Poles on Film: (de)stereotyping Polish labor migration in contemporary European cinema

The present paper focuses on the representation of Polish labor migration in contemporary European cinema. As early as 1982, with the release of Jerzy Skolimowski’s German-British co-production Moonlighting, filmmakers from various European countries (the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, ...) have been engaged in adapting aspects of Polish labor migration in cinematographic fiction. This device has become particularly widespread during the past ten years, when at least five Europe-set movies featuring Polish characters in the role of labor immigrants have made it to the screens, i.e., La Ballata dei Lavavetri (Ballad of the Windscreen Washers - 1998), De Poolse bruid (The Polish Bride - 1998), Fyra Veckor I Juni (Four Weeks in June - 2004), Under the Tuscan Sun (2004), It’s a Free World (2007). The fact that European movie fiction displays a recurring and far-reaching identification of Polish ethnicity with the phenomenon of labor migration seems to be embedded in (and to be constitutive of) a binary set of identifiable stereotypes. First of all, Poles more than any other European ethnicity are likely to be linked to various stereotypes regarding immigrant employment. The other way around, labor migration itself has become a powerful cultural marker in stereotypes surrounding Polishness. Yet, the fact that these kinds of stereotypes exist and are exploited in a variety of artistic and non-artistic forms of expression, does not tell us anything about the way these representations actually function. Unlike documentary films focusing on Polish labor migration as a topical sociological phenomenon, most of these films do not seem to be intended to deal with Polish labor migration as such. When classified according to the position of the Polish characters within the plot, the aforementioned movies might be said to fall into three categories: 1) Moonlighting and The Ballad of the Windscreen Washers are both set in the 1980s, when Poland was still under communist rule, and have a group of Polish immigrant workers as their main characters. ML tells the story of a group of Polish workers which travels to England to remodel the London residence of a high-placed Polish communist. BWW in turn focuses on a Polish family which tries to make a living in Italy in expectation of a visa for Canada. 2) The Polish Bride, Four Weeks in June, and It’s a Free World feature both Polish and non-Polish leading characters and are all set in the post-communist period. PB focuses on a young Polish woman who has been driven into prostitution by her Dutch boss and who finds refuge at the farm of a nontalkative unmarried Frisian farmer. FWJ tells the romance between a young Polish construction worker and a Swedish girl with psychic problems. IFW portrays an ambitious British young woman who sets up a recruitment agency for foreign jobseekers, one of them being a young Pole (Karol, her occasional lover). 3) Under the Tuscan Sun, finally, features a group of Polish workers in a supporting role. UTS tells the story of an American writer who sets out on a trip to Europe after the break-up with her husband and tries to restore balance in her life by settling into a Tuscan villa (the renovation of which is undertaken by a team of Polish immigrant workers). As it appears, only in one particular case (i.e., Skolimowski’s Moonlighting), the Polishness of the immigrant characters constitutes an indispensable aspect of the storyline. In all other cases, the Polish ethnicity of the depicted working immigrants seems to be more or less incidental and could have been replaced by any other ethnicity representatives of which tend to be involved in labor migration. Here, the Polishness of the jobseekers mainly functions as a mark of Otherness and is deployed to envision the interaction between locals and newcomers, employers and jobseekers, and the cultural clashes and professional conflicts that go along with it. This does not mean, however, that these films refrain from exposing more or less stereotypical aspects of Polishness. Apart from the fact that all of them feature Polish immigrant workers, these films seem to share a set of thematic, imagological and narratological traits, which concern both the phenomenon of labor migration and the issue of Polishness. One of the major features of labor migration returning in most of the analyzed films is the issue of exploitation combined with the problem of illegality. These issues do not only determine the relationship between employer and employee, but also affect the interaction between the immigrant workers and the local community. Another thread which runs through most of the films and which affects the interaction between locals and newcomers is the language barrier. The immigrant workers, most of whom have poor language skills, are usually represented by an individual who acts (both literally and metaphorically) as the spokesman of the entire community. Moreover, whereas the vast majority of foreign jobseekers are doomed to remain flat characters, these “spokesmen” are allowed more subjectivity and are given a leading role within the storyline. Their particular role within the plot can be defined in a twofold way. On the one hand, these characters usually get involved in an “amourous” relationship with a representative of the local community. On the other hand, on a narratological level, they tend to fulfil the function of “problem-solvers”: their appearance in the plot has a positive effect on the various problems the local characters are confronted with. In the meanwhile, despite the fact that the portrayal of these Polish characters is marked by a tendency towards individualization and contextualization, most films draw on a recurring set of distinctive cultural markers which are supposed to sustain the Polishness of the characters depicted. However, unlike mainstream Hollywood films -- which tend to have few positive roles for “Polak” characters -- contemporary European cinema seems to deal with stereotypical perceptions of Polishness in a more balanced and nuanced way. Instead of merely buttressing stereotypes, it creates portraits of threedimensional human beings with whom the viewer can identify and sympathize.

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