The Female Sporting Body in Věra Chytilová's "Something Different"

Abstract

The female sporting body is a concept defined by Tatiana S

The female sporting body is a concept defined by Tatiana Sentamans as a first step away from the patriarchal conception of the public sphere as masculine and the private sphere as feminine. By making changes to their bodies that depart from the traditional canon of female beauty and entering public spaces traditionally deemed male, female athletes challenge this logic. In Something Different (O něčem jiném, 1963), Věra Chytilová, a key figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave, plays with blurring the line between fiction and reality by combining what could be a documentary about the elite gymnast Eva Bosaková with a fictional story about a housewife named Věra. What at first appears to be an opposition between the two very different lives portrayed alternately on screen turns out to be a comparison of two woman who have more in common than expected. Taking into account the sociopolitical context of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, this article aims to explore these similarities and to identify how Chytilová reflects on and reconstructs the notion of the female sporting body, placing it in opposition against—and on a par with—the canonical body of the traditional housewife.

entamans as a first approach to breaking with the patriarchal conception of the public sphere as masculine and the private sphere as feminine. Through changes in their bodies that depart from the traditional female canon of beauty and the occupation of traditionally male public spaces, female athletes challenge this logic. In Something Different (O něčem jiném, 1963) by the key filmmaker of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Věra Chytilová, the director plays with the blurring between fiction and reality and combines what could be a documentary about the elite gymnast Eva Bosaková with a fictional story about a housewife named Věra. What at first appears to be an opposition between the two very different lives interspersed on the screen turns out to be a simile, as the two protagonists have more in common than it seemed. This essay aims to look at these similarities and to see how Chytilová reflects and reconstructs the notion of the female sporting body, pitting it against - and equating it with - the canonical body of the traditional housewife, considering the socio-political context of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s.