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Polish joke

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For humor used by persons of Polish nationality and/or ancestry, seeCategory:Polish humour.
Polish joke
Alternative name(s)Polack joke
Type of jokeEthnic joke
Target of jokePolish people
Language(s)English

APolish jokeis an English-languageethnic jokederidingPolish people,based on derogatorystereotypes.The Polish joke belongs in the category ofconditional jokes,whose full understanding requires the audience to have prior knowledge of what a Polish joke is. As with all discriminatory jokes, Polish jokes depend on the listener'spreconceived notionsand antipathies.[1]

The relation between the internalized derogatory stereotypes about Polish people, and the persistence ofethnic jokesabout them, is not easy to trace, though the jokes seem to be understood by many who hear them.[2]Sometimes an offensive term for a Pole, such asPolack,is used in the joke.

Example:

Q: How many Polacksdoes it take to change a light bulb?
A: Three – one to hold the bulb, and two to turn the ladder.

History

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Some early 20th-century Polish jokes may have been told originally beforeWorld War IIin disputed border regions such asSilesia,suggesting that Polish jokes did not originate in Nazi Germany but rather much earlier as an outgrowth of regional jokes rooted in historical discrimination of Poles in German-ruled areas, at least from the 18th-centuryPartitions of Poland,and actively pursued from the end of the 19th century by the government-backedGerman Eastern Marches Society,resulting in social class differences.[3]Nonetheless, these jokes were later fuelled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German warlords andNational Socialistpropaganda that attempted to justifyNazi crimes against ethnic Polesby representing Poles as dirty and relegating them as inferior on the basis of their not being German.[4][5]

Polish Americans became the subject of derogatory jokes at the time when Polish immigrants moved to America in considerable numbers fleeing mass persecution at home perpetrated underPrussian[6]and Russian rule.[7][8]They took the only jobs available to them, usually requiring physical labor. The same job-related stereotypes persisted even as Polish Americans joined the middle class in the mid 20th century. During the Cold War era, despite the sympathy in the US for Poland being subjected to communism, negative stereotypes about Polish Americans endured, mainly because of Hollywood/TV media involvement.[9][10]

Some Polish jokes were brought to America by Germandisplaced personsfleeing war-torn Europe in the late 1940s.[4]During the political transformations of theSovietcontrolledEastern blocin the 1980s, the much earlier Germananti-Polish sentiment—dating at least to the policies ofOtto von Bismarckand thepersecution of Poles under the German Empire—was revived inEast GermanyagainstSolidarność(Solidarity). Polish jokes became common, reminding some of the spread of such jokes under the Nazis.[11]

According toChristie Davies,American versions ofPolish jokesare an unrelated "purely American phenomenon" and do not express the "historical Old World hatreds".[12]Researchers of thePolish American Journalargue instead that Nazi and Soviet propaganda shaped the perception of Poles.[13]

Negative stereotypes

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United States

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Debate continues whether the early Polish jokes brought to states likeWisconsinby German immigrants were directly related to the wave of American jokes of the early 1960s.[3]Since the late 1960s,Polish Americanorganizations made continuous efforts to challenge the negative stereotyping of Polish people once prevalent in the US media. In the 1960s and 70s, television shows such asAll in the Family,The Tonight Show,andLaugh-Inoften used jokes perceived by American Poles as demeaning.[10]The Polish jokes heard in the 1970s led the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to approach the U.S. State Department to complain, a move that ultimately had no effect.[10]The 2010 documentary filmPolackby James Kenney explores the source of the Polish joke in America, tracing it through history and into contemporary politics.[14][15]The depiction of Polish Americans in the playPolish JokebyDavid Iveshas resulted in a number of complaints by thePoloniain the United States.[16]

The bookHollywood's War with Polandshows how Hollywood's World War II (and onwards) negative portrayal of Polish people as being "backward", helped condition the American people to see Polish people as having inferior intelligence. The book supports thePolish-American Journal's assertion that Hollywood historically was fertile ground for anti-Polish prejudice, based on Hollywood's left-wing and Soviet sympathies.[17]

ThePolish American CongressAnti-Bigotry Committeewas created in the early 1980s to fight anti-Polish sentiment, expressed for example in Polish jokes. Notable public cases include protests against the use of Polish jokes byDrew Carey(early 2000s) andJimmy Kimmel(2013), both on theABC network.[18]

Germany

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Movie poster for 1999 filmHeirate mir(Marry to Me,withbroken Germangrammar andFaux Cyrillic'Rs') about a stereotypical Polish cleaner played byBolivian-bornVerona Feldbusch

In the 1990s, popular culture in Germany experienced a surge of Polish jokes. In their televisions shows, entertainers such asHarald Schmidtand Thomas Koschwitz made jokes about the Polish economy and about increased automobile thefts in Germany, attributed to Poles:

Q.Was ist der neueste Werbeslogan der Tourismus-Branche für Polen?
A."Kommen Sie nach Polen – Ihr Auto ist schon da."

English translation:

Q. What is the latest slogan promoting tourism to Poland?
A. "Come to Poland! Your car is already there!"

TheBildtabloid employed stereotypical headlines about Poland. This triggered public outrage among German and Polish intellectuals, but in the latter half of the decade, fears of theft had even led to a decrease in German tourists visiting Poland.[19][20]The greatest percentage of foreign tourists in Poland, exceeding 1.3 million annually, arrive from Germany.[21]In recent decades, it has been observed that the public image of Poland in Germany itself was largely shaped by stereotypical jokes.[22]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^Ted Cohen (1999).Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters.University of Chicago Press. p. 21.ISBN0-226-11230-6.Retrieved2009-09-10.
  2. ^Ted Cohen (1999).Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, p. 78.University of Chicago Press.ISBN9780226112329.Retrieved2011-07-22.
  3. ^abChristie Davies,The Mirth of Nations.Page 176.Aldine Transaction,2010,ISBN978-1-4128-1457-7.
  4. ^abTomasz Szarota,Goebbels: 1982 (1939–41):16, 36-7, 274; 1978. Also: Tomasz Szarota:Stereotyp Polski i Polaków w oczach Niemców podczas II wojny światowej;Bibliografia historii polskiej – 1981. Page 162.
  5. ^Critique of Alan Dundes, professor of anthropology and folklore from University of California in Berkeley inThe Mirth of Nationsby Christie Davies
  6. ^Maciej Janowski,Frederick's "the Iroquois of Europe"(in)Polish liberal thought before 1918,Central European University Press, 2004,ISBN963-9241-18-0Accessed August 4, 2011.
  7. ^Liudmila Gatagova,"The Crystallization of Ethnic Identity in the Process of Mass Ethnophobias in the Russian Empire. (The Second Half of the 19th Century)."Archived2011-07-24 at theWayback MachineThe CRN E-book. Accessed August 4, 2011.
  8. ^"January Uprising RSCI", The Real Science Index;in:"Joseph Conrad, March 12, 1857-August 3, 1924"; Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003ArchivedMay 29, 2007, at theWayback Machine
  9. ^"The Origin of the 'Polish Joke',"Archived2010-09-28 at theWayback MachinePolish American Journal,Boston New York.
  10. ^abcDominic Pulera,Sharing the Dream: White Males in Multicultural AmericaPublished 2004 by Continuum International Publishing Group, 448 pages.ISBN0-8264-1643-8.Page 99.
  11. ^John C. Torpey, Intellectuals, Socialism, and DissentPublished 1995 by U of Minnesota Press. Page 82.
  12. ^Christie Davies,The Mirth of Nationsibidem. Page 181.
  13. ^"The Origin of the Polish Joke".Archived fromthe originalon 2010-09-28.Retrieved2010-11-14.
  14. ^IMDb entry forPolack,2010 documentary
  15. ^Homepage ofPolack2010 documentaryArchived2011-02-08 at theWayback Machine,including credits andpress announcements.Archived2015-10-07 at theWayback Machine
  16. ^Marek Czarnecki,Commentary on the play "Polish Joke",posted at theAmerican Council for Polish Culturewebsite.
  17. ^Hollywood’s War with Poland, 1939–1945: A ReviewArchived2012-01-22 at theWayback Machine
  18. ^Milewski, Frank."WWII and Holocaust: Just A Big Joke At Disney's ABC-TV".canadafreepress.
  19. ^Jäger-Dabek, Brigitte (2012).Polen: Eine Nachbarschaftskunde für Deutsche[Poland: A Neighbourhood Study for Germans] (in German). Ch. Links Verlag. p. 137.ISBN978-3-86284-153-0.
  20. ^Lewandowska, Anna (2008).Sprichwort-Gebrauch heute: ein interkulturell-kontrastiver Vergleich von Sprichwörtern anhand polnischer und deutscher Printmedien[Today's Use of Proverbs: An intercultural constrastive Comparison of Proverbs using Polish and German Print Media] (in German). Peter Lang. pp. 258–259.ISBN978-3-03911-655-3.
  21. ^Główny Urząd Statystyczny,Overnight stays in accommodation establishments in 2014(PDF file, direct download 8.75 MB),Central Statistical Office (Poland),pp. 174–177 / 254. Warsaw 2015.
  22. ^Urban, Thomas (2003).Polen[Poland] (in German).C.H. Beck.p. 84.ISBN978-3-406-44793-8.

References

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