Food appears where one would less expect it, including the stage. In a few contemporary Polish theater plays, it represents on the one hand a tangible sign of economic wealth and a reassuring proof of economic success, on the other the cause of tension between comfort and trendiness, tradition and modernity. It reinforces distinctions in a society that suffers from growing inequalities.
“Biedronka will launch a new, affordable luncheon meat –Ye Olde Poultry Loin. Ingredients: water (97 percent), pork rinds, dishwashing liquid, window-cleaner, gelatin, spices; as well as a new brand of out-of-date cream –A Few Days Off. Ingredients: water, gelatin, white coloring, thickener, thinner, decalcifier, detoxifier, live salmonella culture. Wash down what others won’t eat with what they don’t drink.”
We are supposed to shudder and laugh at this not particularly appetizing description of products on sale in Biedronka, one of the largest supermarket chains in Poland, presented in the play No Matter of Hard We Tried (Między nami dobrze jest) by Dorota Masłowska. The contemporary artist is well known for the corrosive and sarcastic style she displays on theater stages and novels but also in music videos, alternating between surrealism and comedy. Through three generations of women and an assortment of media characters that come to life as icons of the excesses and absurdities of the post-socialist transformation, the play offers a very astute take on the changes that have swept through Polish society after the end of the socialist regime in 1989. Beyond their apparent absurdity and slapstick dialogues, the protagonists turn into symbols for different moments in recent history and the cultural environments they generated.
Remarkably, they mention, remember, and consume distinctive foods, which become metaphors for different attitudes and social identities. The fact that nobody actually eats in the play –although some drinking does take place – reinforces the symbolic centrality of food in contemporary Poland, on the one hand as a tangible sign of economic wealth and a reassuring proof of economic success, on the other as the focus of ambivalence between comfort and trendiness, tradition and modernity. In fact, cheap and accessible mass-produced food, which in many ways constitutes the ultimate insurance against the famines of yore, is presented as a “biohazard” that any educated person –or anybody with a decent income– should avoid, thus becoming an instrument of social distinction that marks the have-nots as losers.
Scene from Między nami dobrze jest
A semi-senile grandmother, stuck in her memories of the beginning of World War II and the German invasion, reminisces about freshly baked desserts and above all about bread, the most wholesome of products. A single slice in her hand was enough to make her happy in her youthful frolicking along the Vistula river. It was quite healthier than bread in contemporary supermarkets, which her jaded and disenchanted granddaughter shuns as vulgar and fattening, devoid of any cultural relevance: “white, flaky crap” that is “great to draw on asphalt.” It is also quite different from French baguettes, English toast, and German rolls, that some of the characters present as evidence of foreign superiority. Poland is just a drab potato field (or as another character describes it, “a potato patch blighted by sick systems, sick concepts, and sick relations”). The young girl identifies herself as European, taking a clear stand against any form of national pride. She wants “good bio-organic potatoes grown in real soil, not like those watery ones from Tesco’s.” Staying slim is a must, as a slender body is evidence of modernity –only obtained by avoiding old-school, heavy, boring Polish food.
In between the old and the new generation, the young girl’s mother and her obese friend represent those who during the tectonic shifts in Polish society during the early 1990s saw their quality of life plummet and were excluded from the benefits brought about by the introduction of the free market. Their lives are made of old pots and pans, yogurt jars washed cleaned and set apart for future use, discounts coupons, recipes cut out of calendars and magazines that offer visions of a lifestyle they will never have access to, and industrial products with suspicious pedigrees. Their culinary landscape is crowded with cheap food like chicken feet, frozen panga fish, canned soups, and mock-cheese. Nursing the trauma caused by the scarcity of the past, they never waste food, which they could not afford throwing away, anyway. Soups in which leftovers ends up are staples such as lecso (a dish of Hungarian origins), made of “all sorts of gunk with paprika and Hungarian space-jizz.” These people are represented as constantly following bad diets, at times as overweight. The obese woman describes herself as “a fat pig, who shouldn’t obnoxiously wobble around in other people’s field of view.” They despise fancy foreign food like French bread and Italian meatballs: culinary cosmopolitanism, one of the phenomena that best exemplify the transition to consumerism, is out of reach for them, both financially and culturally.
That is not the case for the characters at the opposite end of the spectrum: a filmmaker, an actor, and other upward mobile female consumers. They have instead reaped the benefits of the dismantling of the socialist safety network, taking advantage of the rise of a service economy in which the intelligentsia, those with connections, and risk-taking entrepreneurs with financial capital became the face of the new Poland. Though pretending to care for the plights of the weakest members of society, they are very comfortable with the abundance on their own tables. Self-absorbed and fretful, they have no intention to share: one of them ends up gobbling a whole kilo of sweets she had bought for poor orphans “to calm her nerves.” They enjoy the bells and whistles of Western consumerism, from sugar-frosted nuts and Cokes at the movies, pâté, and Parmesan. They live in spaces decorated with IKEA furniture, have mortgages (which are however a huge source of anxiety), and enjoy sipping on wine, experienced and displayed as the ultimate proof of refinement and connoisseurship. One of them states: “I drink a liter of regular liquid water a day. I also eat fruits and vegetables made of organic fruits and vegetables. I try to avoid sweets, fast food and cigarettes because they have 1,100 calories. I work our regularly.” Masłowska ridicules these attitudes, showing that are they actually reveal the ignorance of parvenus, rather than actual sophistication: in her play, the contemporary practices and preferences of the affluent appear to be less a demonstration of well-being and wealth than the consequence of insecurity and social anxiety.
Scene from Diamenty to węgiel który wziął się do roboty
Food also appears as an indicator of social stratification and efforts towards middle-classing in other contemporary plays, some of which are available in the collection (A)Pollonia: Twenty-First-Century Polish Drama and Texts for the Stage. Paweł Demirski’s 2009 Diamond Are Coal that Got Down to Business (Diamenty to węgiel który wziął się do roboty), a take on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, uses a family gathering to display uncertainty generated by the post-socialist transition: the shocking effect of the neoliberal privatization of assets and resources, issues of inheritance, market deregulation, the push to become entrepreneurs, the adaptation to consumerism, and the dissolution of the publish health care system. Potatoes, soup, noodles, and vodka are once again presented as the embodiment of the old Poland, equalitarian but drab. Bread makes an appearance in this play as well, together with salt, as a symbol of hospitality. However, the trendier among the guests immediately point out their predilection for whole grain bread, rather than white one. Price function as a crucial discriminant to determine who has access to and can afford what. New appliances are appreciated as signs of success, while traditional models of commensality are endured as old and uncouth, based more on quantity that quality. Concerns about refinement and class performance also occur – strangely – around prawns, perceived as a dish in “bad taste” to “feel terribly ashamed” about.
Scene from Ciała obce
A third play to be mentioned in this context is Julia Holewińska’s 2012 Foreign Bodies (Ciała obce). This sobering and heart-wrenching reflection on gender dynamics and the place of transsexuals in Polish society was inspired by the life of Solidarity activist Marek Hołuszko, who changed sex and became activist Ewa Hołuszko. The action moves between the 1980s Martial Law and contemporary times, pointing out how many of Ewa’s friends abandoned her, despite her role during the period of political persecution and her unflinching support during all kinds of dramatic events. The past was about sausage, tea, loaves of bread, and Russian champagne if there was something to celebrate. Those were the foods of solidarity and friendship, despite their coarseness. In the attempt to reconnect with her friends, Ewa spends all her salary as a teacher to cook a fancy Christmas Eve dinner with twelve dishes that include foie gras, Roquefort from Auvergne, coq au vine, and Mediterranean cannelloni. As cosmopolitanism at the table is de rigueur as an expression of social mobility, Ewa tries to dominate a culinary language that is clearly foreign to her, to the point that she speaks in quotes of magazines and recipe books. Also, she is aware that her access to expensive items has limits, so she prepares “melon slices wrapped in Parma ham, not from Parma though, but from Tesco. Made in China.” She prefers Italian pasta, which she wants to cook al dente –showing some gastronomic knowledge—but due to her limited means she buys in bulk hoping that the product does not go bad. Nevertheless, when she wants to reconnect with her estranged son, she cooks a pot of very old-fashioned rosół soup with “beef and chicken stock. And lots of vegetables.” As when she is informed that her son’s girlfriend is a vegetarian, she offers to make an omelet with eggs that are marketed as “for the elite.” In few lines, the exchange presents many of the conflicts that can be detected in contemporary food consumption in Poland: traditional comfort food is a manifestation of family affection and intimacy, but at the same time is experienced as excessive and unhealthy, left on the sidelines of social transformations. Definitely not for vegetarians and other modern people…
Mateusz Halawa contributed information and analysis to this post