The Master's Voice: Authenticity, Nostalgia, and the Refusal of Irony in Postsocialist Hungary

Abstract

In 2000, Benedek Uhrin—an elderly man with no apparent musical talent—became an internet phenomenon and later one of the unlikely hit performances at the yearly summer music festival in Hungary. Although local commentators argued that his popularity with youth audiences derived from his kitsch appeal, this article argues to the contrary. Uhrin rose to fame because his performance enabled his audience to refuse irony as rhetorical tool, ethical stance, and reading practice in postsocialist mass culture. Inspiring nostalgia rather than mockery, his much-vaunted sincerity offered an alternative to crises of authenticity created by postsocialism.

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the American Council for Learned Societies. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Salt Lake City, November 2005. I am grateful to Olga Shevchenko, Marko Zivkovic, Krisztina Fehérváry, and Rosalind C. Morris for their comments and feedback.

Notes

1. The popular Hungarian film A Tanú (The Witness, 1969) parodies the Soviet attempt to conquer natural limitations. In one of its most famous sequences, the protagonist is forced to head an agricultural institute devoted to creating the ‘Hungarian orange’, despite the fact that Hungary lacks the climate to grow such fruit.

2. These values then tend to get replicated within fan communities themselves, which draw distinctions between ‘true fans’ and those who do not fully appreciate the artist. For example, the president of Uhrin's fan club, who later briefly became his tour manager, expressed irritation with those who only became fans of Uhrin, after the internet phenomenon had been picked up by the larger media.

3. Such derision was not a dismissal of popular music per se. Like many of its socialist-bloc neighbours, Hungary has a tradition of oppositional rock whose musicality and political critique, as Szemere argues in her study of rock music in postsocialist Hungary, affiliated itself with the artistic avant-garde and the high-art aesthetic more generally (2001, p. 217). The end of communism, however, demolished this underground art scene, as well as the belief in rock as a ‘privileged terrain of critical consciousness’ that propelled these cultural producers (p. 220). Nonetheless, at the time of Uhrin's popularity there were a number of critically-acclaimed and relatively successful Hungarian musicians, such as Kispál és a Borz, Yonderboi, and Sub Bass Monster, whose music ranged from rock to electronic to hip-hop and whose skill and inventiveness challenged a musical terrain otherwise composed of North American and Western European artists and their local imitators.

4. This is not to say, however, that the straight-faced deadpan presentation of Uhrin's act did not have its own ironic effects, particularly since Uhrin insisted on lipsynching his songs and (in the initial days of his popularity) performing in a dark brown wig in order to appear younger and more ‘professional’. Also, given that other performers such as Jimmy Zámbó (a singer of undeniable talent but ‘tacky’ musical taste and presentation) were not welcome at many of the concerts and televised venues where Uhrin performed, one might assume that Uhrin was considered a novelty act even if he was not explicitly named as such.

5. See, for example, Broch, 1969; Calinescu, 1987; Glenn, 1998; 1999; Greenberg, 1961.

6. One key way camp does this is by theatricalizing—and hence denaturalizing—sexuality and gender. While Uhrin did not affiliate himself with the queer sensibility that often consumes and produces camp, his use of double entendre and innuendo (as in his song ‘Rebeka’ about the naughty puli who is always trying to run off to mate with other dogs) similarly destabilized his own (apparently sincere) child-like and innocent persona.

7. During the height of Uhrin's popularity, being ‘professional’ (profi) had become a free-floating value in Hungary, regardless of what purpose such professionalism was intended to serve. This was exemplified by the success of the then-governing center-right party, Fidesz, whose execution of often-controversial policies was nonetheless praised as ‘very professional’—youthful, slickly-produced, and run by media insiders.

8. Hungarian filmmakers were given wide artistic latitude, particularly in the last decade of socialism.

9. Some of the best-known examples are Péter Gothár's Megáll az Idő (Time Stands Still; 1982), Falfuró (Wall-driller; 1986), and Egészséges Erotika (Healthy Eroticism; 1985).

10. Examples of the latter include Sose Halunk Meg (We Never Die; 1993), Moszkva Tér (Moscow Square; 2001), Csocsó, avagy éljen május elseje! (Csocso, or Long live May 1!; 2001), and Előre! (Forward!; 2002), as well as German films Sonnenallee (Sunshine Alley; 1999) and Good Bye Lenin! (2003). The films Csinibaba (Dollybirds; 1997) and 6:3, avagy játszd újra Tutti (6:3, or Play it again, Tutti; 1999), also fall into this category, although their director Péter Timár, provided a much more cutting characterization of the absurdity and corruption of socialist authority in the socialist-era Egészséges Erotika (Healthy Eroticism; 1985).