Every 4 years, the very best of the very best of the very best in the wide world of sports compete for the gold. Nearly every nation is represented in this titanic tournament. Last time I tackled the Olympics, I focused on the 100M Dash. I ‘m stretching my horizons into gymnastics with…

Olympic Special Vol. 2: Vera Caslavska and Agnes Keleti

VERA CASLAVSKA: 1960 – Rome, 1964 – Tokyo, 1968 – Mexico City

Vera in 1967.

Mid-way through World War II on May 3, 1942, Prague’s Caslavska family introduced a baby girl. They named her Vera. From an early age, it was clear that Vera was a natural athlete. Initially, she started in dance, followed by figure skating. At 15 however, she switched to gymnastics. Like with the previous 2 sports, she dominated. Part of this was her and part was her instructor, Eva Bosakova (1952 – Helsinki, 1956 – Melbourne, and 1960 – Rome). Bosakova was already a multiple medal holder in both the Olympics and World Championships.

After a year or so of training Vera competed alongside Bosakova in 1959 at the European Championship. She won her first (of many) gold medals in the balance beams but slipped up on the uneven bars leaving her in 8^th. The team won the silver medal. This success continued into the Olympics in Rome where she won the silver in the team category again. She continued to compete and exponentially became the top gymnast of her era. In the World and European Championships and the Olympics, she won numerous gold and silver medals. Things changed around the 1968 Olympics however.

January 5, 1968, Antonin Novotny was officially replaced by Alexander Dubcek as 1^st Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Dubcek’s goal was to create, “Communism with a Human Face.” In turn, he introduced more Democratic leaning policies and expanding people’s freedoms like speech. The Soviets were not pleased so they invaded Czechoslovakia with 600,000 soldiers and help from other Warsaw Pact nations. Vera was in support of the new reforms and signed the protest manifesto, “Two Thousand Words,” by Ludvik Vaculik. All this happened a few months before the Mexico City Olympics that fall (seriously, the 1968 summer games were held in October that year).

Vera was in trouble so her fled to the mountains. Similarly to Rocky in Rocky IV, she trained using the natural world, but out of necessity not because of manliness. After 3 weeks, she got word that the Czech allowed her to participate in the Mexico City games again. It was during these games that she became the first and only Olympian to ever win a medal in every gymnastics event. In addition to this, she refused to observe the rising of the Czech and Soviet flags when she tied for the gold in the Floor Exercise with Larisa Petrik. Many took notice, including the Soviets.

Around this time, she married Josef Odlozil, a fellow Czech Olympian. Back home in Prague, things changed. The government was suspicious of Caslavska and barred her from federal jobs for her protests and politics.

She divorced Josef in 1987. 3 years later the Communists lost power and she finally publicly regarded as a hero of the people. Also wasn’t barred from federal jobs. They had several children. One of them, Martin, stabbed his father in a dance club in 1993. Josef died. Martin was sent to prison. Vera focused on keeping her family together after this tragic event. She still resides in Prague today and lives a private life.

AGNES KELTEI: 1948 – London, 1952 – Helsinki, 1956 – Melbourne

Hungry’s Agnes Keleti came from humble beginnings, she was born to a Jewish family on January 9, 1921. Like other future Olympians she was attracted to sports early on. A natural gymnast, she excelled at the VAC Jewish Sports Club quickly. Her father, Ferencs, wanted both his daughters involved in sports. He was a lifelong athlete. Her mother complimented their father’s push for athletics with academics. Thanks to her, Agnes was a great student, cellist, and singer.

At 16, she won her first national championship. By the end of her professional career, there were 9 more national championships. She was on her way to the Olympics but World War II broke out. Hunngry was left out of it for awhile until Germany invaded. Agnes managed to get papers under the guise of a Christian woman named Piroshka. She worked for a Nazi-sympathizing family as a maid for the rest of the war. Her father was taken to Auschwitz. Her mother and sister luckily escaped thanks to the Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg (he was responsible for saving thousands of Hungarian Jews). By the end of the war the only family left was her mother and sister.

Agnes doing a split at 91.

Reunited with her family, Agnes resumed where her career left off. She won more national titles over the next few years and nearly made it to the London Olympic. 2 days before they began, she injured herself but recovered in time to compete in European and World Championships. In the Helsinki games, she became the oldest female gymnast to win an Olympian medal at 31. She won 4 medals in total. That record was broken again at the Melbourne games with 6 more medals. At 35, she set the record (again) for oldest female gymnast to win an Olympic medal.

The Soviet Union invaded Hungry during the Melbourne games. Instead of return home, she and the other Hungarians remained down under. She received political asylum to reside in Israel, where she still lives. In 1959, she married Robert Biro, a fellow Hungarian Jew that escaped the Soviets. They have 2 sons, Rafael and Daniel. In Israel, she become a corner stone in the establishment of Israeli Gymnastics. She ended up teaching at Tel Aviv University for years.

Agnes is the second most accomplished Jewish Olympic athlete with 10 medals, right behind Mark Spitz’ 11.

Not only did these women set world records, they managed to thwart both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from destroying them mentally and physically. They are extraordinary women that need to be remembered and celebrated.

Sources

http://www.ighof.com/honorees/1998_Vera_Caslavska.php

https://www.olympic.org/vera-caslavska

http://brooklynquarterly.org/personal-protest-at-the-olympics/

http://thebiography.us/en/caslavska-vera

http://www.drmirkin.com/histories-and-mysteries/vera-caslavska-marriage-of-two-great-olympic-athletes.html

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/czechoslovak-sports-legend-vera-caslavska-celebrates-60th-birthday

http://web.archive.org/web/20040508164234/http://www.intlgymnast.com/events/2004/europeans/champions/caslavska.html

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-04-05/sports/sp-900_1_prague-spring

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/prague-spring-begins-in-czechoslovakia

http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod05_1968/evidence_detail_13.html 2,000 Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dykBBhaoczg

http://www.lib.umich.edu/soviet-invasion-czechoslovakia/pg1.html

http://www.gymn.ca/gymnasticgreats/wag/keleti.htm

http://esra-magazine.com/blog/post/agnes-keleti

http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/jewess-press/impact-women-history/agnes-keleti-the-foundation-stone-of-gymnastics-in-israel/2012/07/22/

http://www.ighof.com/honorees/2002_Agnes_Keleti.php

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/keleti-agnes

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/AgnesKeleti(Klein).htm

What are recurring themes and motifs?

Love is in the air, Frank Sinatra fills the airwaves, and the Nixon/Kennedy debate is the hot news on everyone’s tongue. This is a time when men were men and women are discouraged from expressing their opinions. Even when it comes to matters of love and romance, men have more privilege. If a man is in love with a woman, he can do many things women can’t. This really reeks in the wake of current attitudes, based on these films. Some of them include:

1) Lying, it is perfectly acceptable and romantic if a man spins a web of lies to ‘get’ a girl. Honesty isn’t the best policy, it’s for suckers and nerds.

2) Showing up regularly to where his crush works that he only talked to once is totally fine.

3) He doesn’t have to be handsome. He usually looks fine but the woman is to be the peak of beauty a la Audrey Hepburn or Katherine Hepburn. No Joan Blondells or Sue Randalls allowed.

However it isn’t all that bad for women. They can be sassy but it comes at a price. It means being unlucky in love. The only guy they can ring in is a total misogynist jerk that don’t respect her or their wife. On the other hand she will fall head over heels in love with the good guy but can’t tell him. When she does finally does, he proposes and reciprocates the feeling. It also happens to be the end and around Christmas. Only Christmas not Valentine’s Day the most romantic holiday, not Thanksgiving the family values holiday, and never Flag Day where you know, you remember there are flags. The last major thing I noticed was that the guy is a loner. He doesn’t have any friends because he’s a strong manly man. Was it too feminine to have close guy friends if you were a guy? That’s what it feels like and it’s a little bit weird. He doesn’t even have one friend. If he has none then that should be a warning sign. In conclusion it’s ok for men to be jerks as long as it’s for love.

Is the romance creepy at all?

This was briefly touched upon in the prior segment but holy shit the behavior from these “good guys” is borderline serial killer/sociopath behavior. Granted, most of it comes from The Apartment, the other ones aren’t clean either.

Exhibit #1: In The Apartment our “hero” C.C. Baxter during his first real conversation with his love interest the sassy Fran Kubelik, he tells her that he memorized her social security number, address, and who she lives with. The worst part of this is, she isn’t creeped out and acts like that is acceptable behavior. It isn’t. That’s stalking, no one should be cool with it.

Exhibit #2: In The Apartment our “hero” C.C. Baxter lies to Fran to keep her in his apartment so that she won’t tell the police or her family that she tried to kill herself. He creates a spiraling web of lies so she has to stay there. This is horrible behavior that no one in a romantic situation with another person should just blindly accept. Not only is it totally fine to lie but she tried to end her life. That is a serious thing that needs to be taken seriously and not pushed to the side. It’s not okay even though it was for love.

Exhibit #2.5: This was mentioned before but it needs to be addressed. It’s totally fine to lie to a woman as long as it’s for love. This promotes creating an entirely new identity instead of being your true self to the woman you love. I say woman because these films are heteronormative, where a man and woman, and only a man and woman fall in love. Back to the article, lying like this can lead to a toxic, unequal relationship.

Exhibit #3: This is related to the lying, if a man loves a woman it’s totally ok to psychologically break her down for love. Again in The Apartment, our “hero” keeps lying to her and thus breaking her down. This creates a Stockholm syndrome situation. This is gross, irresponsible, and wrong. I don’t think that if you truly are in love you treat your partner in a condescending, disgusting way and keep them as a prisoner in your home.

For the record, these behaviors happen in the other films but it isn’t nearly as egregious as in The Apartment. So the romance is very, very creepy and one-sided.

Will there be a “Happily Ever After?”

Of course not, this will lead to a terrible, unhealthy relationship.

Next up, Modern Rom Coms, have they changed? Are men just as creepy? Do women actually have a say in the matter? Find out when you read Rom Coms: Now and Then Part 2: The Quickening.

Today at exactly 10:00pm will be the fifty-fifth anniversary of the aforementioned, The Twilight Zone. Everyone knows a few of the iconic episodes, ‘the one with a crazy twist ending,’ ‘the one with the Shat man on a plane,’ ‘the one with the talking doll,’ ‘the cookbook one,’ etc. Some of you reading this might be thinking, “So what?! I care about new things: cool, modern and sexy things like Game of Thrones, not boring ole’ Rod Serling and Buck Houghton.” Well, for those of you thinking that, George R. R. Martin wrote on the 80’s reboot of TZ. It unlocked the floodgates for nerdy entertainment in pop culture like Game of Thrones.

The Twilight Zone ran for five seasons, 1959-1964. In the fourth season they experimented with the hour long format but reverted back to half hour format for the final season. Not every episode was amazing, there were a few stinkers here and there but they hit more than they missed. Rod Serling created, narrated, and wrote the show with a staff of other highly influential writers like Richard Matheson – I am Legend (1954) and George Clayton Johnson – Logan’s Run (1967). The show tackled important social issues like war, race relations, and love struck computers much to the chagrin of CBS. There were numerous cases of ‘before they were famous’; Billy the Shat man in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Charles ‘No Dice’ Bronson in Two, Richard ‘Jaws’ Kiel in To Serve Man, Cloris Leachman in It’s a Good Life, Richard Donner directed Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Don Siegal directed Uncle Simon, and countless others.

On paper there is nothing mainstream about it. There were aliens, parallel universes, time travel, immortals, androids, monsters, and cowboys. Those things aren’t what most people are interested in but somehow Rod Serling and crew made it accessible. It hit at the exact right time at the exact right place. It wasn’t the first show like it however. Anthology shows had been since early radio. A few other TV shows laid the foundation. They were Tales of Tomorrow (1951-1953), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (This premiered exactly four years before TZ, October 2, 1955; 1955-1965), and One Step Beyond (1959-1961). All of these are on DVD, Hulu and Netflix, if you’re curious.

The show’s influence can be felt everywhere. TZ’s bizarre and enthralling sensibilities show up in The X-Files (1993-2002), Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Lost (2004-2010), Kolchak: the Night Stalker (1974-1975), Fringe (2008-2013), Star Trek (1966-1969), Planet of the Apes (1968), and too many others. Remember the Hugh Jackman classic Real Steel (2011), it’s based on the TZ episode, Steel. J. J. Abrams, Gene Roddenberry, and Joss Whedon were all hugely influenced by it. I could go on but that’s boring.

My personal experience with TZ is odd. As a kid I always caught it in passing. It was until very recently ‘that weird show my mom likes.’ The only episode I knew of was Eye of the Beholder. The pig faces were permanently branded onto my brain. At the time it registered as confusing, boring, weird, and for old people. I noticed earlier this year, it was on Netflix and figured why not give it a shot. I instantly loved it. It felt like when you get a gift from your grandparents but you dismiss it immediately then, a year later you realize just how awesome it is. It’s become my new go-to thing to watch and I discovered a whole new dimension of TV. So let’s celebrate this momentous day by joining Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone.

Here are my favorite episodes (Don’t get mad if I skip a classic, these are my favorites):

Number 12 Looks Just Like You – Season 5, Episode 17; This is similar to Eye of the Beholder. It’s about society’s standards of beauty and the pressures that come with it. Eye is too famous for its own good and lost some of its effectiveness. No. 12 takes the theme really runs with it in a cleverer way. It’s my favorite episode.

Judgment Night – Season 1, Episode 10; I have a soft spot for the military episodes. This is the story of a German soldier in WW2 that suddenly appears on a British civilian ship. As you watch you’ll learn how and why he got there. It’s like a Greek Myth with Nazis.

The Obsolete Man – Season 2, Episode 29; This is a beautiful episode much in the vein of Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. A librarian, named Romney Wordsworth, gets the death sentence for being reading books. He’s in a world run by smug Nazi jocks. He gets to choose his own style of execution. It’s the perfect example how to have a simple message with layers of meaning behind it. Warning, it’s very heavy-handed. However, I can look past that and really enjoy it.

Mr. Dingle, the Strong – Season 2, Episode 19; Usually the comedy episodes don’t work but this one is amazing. The scrawny and weak Mr. Dingle gets super strength from Martians for an experiment. Imagine if Milhouse was given superpowers from Kang and Kodos and that’s this one. If you don’t like your dish of TZ served goofy, you will not like this. It’s extremely goofy. Also Don Rickles is in it.

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street – Season 1, Episode 22; This is a classic episode. I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said before. Just watch it if you haven’t and again if you have.

People are Alike All Over – Season 1, Episode 25; I don’t want to say too much besides a couple of astronauts go on a space mission and things take a crazy turn. It’s more fun if you go in with nothing to expect.

The Changing of the Guard – Season 3, Episode 37; Imagine Dead Poet’s Society (1989) in the Twilight Zone, it’s basically that. A young Donald Pleasance with terrible old makeup and a weird beard stars in this bittersweet Christmas tale. It’s one of the best sentimental episodes.

The Big, Tall Wish – Season 1, Episode 27; This is about simply believing in magic and the power of wishes. It’s also about alternate realities. This is a refreshing change of pace with a nearly all-black cast. It’s one of the most interesting episodes in that, it’s very grounded compared every other episode and exudes an infectious air of childlike innocence. It’s gravely underrated.

I am the Night – Color Me Black – Season 5, Episode 26; This is another heavy-handed one. It might be a little much for some but should give it a shot. A man is sentenced to death and the town excitedly waits for his death. The sky is getting progressively darker as they get closer to the hanging. Again, the message is very obvious.

The Mind and the Matter – Season 2, Episode 27; I knew I was going to love this one once I saw who was starring in it, Shelley Berman. He’s a fantastic standup from the 50s and 60s. Our hero, Archibald Beechcroft, learns how to change reality with only his mind. It’s similar to the movie Lucy (2014) but smarter, better and making a point.

Honorable Mentions:

-Execution – Season 1, Episode 26

-The Howling Man – Season 2, Episode 5

-Five Characters in Search of an Exit – Season 3, Episode 14

-The Masks – Season 5, Episode 25 *only episode directed by a woman and an actor/actress from another episode, Ida Lupino

-The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross – Season 5, Episode 16

-And When the Sky Was Opened – Season 1, Episode 11

-The After Hours – Season 1, Episode 34

-Where is Everybody? – Season 1, Episode 1