By: Jeffrey Goldfarb

Jeffrey Goldfarb — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 09:51:00 +0000

Indeed there were many subtle and impressive “Polish Jokes” in the good old bad days. Brilliant satire was part of everyday life and an element of great artistic work. When I lived there, then, I was in awe. But sometimes the humor missed the mark, it seems to me, creating too easily the solidarity you speak of, and in retrospect, anticipating some authoritarian trends in today’s Poland. But, certainly this is a matter of judgment and not a fact.

By: Grzegorz Lindenberg

Grzegorz Lindenberg — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:53:00 +0000

I suppose there is a difference between the role of satire in a democratic and an authoritarian society – and that is why you felt uneasy witnessing ’70s satire in communist Poland. The major role for a satire you watched was very simple: to make people laugh so they can discharge feelings of hatred and fear, And by making this in public it helped to create authentic (not state induced) social bonds – that was very important too, that feeling “we all think and feel in the same way, hating communists”. But there was plenty of “illuminating the social condition” type of satire in communist Poland too – e.g. look at all the increadibly popular in the ’70s cartoons by Krauze and Mleczko. My favorite: two guys are looking at pyramides and one of them says: “me and my brother in law can do much better when we are drunk” – making fun both of Polish traditional drinking culture and of the official propaganda that would boast of numerous dubious accomplishments of the communist regime.

Comments on: The Personal and Political Significance of Political Satire

By: Jeffrey Goldfarb

By: Grzegorz Lindenberg