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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 intelligentsia 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, suspended between the models of modernity and tradition, between the benefits of civilization and the inertia of living within provincial communities. These two different 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 adapting 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 contemporary 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 associated with the landed gentry and clergy (Szwarc 1983: 197). % Text partially translated by Edyta Jaczewska. 83
