Monday, January 27, 2014

Bieganski on Saturday Night Live

Slavs are peasants in babushkas. They speak a simpleton pidgin. Their lives are so horrible that they wake up in tears. They want to commit suicide but "the line is too long." They have strange customs for mating, involving chases to the death. Wolves eat them. Their laughter sounds like other people's wheezes and coughs. Women date dogs -- actual dogs. These dogs are so superior to Slavs they become lawyers. Slavs are, in short, Bieganski, as performed by Kate McKinnon as Olya Povlatsky on Saturday Night Live 

 Watch her here

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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 27, 2014 at 5:56 PM

    One can only hope that this sketch helps viewers to perceive how bigoted the common image of Slavs in popular culture is. But, unfortunately, though some of its satire is directed at the ignorance of anyone who has such a stereotyped view of Russia, most of the satire is obviously directed at Slavic culture. I can't imagine these kinds of jokes being made about any other ethnic group. Consider that the crack about Haiti (the only other place, besides the middle of the ocean, that "Olya" thinks would be a worse place than Russia to host the Olympics) doesn't even sink to the same low of bigotry, given that the 2010 earthquake pretty much explains away this insult.

    --Linda Kornasky

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Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
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