Romania: of Dictators, Gymnasts, and Jerry Seinfeld…Hungary: of Gulash, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Green Acres

Images of Hungarians and Romanians in

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