An Autobiographical Note as an Introduction to Hungarian and Romanian Images in American Culture

"Knowing" Romanians (or at least, Tran-syl-va-ni-ahahaha-ns)

As a child, when it came to Romanians, I knew of course of study of Dracula, or at least his pop-cultural/film (re-, and seemingly never ending)incarnation. After all, to the extent I knew where he was from it was some topographic point called "Transylvania," which was either its ain country—in which lawsuit it must have got some pretty cool-looking postage stamp stamps, spooky palaces on forbidding mountain tops and the like—or A made-up place. I say this should not have got been surprising for a kid, since, of the countless Genus Genus Genus Dracula films, there were 1s such as as "Billy the Child vs. Dracula (1966)." (Where makes that return place, Contrivance City?)

Dracula's birthday, as we all know, is 31 October, which just haps to cooccur with Halloween, thereby causing some confusion. Anyway, so when I went trick-or-treating as Cornelius from the "Planet of the Apes"—it was the '70s okay, and I was A kid, how was I to know?…I actually thought soylent greenness was people—in a costume that they probably utilize today to show the danger of fireworks—to state nil of the mask, a inexpensive plastic cast with an rubber band twine that invariably broke, causing you to have got got to transport it with you and thereby destroying any capacity you might have had to surprise the people who came to their doors…unless of course of study they tried the "please, take just one" candy-in-the-bowl-out-front-with-the-lights-off-really-we're-not-home-socialism-in-action method—more often than not, I would run into infinite Draculas. They had the cape, the sham fangs, and that cool sham blood…and perhaps even some of those cool postage stamp stamps. (Context is everything at Halloween. My youngest blood brother went sometime in the late '80s as "Jason" from the "Halloween" horror series. A small old lady opened up the door at one house and said "Ooooooh, expression at the cunning small field hockey player"! By the way, what haps when you travel up to somebody's house in a costume, ring the doorbell, and state trick-or-treat, on a twenty-four hours other than Halloween? I calculate one of two things can happen: 1) they name the cops, or 2) they seek to regift the still-remaining popcorn balls and circus peanuts left over from last Halloween.)

If Genus Dracula was only present in individual on Halloween, he could be establish the remainder of the twelvemonth on television—especially, perhaps ironically, for kids. There was Count von Count from Sesame Street. The count's subject song included a line, "When I'm alone. I number myself. One, one count! Ahahahaha [to boom in the background]!" Interestingly, according to the Internet's Wikipedia ("Count von Count") entry, there is some lamia folklore which proposes that lamias can go obsessed with counting things and that should you ever face one, throwing sand or seeds may assist to deflect them (a helpful traveling tip…).

The Count von Count skit is emblematical of the baffled premix of Romanian, Hungarian, and sometimes inexplicably inserted Slavic elements that do up the Genus Dracula composite. For example, as in the Seinfeld scene excerpted in the introduction (whose fictional characters actually talk a few words of Rumanian in the scene!, but who are nevertheless named Katya (the gymnast) and Misha (the circus acting acrobat), name calling (diminutives) which are neither Hungarian, nor Romanian), the Count's bats for some unknown region ground have got got Slavic names—Grisha, Misha, Sasha, etc. The Count's characteristics are clearly inspired by Bela Lugosi's (indeed, a existent Transylvanian (from Lugoj), of Magyar origin) 1931 portraiture of Genus Dracula (down to Count von Count's accent), and, it would appear, the Count's cameo girlfriend "Countess Dahling von Dahling" is inspired by the Magyar actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, who is celebrated for being famous, as is said, and for calling people "dahling" (convenient, she have said, because then you never have to retrieve anyone's name).

Finally, there was Count Chocula, a basic of Saturday morning clip telecasting series and the commercial messages in between which they were sandwiched (nothing in comparing to today, however, as commercial interruptions took up much less time then). All Iodine knew of him was that he presided over what looked like a really-tasty chocolate cereal grass that looked more than like dessert than breakfast. That, of course, explicates why our female parent refused to purchase it for us. Back in the in-retrospect-not-a-bad-time-to-be-a-kid, now much-maligned, hedonic "have a nice twenty-four hours smiley-face," "Me" decennary of the 1970s, gluttony as one of the seven deathly sinfulnesses was given impermanent particular dispensation. Gluttony was in…even if cocoa covered cereal grasses with marshmallows were not in some households. (In those days, "nutrition correctness" had not yet taken over, as name calling such as as Sugar Smacks (renamed Honey Smacks) or Sugar Pops would suggest.)

"Knowing" Hungarians

My introduction to Hungarians was similarly obscure. To the extent I identified Genus Dracula with any topographic point at all, it was, as I noted, Transylvania; to the extent that it was a country, Romania—not yet having gotten the patter infinite modern times by the owners of private suite I was to remain in Republic Of Hungary in later years, "ah, so you are going to Transylvania, you cognize that used to be portion of Hungary—one, 1 dismembered kingdom, ahahahahahaha—until they took it away (to the concomitant of boom in the background) ." What did I cognize and when did I cognize it (well, it was the Watergate Scandal era, you know)? It was not, for example, until old age later that I realized that I had once lived in the Hungarian-American mecca known as Cleveland, or that the Austrian household from whom we bought our house in a suburbia of Toronto in the early '70s was named Feleky. (It was quite a street we lived on then (1970-1974); my parents, Irish immigrants just established American citizens, the female parent of a friend a Praha Spring Czech refugee, and many new Grecian families, doubtless some having fled the right-wing military cabal of 1967-1973.)

My female parent used to do that basic of many an American family (at least at a time), "Hungarian goulash"…it sounds ghoulish, but it savors delicious. (As is frequently noted, the American version is more than similar to porkolt (stew-like) than to goulash (a soup).) I loved it, even though I didn't cognize what it was or where it came from. (It can only be said to be dry too, although I did not recognize it was dry at a time: my father is a '56er, only he came from Dublin, a relative (a policeman!) stiffed him at the port, and so he wandered the streets of New House Of York with his bag in heavy Irish tweed during North American Indian summer, only to duck into a barroom to see a few pitches of Don Larsen's Perfective Game in the World Series, an event whose importance was inscrutable to him; like many a Magyar '56er, however, he felt like a Martian (see below for more than on the subject of Hungarians as "aliens"). No, my father did not knock into Frank McCourt!)

"Goulash," of course, already had a long history on telecasting by that point, what with huffy men of science in Charles Dudley Warner Brothers cartoons, living in "Transylvania" among lightning violent storms and talking about making "spider goulash" and similar huffy man of science specialties. (The other Magyar touching used in a whole series of cartoons—including a classic Charles Dudley Warner Brothers' sketch by Fritz Freleng with Bugs Bunny as a concert pianoforte player ("Rhapsody Rabbit") and a classic MGM sketch by Hanna and Barbera of "Tom and Jerry" dueling it out at a piano ("The Cat Concerto"), both of which came out within hebdomads of each other in 1946 prima to common accusals that the rival was guilty of plagiarism (see Wikipedia entry)—is the manic-depressive, mostly manic, frenetic music Franz (Ferenc) Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2".) "Goulash" was also the plot-line of what from today's eye was a clearly racist episode ("A Majority of Two," 4/11/68) of the 1960s sitcom "Bewitched" in which, as usual, "Darrin" (alias "Darwood") was to entertain an out-of-town concern guest—would you like a high-ball, sir, do that a double; bad they've slashed the disbursal account, dinner at Darrin's again…—who on this juncture was Japanese. The whole episode, Darrin's wife, a enchantress named Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery), is trying to track down how to set up the repast petition the businessman's secretary had relayed: Hun-gai-ran-gou-rash. She is worried, of course, about causing the Nipponese man of affairs to lose human human face if she asks, which is indeed a concern since throughout the episode when this haps to person his or her face will literally disappear, apparently leaving a splodge of white-out. Everyone, of course, have got got a good laughter at the end, however, after the man of affairs have romanced only a mildly Asian-looking (didn't desire to have her looking tooooo Asian) stewardess, and it turns out all the man of affairs really wanted was "Hungarian Goulash," but owing to his secretary's accent…Everyone except that nosy next-door neighbour Mrs. Gladys Kravitz, who, we can deduce, must be spying on the Stevens' family for "Dragnet" or "The FBI," since "freak out" political parties have been reported at that address…

Then, there was the show, "Green Acres,"…something was definitely up with that, but exactly what I didn't know. Although I knew the fictional character Lisa Stephen A. Douglas was eccentric, I didn't cognize she was Hungarian, and I certainly did not cognize that she was Eva Dennis Dennis Gabor and not Zsa Zsa Gabor as is very frequently mistaken. As a kid, I thought I didn't understand the show, precisely because I was a kid. Nope. Now, old age later, I know: that wasn't the problem.

How exactly makes one depict "Green Acres?" The secret plan ostensibly was that Eddie Albert's fictional character wished to undergo the "real livin'" of the countryside (today, this is known as a "r-e-a-l-i-t-y show," starring a similarly famous-for-being-famous celebrity, City Of Light Hilton…who is actually related to the Gabors (see below), however, thereby causing us serious existential issues at this point in this sentence). Eddie Prince Albert drags his loath Magyar married woman with him, and she is not very happy with the state of affairs because, as we larn from the subject song, she would rather be shopping on Park Avenue. (The countryside subject was so common in CBS sitcoms during the 1960s, that some critics derisively referred to it as the "Country Broadcast Media System".) Anyway, they lived in some rural area, respective hundred statute miles from Chicago, probably Illinois. Despite the little size of the town in which they lived, Hooterville was capable of hosting not one, but two sitcoms: Green Estate (1966-1971) and Petticoat Confluence (1963-1970). (The town was apparently known best for the ample breasts of the immature female stars of Petticoat Junction, since, as it turns out, the pick of name was not accidental). The two shows were united by the presence of Surface-To-Air Missile Drucker, apparently town grocer, postmaster, and banker, and the unforgettable fictional character of Saint George Thomas Jefferson (oh, sorry, no, too early, this was still the 1960s, work stoppage that then). As the Wikipedia entry notes, Hooterville had Drucker's grocery shop store and the hotel from Petticoat Junction…not exactly, Pixley stuff (to state nil of Saddle Horse Pilot), and likely that giant sucking sound on the state's budget. At least the town did not have got Peanut or Leslie Howard Sprague, clearly not local personalities the chamber of commercialism wishings to publicize when trying to pull investment).

Moreover, I would embark to guess, this was one town where the locals did not "exceed the plan" or "break the crop record," despite Eva's naturally collectivistic tendencies. Instead, a batch of clip was spent with fending off the exasperating locals, including the featherheaded state bureaucrat, county farm agent Hank Kimball, a gender-ambiguous fellow and sister picture team, and Matthew Matthew Arnold Ziffel, the "hilarious" TV-watching pig, apparently "Green Acres"s'answer to Mr. Erectile Dysfunction (an insidious, but false, urban fable have it that the cast of characters ate Arnold after the show was cancelled; the truth is just being on the set made him homesick for the saneness of the sty). The running play gag of the series was that Mr. Stephen A. Stephen A. Douglas (Eddie Albert) wanted to be there, but nil went right and the locals drove him crazy; while Mrs. Douglas, despite her love of downy negliges and diamonds, tantrum right in and understood the locals. Her Hungarianness in the show was alternatively exotic, haughty, sexy/ditzy (as connoted by her accent) and seemingly unmindful to reason—yes, A regular Hungarian goulash of "otherness."

One would wish to presume that "Green Acres" could be explained by resort to more than complicated analysis: that it was somehow a) a contemplation of the drug culture's first incursion of the originative clerisy (according to Alice, the wind was whispering, not yet crying Mary…"Green Acres" an accidental pick of title?!), or that b) there was some deep fable at work here, suggesting chase of a Utopian rural life is a chimera, and that instead you acquire electrification and a TV-watching pig. (Appropriately enough, when it and other such as state broadcast media system shows were cancelled in 1971, it was referred to as the "Rural Purge.") It is more than likely that the show was merely escapist, almost unintentionally absurd—although it did leave of absence a mark that lent itself well to interlingual rendition into Magyar for a skit at a summertime linguistic communication encampment old age later. (One of the best bills of indictment of "America's Cold War realism" of the epoch can be establish in the film "Forrest Gump," in a recovery room for injured soldiers during the Socialist Republic Of Vietnam War…in the background "Gomer Pyle, USMC" plays on a TV…In Five years, Gomer somehow never made it out of basic preparation to Vietnam…)

Through the Eyes of an American Child of the Television Age: Identifying Hungarians and Romanians as Hungarians and Romanians…through the Wide World of Sports

Al "The Huffy Hungarian" Hrabosky

Speaking of Eva…I intend value Zsa Zsa, no, I mean, for once this is right, Zsa Zsa Gabor…a invitee topographic point on another rural-themed Sixties telecasting show presents us to our adjacent theme: the Hungarians as "mad" or brainsick (a lanthanum Lisa Douglas). In one episode (28 January 1962), Wilbur congratulates his talking horse, Mr. Ed, for having cured Zsa Zsa of her fearfulness of horses, to which Mr. Erectile Dysfunction responds: "She cured my fearfulness of Hungarians" ("The Best of Mr. Ed," multiple sites; Mister Erectile Dysfunction aired from 1961-1966 on, you guessed it, CBS). In J.D. Salinger's "Franny and Zooey" (published as a whole in 1961), Mrs. Glass states Zooey: "You could utilize a haircut, immature man…You're getting to look like one of these brainsick Hungarians or something getting out of a swimming pool" (the subdivision also incorporates a mention to Zsa Zsa Dennis Gabor and usage of the descriptor "Balkan"; I retrieve now reading this book beneath leafy trees below the Pannonhalma abbey in Republic Of Hungary in June 1990) http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/frannyandzooey.doc. (I would be funny to cognize here: this subdivision first appeared in The New Yorker in May 1957, and the mention to a Magyar "getting out of a swimming pool"—a rather unusual comparison—inevitably conveys to mind the celebrated bloody H2O Polo lucifer between the Soviets and the Hungarians on 6 December 1956 at the 1956 Summer Olympic Games (yes, that's right, because the Summer Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, Commonwealth Of Australia that year). The Hungarians defeated the Soviets in a lucifer with immense political overtones—angry Magyar fans were reportedly ready to lynch a Soviet participant for a poke to the oculus of a Magyar star—the lucifer coming just a calendar month after the Soviet crushing of the Magyar uprising.) My first personal realisation of Hungarianness as Hungarianness, however, came around 1976, with the ascribed "mad" quality of Hungarians, specifically and appropriately enough, Aluminum "The Huffy Hungarian" Hrabosky. Hrabosky was a alleviation hurler for respective different squads in the 1970s and early 1980s, but his best old age were with St. Joe Louis and Sunflower State City, with 1975 beingness his cardinal twelvemonth in the record books. The mid-1970s were the years of colourful fictional characters in baseball, especially among pitchers: the cigar-chomping Cuban of the Hub Of The Universe Red Sox, Luis Tiant, who looked like we was throwing toward the outfield rather than the catcher because of his pitching motion; Sparky Lyle for the New House Of York Yankees, his cheeks like a blow-fish filled with chewing tobacco; and Mark "The Bird" Fidrych of the Motor City Tigers, who talked to the ball as if it were alive and whose boylike enthusiasm unfortunately couldn't defeat hurts that strangled his calling in its infancy.

Then there was Hrabosky who despite the Slovak-sounding last name claims Magyar descent. Contrasting the absence of colourful fictional characters among hurlers inch today's baseball, Gordon Edes wrote in a wonderful—if helium were Hungarian, we might even state "sweet"—article in 2003 about Hrabosky as follows:

But for absolute theatrics, one stand-in stays in a conference of his own: Aluminum Hrabosky, known as the "Mad Hungarian" when he pitched for the Cardinals, Royals, and Braves from 1970-1982. With his Fu Manchu mustache, long hair, and somes Ag ring, the Gipsy Rose of Death ("I don't even retrieve the stupid narrative I made up for that, it was so far-fetched—probably a household heirloom of Dracula"), Hrabosky would turn every outing into public presentation art. He'd stomp off the hill toward 2nd base, eyes blazing, the rage practically seeping through his uniform as he turned back to the batter who was left waiting at the plate until he was done working himself into an altered state he called his "controlled hatred routine," then whirled around, pounding his ball into the baseball glove while the place crowd generally went nuts. (Gordon Edes, "Hrabosky had a genius about him," "The Hub Of The Universe Globe," 28 March 2003, F9, reprinted on the Internet)

How did Hrabosky acquire his nickname? Again, Edes recounts:

The nickname, he said, came from a squad publicist. No 1 was certain of his nationality—[the American movie star] "Burt Sir Joshua Reynolds once called me 'The Huffy Russian'"—and only the spelling-bee champs got his name right. But then one day, a Cardinals publicist, Kraut Lovelace, said "Hey, M.H.," to the immature hurler from Oakland, Calif., and a moniker was born….I said, "What makes that mean?" He said, "Mad Hungarian." I said, "I like it." (Edes, 2003)

Hungarians, I concluded from watching his telecasting visual aspects and from his nickname, must be associated with craziness. That is how, of course, many mental images are passed on, not with malice, but as descriptors for individuals, a manner of awarding personal identity and for selling purposes. Hrabosky's "mad" behaviour was established before his nationality (as Cyril Burt Reynolds' career him "The Huffy Russian" indicates, in itself a negative and positive contemplation of "East European" ethnicity in the United States at the time—interchangeable, portion of a thaw pot, even if a separate 1 from those of Occident European ethnicity—although cultural constructionists would see such as "everycountry" attribution more darkly (see below)), rather than his Hungarianness being identified first, and his behaviour seen as reflecting his Hungarianness. Once the 2 go intertwined, however, and given the leaning for corporate associations to outweigh individual associations, it was hard and almost irrelevant to cognize which came first—the two were married and complementary in the popular imagination, or at least athletics fan's imagination.

Nadia…

It was also the Bicentennial Summer of 1976 when I was introduced to Romanians, also through sports. It was, of course, through Nadia Comaneci ("N.C. I"), an adorable immature Rumanian gymnast who scored seven perfect 10s, the flawlessness beingness driven place even more than by the fact that the scoreboards only went up to 9.9, the perfect mark of 10 being considered unattainable! (The scoreboard would demo 1.0 because it could not travel past 9.9….Spinal Tap's invention of the 11 not having been invented yet.) Nadia spawned "Nadia-(Ro)mania" of a sort. rudiment which carried the Montreal Olympic Games in the United States attached a musical subject to the gymnast's performances; "Nadia's theme" then climbed the dad charts! (It was actually the subject to an American soap opera, "The Young and the Restless," but it was through its fond regard to Nadia who used it for one of her flooring public presentations that it became famous.)

Of course, I have got got asked myself since then: would the reaction, the outpouring of echt heat and esteem from Americans (Canadians, and Westerners in general) have been the same had Nadia been representing Republic Of Bulgaria and not Romania—to state nil of the Soviet Union? True, the USSR's Olga Olga Korbut generated enthusiasm four old age earlier in Muenchen but nil like Nadia. Was it Nadia's comparative young person and "cuteness/sweetness/prepubescence?" Was it her coach, the charismatic, bear-like Hungarian, Bela Karolyi (their human relationship presented as declarative of the "warm ethnical relations" fostered by "Ceausescu's Romania")? Perhaps, but I also believe it was against the background of Romania's highly-crafted and the U.S. and West's highly-courted mental image of Ceausescu's Roumania as the great irritant in the Soviets' side, bravely standing up to Capital Of The Russian Federation and more than Western in their civilization and people ("a Latin people in a sea of Slavs")—i.e. frankincense not Balkan or truly "Eastern," somehow caught by accident "behind enemy lines." It is simply hard to believe that something approaching Nadia-mania could happen in the post-Cold War world; it was a contemplation of the clip in which it took place.

Certainly, the standing standing ovation for the Rumanian deputation as it entered the Los Angeles Amphitheater at the 1984 Summer Olympics—which unfortunately lent itself easily to uninterrupted development by Ceausescu thereafter, during the most-difficult years of his reign—and Nadia's flight from Roumania in November 1989, became metaphors for and barometers of Romania's political state of affairs and U.S.-Romanian relations. The appropriately phantasmagoric "1984" minute reflected the Chernenko, pre-Gorbachev low-water mark of Soviet-American relations in the 1980s—arms decreases talks' were essentially set on water ice between late 1983 and 1985—and the continued greater importance attached to Romania's foreign policy over Ceausescu's "Golden Era" domestic policy (the 1984-1986 time period being perhaps the worst and most hopeless according to some, in portion owing to cruel weather, and the failing of reform electric currents at that minute elsewhere in the bloc). By 1989, with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in full swing—and with "Gorbymania" having changed the mental mental image of the Soviet Union extensively in the United States—the image of a transmogrified Nadia—as if 1976 had never happened—involved in a "tawdry affair" with a married adult male (Constantin Panait), escaping from Romania, seemed to symbolize the ailments of Ceausescu's Roumania and how it now stood in blunt direct contrast to the remainder of the Eastern bloc. As the Seinfeld episode demonstrates, and as I will discourse in more than item below, the gymnast framework stuck in the popular imagination, however. It was Nadia who put that mold.

(A Romanian-American scholarly person once told me how surprised he was to look up on the telecasting silver screen 1 twenty-four hours in November-December 1989, only to see the married father of four, the Rumanian émigré for whom a now aging and plumper Nadia had allegedly left Ceausescu's Romania: the scholar had tended barroom with the guy…and the cat still owed him money! My first brush with "real, live" Romanians from Roumania also had a sad athletics subject in a sense. It was in Keleti pu., the eastern railroad train station in Hungarian Capital in May 1985. Amid the clapping of rusting lavatory rims and intermittent downpours of piss falling to the paths below, Rumanian male children in dingy blueness path lawsuits with spare that had once been achromatic chased each other around the unmistakable "CFR" railway cars of the time...)