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Playing With Otherness: Within and Beyond Stereotypes in Visual Representations
figures who represented new economic elites, and on the other, the new Others,
enumerated above, who could find no place in either the old world of affiliations
or the new world of increased individual initiative, which also kept spreading its
influence in Poland.
The rift between the culture of the city and the culture of the countryside was
also notable in visual sources (ill. 25). Despite the decline of the landed gentry and
the end of its aspirations for leadership (Szwarc 1983: 193), the provincial intelligen¬
tsia remained more dependent on, and smaller in number than, the landed gentry.*!
The intelligentsia of the time was manifesting its intellectual activity via newspaper
subscription and membership in the local social clubs. To some extent they formed
public opinion through exchanging ideas and reaching a common ground, though
the group was not homogenous. Due to censorship, national topics did not appear
and remained hidden.
What was funny and who enjoyed the humor in visual representations? The way
of perceiving the reality, present in the press, was a product of the period, circulated
among the city dwellers and part of the provincial intelligentsia. In this sense the
Polish eye of an educated individual of that period operated within a limited sphere
of contact (the annexed territories, towns/countryside) and remained hesitant, sus¬
pended between the models of modernity and tradition, between the benefits of
civilization and the inertia of living within provincial communities. These two dif¬
ferent outlooks and types of argumentation are detectable in the representations
and images and also in their products in the form of the disparate Others. With
reference to the internal world, on the one hand, there is the dominating picture of
the backward countryside, the village, a certain group of people; while on the other
hand, we have the threats presented by the ethnic groups that were better at adapt¬
ing to the model of modernity. In the expressions related to the external world—
pictures of more or less advanced demonization of the neighbors, the Others—the
strangers are present, dictated by the instinct of self-defense.
In serious and playful use of stereotypes, the general goal was similar—to mark
order in a broad, shifting world. The serious representations were unable to detach
from what they represented, endangered by creating prejudice unintentionally. The
humorist representations, due to their specific attitude and the tools employed, both
playful and satirically targeting stereotypes, did not provide space for idealization of
one’s own culture and tradition. This distinction notwithstanding, it still remains a
fact that both attitudes—playful and serious—were unable to render the contem¬
porary reality in a sufficiently exhaustive manner.”
3! According to Andrzej Szwarc, the main criterion for the appraisal of intelligentsia was the way of
spending time—in the country, playing cards or billiards and exchanging local news in conversation
were infrequently interwoven with idle discussions about grand politics. Such a model was also associ¬
ated with the landed gentry and clergy (Szwarc 1983: 197).
% Text partially translated by Edyta Jaczewska.
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