Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West
24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go West for work; but the East stays East, and West stays West. Caricatures abound - the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for 'the new Berlin' for hipsters. Against the stereotypes, Agata Pyzik peers behind the curtain to take a look at the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the 'West'). Neoliberalism and mass migration, post-punk and the Bowiephile obsession with the Eastern Bloc, Orientalism and 'self-colonization', the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, the possibility of a non-Western idea of modernity and futurism, and the place of Eastern Europe in any current revival of 'the idea of communism' – all are much more complex and surprising than they appear. Poor But Sexy refuses both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the 'good old days' and the equally desperate desire to become a 'normal part of Europe', reclaiming instead the idea an Other Europe.
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1117655492
Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West
24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go West for work; but the East stays East, and West stays West. Caricatures abound - the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for 'the new Berlin' for hipsters. Against the stereotypes, Agata Pyzik peers behind the curtain to take a look at the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the 'West'). Neoliberalism and mass migration, post-punk and the Bowiephile obsession with the Eastern Bloc, Orientalism and 'self-colonization', the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, the possibility of a non-Western idea of modernity and futurism, and the place of Eastern Europe in any current revival of 'the idea of communism' – all are much more complex and surprising than they appear. Poor But Sexy refuses both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the 'good old days' and the equally desperate desire to become a 'normal part of Europe', reclaiming instead the idea an Other Europe.
,

,
26.95 In Stock
Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West

Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West

by Agata Pyzik
Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West

Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West

by Agata Pyzik

Paperback

$26.95 
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Overview

24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is as divided as ever. The passengers of the low-budget airlines go east for stag parties, and they go West for work; but the East stays East, and West stays West. Caricatures abound - the Polish plumber in the tabloids, the New Cold War in the broadsheets and the endless search for 'the new Berlin' for hipsters. Against the stereotypes, Agata Pyzik peers behind the curtain to take a look at the secret histories of Eastern Europe (and its tortured relations with the 'West'). Neoliberalism and mass migration, post-punk and the Bowiephile obsession with the Eastern Bloc, Orientalism and 'self-colonization', the emancipatory potentials of Socialist Realism, the possibility of a non-Western idea of modernity and futurism, and the place of Eastern Europe in any current revival of 'the idea of communism' – all are much more complex and surprising than they appear. Poor But Sexy refuses both a dewy-eyed Ostalgia for the 'good old days' and the equally desperate desire to become a 'normal part of Europe', reclaiming instead the idea an Other Europe.
,

,

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781780993942
Publisher: Zer0 Books
Publication date: 03/28/2014
Pages: 309
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Agata Pyzik is a Polish journalist who divides her time between Warsaw and London, where she has already established herself as a writer on art, music and culture for various magazines, including The Wire, Icon, Guardian, Afterall and Frieze.
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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Welcome to the House of Fear 13

Introducing the New Europe

The "Polish Miracle" 14

The new middle classes and their Bible 19

A Tale of Two Cities, or On The Real Meaning of Borders 23

The strange silence of liberal Poland 28

Communist Ghosts in the Closet 32

Post-politics of nostalgia 35

Toxic Ruins 39

You can scream here 46

Sexy and Unsexy Countries 49

Post-transitional cruelty 58

Dark art for dark times 62

New architecture of memory, memory as a Commodity 66

2 Ashes and Brocade 72

Berlinism, Bowie, Postpunk, New Romantics and Pop-Culture in the Second Cold War

Drang nach Osten

Berlin as capital of Post-DDR melancholia 75

I could make a transformation 80

Oh we can beat them, forever and ever 84

Mauerszene 90

Fear in the Western World 99

A Totalitarian Musical 105

Stilyagi of the New Era 108

They walked in line 112

Europophilia 115

Depeche-Mania 118

System to fight the SYSTEM 120

Goodbye, Berlin 127

3 O Mystical East 132

Eastern European Orientalism

To despair is to be Romanian

Not Really White 138

Misbaptized 142

Poland as a post-colonial country 145

The Polish Uncanny 147

The chimeras of Sarmatian melancholia 149

Catastrophism 154

Living with phantoms 159

4 Socialist Realism on Trial 165

Post-post-modernism, avant-garde, realism and socialist realism in our time

The real in the new reality

Critical art, Engaged art 172

An "impact on reality" 176

The New National Art, or the New Socialist Realism 181

From avant-garde to realism (and back again) 192

Inside Socialist Reality 199

We were men of marble 208

Soap operas about late capitalism 214

5 Applied Fantastics 221

On the "catching-up" revolution in the Soviet Bloc Learning modernity from the east 222

We will bury you! 224

The Meaning of the Thaw 230

Was there a proletarian culture? 232

Aspirational magazines of Socialism 240

A Festival of Youth 247

You and Me and Things: Socialist Objects of Desire 256

Does it matter? It doesn't waiter! An invitation to destruction 260

Give me all that I want! 267

Lost in Contradictory Images 277

Afterword 281

Acknowledgements 287

Further Reading 290

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