is particularly meaningful to her due to her Czech roots.