Today I Learned About: Čumil and Rubbernecking

This is the start of a new series called Today I Learned About (title subject to change). I’m a very curious person and often goes into a Wikipedia/Google rabbit hole. Instead of keeping it all to myself, I decided to document this here and get some practice writing while I’m at it.

Follow the rabbit (How did I get here?)

Today’s subject is a statue called Čumil the Sewer Worker. So how did I come about learning about this thing? Well, as I usually do, I was browsing Tumblr and saw that Black Mirror was trending at #1 for seemingly no particular reason. Because I am curious but hate horror/thriller stuff, I decided to read the synopsis of each episode of the latest season. One of the episodes, Loch Henry, was partially inspired by the phenomena of rubbernecking. This is when a group of spectators watch a disaster happening or a group of tourists watching a normal, everyday thing in a tourist town with their neck stretched out, aka rubbernecking. On the Wikipedia page for rubbernecking, this picture was used as an example of rubbernecking. And that’s how I started looking up a random statue in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Photo of Čumil by krysi@, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60163075

Čumil, Man At Work

Public statues are always interesting. They usually fall under two categories: those made to commemorate historical figures or those with the intention to make a location better. This one obviously falls under the latter, but it takes a very lighthearted and comical approach. According to Atlas Obscura, the city was looking to overhaul their “drab, Communist-era architecture” with a series of sculptures, one of them being Čumil . Other sculptures commissioned at this time were Paparazzi, Schöner Náci, and Napoleon’s Soldier.

Here are a rapid fire list of things I’ve learned about this sculpture:

1. The statue was commissioned in 1997 and was made by the Bratislava-born artist, Viktor Hulík. Strangely, he is now more known as an abstract geometric painter, leading me to question if the artist was wrongly credited. But the limited research I did seem to indicate he was indeed the artist and this was a work earlier in his career, hence the different styles.
2. Like many public statues, this one has a shiny spot where passerby touch the statue. Here, it’s the top of the head. Apparently if you do, you’re wish will come true, but only if you keep it a secret forever.
3. Čumil has lost his head twice thanks to careless drivers. I don’t really blame them because he’s so low to the ground and is darkly colored. Because of that, a permanent sign is erected above him that reads “Man At Work”.
4. Related to the above, lots of drunken walkers have stumbled and fell because of Čumil.
5. Čumil means watcher in the Slovak language. What is he watching? That’s up to interpretation.

Conclusion

I love statues like this. It’s a successful example of bringing life to the city and reviving interest in a town. I mean just look at the Google reviews of this statue. It has over 8000 reviews, most of them positive.

But there is one question that remains. Is this creepy? I want to circle this back to how I got here in the first place, which is the phenomena of watching. It’s cute that there is a statue of a smiling man poking out of a non-existant manhole, but if this was the real deal? That’s creepy, right? Is this a sewer worker taking a break and enjoying the sun and fresh air? Or a creepy man trying to look up some skirts? My initial thoughts was that it’s just a man taking a break from work, but I see how it can be seen as a peeping tom.

What do you think of this statue? Have you seen Čumil in person?Is he a creepy watcher or just taking a break? Also, what’s the newest interesting thing you’ve learned? I’d like to know!