About twenty years ago to the day, while backpacking through Romania, I found myself confined, of all places, in a Deva hotel room.

Deva was as sleepy a town as could be.  I had arrived there jumping almost crowd-surfing, parachutist-style, from an overcrowded train onto an equally overcrowded wartime-refugee-like platform.  The dead dog just outside the Cetatea (Citadel) would still be there over a month later, as I found out in swapping stories later with another fellow Romanianist.  My market sense was still not well-calibrated:  I gave a Gyspy woman selling rottening small green apples 3 lei and she started shoving more and more apples at me.  (Your wallet would bulge in those days:  disintegrating 100 lei notes were the largest bill in circulation, but inflation was rampant, and black market exchange still very attractive…so you would leave with wads of 100 lei notes on you.)  Then I went to find some place for dinner…

Anyway, whether it was that meal or not, the next day I was feverish and confined to bed.  I sweated and writhed in the bed, thinking melodramatically:

I’m dying.

No, I’m not dying.

I’m dying (by myself in a crappy hotel room in Deva, Romania)

No, I’m feeling better.

I’m dying.

“No, I just can’t think of anything better to do…”

Anyway, so there I am in bed.  And in the next room, all day all I heard was loud voices, evidently from a large group, and the constant clanking of bottles (they had pepsi crates stacked in the hallway, pepsi still a delicacy at that time in Romania…I’ll never forget going into a village store and having a choice between Vietnamese prawn crackers and Vietnamese vodka…that appeared to be it!) and then the incessant, almost loop tape playing of the following song–whose name I did not even know at the time…and yet which as a result of that day, will unlikely to be ever able to forget.  (Oh, yeah, I recovered in the following days…much ado about nothing as it turned out.  Still I remain haunted by THE DREADED LAMBADA!):

One aspect of protests, revolts, uprisings, and revolutions that has long intrigued me has been the coincidence of some of these with spells of warm, often dry weather in late fall or winter in cold weather climates where these are infrequent.  True, there are lots of such periods of weather where there was no one in the street against the authoritarian regime in question.  And there have been some such events when the weather was seasonably cold or colder.  Still, as one hears people recount their eyewitness accounts of Hungary in October 1956 or Romania in December 1989, it is interesting to see how often, at least in passing, they invoke the uncharacteristic weather.  To the extent it played a role, it would seem such weather constitutes something of a permissive, rather than causal proximate factor.

Hungary, 23 October 1956

Bob Dent discussed the role of the weather in the outbreak of anti-regime demonstrations in Budapest on 23 October 1956 as follows:

The day  was warm  – exceptionally warm. The morning edition of the
trade union newspaper Népszava had predicted temperatures of up to
21 degrees and had commented on the extraordinary and unusually
warm weather conditions the country was experiencing for an autumn.
Did the newspaper’s editors, typesetters and proofreaders realise that
those words could have applied to the political temperature as well?

Source: Bob Dent, author of ‘Budapest 1956 – Locations of Drama’
(Európa Publishers, Budapest, 2006)

http://www.filolog.com/crosscultureHistory1956.html

Indeed, checking the extensive weather records contained at www.tutiempo.net we find that the high in Budapest on 23 October 1956 was 21.1 celsius or 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  According to the Weather Underground normals for Budapest, the average high for 23 October is about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was indeed a warm day for that time of year.

23	12.4	21.1	6.1	1028	76	0	6	3.7	7.6	-				o
24	9.4	13.9	6.1	1024.3	90	0	3.1	1.9	3.5	-				o
25	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
26	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
27	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
28	8.9	12.2	6.1	1007.8	87	5.08	4.8	10.2	29.4	-	o			o
29	5.8	6.1	5	1005.2	83	11.94	9	12.2	22.2	-	o
30	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
31	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Budapest_Met_Center/10-1956/128400.htm

23 Record: 71 | 28 Precip: 0.00 Average: 57 | 38 Precip: 0.06	24 Record: 73 | 28 Precip: 0.00 Average: 56 | 38 Precip: 0.06	25 Record: 104 | 23 Precip: 0.00 Average: 56 | 38 Precip: 0.06	26 Record: 71 | 24 Precip: 0.00 Average: 56 | 38 Precip: 0.06	27 Record: 71 | 17 Precip: 0.00 Average: 55 | 37 Precip: 0.06
28 Record: 66 | 15 Precip: 0.00 Average: 55 | 37 Precip: 0.06	29 Record: 69 | 14 Precip: 0.00 Average: 54 | 36 Precip: 0.06	30 Record: 68 | 14 Precip: 0.00 Average: 54 | 36 Precip: 0.07	31 Record: 73 | 21 Precip: 0.00 Average: 53 | 35 Precip: 0.06

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/LHBP/2012/10/23/MonthlyHistory.html

A more detailed article on weather on this day, by OMSz in Hungarian

http://www.hotdog.hu/magazin/magazin_article.hot?m_id=14629&a_id=139399&h_id=36780

Időjárás 1956. október 23.-án

1956. október 23-a időjárása Budapesten

A tömegek akaratának utcai kinyilvánítását mindig a gazdasági és a politikai szituáció idézi elő. Külső körülmények, mint például az időjárás, ezt segíthetik, vagy esetleg akadályozzák. Mindkettőre ismerünk példát a magyar történelemből, hiszen 1848. március 15-én a korabeli források szerint esős idő volt, míg 1956. október 23-án gyönyörű őszi nap adatait regisztrálta az Országos Meteorológiai Szolgálat jogelődje. E híres nap időjárását idézzük fel a Budapest belterületén végzett megfigyelések alapján. A levegő hőmérséklete a derült őszi napokon szokásos menetet követte, amit a hajnali és a nappali értékek közötti nagy különbség jellemez. A délutáni órák csaknem 20 oC-os értékeivel szemben, hajnalban a belterületi meteorológiai állomáson, az utca szintjében alig 5 oC volt. (A legmagasabb nappali hőmérséklet, amely e napon is 13 és 16 óra közé esett, kevéssel meg is haladta a 20 oC-ot – l. az utolsó két ábran.) Tükrözte a hőmérséklet erős napi ingását a levegő relatív nedvessége is, amely hajnalban még csaknem 100 %-os (azaz, ködképződéshez közeli) volt. A délutáni órákra ez az érték 50 %-ra csökkent. (Ekkor kétszer annyi vízgőz is lehetett volna a levegőben, kicsapódás nélkül.) A légnedvesség fenti alakulását tükrözi a vízszintes látástávolság napi menete, amely az észle-lések helyéről nézve nem takartan, ismert távolságra lévő tereptárgyak körvonalainak látásán alapszik. A hajnali rossz látási viszonyokat, amit a mérőhely környékén kialakult köd okozott, délutánra az őszi magas légszennyezettség (1956-ban inkább a fűtés, mint a gépkocsiforgalom okán) mellett kedvező, 6-8 km-es látástávolság alakult ki. A viszonylag kedvező érték, amit napnyugta után már csak a levegő tiszta voltán keresztül érzékelünk, késő estig fennmaradt. Mindhárom éghajlati elem érős napi ingása azzal magyarázható, hogy az adott nap időjárását egy magasnyomású légköri képződmény, ún. anticiklon irányította hazánkban. A tengerszinti légnyomás csaknem 1030 hPa-s értéke az év e szakában már jóval átlagon felüli érték. A né-hány hPa-s visszaesés csak részben magyarázható a légnyomás szokásos nappali menetével. Közben gyengült maga az anticiklon is, ami pár nap múlva a kedvező időjárás végét okozta. (Lásd az utolsó ábrán, az egymást követő napok legmagasabb nappali hőmérsékletein.) 1956. október 23-án reggel 7 óra és másnap reggel 7 óra között nem hullott csapadék Buda-pesten. Ez nem ritka eset, hiszen az év e szakában, a gyakori anticiklonok miatt, a napok bő kétharmada csapadékmentes. (A kevés csapadékos nap ötven éven belüli megoszlásából messzemenő következtetést nem érdemes erőltetni, hiszen egyetlen naptári napról van szó.) Ha a napsütéses órák számát vetjük össze a későbbi fél évszázad adataival, akkor ebben az összehasonlításban az 1956. október 23-án regisztrált 8,1 óra igen kedvezőnek mondható. A csillagászatilag lehetséges 10,5 óra csaknem 80 %-át kitevő érték közel esett az utóbbi 50 év abszolút rekordjához is. A hajnali pára eloszlását követő, gyönyörű napsütés bizonyára hozzá-járult ahhoz, hogy az emberek hosszan együtt maradtak, és megérezték gondolataik, szándé-kaik hasonlóságát. Biztos, hogy sokat segített ebből a szempontból a nappali hőmérséklet magas, ugyancsak re-kordhoz közeli alakulása is. A legmagasabb nappali hőmérséklet 20 oC-os alakulása egy hó-nappal korábbi szeptember végi átlagos időjárásnak felelne meg. Az 1956-os évi értéknél csu-pán három melegebb október 23-a akadt az elmúlt fél évszázadban. Rövid bemutatónk végén kitérünk arra is, hogy október 23-a nem egyedüli magas hőmérsék-letű nap volt 1956 októberének végén. A megelőző három nap is hasonlóan, vagyis az átlag-nál enyhébb nappalok jótékony hatása alatt állt 1956-ban. A következő napoktól azonban az időjárás felvette az évszaknak teljesen megfelelő, hűvös és nedves jelleget. Így a forradalom további időszakáról nem tudunk a sokévi átlagtól lényegesen eltérő különleges értékekről, vagy időjárási eseményekről beszámolni. Összeállította: az OMSZ Éghajlati Osztálya. Forrás: www.met.hu

Romania, December 1989

posted by kalix 1989

posted by kalix 1989

The warm weather in Timisoara in December 1989 has inspired artwork to commemorate it as this article discusses:

“People always ask me why I call it HOT AIR, and it starts with understanding the physical climate – the weather was really warm and that enabled some of the movement to happen,” she said. “But the name is meant to be a double entendre, and hot air is also important to me because of the oppression people suffered. The original springpoint for me was actually finding a way to bring a spot of hot air into the city.”

The large, inflatable monument honors the twentieth anniversary of the overthrow of Romanian dictator Nikolae Ceauşescu’s government. Trandafirescu, who teaches architecture in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning displayed the monument in Timisoara, Romania Nov. 3-7, in the same square where the revolution began with demonstrations during that unseasonably warm December in 1989.

http://globalportal.umich.edu/hotair.php

Below the normals for Timisoara in an average December, followed by the numbers for the week of 15-22 December 1989.  From 16-19 December 1989 temperatures were in the 60s Fahrenheit, when normals are in the mid 30s.  Low temperatures were also well above freezing.

Record: 53 | 14 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 26 Precip: 0.10	15 Record: 53 | 10 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 26 Precip: 0.11
16 Record: 53 | 6 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 25 Precip: 0.11	17 Record: 55 | 8 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 25 Precip: 0.10	18 Record: 53 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 24 Precip: 0.11	19 Record: 50 | 12 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 24 Precip: 0.11	20 Record: 50 | 6 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 23 Precip: 0.11	21 Record: 48 | 12 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 23 Precip: 0.11	22 Record: 51 | 14 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 23 Precip: 0.11
23 Record: 60 | 8 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 23 Precip: 0.12	24 Record: 59 | 6 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 23 Precip: 0.11	25 Record: 53 | 5 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 24 Precip: 0.12	26 Record: 53 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 24 Precip: 0.12	27 Record: 59 | 5 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 24 Precip: 0.12	28 Record: 57 | 8 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 24 Precip: 0.12	29 Record: 51 | 12 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 24 Precip: 0.12
30 Record: 51 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 24 Precip: 0.12	31 Record: 48 | 0 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 24 Precip: 0.11

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/LRTR/2012/12/7/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

15	10.8	13.6	6.6	1008.6	66	0	10	19.3	25.2	-
16	12.8	17.9	8.3	1008.4	69	0	10	9.3	21.7	-
17	12.6	16.8	3.4	1008.8	67	0	10	13.3	28.7	-
18	11.8	15.5	8	1014.2	85	0.51	9.2	4.1	14.8	-	o
19	14.2	17.3	7.5	1013.2	62	0	10	16.1	28.7	-	o
20	7.4	13.1	2.9	1022.4	89	7.11	9.3	4.1	7.2	-	o
21	4.5	9	1	1023.1	89	0	10	0.2	3.5	-
22	7.2	14.5	0.9	1016.9	75	0	10	3.9	14.4	-
23	5.8	9	1.2	1013.6	80	0	10	0.7	3.5	-	o
24	2.2	6.2	-1.8	1025.2	78	0	10	0.9	7.2	-
25	3.9	7.7	-0.8	1025	71	0	10	2.2	7.2	-

http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Timisoara/12-1989/152470.htm

Below normals for the period for Bucharest and data from December 1989.  As a book title later recalled, “After the execution [of the Ceausescus at Targoviste on 25 December 1989], it snowed,” a heavy snowfall followed from 26 December 1989…

15 Record: 53 | 17 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 25 Precip: 0.07
16 Record: 57 | 10 Precip: 0.00 Average: 36 | 25 Precip: 0.07	17 Record: 50 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 24 Precip: 0.08	18 Record: 50 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 24 Precip: 0.08	19 Record: 53 | 1 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 23 Precip: 0.09	20 Record: 46 | 5 Precip: 0.00 Average: 33 | 23 Precip: 0.09	21 Record: 44 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 33 | 22 Precip: 0.09	22 Record: 51 | 10 Precip: 0.00 Average: 33 | 22 Precip: 0.10
23 Record: 51 | 12 Precip: 0.00 Average: 33 | 22 Precip: 0.10	24 Record: 46 | 5 Precip: 0.00 Average: 33 | 21 Precip: 0.10	25 Record: 53 | 0 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 22 Precip: 0.10	26 Record: 51 | -5 Precip: 0.00 Average: 34 | 22 Precip: 0.10	27 Record: 62 | 5 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 23 Precip: 0.10	28 Record: 64 | 6 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 23 Precip: 0.09	29 Record: 60 | 3 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 23 Precip: 0.09
30 Record: 55 | 6 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 23 Precip: 0.10	31 Record: 46 | 14 Precip: 0.00 Average: 35 | 24 Precip: 0.09

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/LRBS/2012/12/7/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

15	3.6	8	0	-	95	0	3.9	12.4	22.2	-
16	7.7	14	4	-	90	0	8.2	15	25.9	38.9
17	7.8	16	3	-	89	0	8.7	12.6	22.2	-
18	8.5	17	3	-	85	0	8.2	11.1	25.9	35.2
19	6.1	12	1	-	98	0	4.7	8	18.3	-
20	6.9	16	1	-	89	0	8	13	25.9	35.2				o
21	4.4	11	-0.2	-	92	0	2.9	10.2	25.9	-				o
22	5	11	1	-	93	0	3.7	12.2	22.2	-
23	3.4	4	2	-	97	0	2.3	14.8	25.9	-
24	4.6	6	3	-	88	0	7.2	4.3	11.1	-
25	4.1	7	1	-	90	0	4.2	6.3	14.8	-
26	1.6	4	-1	-	95	-	7.1	20.2	25.9	-	o	o
27	1.1	2	-1	-	93	-	5.5	25.6	31.7	50		o
28	0.6	2	0	-	98	-	2.6	9.6	31.7	50	o	o
29	-0.4	8	-1	-	97	-	1.9	42.2	72.2	90.7		o
30	-0.2	0	-1	-	100	-	1.6	20.2	42.4	61.1	o	o
31	-1.4	0	-3	-	96	-	3.9	9.8	22.2	-		o

Literature Review + Laying out Your Argument (close approximation to me at the time)

Pee Wee Herman sez:  you must click on the Watch on YouTube link to view…

Ah, another beautiful day in dissertation land…hmmm, wonder what I will do today? (Groundhog day for the dissertation writer can last x number of years)

When loved ones (or Committee members) finally get to read a draft of what you have been working on all that time…

I suppose I thought I was somehow “under cover.”  Methuselah here, dressed all dapper for his big, rainy Sunday afternoon outing on the cog-rail, had grabbed the cassette box of the tape I was listening to on my walkman.

“Time is money…American?…Time is money…American?” he kept on repeating.

‘Annoying is old Swiss codger,” I thought, “Annoying is old Swiss codger…”

I figured it was the only English he knew (it seemed to be).  How dare he just assume I was an American!  (Although all he had to do was to look at my shoes, my sneakers, and work his way up to the anti-social headphones.)  And on top of it all, the oldest stereotype in the books about Americans:  time is money–all business, no time to stop and smell the roses, no time for people, no time for small talk, got to earn money, buy a house, buy a car, news at 11, etc etc.

Oh yeah, one slight detail I had forgotten:  the title of the tape he was looking at was “Time is Money,”–I gathered this as he pointed his finger at the title and repeated it again (my powers of observation no less that Spiderman’s radioactive-blood “spidey senses”).

He was right:  time was money, or rather Time is Money.  Only problem is I have scoured the Internet since–the incident above happened in Zurich in May 1985–and cannot find any reference to the existence of this tape–if you once listened to a tape, but can’t find evidence of its existence on the Internet, did it really ever happen?

—

I was reminded of this the other day when, after almost two decades, I came to one of those extreme satellite delay realizations that you kick yourself for for not getting sooner and yet seem to make so much sense.

I must have listened to “this next one…is the first song…on our new…al…bum…” and the driving bassline that introduces the Beastie Boys’ “Jimmy James” on Check Your Head hundreds of times.  I always loved that driving bassline–to the exclusion I guess of listening to the songs words or digging to see the samples used in the song (now easily facilitated by the Internet)…that is, until the other day.

No wonder, it turns out, I really like that driving bassline and found it hauntingly familiar:  the song is a tribute to Jimi Hendrix, who early in his career used the stage name “Jimmy James.”

It all came back to me.  In the spring of 1985, much to the amusement and derision of my suitemates during my first year in college, I had started to get into listening to Jimi Hendrix–Jiiiiiiimmmmmmiiiiii, they would yell at me as I entered the dorm suite (I was straightlaced and uptight…people thought it somehow didnt go with my personality).  But, I was also CHEAP!  So I had loaded up on those cut-outs and never heard of, exploitative of a dead guy who can’t defend his copyright, cassette tapes of Jimi Hendrix before he and the world got Experienced (well, at least before the Jimi Hendrix Experience hit the big time).  They were, I believe, mainly under obscure German labels.  (I have been able to find one of them online–an Astan label album entitled “My Best Friend” with a photo of Jimi on the cover that suggests his best friend was not animal or mineral, but herbal http://www.discogs.com/Jimi-Hendrix-My-Best-Friend/release/624755)  Anyway, much to my dismay, I can’t find any of these old cassettes among junk I have saved through the years, got embarrassed about, and then purged, much to my later dismay (this includes airline timetables, newspapers (sports sections), RFE/RL Research (dont ask), and cassettes and albums).  Believe me though that Time is Money did exist!

In searching for these old albums on the Internet, I came across some youtube videos…and there it is, at 0:14, as the great site http://www.whosampled.com/sample/view/1533/Beastie%20Boys-Jimmy%20James_Jimi%20Hendrix%20and%20Curtis%20Knight-Happy%20Birthday/ identifies, that driving bassline throughout “Jimmy James,” from Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Knight’s “Happy Birthday.”  No wonder it was familiar:  that May, who knows how many times I listened to that song on those cruddy cassettes on my walkman.

Below, the original video (8/1/1992) for the Beasties’ “Jimmy James” (video starts only about thirty seconds into clip) and a version of Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Knight’s “Happy Birthday” (is that the Orange Bowl in Miami everybody is dancing at?–update, no it is the LA Coliseum, pays to watch the whole video..)…plus a “bonus” from those old crappy, but strangely nostalgia-inspiring cassettes…

“FATHER” OF THE NATION

COOL HAND LUKE:  failyuh to communicate…

Captain, Road Prison 36: What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it… well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?  [THE CLASH]:  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE YOUTUBE LINK IN THE BOX TO GO THERE TO LISTEN!

Official music video of “Should I stay or should I go” by The Clash (1982)

Lyrics :

Darling you gotta let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
If you say that you are mine
I’ll be here ’til the end of time
So you got to let know
Should I stay or should I go?

Always tease tease tease
Siempre – coqetiando y enganyando
You’re happy when I’m on my knees
Me arrodilla y estas feliz
One day is fine, next is black
Un dias bien el otro negro
So if you want me off your back
Al rededar en tu espalda
Well come on and let me know
Me tienes que desir
Should I Stay or should I go?
Me debo ir o que darme

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An’ if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know

This indecision’s bugging me
Esta undecision me molesta
If you don’t want me, set me free
Si no me quieres, librame
Exactly who’m I’m supposed to be
Diga me que tengo ser
Don’t you know which clothes even fit me?
¨Saves que robas me querda?
Come on and let me know
Me tienes que desir
Should I cool it or should I blow?
¨Me debo ir o quedarme?

Should I stay or should I go now?
¨Yo me frio o lo sophlo?
If I go there will be trouble
Si me voi – va ver peligro
And if I stay it will be double
Si me quedo es doble
So you gotta let me know
Me tienes que decir
Should I stay or should I go?
¨Yo me frio o lo sophlo?

————————————————————————–

Somehow I think we have been down this road before…

Of course, that wasn’t enough for Ceausescu.  The next day he took to the airwaves LIVE, and well, shall we say, it didn’t go so well…

Ben Ali and Ceausescu’s fates diverge from there…

As they say on TV, stay tuned…

For a comparative and theoretical view of the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime in December 1989, please consult here, thank you:

http://141.109.221.55/ibertsch/RomaniaReadings/Hall.pdf

http://people.stfx.ca/ibertsch/RomaniaReadings/Hall.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/pss/153590

Somehow I think we have been down this road before…

Of course, that wasn’t enough for Ceausescu.  The next day he took to the airwaves LIVE, and well, shall we say, it didn’t go so well…

Ben Ali and Ceausescu’s fates diverge from there…

As they say on TV, stay tuned…

For a comparative and theoretical view of the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime in December 1989, please consult here, thank you:

http://141.109.221.55/ibertsch/RomaniaReadings/Hall.pdf

http://people.stfx.ca/ibertsch/RomaniaReadings/Hall.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/pss/153590

Modern American Media and Popular Culture

by Richard Andrew Hall, Ph.D.

Research for this article was begun in 2004 and the bulk of the article was written during summer 2005.  As a result, many of the web searches were performed at that time (2005) and reflect what was available then (it is amazing to see how, just in this short time, the information available on the wikipedia, for example, has exploded).  For the most part, I have resisted the urge to reinvestigate everything, but as a consequence newer research and examples from the Internet may be missing from this article.

***I welcome comments, questions, and new/overlooked examples, observations, and theoretical musings at hallria@comcast.net.  Thank you.***

ROMANIANS…

JERRY SEINFELD: (trying desperately to make conversation) So, Ceausescu. He must’ve been some dictator.

KATYA [A guest character, she is supposed to be a Romanian gymnast who won a Silver medal in the 1984 Olympics] : Oh yes. He was not shy about dictating.

JERRY: He, uh, he must’ve been dictating first thing in the morning. “I want a cup of coffee and a muffin!”

KATYA: And you could not refuse.

JERRY: No, you’d have to be crazy.

KATYA: He was a very bad dictator.

JERRY: Yes. Very bad. Very, very bad.

(from the American television comedy series, Seinfeld, episode entitled “The Gymnast,” aired 3 November 1994, multiple sites, see for example,  http://www.seinology.com/scripts/script-92.shtml)

HUNGARIANS…

TONY KORNHEISER:  “Thank you, Julian…folks, Julian Rubinstein, author of ‘The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber’ [a Hungarian bankrobber of the 1990s whose cover was playing ice hockey], will be at the ‘Hungarian-American Foundation’ tonight…What’ll they have there? [Laughing]  Gulash, yes, they’ll have popperkash [sic]…”

ANDY POLLIN:  [Laughing]  Maybe Zsa Zsa [Gabor] will be there…

(author’s gist of a conversation heard on the sports talk/comedy radio program “The Tony Kornheiser Show,” 2 December 2004, 9 AM Hour, WTEM 980 AM, Washington, D.C.)

Part I:  Introduction

Larry Wolff, Maria Todorova, Vesna Goldsworthy and other scholars interested in the development and spread of Western images and stereotypes of the peoples of eastern Europe understandably have focused their research on travelogues, plays, novels, oper(ett)as, paintings, etc.  This makes sense and is methodologically appropriate since these are the artifacts of the age in which these ethnonational images and stereotypes came to be specified, recorded, and communicated to audiences larger than the one in direct earshot.  But the content and context of these images and stereotypes are not static, and neither are the means by which they are communicated.  Over the last century, and particularly half century, technological and media innovations—primarily in the form of mass communications (films, animated cartoons, radio, television, the Internet)—have changed how ethnonational images come into being and are conveyed to others.  This change has arguably decreased the role of traditional (especially intellectual) elites in shaping the content of ethnonational images, while simultaneously enhancing the role of the audience in determining which images “take” and which ones creative intellectuals, journalists, and others will use in their work.

Ironically, the very point that is at the center of the research of Wolff, Todorova, et. al.—that these ethnonational images were not always what they became later, or are today—has somehow gotten lost, including in their application of their own theories to the latter part of the twentieth century.  This departure from their intellectual assumptions has happened despite the fact that conditions such as the technology revolution, marketization, globalization, and democratization clearly challenge and reshape—and have challenged and reshaped—individual and collective identities.  It is one thing to say that ethnonational images evolved, but hardened over time, and continue to shape how peoples view themselves and others, despite such changes.  It is quite another to say, as many in this constructionist literature seem to, at least implicitly, that somehow this evolution became frozen in time, that these images, after a long period of evolution, “consolidated” and now are essentially impervious to meaningful change—that is, that everything is merely déjà vu all over and over and over again and again.

The two excerpts I have invoked above suggest the arbitrary, idiosyncratic, and often personality-contingent and event-driven character of modern ethnonational images of Hungarians and Romanians in the United States.  These images are set against a backdrop of, influenced by, and feed upon the broader preexisting images outlined by scholars of the “first generation” of image and stereotype creation (the constructionist literature described above), but they are neither a subset of, nor beholden to, those first order images.  Moreover, the interplay between televised images and the audience who watches them (i.e. as consumers who can vote-with-the-remote so-to-speak)—as well as the Internet’s empowering capacity to encourage and facilitate individual expression and participation—means that power over the content and meaning of these ethnonational images has devolved more to non-traditional elites (journalists, producers, media executives, business people) and the mass audience in comparison with the situation that prevailed in the past.

Despite the “Eastern (European)” classification of Hungarians and Romanians, the negative Hun/Mongol/Asian/Oriental connotations of the Hungarians and the “Balkan” characteristics of Romanians, and the general “neo-orientalist” treatment of this “second/third world” or “semi-periphery/periphery,” the actual content of popular and media images of Hungarians and Romanians is far less foreseeable, and more internally and externally diverse, than such overarching, generalizable theories of externally-created and imposed cultural construction predict.  (I shall employ Csaba Dupcsik’s term “Euro-Orientalism” here to capture collectively the ideas of Wolff, Todorova, Goldsworthy, Bakic-Hayden and others.)

Moreover, the constructs of this literature have a difficult time accounting for something that derives from the excerpts above and recurs throughout this paper:  the difference between Romanian images, which I will argue tend to be more recent and political (from the Seinfeld episode, Nicolae Ceausescu and a Nadia Comaneci-like gymnast)—and, as a consequence, vulnerable to change in content and connotation—and Hungarian images, which tend to be older and more “cultural” (from the sports radio talk show:  goulash and Zsa Zsa Gabor) and static.  Although the cultural constructionist model of Western image-creation and imposition does not fully spell out its assumptions and expectations, based on its treatment of the concept of “Central Europe” its underlying logic would seem to suggest that the more “Eastern” a people, the more simplistic and pejorative the ethnonational images and stereotypes attributed to that people, the more indistinguishable that people is from the rest of the “unwashed” peoples of the non-West, and the more inflexible the images and stereotypes.  At least in the comparison of Hungarian and Romanian images in the West, this does not appear to be the case, and that begs the question:  why?

Overall, I conclude from an examination of representations of Hungarians and Romanians in modern American media and pop culture, that in comparison to one another, to other peoples from central and eastern Europe and to peoples from western Europe, the neo-orientalist (Todorova’s distinctions and caveats of her own model notwithstanding) bent of much of the work that studies images of “Eastern Europeans” oversimplifies and overstates the picture.  As I have already hinted, part of this derives from the sources, medium, and time period selected by these scholars for study.  Another part, however, I would argue derives from the reification and sclerosis of this academic vantage point—one that at times seems unable to overcome its elitist roots.  All of this said, I do not completely conclude that the neo-orientalist perspective has nothing useful to contribute.  For one of my conclusions is that images of Hungarians in the American imagination are older, more consolidated, less subject to modification, and more diverse than contrasting images of Romanians.  The stockpile or archive of images of Romanians tends to be smaller, less differentiated, more political, and newer.  Part of this I hypothesize is arbitrary, but deals with the timing of the incorporation of ethnic images—itself a consequence of travel to the country, emigration from that country, and the timing of modern national consciousness and identity movements in that country—into western European/English-speaking/American consciousness.  Like Gerschenkron’s late developing states, late developing nations face a different set of rules, or at least more limited options—a choice between irrelevance and ignorance, less-than-desirable stereotypes, or the possibility of exploiting comparative advantage of that stereotype no matter how unsatisfying and patronizing it may be.

Here is a preview summary of my findings then:

1)    The range or universe of ethnonational images of either Hungarians or Romanians in North American film and television is more diverse, more internally contradictory, and less predictable than neo-orientalist assumptions seem to allow for.

2)    Neo-orientalist assumptions prove somewhat ahistorical.  Accident and absence of intention are filtered out in retrospect, and intention and malice are assumed in their place in order to create a coherent narrative.

3)    Concrete, individual, idiosyncratic images prove much more enduring and influential than the pale abstract assumptions associated with the neo-orientalist model.  It is these that frequently differentiate peoples in the popular mind and that are more impervious/inflexible to change.

4)    Partly because of the role of individual images, televised images/pictures prove more compelling and lasting.

5)    This points us toward the influence of television, film, and the Internet—media largely ignored in the earlier constructionist, neo-orientalist research, research which, surprisingly, while emphasizing the role of new mass media such as novels and travelogues that brought new peoples and places into the Western consciousness, and while stressing that images have changed over time (i.e. were not what they were later to become), underestimates or ignores both the capacity for change and the role of new media in identity and image formation.

6)    The issue of modern media, popular inclusion/consumption culture, etc. brings us to the question of audience and highlights the link between technology and broader market access in determining image selection, formation, and endurance.  The neo-orientalist perspective focuses excessively on elite control and dissemination, suggesting audiences are labile and easily manipulable, and placing almost no importance on the role of audience in determining image formation and content.  The greater role of masses in determining which images “stick” buffers the elitist focus of the neo-orientalist perspective and accounts in part for the more mixed, syncretic character of contemporary ethnonational images.

7)    As with state formation, the late developing nation and its late incorporation into the Western consciousness has a lingering role in the content of ethnonational images.  Being unknown and having no image, although beneficial in presenting a tabula rasa template upon which good images can be projected, often leaves a people vulnerable to being pigeonholed in the foreign imagination by a small number of late developing images—images which inevitably seem to be more political than cultural, and as a whole, more negative.  However, it is important to note that this is as much a product of mass audiences and visual media…as it is of elites and any imputed constructionist imperative.

As I believe befits this topic, the layout and content of this paper is eclectic.  As a result, it is unlikely that the reader will find every section of this paper of interest.  However, I do believe that a wide variety of different audiences should find something germane to their particular interest—including those interested in media and communications studies, Central and East Europeanists, pop culture trivia buffs, movie aficionados, and sports fans.  This article has something for most people, but it is definitely not “for everyone.”

full paper at Images of Hungarians and Romanians in Modern American Media and Popular Culture