ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Czech film Stín ve světle (The shadow in the light, 1928), made for Slovakia, highlighting its role in introducing a genre of health films for the periphery. In terms of Rick Altman's approach, the semantic structure of Stín ve světle includes three interrelated elements that embed them in one of the most vivid topics of interwar European thought, the relation between culture and civilization: (1) the films focus on the ant personality, a man without specific features but with a specific geobody (dressed in national costume, indivisible from its locality and a part of collective practices) as the most desirable profile of individuality for eradicating infectious diseases; (2) the ant personality, as a main character, should experience a particular type of “human bondage,” which intricately links intergenerational and spousal relations in the timeless dependence on the periphery; and (3) public health embodies a decisive role as the social glue for the communities and families of the periphery. These three elements aim at subjecting the “primitive” culture of the periphery to the challenges of Western (higher) civilization, including the expectation of better hygienic conditions.
