Scholarly record

EROTICISM IN THE NOVEL THE CAMP OF FALLEN WOMEN AND IN ITS FILM ADAPTATION

M. Adamicka

Abstract

The theme of the contribution is the eroticism in the novel The Camp of Fallen Women (1992, Tabor padlych zien) written by Slovak author Antor Balaz. The novel focuses on the period of the first years of building the socialist regime in Czechoslovakia and depicts the efforts of the incoming regime to re-educate prostitutes from the Vydrica (district of Bratislava) to conscious citizens in the area of forced labour camp Novaky. The labour camp in Novaky is known as the camp of three totalities in which Jews were interned during World War II and from there led transports to German death camps. In the post-war period, Carpathian Germans were placed there before they were transported to Germany. Later it was a forced labour camp for political prisoners and asocial elements, and at the same time the Hungarian Jews were interned there before they emigrated to Israel. On the background of depicted historical events, which the author portrayed in a grotesque way, the dominant motive is eroticism, which is a result of the substance of prostitution. On the other hand, the historical line cannot be forgotten – the depiction of historical events that took place in Czechoslovakia during the first post-war years and which the author depicted on the basis of his long-term study of archival materials and period newspapers from that period. In the year 1997 the novel was adapted into a film version in Laco Halama’s direction. The author of the novel, Anton Balaz, was also the author of the script and it can be said that there is a complex continuity of pretext to posttext. The paper analyses individual shifts in the adaptation of the novel The Camp of Fallen Women, which led to the elimination of the historical essence of the novel and the accentuation of the erotic line. It seems that eroticism and nudity are the dominant theme of the film.

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