Introduction
Mr. Polska is a Dutch rapper who has been enjoying increasing popularity in the Netherlands since 2011, when he released his first solo album De boswachter (‘The Forester’). He was born in 1989 in Toruń, Poland, but he grew up in the Netherlands. Polska graduated from the Herman Brood Academie, a high school for pop artists and music producers in Utrecht, Holland. He has been part of the Nouveau Riche Collective, comprising various Dutch artists. Polska's image, his texts, video clips and consequently his success lean heavily on his Polish roots. His consciously constructed artistic persona is founded upon his Polish background. It comprises various reoccurring ‘scripts’ – snippets of information about his personal life and other recognisable elements that keep returning throughout various aspects of his project. The essential element of the project, however, both on its textual and visual level, is a stereotypically conceived ‘Polishness’. It forms the leading thread connecting all of the elements of Mr. Polska's project, making it into a whole. Together with his biography, it forms the foundation for marketing his music.
Polska enjoys success among both Dutch and Polish audiences in the Netherlands, his fans consisting mostly of youth between 14 and 25 years old (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol. 1). His clip ‘Vinger op de klitter’ for instance got 4.5 million views on YouTube, while ‘Berguis’ got 2.3 million, and ‘Gustav’ 2.5 million. On social media Mr. Polska has 58,200 followers on Twitter and 94,800 followers on Instagram; on Facebook he is liked by 41,048 and followed by 40,437 people (data from 25 December 2017). In 2011 he was awarded the title of the Pole of the Year by the Dutch–Polish association Polonus.Footnote 1 On Polonus's website we find the following description of the artist:
Proud of his Polish roots Dominik decided to give himself an artist-name Mr. Polska. Not only because of his evident Polish background but also to build a connection between the Polish and the Dutch. Polska accentuates his bond with Poland and, thanks to his sense of humour, positive approach and vigorous music, he manages to present his Dutch fans with a positive image of the Poles living in the Netherlands. […] Mr. Polska is a role model for young people, someone who does not lead them down the wrong path. Exaggerating stereotypes, he undermines the prejudice of others. This is Mr. Polska's strength and that is how he wins lots of success and respect.Footnote 2 (Polonus 2011, emphasis mine.)
Mr. Polska is presented here as someone who constructs bridges between the Netherlands and Poland, someone who promotes a positive image of his country of birth and who breaks down stereotypes. Knowing Mr. Polska's lyrics and video clips, however, one has to wonder if this description is not tendentious, presenting an ideal Pole of the Year rather than the real Mr. Polska. If one takes a closer look, he is the stereotypical kind of young people's role model who presents himself as subversive, provocative and thuggish. According to the Polonus-site description, Polska would exaggerate stereotypes in order to undermine them. Yet if one follows the reactions of his fans on social media one has to wonder if he is not in fact ingraining them. This article aims to analyse the image of Poland and the Polish that emerges from Polska's project. It also tries to determine what purpose this image serves. The analysis reveals that Polska uses stereotypes for self-fashioning, transporting them into contexts where they acquire new meanings.
It has to be emphasised that Mr. Polska's project encompasses not only music and lyrics. The latter are accompanied by the visual narrative – video clips and other videos published on the Internet, as well as a metatextual narrative presented in numerous interviews and in social media such as Twitter or Facebook, where his fans participate in creating Polska's image.
Orientalising, subcultural capital and hip-hop aesthetics
Polska's project will be discussed here as orientalising and exoticising for the purpose of self-fashioning and the gathering of subcultural capital. It will be argued that, in order to create an image of Poland and the Polish that will serve his purpose, Mr. Polska essentialises stereotypes and orientalises Poland, exploiting perceptions of his home country in the Netherlands.
Said's seminal work, Orientalism, describes the Occident's ways of exercising cultural domination over ‘the Orient’ by ‘inventing it’ discursively: ‘dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, […] a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’ (Said [1978] Reference Said2003, p. 3). Furthermore, the Orient functions as the West's ‘constitutive other … as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’ (Said [1978] Reference Said2003, pp. 1–3), helping Europe to define itself. Presenting the Orient as primitive, backward, dependent and child-like served and serves as a way of legitimising political, economic and cultural domination over it.
Although Eastern Europe was never colonised by the West per se, it historically came to play the part of Western Europe's ‘oriental’ Other. Just as in the case of the relation between the West and the Middle East, the relationship between the West and the East of Europe has been a relationship of domination. The socio-political divide brought about by the Cold War predisposed the Eastern Bloc to play the role of a dependent, ‘lesser’ part of Europe. Among the many studies devoted to an analysis of this tradition of ‘orientalising’ Eastern Europe, one should mention Wolff (Reference Wolff1994), Melegh (Reference Melegh2006), Kuus (Reference Kuus2007) and more recently Zarycki (Reference Zarycki2014).
Despite the political transformation, the division into West/East, civilised/barbaric, dominant/backward persists and still plays an important role in processes of building collective identities. The exotic East, ‘a repository of negative connotations within Europe’ functions as the West's constitutive other (Kuus Reference Kuus2007, pp. 22, 24). Because of their significance for contemporary intra-European relations, these ‘ways of thinking about and the practices of making the Other’ can be labelled ‘new European Orientalism’ (Buchowski Reference Buchowski2006, p. 465).
Since being the ‘Other’ means being confronted with negative stereotyping, one would expect the ‘Other’ to try contesting the hegemonic representation in an effort to problematise and redefine the unjust, simplified dichotomies. In fact, as research shows, there is a tendency to embrace and internalise these patterns and to perpetuate them into a form of ‘self-othering’, i.e. playing along with the stereotypical presentations, assuming the role of the exotic other, mostly to benefit from it in one way or another (Kuus Reference Kuus2007, pp. 22, 98; Wallace Reference Wallace2008, p. 37). In other words, one can observe strategies of ‘performing’ the East, practices of confirming Westerners’ image of it, in order to attract or retain Western attention and money (Kuus Reference Kuus2007, p. 37). Kuus (Reference Kuus2007, pp. 97–114) describes especially the role in this process of ‘gatekeepers’ – intellectuals of statecraft – who prove their agency by a strategic appropriation of western narratives about the East. It is because of this confirmation from within that particular images of Eastern Europe are so persistent.Footnote 3
In this context Mr. Polska's in-between position has to be emphasised. His representation of Poland comes neither entirely from within nor from outside Polish culture. It is made by someone who moves in and out of different groups and positions himself respectively as a Pole or as a Dutchman. On the one hand, he uses his insider's knowledge in order to equip himself with cultural capital. On the other hand, it is evident that the images he produces respond to Dutch expectations, confirming the image of Poland and the Polish circulating within the Dutch/Western culture. Rather than trying to counter it by images originating from Poland, he internalises ‘self-othering’ vis-à-vis the Dutch representations of Poland, perpetuating the division into West/East, civilised/barbaric, dominant/backward to serve his own purposes of self-positioning and self-promotion, enhancing his cultural capital as an artist.
As he does not try to subvert the representational status quo and to renegotiate identities imposed by the dominant culture, but rather embraces, essentialises and exploits them, Polska's project can also be perceived as post-subcultural. Traditionally, subcultures were waging the ‘semiotic guerrilla warfare – taking objects from the dominant culture and transforming their everyday naturalised meaning into something spectacular and alien’, an activity which was a form of resistance to the dominant culture and to capitalist incorporation (Stahl Reference Stahl, Weinzierl and Muggleton2003, cited in Muggleton and Weinzierl Reference Muggleton and Weinzierl2003, p. 27). Post-subcultural studies show, however, that this kind of political engagement often does not characterise the subcultural scene any more. Nowadays subcultures are to a large extent commodity oriented. Central to the subcultural practice is marketing of one's own identity in order to gather ‘subcultural capital’ (Thornton Reference Thornton2013). Thornton understands subcultural capital to be resources through which one can obtain status of ‘coolness’, distinguish oneself by being ‘in’, in the eyes of an intended audience. Nowadays its circulation is governed primarily by the Internet. Essential for acquiring subcultural capital is a perceived authentic identity and maintaining distinction from other groups (Muggleton and Weinzierl Reference Muggleton and Weinzierl2003, p. 7). In other words, the more exclusive one's subcultural profile, the better for the subcultural capital. In Mr. Polska's project his exclusivity and authenticity are guaranteed by his ‘Polishness’, which cannot be easily appropriated by other Dutch artists.Footnote 4
The last reference frame for the examination of Mr. Polska's project will be that of hip-hop aesthetics. The most important tropes of the hip-hop performance that I will refer to in my analysis are narratives about the ‘hood’ and rise-to-fame-from-the-ghetto in which one's ‘thug life’ and yearning for commercial success are often accentuated. Hip-hop aesthetic celebrates masculine coolness, glorifying fun involving drugs/alcohol as well as sexual conquests (Greene Reference Greene2008; Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011). All of these elements are connected to a perceived authenticity, an important dimension of hip-hop culture. To be authentic one has to found one's performance on one's own experience. As a matter of fact, music is marketed through artists’ biographies (Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, p. 71). Importantly, music videos participate in contextualising the artist and adding to his identity and image formation (Rose Reference Rose1994, pp. 8–9). This typical hip-hop performance aesthetics will be taken as a starting point. It will be argued here that Mr. Polska plays with the hip-hop aesthetics just as he toys with the stereotypes about Poland and the Polish. This article analyses how his Polishness is inscribed into his authenticity scenario and how it is used for marketing purposes.
Polish roots
Siema, I'm a Young Polak. (Mr. Polska 2012a).Footnote 5
Dominik Włodzimierz Groot was born on July 20th 1989 in Toruń, Poland as Dominik Włodzimierz Czajka. His mother migrated to the Netherlands when Dominik was three years old. He was adopted by his Dutch stepfather and consequently acquired a Dutch surname (cf. Polonus 2011). Polska uses his original Polish surname as one of his many artist nicknames. They all bear a link with his Polish background, like Polska (Polish for ‘Poland’), Polski (‘Polish’), jong Polak (‘young Pole’), President Polska, Włodzimierz Czajka or Oost-blok boy/Oostblok jochie (‘a boy from the Eastern Bloc’). Mr. Polska uses all of his different nicknames interchangeably, but one can observe that he uses his second name, Włodzimierz, often in combination with his Polish surname, more often when it comes to songs related to his Polish background. This long name, full of consonant clusters, sounds very ‘Polish’, and as a consequence ear-catching and exotic. To the ears of the young generation of Poles the name Włodzimierz sounds old-fashioned and somewhat funny. Polska also uses other Polish words in his songs. They all have an exotising effect on the Dutch audience as they pop up all of a sudden in the otherwise Dutch texts.
One such word is Siema – Polska's trademark greeting, returning in many songs and interviews. The word is an informal Polish greeting, short for Jak się masz? (‘How are you?’). Siema is associated with spontaneous informal youth language. In the 1990s it used to be an expression of ‘coolness’. The word is still used in Poland but its popularity has lessened over the years. Polska also uses other Polish words and expressions in his texts, such as ziomuś (‘bro’), or mamuś (‘mommy’).
The stereotype of the Polish
The Dutch know the Polish as the largest immigrant group from Central and Eastern Europe in their country. After the Polish accession to the European Union the number of Polish migrants grew considerably; in 2011 the number ranged from 120,000 to 190,000 (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 2012). Polish migrants work mostly in the agricultural and construction sectors and are commonly associated with drunkenness and nuisance, but also with a strong work ethic (cf. Poolse Instituut voor Publieke Zaken 2012). The Polishness in Mr. Polska's project is brought into connection especially with the former. The national character of the Polish that emerges from his texts can be described as crude and vulgar. In his songs Poland is portrayed as a country of vodka, a cold climate and wild nature. Polska frequently mentions typical unsophisticated Polish food such as potatoes with meat, kluski (a kind of dumpling) or pickles. Pickles and potatoes, accompanied by a bottle of vodka, are among the symbols on the cover of his album Waardevolle Gezelligheid (Mr Polska 2012a). Other symbols one can find here are a map of Poland and the Polish national emblem, the white eagle. Also his own image – a white t-shirt, a winter hat with ear-flaps and spiked hair – makes him look like a stereotypical Polish migrant worker (Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1. Cover of Mr. Polska's album Waardevolle Gezelligheid.
Figure 2. Mr. Polska.
The trend for the portrayal of his home country is set in the video clip ‘Oostblokleef’ (Mr. Polska 2010), which is built from a series of stereotypical images of Poland: next to the traditional potatoes and meat, we see a group of primitive, aggressive young men and a drunk lying in the street. It also comprises old photographs showing communist Poland covered with snow. They give impressions of Poland as a backward country with a difficult history, full of hardship and poverty. Such presentations answer to Western expectations, where Eastness is associated with a history of misery (cf. Kuus Reference Kuus2007, p. 30). The image of Poland presented here is one built on cognitive simplifications and familiar, easily recognisable stereotypes, confirming the image of Eastern Europe as backward, primitive and crude. Poland is Holland's ‘oriental’, exotic Other here, that responds to the stereotypical image of the Polish in the Netherlands and as such readies it for consumption as a media image.
The ‘little mechanic’: Polska's authenticity scenario and street credibility
You know, the funny thing is, actually I used to be a mechanic. (Mr. Polska 2011a).
Hip-hop music is commonly presented as part of the subculture of the underprivileged and marginalised black American working class. It is viewed as a form of self-expression, a way to reflect on life lived in difficult circumstances, where poverty and violence are a fact of life (cf. Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, pp. 28, 62, 78–9). Importantly, hip-hop is an expression of lived experience. Battling against adversities is a source of what can be called an artist's street credibility. That is why authenticity is essential for a rapper's career (cf. Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, pp. 117–49): ‘Authenticity matters in all art worlds, but hip-hop is unique in its incorporation of “real talk” within the artistic commodities; the message of authenticity dominates entire songs, albums, and careers’ (Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, p. 120). Next to stories about the ‘hood’, hip-hop narrative often comprises rise-to-fame-from-the-ghetto scenarios. Rha Goddess (Reference Goddess and Chang2006, p. 341), a hip-hop artist, speaks in this context about a mythology of transformation and triumph, a romanticised idea of struggle, telling a rags to riches story.
Hip-hop's commercialisation has led to an authenticity debate – a discussion of who can be called a genuine representative of the genre. Those opting for a traditional meaning of hip-hop despise the nouveau riche rappers who do not express a genuine experience, lack ‘poverty consciousness’ (Rha Goddess Reference Goddess and Chang2006, p. 340) and use the genre for commercial gain. Mr. Polska is part of a collective subversively calling itself Nouveau Riche, which would indicate that he consciously plays with the hip-hop convention and the authenticity discussion. For instance, in his solo project Polska activates the rise-to-fame-from-the-ghetto scenario. This strategy is based on the rapper's Polish background and is built around the codes of Polish orientalised inferiority. Polishness produces certain associations which are being consciously blown out of proportion by the artist and used to produce his image. In what follows I will illustrate what kinds of stereotypes are being used here and what purpose they serve.
In his project Mr. Polska establishes his authenticity, repeatedly emphasising that he is an ordinary guy, a ‘simple boy’ (Muller Reference Muller2010). He often says that before he became a famous rapper he used to be, or wanted to be, a mechanic: ‘You know what the funny thing is?/Actually I was a mechanic/Now I show you that any drunken, drinking fool/can become a rapper’, he raps in his song ‘Berghuis’ (‘Mountain house’) (Mr. Polska 2011a).Footnote 6 This mechanic-motive can be seen as an element of his rise-to-fame-from-the-ghetto story: an ordinary manual job where one needs to do hard physical work matches the image of a tough rapper with a difficult past and is a source of his authenticity.
In his lyrics Mr. Polska also, implicitly or explicitly, mentions difficulties he was confronted with in the past, when he was still a recent arrival in the Netherlands:
I'm living a great life, I'm making the sign of the cross/before I used to live with my mother on a minimum [income]/you think it's strange that I want money/I want my stomach nicely filled, those shoes a bit nice/a washing machine for my mum, good boy/I want to move from a council flat in the hood to an apartment/from rap in the neighbourhood he is a super star.Footnote 7 (Mr. Polska 2011a, emphasis mine.)
Buying a washing machine for his mother returns also in other songs. Polska shows here that he used to belong to an underprivileged group and needed to struggle his way to the top. In the same song he says: ‘Yesterday I was standing at a production line/now with a rookie of the year award in my Polish hand./To work hard, that must really be something Polish’ (Mr. Polska 2011a, emphasis mine).Footnote 8
In the song ‘Berghuis’ Mr. Polska (2011a) raps: ‘First there were Moroccans and the Turkish, now the Eastern bloc boys, thugs/From the bottom you can only go up’ (emphasis mine).Footnote 9 As a Pole he is part of the underprivileged group of Dutch society – the immigrants, commonly associated with crime and trouble. Further he tells about his early years in the Netherlands, before he became a success: ‘Hello, I've been babbling for a while with the chicks/before they wouldn't even look at me, now it's different/and you know what the funny thing is?/when I just arrived in the Netherlands I would get beaten up’ (Mr. Polska 2011a, emphasis mine).Footnote 10 In all these texts, elements of an authenticity scenario are to be found, presenting Polska as someone who had to overcome difficulty as an immigrant in the Netherlands. The Netherlands are presented here as a hostile territory for a newcomer, comparable almost to an American ‘hood’. Poverty (living from a minimum income with no washing machine, working on a production line) and being bullied are markers of authenticity, a source of his urge to rise to fame and at the same time of his street credibility. He deliberately self-marginalises himself, exaggerating appearance and mannerisms of the working class, putting on a ‘Polish’ accent (in interviews Polska speaks accent-less Standard Dutch), presenting a persona of a migrant worker with a poor background. He embraces the notion of Polish inferiority. By doing so he paradoxically takes control over the degrading narrative about his home country just as many black hip-hop artists reclaim and embrace the meaning of words such as ‘n*****’, transforming them in order to resist racism (cf. Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, pp. 86–7). The question that remains is if by doing so Mr. Polska actually tries to talk back, to resist and undermine the stereotype. Undoubtedly, hip-hop functions here as a tool for identity building and making a space for oneself within society (Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, pp. 24, 35), but first and foremost within the music industry. His strategy of self-denigration is at the same time a strategy of self-promotion; it has the character of both authenticity and a theatrical show.
Nowadays an artist's image is managed and moulded according to the hip-hop stereotype in order to meet audiences’ needs, with many white artists striking a marketing pose by appropriating cool black masculinity (Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011). At the same time the fact that hip-hop authenticity is localised (culturally and spatially) does not have to exclude white artists from claiming it. In different cultural contexts such as multicultural Western-European society, one's claim to authenticity does not have to be inscribed in race, but can come from a different source such as ethnicity or class. Here, experience that was traditionally ‘black’ is an experience of the immigrant. As Christopher Smith (Reference Smith1997, pp. 46–7) notes: ‘In rap's dominant marketing paradigm, blackness has become contingent, while the ghetto has become necessary’. In his project Mr. Polska constructs ethnicity (Polishness) and his social status through being an immigrant as an important source of distinctiveness that serves to both fashion an identity and find a cultural niche for marketing purposes. His language and accent imitate naturalness. Hip-hop authenticity of ‘talking black’ (cf. Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, p. 69) is here being turned into authenticity of ‘talking migrant’.
A difficult past and an underprivileged position are the source of a rapper's street credibility, unlike an education at the Herman Brood Academie, a school for young people interested in pop music and the music industry. In interviews Polska appears somewhat embarrassed by the questions about him attending the school, as it clashes with the image of a real rapper who gets inspiration from his life-experience: ‘It was more like, I got space there to make music. Look, it's not that you can learn to rap there, but I got a bursary and I could simply make music all week long. What else can you wish for, you know’ (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol. 3, emphasis mine).Footnote 11 Commenting on his project, he easily shifts from his Polish to his Dutch identity. It becomes clear that he perceives himself as a Dutch rapper. When asked about the hip-hop scene in Poland he comments, ‘When I listen to Polish hip-hop I find we are somewhat more advanced in the Netherlands, but that is because […] all the great DJs come from here and one experiments a lot, while in Poland one still looks at what the rest of the world does’; and ‘I think that what we make is a new sound of the Netherlands’ (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol. 1).Footnote 12
The woods and the bears: Poland in the project of Mr. Polska
During the week I'm just an ordinary guy,/In the weekend I fight bears. (Mr. Polska 2011a, emphasis mine).Footnote 13
Jeffries (Reference Jeffries2011, p. 69) notes that hip-hop authenticity is purposefully theatrical and spectacular. These qualities we can also observe in Mr. Polska's project. In his lyrics, Poland is a country of snowy mountains, cold rivers where one can catch fish and forests where one meets wild bears. Although it is always winter in Poland, as the stereotype goes, an average Pole is so tough and hardened that he walks outside wearing an unbuttoned shirt and sandals. One can find this image of Poland in the song ‘Berghuis’ and its video. As a real Oostblok boy (‘Eastern Bloc boy’) Polska wears a thick hat with earflaps, drinks vodka and eats pickles. He walks around with a naked chest ‘on a mountain with snow and so on’ (Mr. Polska 2011a),Footnote 14 and as a real tough Pole, he sleeps in a tent. On YouTube, the video is accompanied by the following text:
In fables kings always have a huge castle on a hill with golden facades, but Mr. Polska does not need that. Give our cousin from the Eastern Bloc a little house on a mountain and some beer. Having sampled bison, raccoons and elks, Boaz v/d Beatz [Dutch DJ, member of the Nouveau Riche Collective who often works with Mr. Polska] has managed to make a sound matching this excursion.Footnote 15 (Nouveau Riche 2010)
Another Polish landscape can be found in the introduction to the album Boswachter (Mr. Polska 2011b). Poland is presented here as a country of forests and wild nature of which the bear is the ultimate symbol (Figure 3). Mr. Polska presents himself as a forester who takes the listener on a trip through the snow-covered woods of western Poland. Here too he uses his Polish second name and his original surname:
Siema. My name is Włodzimierz Czajka. Today I'll take you on a journey through the forests of Western Poland. Today I am your forester. What we can see here in front of us is a beautiful specimen of an oris [sic!] arcatos, popularly known as the brown bear. […] We need to be careful. Very careful. It is the mating season and these animals are known to be extremely aggressive at this time. […] Ladies and gentlemen, I'm standing here more or less five to three meters away eye in eye, oh shit, from this enormous beast. OK, we now have eye contact and the most important thing now is to show who is most dominant in the forest. That's me, my name is Włodzimierz. Ladies and gentlemen, now it is the time to attack the bear.Footnote 16 (Mr. Polska 2011b)
Figure 3. Cover of Mr. Polska's album De boswachter EP.
In the sound track ‘Opa de jager’ (‘Grandpa the hunter’) he tells the story of his grandfather who used to hunt and would take his grandson with him to the forest where he would teach him to deal with wild nature: ‘My grandpa was a hunter/I used to go with him/No one can tell me anything/I am an Asian wild [sic!]’ (Mr. Polska 2011b).Footnote 17 As a result of an upbringing in the Polish forests he grows up to be an ‘Asian wild’, a fearless hunter who knows how to survive in the forest. He is a tough guy who can hunt and make fire and who eats what he has shot: ‘Timber in the stove, drinking tea all day long/Grandpa was a hunter, together into the woods/To catch animals and to eat them’ (Mr. Polska 2011b).Footnote 18 These Polish survival skills also turn out to be useful in the Netherlands. In one of the songs Polska declares: ‘there is a carp in the park, I'll eat it with pleasure’ (Mr. Polska and Jebroer 2011).Footnote 19 The allusion here is to the stereotype of a Pole being somewhat crude, but tough and resourceful. In his lyrics both Polish nature and the people have something primitive about them. Both the snow-covered forests and bears that one can meet on the streets form part of the stereotype image of Poland that is being played with here. To the Dutch youth hunting, catching fish and sleeping in a tent in the woods may appear exotic and require a special kind of toughness; Polska presents himself as someone who knows these realities from experience, which is yet another important element of his artistic authenticity and credibility.
That Polska's strategy works is clear when one looks at the comments of journalists and Polska's followers on Facebook. A post from 1 February 2012 reads: ‘No hand protection or a hat, I want to feel that it's winter’.Footnote 20 A follower reacts: ‘A real Polish tough guy’;Footnote 21 other followers write: ‘they call you a bear, right?’Footnote 22 and ‘a real real man’ (Mr. Polska 2012c).Footnote 23 Another fan on YouTube writes: ‘Mr. Polska he is a real gangster, I follow him on Twitter’ (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol. 5).Footnote 24 In the programme Wintersessie Mr. Polska is introduced as follows: ‘This man can never come here in summer, simply only winter session, ice-cold. What do you know of buying a washing machine for your mother. Polska […] is in the house’ (Mr. Polska 2012b).Footnote 25 Polska performs here wearing his trade-mark winter hat and introduces himself as President of the Eastern Bloc. We can observe here how the (social) media confirm and help to establish his chosen image.
When we think of its reception, Mr. Polska's project can be compared with that of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat, in that his representation of Poland and the Polish gets a hyperreal quality: it replaces reality and starts functioning as Baudrillard's (Reference Baudrillard1995) simulacrum, referring not to any social reality, only to itself (Wallace Reference Wallace2008). Because Polska's young Dutch audience in general lacks any knowledge of Poland, Mr. Polska's version is the only image of the country and its people they come across.
Vodka-diet
According to Kuus (Reference Kuus2007, p. 30), ‘[t]he East is most interesting [to a Western audience] when it behaves like the East’. In Polska's project the Polish are not only tough when it comes to cold weather. Another stereotype about them that is repeatedly used by Mr. Polska is the stereotype of a drunken Pole. Polish men are all considered to be heavy drinkers: ‘Men on a couch drink vodka as water/[…]/Pickle at a party, pickle for breakfast […] Everyone is on a vodka-diet’ (Mr. Polska, 2011b, emphasis mine).Footnote 26 He also presents himself as someone who drinks a lot. Often he has himself photographed or filmed with a bottle of vodka at his mouth and tells (jokingly?) about his drinking as part of his lifestyle. His comment underneath a picture with a vodka bottle of 20 October 2011 goes as follows: ‘If I'm going to drink again today, by the end of the week I'll be a walking liver’.Footnote 27 An internet user reacts to this: ‘nice right :P’, ‘this is the Eastern Bloc lives ahhh:P’.Footnote 28 When asked ‘But tell me, being a Pole you surely know how to drink?’, he answers ‘Of course’ (Mr. Polska 2012c).Footnote 29 Also here Mr. Polska's claim to authenticity is accepted by his intended audience who share similar tastes and consumption preferences and know best to appreciate the convention.
Partying and heavy drinking are elements of the so called ‘cool pose’, an important element of the hip-hop posture-performance. Hip-hop artists often portray themselves partying, surrounded by beautiful, voluptuous women, showing off their material status gained as a result of their success (cf. Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, p. 62). In his project Mr. Polska employs cultural scripts relating to the cool persona. He often performs surrounded by sexy girls, partying and drinking. Cool pose is an element of identity building that can serve many goals. Rose identifies it as a strategy for survival in a hostile environment (Rose Reference Rose1994, p. 12). As an element of hip-hop stereotype, however, it is also a marketing strategy – a way to meet audiences’ expectations. Mr. Polska projects a cool image of himself adding a distinctive ‘Polish’ element to it, namely exploits in ‘wild’, winter landscapes. His ‘cool pose’ is also an element of ‘thug mimicry’, playing with the stereotype of the (originally Black American) rebel-outsider. It works as a technique aimed at shocking his audience, contributing to his street credibility and his unique style (Figure 4).
Figure 4. ‘Drinking vodka like water’.
The Polish
Another characteristic of a ‘typical’ Pole on which Mr. Polska builds his alter ego is brutishness and chauvinism, leading to domestic violence. In the album Boswachter one finds a track ‘De Poolse situatie’ (‘The Polish situation’; Mr. Polska 2011b) which is an illustration of another stereotype of Polish men: not only do they drink but they are also primitive and abusive. On the track one can hear an interaction of a ‘typical’ Polish family. Although the Dutch language is being used, sounds of the changing channels anchor the situation in a Polish household. A swearing man is fighting with his wife and threatens to beat her up. The fragment ends with profanity, kurwa (‘fuck’).
In interviews Mr. Polska tells journalists that his mother used to work as an air hostess, which made it possible for him to visit Poland regularly. This way he could make friends there and build a relationship with his Polish family members. Those visits and people come back in his project. They are all somewhat hardened and brute. For example, in the song ‘Opa de jager’ (‘Grandpa the hunter’) the listener meets Polska's uncle, who hits the boy in the face because he returns home late (‘Beating from my uncle, because I returned late home/Not with his hand but old school style, with a fist’; Mr. Polska 2011bFootnote 30) and his cousin, who had taught Polska to fish and acquainted him with Polish hip-hop. As a result of this acculturation we repeatedly see Polska in his video-clips eating meat or pickles or catching fish, standing in water.
In the song ‘Gustav’ we meet a retired Polish solider who is presented as Polska's uncle (Nouveau Riche Music 2011). Gustav is apathetic, bitter and lonely. He feels that he has wasted his life:
As a sergeant in the army, a few years back/But since his retirement he's been living on a couch […] Ahh, what do you know about life?/I haven't known love, I'm ice-cold/Leave me alone and let me go/Let me sit on this couch all day long/Leave me alone and let me go/Surrounded by people whom I hate.Footnote 31 (Mr. Polska 2011b)
Gustav spends his days watching television, drinking beer and quarrelling with his wife who ‘swears, beats and complains all day long/And since a few years sleeps in her own room’.Footnote 32 A refrain returns as a mantra summarising Gustav's life: ‘I came alone, I am alone/I'll die alone/Because we die anyway’ (Mr. Polska 2011b).Footnote 33 The action of the video accompanying the song takes place in a chapel, alluding to one more stereotypical image of Poland – Catholicism. The priest sleeps during mass, communion comprises vodka. The clip is introduced by Polska as an illustration of real life in Poland: ‘We shall see how life in the Eastern Bloc is’ (Muller Reference Muller2010).Footnote 34 In songs like ‘Gustav’ or ‘Polish situation’ Polska gives his Dutch fans a glimpse of an exotic Polishness with its harshness and primitiveness, which is at the same time what is expected from Eastern Europe.
Audience response
Mr. Polska's project could be seen as an instance of inter-ethnic humour. Zenner (Reference Zenner1970, p. 93) notes that, whereas humour about ethnic out-groups is seen as perpetuating negative stereotypes and an expression of hostile attitudes within the context of unevenly spread power relations, self-oriented humour made within an ethnic group that occupies a minority position in society can be seen as an instance of covert aggression, self-hate and self-criticism. As the first assumption still holds true, the second has come to be seen in a different light. The emphasis is now on self-directed humour as a consciously used political strategy that aims at countering discrimination. As such it has an unmasking function, calling attention to biased perceptions of those in control of social power. Next to these functions of inter-ethnic humour that pertain to power relations within society, humour can be viewed as creating a feeling of group solidarity. Importantly, in all these instances humorous representation tends to become part of a public image (Zenner Reference Zenner1970, p. 94). What pertains to self-directed humour also pertains to the use of self-directed stereotypes. It is usually a political strategy aimed at achieving positive social change. The primary goal of using self-directed stereotypes is to undermine them (Margolis Reference Margolis1999, p. 53).
As in most cases of comic impersonation, Mr. Polska's performance is ambiguous in its meaning and intention and it could raise ethical questions (cf. Pickering & Lockyer Reference Pickering, Lockyer, Pickering and Lockyer2005b, p. 181). His posturing project could be seen as pastiche, mockery of stereotypical Polishness, an attempt to come to terms with some of its negative qualities. ‘Dragging’ his Polishness, theatrically exaggerating and parodying it, could serve as means of subverting stereotypes, undermining the ‘assumed essential reality […] through its hyperbolic mimicry’ (Butler Reference Butler1990 cited in Weinzierl and Muggleton Reference Weinzierl, Muggleton, Weinzierl and Muggleton2003, p. 10). He might also be said to be simultaneously mocking the Polish stereotypes and the Dutch believing in them. Yet this could also be interpreted as carrying potentially negative implications for the image of Poles in the Netherlands (cf. Pickering & Lockyer Reference Pickering, Lockyer, Pickering and Lockyer2005a, p. 11), and as being exploitative. One could subsequently imagine that it could cause protests from those Poles who feel offended or feel that they are being negatively stereotyped. In my analysis of audience responses to Mr. Polska's project, based on (Polish) fans’ reactions on Facebook and on YouTube, I have not encountered such voices. If there are any critical voices there, they pertain to the musical performance, not to Polska's artistic persona and its bearing on the image of Poles in the Netherlands.
As Margolis (Reference Margolis1999, p. 54) points out, the successful undermining of negative stereotyping by employing stereotypes depends on audience reception and interpretation. As she argues, the strategy can only be successful when it invokes an ironic response in the spectator. She also notes that this response is prompted by the genre that is used. The use of stereotypes in Mr. Polska's project does not seem to invoke irony on the part of his audience, however. It seems that his fans play along with his strategy and that the stereotypical images he uses, at least to some extent, are taken seriously. In other words, the public does not try to subvert or destabilise his performance of authenticity; on the contrary, based on comments on Facebook and YouTube they seem to affirm it. In an interview Polska brags jokingly: ‘Because of me people walk in sandals in the winter. They want cold feet and Eastern bloc lives, a pickle and a bottle of vodka on stage’ (Mr. Polska and Jebroer 2011).Footnote 35
The fact that his Polish fans embrace the stereotypical presentation of his ethnic background could be attributed to their naïveté or apathy, but it could also be explained in a different way. As I have argued before, this has to do with the genre or convention within which he operates, namely hip-hop in a post-subcultural context. The reception of his project is not political because its production is not either. It can also be argued that Mr. Polska's audience forms a ‘humour network’ (Willis Reference Willis, Pickering and Lockyer2005, p. 137), constituted by people sharing the same ‘special interests’, which in the case of Polska's fans are music preferences and affiliation with the same subculture. This platform of shared (music) interests is democratic in its character. In that way the interpretation of humour is not dictated by a dominant group, but is a product of a shared humour competence. Members of a humour network are likely to have more in common than just an interest in one specific artist; moreover, they tend to react in a similar way to different forms of humour (cf. Willis Reference Willis, Pickering and Lockyer2005, p. 137). Mr. Polska's fans will interpret his project in the context of subcultural hip-hop aesthetics and will concentrate on other aspects of his performance than its supposed political engagement.
Reactions of Mr. Polska's Polish fans can further be explained by the mechanism of the so-called ‘ethnic affect’ (cf. Schweitzer & Guadagnolo Reference Schweitzer and Guadagnolo2012). By exploiting his Polish persona, Mr. Polska gives Polish fans the impression that he is one of them, which results in their feeling a connection and affiliating themselves with the rapper.Footnote 36 His success is being experienced as their success. Although it is based on negative stereotypes of Polishness, their presentation within the subversive hip-hop convention transforms them into something positive and attractive. Vodka drinking, as one example, is ascribed to Polish migrant workers, and normally seen as a source of nuisance, but in connection to Polska it is seen as something cool, a form of subversion and good fun. This allows Polska's Polish fans to feel good or even proud of being Polish and legitimises their own performances of Polishness in the Netherlands. Pickering and Lockyer (Reference Pickering, Lockyer, Pickering and Lockyer2005a, p. 18) note that humour can move either in the direction of harm or in the direction of benefit. In Mr. Polska's case it seems to move in the direction of the latter.
Political engagement
Polska also enjoys some popularity in Poland. He received positive reactions to his initiative Meldpunt Waardevolle Gezelligheid (2012; ‘Reporting Desk Meaningful Sociability’), which alludes to the Meldpunt Polen (‘Polish Complaint Desk’), a complaint portal created by the leader of the Dutch anti-migrant Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid), Geert Wilders. On the website created by the party one could answer questions concerning different forms of nuisance caused by the Polish migrants in the Netherlands.
As a reaction to Wilders's anti-Polish campaign, Mr. Polska launched his own website, Meldpunt Waardevolle Gezelligheid (2012). The layout of the website was a mirror image of Meldpunt Polen but it served the opposite goal. One could leave here positive comments about Poles and tell stories about positive aspects of their presence in the Netherlands. The image of the Polish propagated here was that of hardworking people, with an exceptional work ethos, keen on and good at partying. The website generated some commotion, with numerous reactions from the Dutch describing their positive experience with the Polish. As a result of this initiative Polska started to function as the face of the Polish community in the Netherlands. Together with other prominent Dutch Poles, he was invited by the former Polish First Lady, Anna Komorowska, to open the Dutch Keukenhof flower show titled Poland, the Heart of Europe (cf. Zwennes Reference Zwennes2012). And as a correspondent of the Dutch Radio 1 he was sent to Poland to comment on the European Championship 2012 (cf. Griffioen Reference Griffioen2012).
Asked about his reasons for starting the campaign, Polska explains: ‘I saw Wilders's portal and it simply made me angry. […] I was tired of the fact that the only thing about the Polish I could find in newspapers and on TV was that they steal or drink’ (Szymańska-Borginon Reference Szymańska-Borginon2012).Footnote 37 In commenting on the initiative the press underlined Polska's political engagement, although not mentioning that it could also be seen as a case of self-promotion, as the title of Polska's website was also the title of his new album. Moreover, the image of the Polish that one encounters in Polska's project is in fact not much different from the image propagated by Wilders. The key to his image and his relation to his Polishness can be sought in a statement he made in an interview, when asked if the images of Poland and the Polish he creates are caricatures:
No, it is not a caricature, but I realise very well that I have something very precious in my hands now, because nowadays it is a hot topic, you know, Poland. So in some tracks I exaggerate it by putting on a sort of accent for example, but I do not go through life as someone wearing a mask who is trying to behave differently. Sometimes I add a bit of an extra sauce, a bit of pepper, a bit of salt to spice it up a little bit or to improve the mood. But it is also simply who I am.Footnote 38 (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol. 2)
We can see here that Mr. Polska is a conscious artist who is aware of the marketing strategies involved in the making of his own career: ‘I realised pretty quickly, together with my producer Boaz, that the only way to stand out is by doing something different’ (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol 1).Footnote 39 He knows his target group. He also emphasises the role of the Internet and portals such as YouTube in his positioning as an artist (Mr. Polska 2012, Vol. 3).
The strategy he resorts to in order to achieve his goal can be described in terms of ‘recontextualisation’, the endowment of cultural artefacts with subversive or oppositional force through an exaggeration of dominant images of a culture (cf. Straw Reference Straw, Frith, Goodwin and Grossberg1993, p. 15). Normally this strategy tends to have a political meaning; here, however, this seems not to be the case. As Polska admits himself, his primary goal is not to be political, as is customary in traditional hip-hop, but quite the opposite. He aims simply to have fun, to be wild (cf. Mr. Polska 2012, Vol 1). He does not disrupt and transform the hegemonic codes (in this case meaning the stereotypical image of the Polish in the Netherlands). Polska's is a new kind of recontextualisation: ‘an activity which is subversive, less because of the specific signs involved and shifts in their meanings, than because the very activity of recontextualisation opens up a realm of freedom within (and dependent upon) practices of consumption’ (Straw Reference Straw, Frith, Goodwin and Grossberg1993, p. 15). Polska's authenticity has a post-modern, post-subcultural character, in that it is not so much a political statement (undermining mainstream); rather, authenticity achieved here by essentialising stereotypes of Polishness is being used in image management, as a marketing strategy (cf. Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, p. 86). Polishness in Polska's project is a source of ‘subcultural capital’ guaranteeing uniqueness and originality.
Conclusion
As hip-hop projects are often politically engaged, comprising social critique and contesting power relations through oppositional discursive production (cf. Rose Reference Rose1994, p. 100), Polska's project is often portrayed as such, especially in the context of the Meldpunt Polen. His project could be seen as a ‘carnival of protest’, acting hedonistically and ideologically at the same time. Using modes of articulation and identity generation from a subculture could be seen as an unconventional form of political participation (cf. Weinzierl and Muggleton Reference Weinzierl, Muggleton, Weinzierl and Muggleton2003, p. 15). Although he explicitly says that he is first and foremost looking to have fun and openly declares that he is searching for a niche in the music scene, one feels compelled to ascribe different meanings to Polska's endeavours.
As Chang (Reference Chang2005, p. 20) and Jeffries (Reference Jeffries2011, p. 25) claim, hip-hop does not necessarily propagate an oppositional discourse. Chang argues that within the hip-hop scene there has been a shift from politics to culture, whereas Jeffries states that hip-hop ceased to be about collective efforts to achieve political change; instead it is about identity, autonomy and self-realisation. Performing oppositionality is actually a camouflaged means of negotiating inclusion into the mainstream (Jeffries Reference Jeffries2011, p. 73). As the analysis above tried to illuminate, Mr. Polska does not seem to be interested in redefining his Polish identity and undermining stereotypes, as the Polonus website has suggested. Central issues to his project are empowering oneself, creating a distinctive artistic persona, and marketing oneself – at the cost of reproducing stereotypes. At the same time he transports essentialised stereotypes into a discursive realm where they acquire a new, positive meaning. By engaging the ‘oriental’ other into a subculture he turns himself into something positive and desirable. The stereotypical image of Poland and the Polish is used in a performative act that functions in a local (Dutch) subcultural context. His project illustrates how hip-hop aesthetics operate within Western European, multicultural surroundings where race is replaced by ethnicity and class by a migrant status.
Creating his auto-image, Mr. Polska plays with otherness. Culturally he belongs first and foremost to the Netherlands. In his music videos he chooses to be different, Polish only insofar as it is convenient. Orientalised Polishness is for him a source of symbolic capital. In the context of hip-hop aesthetics Polishness comes in handy as a source of authenticity and a form of a ‘cool pose’. As a result, otherness is turned into a ‘source of pleasure’, not a ‘source of nuisance’ (cf. Nowicka Reference Nowicka and Nowicka1991, p. 11 cited in Golka Reference Golka2010, p. 173); what most will see as nuisance, Polska's fans will find exotic and attractive. Employed in this way, negative elements of Polish culture acquire positive meanings, not only for a Dutch audience but also for the Polish immigrants in the Netherlands. The latter get to associate themselves with a successful Pole, who turns the elements of their culture of which they used to be ashamed into something of which they can be proud. It does not matter if those elements have not ceased to be negative in their essence. What matters is that they have been brought into a context in which they can be seen as something positive. Belonging to hip-hop subculture Mr. Polska is ‘our other’; despite coming from a different county, he is an insider to a group as he represents similar values and common codes of behaviour, and as such elucidates positive emotions. Consequently Polska's intended audience is not necessarily interested in the validity of the image presented here, but rather in the atmosphere, a certain ethos of fun and belonging to a subculture, sharing its ‘coolness’.
What is essential here is to realise that Polska acts the ‘other’. He consciously adopts elements commonly associated with (Polish) otherness which can serve his purpose of being authentic in the context of street credibility and a rise-to-fame-from-the-ghetto scenario, and of being different, exotic and therefore distinctive and original within the context of marketability. His posturing strategy illustrates that in a multicultural surrounding, stereotype is commodity, something that can be used to build a distinctive profile of a public figure.
