The Czechoslovak Story Crash is an event that I am 93% certain has occurred, but which nobody seems to have noticed. Let’s get into it.

This article is mostly focused on film because that’s what I have the most experience with. But I think it generally applies to Czech media as a whole.

This section isn’t pure information, so you can skip it if you don’t care.

Growing up, most of the (visual) media that I consumed was Czech. Many of the films, cartoons and so on were all made in Czechoslovakia. Thus I got introduced to big names like Krtek, Pat a Mat, Rákosníček and many many more. There was even a point where I preferred to watch films or play games in Czech.^A)
However, around the time I was 10-12, the amount of Czech media I consumed sharply declined until we reach the present state where most of it isn’t Czech.

There were a few reasons for this: I didn’t really like Czech (the language) and ended up moving away from it; there was simply more stuff available in English; I used to watch TV semi-regularly and, in Ireland, it’s typically in English; I realized that Western (and later Japanese) content was of a higher quality on multiple fronts; my parents stopped procuring content in Czech.

That last point is the most important one because, for whatever reason, my parents also stopped watching Czech TV, moving on to British TV instead. In hindsight though, this makes complete sense.
Nowadays, basically nobody in my family watches Czech content. There is the occasional exception, but most of the time it’s American film and British television. I thought this was just an us-thing, until I realized that many other Czechs also don’t care about native content. Most of them also watch/read/play Western stuff. Sometimes even in English.
And this is kinda strange, because as I’ll get into, Czech media used to be pretty strong. But that in itself is a bit of a hint, isn’t it? It used to be.

When it comes to me and my preferences for Czech stuff, I also mostly stick with older stuff. I hope to add more about all of that on this wiki at some point, but that’s a side note.

From 1946 until 1989, Czechoslovakia was a socialist state. This means that they were operating under a branch of Marxist-Leninism under the watchful eye of the Soviet Union. And of the socialist states, Czechoslovakia was unique: it was one of the only ones that had a sophisticated market economy prior to Communism; it was an industrialized and wealthy state (at least prior to WW2) and, of the socialist states, it was the one to take socialism most seriously. Czechoslovakia was apparently the only socialist state of the Eastern Bloc that managed to ‘successfully’ eliminate all private enterprise. Everyone was an employee of the state.

Communism ended up isolating Czechoslovakia from the West (and thus Hollywood), but also from the rest of the Eastern Bloc. This had a quirky effect on the media that was produced there, especially when we consider something else: prior to Communism, Czechoslovakia was (reportedly) one of the big film producers in Europe. As in, they could compete with the Germans and French in quality and quantity. Czechoslovakia also had the benefit of German-speakers (both Czechs and Germans could speak German), which meant there was cross-pollination with German film. A testament to this cross-pollination was the fact Joseph Goebbels has a Czech actress as his mistress.
I’m also not mentioning the fact Czechoslovakia had a lot of good authors at this time, with Rossum's Universal Robots being written by one of them. But this is also a factor to consider.
So Czechoslovakia had a sophisticated media infrastructure in place prior to Communism and following the rise of socialism…nothing really happened to it. Except, of course, that it was now isolated. Which meant they were forced to turn inward.

It’s here that I’d argue the golden age of Czechoslovak media started. For whatever reason, the communist authorities were completely fine with Czech storytellers producing fantasy stories about kings and princesses and demons. That was around the time Czech Fantasy materialized into a recognizable form. Also, due to the nature of how censorship worked in Socialist Czechoslovakia, most of the content being made was comedic. So Czech media from roughly 1960-1980 had a lot of fantasy and comedy. And even the fantasy was usually light-hearted or funny.
Animation also flourished around this time. And the art styles and techniques used were incredibly varied. Besides traditional animation, there was also stop motion.
Naturally, this era is when some of those greats managed to establish themselves.
But just to be clear, these films were impressive in many different ways. The script, music, acting, costumes, sets and so on tended to be really good. Even in cases where it wasn’t explicitly “wow”, there was still something that would make them quality.

Something else that’s notable about Czech film is that, due to the isolation, most of the creators here had to learn everything within the country. They couldn’t rely on Western film schools to teach them how to make movies. That may not seem relevant now, but it will be.

I’m not sure exactly when this supposed crash of mine happened, but I’d guess it was in the mid-late 90s. The reason I’m picking that time is because it coincides with the end of communism in Czechoslovakia and thus the end of isolation. Suddenly, Western content was easier to get than ever before (especially after computers became widespread). So people could now compare Western and Czech content more regularly and, typically, they were more impressed by what they saw come out of the West.

It’s here that I think the main factor contributing to the decline occurred, though a secondary factor would be the terrible economic situation at the time. The primary factor was comparisons to the West. Czechs started to look at Western content as something they should try to mimic, rather than take inspiration from. So, very quickly, the unique infrastructure built by Czechs seemed to vanish…leaving attempts at copying the West.
The problem is, though, that Czechs didn’t know how to do this. But then the other problem struck.

Migration!

Y’see, let’s say you’re a talented film-maker and you’re from Czechia. Czechia is the only country that speaks Czech, with their neighbor speaking an (obviously and embarrassingly) inferior dialect of it. Would you rather produce films in that country…or would you rather go to America, to Hollywood…and produce films that are enjoyed by the entire globe?
Many Czechs (not just in the area of film, mind you) weigh their options and decided that their talents would be put to greater use outside of Czechia and, often, outside of Europe. This left behind people who were too proud to leave or who simply didn’t have the talent/know-how to. So most film-makers left in Czechia just…weren’t as good as those who left.
Previously, under communism, they had no choice but to stay in Czechoslovakia and make films for Czechs. But now they could leave and work in Hollywood.

This wasn’t the first time that this happened – there were two similar waves in the 1940s and around 1968 – but it was especially damaging now, because in those previous cases the country remained isolated.

So you’re left with people who aren’t as good at the craft, who are looking to the West to mimic it, all while people look at Western content. The natural result is a decline in quality, which spirals into a lack of funds to improve…which further results in a decline in quality…and so on.

Thus we’re at the present: only monolingual people watch only Czech content and even then they prefer dubbed American/British stuff.