Izvorni znanstveni članak
Representations of Sexuality in Hungarian Popular Culture of the 1980s
Ana Magó-Maghiar
; PhD candidate at the Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania
Sažetak
After pointing to the scarcity of research in sexuality and state-socialism the
author traces the historical and social-political-economic setting in which the
issues of Ludas Matyi the prolific Hungarian humor magazine were published.
The body of the paper is taken up by the close reading of the sexualized joke
illustrations of women published in the last decade of Hungarian state-socialism.
Through the thematic and semiotic analysis of about 30 illustrations the
author describes a fully articulated sex-discourse running parallel with the
more state sanctioned discourse of the socialist mother. Through her conclusions
the author addresses some very important theoretical debates in cultural
studies, the research of post-socialism and feminism.
First it inquires about the debate surrounding popular culture which has always
been framed in the context of a capitalist economic order. The thriving
field of popular culture under state-socialism requires the reconsideration of
the hitherto inherent connections between industrialized capitalist societies,
consumerism and the mass production of popular culture.
Second, it shows that the dismissal of popular-culture sources as data for research
leads to a one-sided picture of the state-socialist context, like the ubiquitously
held belief that in socialism there was no sex. This conclusion has
some implications for (feminist) methodological decision-making as well. Research
that limits itself to the cultural products of high culture translates into a
modernist/structuralist project with patriarchal overtones.
Third, and most importantly in this particular case of the Hungarian humor
magazine Ludas Matyi and against the backdrop of the negotiation of the
contents of the tolerate category of Hungarian cultural politics there seems to
be a silent agreement between the socialist state and its male citizens at the expense of women. The state sought to buy the patience of the ’worker’ (its
constituency) by allowing to pursue his own sexual interests on the condition
that he is not going to question the legitimacy of the political regime.
Ključne riječi
Hungarian popular culture; humor magazine; socialist state; women; semiotic analysis; cultural studies
Hrčak ID:
58484
URI
Datum izdavanja:
25.7.2010.
Posjeta: 1.878 *