IN THE TOY ROOM
This issue resembles a room full of toys. First there is bewilderment. The richness of objects gives pleasure to the eyes, lures into an undiscovered mystery, which hides in each of them. When the first rapture comes to the end, one may recognize what really draws attention. The association with the childlike kingdom of unconcerned joy suggests itself naturally: this year’s third issue of “Czas Kultury” (“The Time of Culture”) (3/2007), in the overwhelming part, is devoted to… exactly, to what? To the childhood, childishness, the child in us, infantility or the time of the childhoodness? There is also an English-language term: cuteness – in an extremely interesting and enlightening sketch of Maja Brzozowska–Bryczewska entitled To co urocze. Notatki o estetyce cuteness. (What is charming. Notes about cuteness aesthetics). However, the editors decided to mark the subject with the leading catchword: ‘non-adults’. And probably rightly. It does not have this pejorative tone, which is associated with immaturity, it is a negation, or maybe just the extreme point, the point marking out the other pole of the term 'adult'. The word ‘non-adults’ depending on the context may act as a noun or an adjective; we should remember about this ambivalence when defining ‘non-adults’ as a group of individuals who did not yet reach the full biological development, in case of people – intellectual and psychological development, or just did not reach the adult state.
Doubleness or even ambiguity of this word should be sufficient encouragement to read the texts published in ‘Czas Kultury’. Not only those, which thanks to the editors, were assigned to the column ‘non-adults’. I am under the impression that this matter was already mentioned – not in the open, but camouflaged way – here and there in other texts. To become convinced it suffices to look into the poems of Piotr Sommer or the interview with him (Escape to aside. With Piotr Sommer talks Jerzy Borowczyk and Michał Larek), and moreover, to the conversation with Andrzej Sobol-Jurczyk (Borges for the whole life).
Apart from the notes of Maja Brzozowska–Brywczyńska, about which there will be more later, I would distinguish also Zabawki to my. Zabawki i dziecięcość w dzisiejszej sztuce (Toys are us. Toys and childlikeness in today’s art) of Eva Forgac and Dziecięce zalety aktywizmu (Children’s merits of activism) of Ewa Majewska, and, furthermore – contrariwise to quarrel with it – text of Justyna Knieć Animowany świat dla dorosłych (Animated world of adults). For a dessert I suggest – or, what is more pleasant, it is better to eat this dessert at the beginning – the article of Agata Araszkiewicz Myślenie jest jak dzieciństwo… (Thinking is like a childhood…). Let the initial part of Araszkiewicz’s deliberations be the opening to reading the whole discussed by me ‘Czas Kultury’, in which she writes:
“Thinking is like childhood we did not have yet. To think means to come back to the age of unfinished words and open meanings, when nothing is certain, to voluntarily agree for uncertainty, which may be mangling. After all, childhood is a kind of psychotic suspension which has to be taken as a thing which not only threatens but also opens. To decide for the mystery not for the obviousness, for sensation before naming, naming for the first time. For stimuli and meanings which are not yet assigned. For the understanding, which is not yet ‘standard’, for the ‘standards’ among which there is no hierarchy yet. For the acceptation, without conditions, of what comes and enables itself to be separated. For discovering the curtain and lasting in the bewilderment. In the time when pleasure and truth are sometimes closer to each other”.
This is the way that we should look also at the other texts from this issue. They are not paeans in honour of childhood – the lost time, the closed time which today we can only reflect on. From this mythic features which we assign to the childhood, the power of renovation of meanings and cyclical repetition of gestures, causative and creative power, should be elicited.
Ewa Majewska writes that behind each mutiny lies childishness. Without the childish faith that it will work and is necessary regardless of the costs which are, anyway, never calculated, there would not be social activists such as alterglobalists and feminists. The author wonders, among the others, whether reaching a mature age by the mentioned social movements would not bring their end. She does not give concrete answers; she rather puts another questions than formulates (hipo)theses but for sure she confirms one thing: The foundation of social movements is childhood, which is dreaminess, unfettered questioning of existing rules and the faith in the fact that a handful of people, may save the world.
From 27 notes of Maja Brzozowska–Brywczyńska it follows that the term cuteness – which does not have a Polish equivalent because in the original it has so many meanings that it is difficult to find an appropriate equivalent for it – is more than ambiguous. The author settles with the term in the first footnote (to the English word he assigns every Polish meanings ) and in notes she focuses on the title aesthetics. Especially precious for me – on account of my personal experience – seemed to be the notes, which are directly, but not always, about cartoons which use cuteness aesthetics. Thanks to them (beginning from the 11th note) we gain instruments helpful in analysis of animations which take advantage of deceptive and ambivalent character of cuteness – under the guise of charm and sweetness hides cunning and cruelty. I would willingly read in ‘Czas Kultury’ a separate article devoted to animations but written from the cuteness aesthetics perspective. I regret to admit that Justyna Knieć’s text disappointed me. First of all, there is too much obviousness in it, even the fact that the big studios such as DreamWorks and Pixar scented economic trend for the double encoding of animations, originally intended for children, coming to the cinema with parents. Movies like Shrek are capable of gathering also an adult audience because some 'adult' dialogs or borrowings from other movies, known only to the adults, are included. Moreover, I do not really think that it was a good idea to put together: Shrek, Ant Z, Ice Age, Hungarian The District (Nyócker!) and South Park. If the author wanted to describe the new kind of movies – in her opinion – coming into existence, ‘an animated fairy tale for a big child’, maybe she should have stick to the smaller amount of titles and focus only on the movies which, as she writes: ‘are characterized by the reference to the world around us and extraordinary but to all appearances absolutely nice characters…’ and the further part of the definition, which is '… the presence of the irony, absurd, and political and cultural wit', reserve for another kind of movies coming into existence. What kind of movies would it be is – obviously – an open matter.
Agnieszka Kozłowska
Translated by Magdalena Sokolnicka
Discussed journals: Czas Kultury