Small Screen Suburbia - Jakub Ryng

Jakub Ryng Selwyn College

19 April 2016

ESSAY 2:

SMALL SCREEN SUBURBIA AN ANALYSIS OF OUT-OF-TOWN NARRATIVES PRESENTED IN POLISH TV SERIES AS THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF THE SUBURBANISATION PROCESS

5495 words

An essay submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MPhil Examination in Architecture & Urban Design (2015-2017)

Promotional photo-montage of the Ventana Estate outside Warsaw.

CONTENTS PA GE Introduction

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A Brief History of Suburbia in Poland

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The Suburban Ideal as Seen on TV

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Case Study: The Village Of Wilkowyje -

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An On-Screen Collage Of Polish Folklore The Suburban Ideal as Realised

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Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Figure 1 A still from ‘Ranczo’

Figure 2 The suburban village of Seaside from the ‘Truman Show’ (1998)

I NTROD U C TI ON Numerous accounts from across the long history of suburbia in the West, as well as its more recent manifestations in the post-socialist context, have framed the processes of suburbanisation in terms of demographic, economic and technological advancements.

While these developments have certainly been a major, often the primary force behind the phenomenon, many authors, who focus on them in too narrow a scope, tend to exclude the more nuanced, cultural aspects of suburbia, and as a consequence reduce the process of suburbanisation to a form of technological determinism. Through this text which draws upon numerous studies of suburban cultures or, as Mary Corbin Sies called them, “suburban ideologies” (1987), I attempt to uncover the cultural basis of the suburbanisation phenomenon in the specific context of post-socialist Poland. In line with David Harvey’s characterisation of “place in whatever guise” as primarily “a social construct” and his ensuing curiosity as to the “social process(es)” through which place is constructed (1993), this essay examines suburbia as a set of values and specific life-style choices. As such, the aim is not to produce a holistic or chronological overview of the suburbanisation process in Poland, but instead attempt to describe and understand the very particular set of spatial and social forms, which Polish suburbia tend to assume.

A methodological focus on popular media accounts of the phenomenon – in particular its depictions on contemporary TV series – provides the backbone to this essay. While this anthropological approach to suburban studies, based on the analysis of suburbia’s representations has in the last two decades resulted in a multitude of publications in Western literature, the field has been left largely untouched in Poland. The mass viewership of the medium coupled with the reflexive nature of the TV series, which, following Frederick Jameson, can be said to “bring into being that very situation to which it is also, at one and the same time, a reaction” (2002, p. 81) adds a great degree of practical relevance this field. It is hoped that the following analysis of fictional out-of-town narratives in Polish media begins to address the deficiency in Polish suburban research and by attempting to sketch out the image viewed in the on-screen mirror of the TV series, uncover new layers of meaning within the suburban realm, elucidating the choices of its inhabitants and the functioning of its institutions.

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Figure 3 A still from ‘Nie Ma Rózy bez Ognia’ [‘A Jungle Book of Regulations’] (1974)

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A B RI EF HI S TORY OF S U BU R B IA

I N POL A ND Polish suburbia is a relatively young phenomenon, which has only recently become a serious subject for academic study across a number of disciplines. Most researchers point to the last decades of the 20th century, as the beginnings of the suburbanisation processes taking place in Poland (Jałowiecki and Szczepański, 2006; Lorens, 2005). The considerable scale and pace of the phenomenon make it, according to a recently published review, the single, most significant trend influencing the country’s rapid urbanisation (Sepioł, 2014, p. 16). Geographical accounts tend to depict large urbanising tendencies in Poland all the way until 1997, when the proportion of Poles living in urban areas peaked at almost 62%, following which it gradually began to fall (Lisowski and Grochowski, 2009). Behind this decline in the urban population, which as the authors argue, conceals suburban migrations, are the political changes of 1989 and the ensuing years of administrative and economic transformation (Lechman, 2005). Following decades of state ownership of land and central overview of planning, the introduction of market forces brought about the return of the ground rent, causing land to regain its financial value and the metropolitan region to slowly diversify accordingly. Widespread privatisation of land and the emergence of a new group of potential investors began to transform the periphery of many Polish cities - a situation helped to a large extent by the increasingly permissive attitudes to spatial planning of the newly decentralised local authorities (Chmielewski, 2002). In part, the suburbanising pressures around Polish towns have also been fuelled by the housing shortage inherited from the socialist years and made worse in the last quarter of a century (Kajdanek, 2012), to the point where there is a need for 1.1 million new homes to be built to satisfy current demand (PZFD, 2012).

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While the economic and political revolution, which swept through Poland during the

1990s has undoubtedly left a fertile environment for the process of suburbanisation to set in, it did not, on its own, create a specific set of suburban ideals, which would determine its social and spatial forms. Instead I argue, in line with (Kajdanek, 2011) in the specific case of Poland and (Hirt, 2012) pertaining the wider context of the post-socialist city, that the phenomenon is also the product of deep cultural changes experienced at a national and possibly postsocialist level. Both authors refer to Robert Fishman’s seminal study of Anglo-American suburbanisation (Fishman, 1987), in which he depicts 19th century suburban developments as the result of significant transformations in shared attitudes of specific social groups – in this case the bourgeoisie - to urban life. This “collective effort to live a private life”, as Lewis Mumford, quoted in Fishman’s book would characterise it (1987, p. x), was predicated upon its own specific set of values, or – in the words of Sies – “suburban ideologies” (1987).

These ranged from the prevailing anti-urban sentiments and a corresponding nostalgia for the countryside, to an overwhelming preference for the detached house and a family-centred domesticity which goes along with it.

Largely concurring with Ladányi’s and Szelényi’s emphasis on the centrality of

suburban sprawl as “the most striking new phenomenon of post-communist development” (Ladányi and Szelényi, 1998), Hirt goes on to identify a number of lifestyle-change themes common to all post-socialist countries. Her focus on a new urban escapism, a growing dislike of city life and a yearning for the private family lifestyle subtly echoes Fishman’s thesis, although it is clear that the post-socialist suburban dream must also be understood as the direct reaction against the values enforced by the previous regimes. Kajdanek’s account of the phenomenon in the specific case of Poland largely overlaps with Hirt’s portrayal of the postsocialist city, to which she adds the newly-rediscovered, specifically Polish fascination with the rural ways of life. She points to the recent revaluation of the pejorative stereotypical image of the countryside as backwards and conservative (Śpiewak, 2011) and describes how moving one’s home to the suburbs, closer to the rural ideal becomes an expression of increased social standing (Kajdanek, 2011). An important link can be made here with the theories presented in Paul Macnaghten’s and John Urry’s book, describing the “social practices” by which specific images of nature – in this case the rural periphery of the countryside – are created (1998).

Drawing on Lefebvre’s concept of spatialisation, the authors argue that it is “specific social practices, especially people’s dwellings, which produce, reproduce and transform different natures”. The newly-found affection for the rural periphery and its particular vision of the countryside is clearly an example of a social practice at work.

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In spite of its relatively short history, the process of suburbanisation around Polish

towns, along with the accompanying suburban ideologies, have, in the past few years, drawn heavy criticism from academia and the main-stream media alike. In this respect, the discourse is reminiscent of the anti-sprawl rhetoric present in the Western context. In addition to the aesthetic objections popularised in various cultural media, as well as the more quantitative environmental and economic arguments used against suburbanisation, the one aspect of critique which is arguably most relevant to the Polish context is the sociological discourse. Ever since the post-war housing boom in the United States, the high rates of suburbanisation have been accompanied by a heavy flow of criticism from social critics like Daniel Bell (1960) and Richard Sennett (1970) who saw in suburban sprawl an environment of exclusivity, alienation and social conformity. The critique persisted well into the 1980s and 90s, when critics like Mary Baumgartner turned her attention to the lack of genuine community bonds between suburbanites, deploring the sense of “moral minimalism” pervasive in the suburban realm (1991). This was also the time, when the widespread critique of suburbia took on a more propositional stance in the form of the “New Urbanism” project, which called for denser, functionally-diverse neighbourhoods, reduced dependence on the automobile, and a return to more traditional architectural styles, all of which would, in the words of Andres Duany be “conducive to the formation of community” (2010, p. 12).

While suburbia in Poland have been subject to criticism on aesthetic and economic

grounds for quite some time (Lorens, 2005; Springer, 2013), it was only in the most recent years that the negative social aspects of their functioning have attracted the attention of scholars.

In this field Kajdanek’s two seminal studies of the suburban environments around a number of Silesian cities have led the way (2012, 2011). Within them, the author identifies only very feeble strands of neighbourly co-existence, not only amongst the suburbanites themselves, but also between the new suburban settlers and the existing rural communities. While Kajdanek’s ethnographic methodology is certainly convincing, the relationship of the attitudes described with a wider cultural set of values or suburban ideologies needs to be further examined. Her sociological focus also tends to work at the expense of spatial considerations to do with the built environment and the various civic institutions which it supports.

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Figure 7 Stills from the intro sequence to ‘Ranczo’

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THE S U BU RBA N IDE AL AS SEEN ON TV

TV series have for a long time constituted a viable object of study for sociologists and anthropologists, who find in the medium’s drawn-out, cyclical and open-ended nature, but also in its widespread popularity, a particularly relevant source of cultural reflections on contemporary issues (Creeber, 2004). Within this wealth of academic literature, suburbia and their on-screen representations assume a prominent space of their own, as is evident in the numerous accounts of fictional suburban realms especially in the Anglo-American context.

In addition to dissecting the televisual depictions of such suburban themes as domesticity (Haralovich, 1989), gender relations and family life (Spigel, 2001; Dines, 2009) or instead focusing on the sometimes dystopian portrayals of the homogenous and exclusionary suburbs (Beuka, 2004; Vermeulen, 2014), some authors also point to a very special reflexive link between the suburban reality and its fictional on-screen counterpart (Silverstone, 1994; Spigel, 2001). A number of studies by Beata Łaciak have addressed the same issues in the specific context of post-socialist Poland and the soap operas of the last 25 years (Łaciak, 2007, 2013).

In the last quarter of a century Poland has seen a massive rise in the number of TV

series aired, accompanied by relative increases in their popularity. While domestic settings and narratives feature in and dominate a great number of these, the limited scope of this study necessitates the selection of a small number of the most popular of series, which relate most strongly to the practice of suburban living – both its social and spatial forms.

Despite the prevalence of the single-family house typology on-screen (over half of

all dwellings are said to belong to this category (Łaciak, 2007)), they are largely located either close to city or in a rural setting. The typical suburban home, which fits the model described at the start of this essay is relatively rare, as are depictions of the daily problems associated with a suburban existence. In comparison to the popularity that the suburban realm and ways of life enjoy in Western popular culture, the relative absence of any such cultural depictions of Polish suburbia may strike one as somewhat surprising. To an extent, this may be explained by the fact that the phenomenon is a relatively recent one in the post-socialist context, especially if one contrasts it with Fishman’s characterisation of the Anglo-American suburb, which, according to him, has roots dating back to the 18th century. If we take the mid-1990s as the start of the suburbanisation processes that we are witnessing in Poland today, there appears simply not to have been enough time for the phenomenon to enter the cultural imagination.

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Figure 4 The rural setting of ‘Blondynka’

Figure 5 The Masurian Lake setting in ‘Dom nad Rozlewiskiem’

Figure 6 The Tatra Mountains location for ‘Szpilki na Giewoncie’

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But the absence of this suburban middle ground from mass media accounts, which

tends to result in very binary depictions of city versus country life may also hold clues as to what Poles are expecting from the suburban move. Ethnographic studies of suburban residents living around large Polish cities (Kajdanek, 2011; Mantey, 2009), have revealed that one of the main concerns when deciding on the location of the new house is the quality of the natural environment, the aura of peace and quiet, as well as the remoteness from the city.

These are often cited ahead of other more pragmatic reasons such as lower land prices or lower building costs. Behind this romanticised vision of a suburban retreat, there appears to be a newly rediscovered cultural fascination with the countryside and its ways of life (Sulima, 2014), evident in numerous popular media accounts. While they are just much a symptom, as they are a cause of the growing phenomenon, TV accounts of urban escapism are numerous and increasingly popular. In addition to reality programs such as ‘Daleko od Miasta’ [‘Away from the City’], which trace the lives of real-life escapees in their new environments, fictional depictions of urban-rural migrations have in the last decade become an almost archetypal story arch for a number of new TV series.

Since 2006, there have been at least five major TV productions1 where the narrative

is based on the typical ‘fish-out-of-the-water’ structure in which a city dweller is forced – invariably due to external influences – to settle down in the largely unfamiliar setting of the countryside. Following a brief period of frequently painful adjustment, during which the main characters experience some of the shortcomings of country life, most of them decide to stay and often make the new rural location their home. All productions are mostly light-hearted and the resultant depiction of the countryside is appropriately rose-tinted – often outright naïve. While several more problematic social issues are brought out in some of the series – unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence amongst them – the overall picture appears to be that of an idyllic countryside, full of beautiful picturesque scenery populated by kind, honest and hardworking people. Visually, the series abound with bucolic imagery – depending on the geographical setting of the plot – a sun-drenched wheat field, a lake jetty covered in a morning mist or the green slopes of the Tatra Mountains.

The formulaic nature of the narratives is also evident in the great number of plot

details and devices, which the five series have in common. The main protagonists – of which all but one are female – tend to live busy, professional lives at the start of the series: three of them are marketing executives, the other two – a veterinarian and a football manager. With the

They are:‘Ranczo’ [‘The Ranch’] (2006), ‘Dom nad Rozlewiskiem’ [‘The House on the Marsh’] (2009), ‘Blondynka’ [‘The Blonde’] (2009), ‘Szpilki na Giewoncie’ [‘In Heels on the Giewont Mountain’] (2010) and ‘To Nie Koniec Swiata’ [‘This is not the World’s End’] (2013).

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Figure 8 Lucy’s inherited dwór home in‘Ranczo’

Figure 9 The new home for Sylwia in ‘Blondynka’

Figure 10 The inherited house in ‘To Nie Koniec Swiata’

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exception of Lucy in ‘Ranczo’, an American who arrives to the Polish village all the way from New York City – in the eyes of many Poles the very epitome of metropolitan life – the rest of the characters live and work in Warsaw. The move to the countryside is in all cases predicated upon an external set of events which tend to upset the natural rhythm of the protagonists’ urban lives: three of them are made redundant, one is transferred to her company’s peripheral branch, all find themselves at a low point in their family lives. The time spent at the new rural location appears to have a healing and beneficial effect on all characters concerned. All five strike up new romantic relationships locally - two find themselves husbands. Professionally, most of the lead characters remain active – some continue with their previous jobs at a more local level, others take up new initiatives – often effecting positive social and cultural change on the rural communities.

An important focal point for all five narratives is the domestic element of the country

house, which generally provides the home for the urban escapees. In two cases, the house, received by the lead protagonist as inheritance, is the original reason for the move out to the country and as such it assumes a central role to the story. All five houses are traditional in style, although within their varied stylistic treatments each represents the different vernacular influences of its geographical setting. In addition to a wooden chalet in the Tatra Mountains and a lake-side mill house, the three other houses can broadly be described as representative of the dwór model, which generally connotes a traditionally Polish form of domestic architecture associated with the landed gentry. Despite the inherent regional variations all three houses broadly fit within Chrzanowski’s characterisation of “the dwór with its whitewashed walls, ideally, though not necessarily, built of larch wood, with a colonnaded porch, an extensive wood shingle roof and a flowerbed in front” (1988, p. 75). Over the years, through the media of painting and literature, but also within the built and imagined work of architects, who continued to come back to the dwór as a typology in its own right, it has evolved into what Leszek Kajzer has termed a “synonym” and an “archetype of the home” (2010, p. 15). Its significance as a national symbol extends into other TV series with a more urban focus, such as ‘Klan’ and ‘Złotopolscy’, in which the dwór assumes the role of the traditional family nest, bringing together the various family members for special occasions and celebrations. In the latter series, in particular, the dwór, which still belongs to its original owners who are said to descend from pre-war nobility, acts as the repository of traditional values and provides the setting for the appropriate activities, such as farming and raising horses.

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Figure 11 A geographical map of selected shooting locations for the TV Series ‘Ranczo’ with distances between them marked. [drawn by the author]

C A S E S TU DY T HE V I LLAGE OF WIL KOWYJ E

A N O N-S CRE E N COL L AGE OF POL ISH FOL KL ORE

Of the five TV series discussed in the essay, has a greater viewership, compounded by a devoted fan-base followership, than ‘Ranczo’. About to enter its 10th season in 2016, the series, continues to attract great numbers of TV audiences as well as faithful contingents of fans, who helped turn the programme into not just a televisual, but a cultural phenomenon (Szubartowicz, 2007). Nowhere is it more palpable than in the real-world filming locations, providing the setting for the televisual drama, all of which have seen an influx of cultural tourists, who wish to explore the familiar streets of the fictional village of Wilkowyje for themselves. Naturally, no such single location exists and the various settings for the TV series’ drama are spread out over a large area, with Lucy’s dwór and the village church separated by a distance of 100 kilometres. This on-screen assemblage comprising over 50 fictional settings in 20 different geographical locations holds clues as to what kind of quintessential civic institutions one would expect in an idealised rural existence. Out of the multitude of fictional locations featured in the series, only a handful of the most prominent is focused upon in this study. Through the analysis, a clearer picture of the community infrastructure in the fictional realm of Wilkowyje emerges, revealing the often unexpected set of relations and ambiguities between the civic institutions – both explicit and implicit, or, in the words of Peter Carl, “official” and “informal” (2015).

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Solejukowie’s House

Lucy’s Dwór

The Wójt’s Mansion

Solejukowie’s House

Lucy’s Dwór

The Wójt’s Mansion

Lodzia’s House

Więcławscy’s House

Lodzia’s House

Więcławscy’s House

Stach’s and Michałowa’s House

The Vicarage

Stach’s and Michałowa’s House

The Vicarage Duda’s House

Duda’s House

29 km 18 k

m

m 5k

4

14

km 7k

m

29 km

100 km

6 km

101 km

18 k

m

m

k 45

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km 7k

m

6 km

101 km

100 km

Inn/Country Club

Restaurant

Inn/Country Club

Restaurant The People’s University

The People’s University

The Cultural Centre

The Cultural Centre

Local Radio Station

Local Radio Station Council Offices

Council Offices

Primary and Secondary School

Primary and Secondary School Convenience Store

Convenience Store Local Parish Church

0

0

5

5

10

10

20

20

30

30

40 km

40 km

Local Parish Church

Official Institutions

The primary focal point of Wilkowyje’s official communal life appears to be the local parish church. Numerous scenes depicting the Sunday congregation suggest that virtually all residents are practicing Catholics and the church does provide the setting to a range of traditional ceremonies associated with the building type such as weddings and christenings. Its use however, often goes beyond matters strictly religious, as politics and faith often appear to be intermingled – a situation bluntly caricatured in the series by the fact that the priest is the twin brother of the mayor of the village - the wójt. As the rivalry between the siblings plays out, the church with its regular contingent of the faithful – or, as others see it - the electorate, inevitably becomes one of the main arenas for conflict. It is here that political candidacies are announced and new parties set up. When Lucy takes over as wójt later on in the series, the encroachment of civic and political matters on religious territory becomes institutionalised in the form of “civic services”, which take place once a month, following a Sunday Mass.

During these gatherings, the congregation gets a chance to meet with the local authorities and collectively discuss current affairs.

The other large venue serving the collective needs of the villagers is the local

restaurant, dubbed, at one point, the “Country Club”. Having started off as the local inn, frequented mostly by village drunks, which is at one point taken over by the wójt, who intends to transform it to an exclusive “Country Club” for the local elites, the building subsequently burns down in a fire. Its communal ownership is reaffirmed when the inn’s original patrons rebuild the restaurant out of their own initiative. From this point on, the venue becomes perhaps the most open, and ideologically-neutral communal institution in Wilkowyje, where local authorities – both secular and religious, rub shoulders with common villagers.

Informal Institutions

In addition to a number of informal institutions, such as the local convenience store, or the associated local drunks’ bench in front, which in a light-hearted manner constitute a caricature of Polish provincial life, the various domestic realms across the village also serve to sustain certain implicit institutional orders. The centrality to the genre of the home and the interior, asserted in the seminal study of TV series by John Fiske (2010), consequently finds confirmation in the ‘Ranczo’ series as well.

Of the numerous domestic settings the audiences are allowed to enter, none play

greater roles than the dwór of Lucy Wilska, the newly-arrived Polish-American, who inherits the noble house from her grandmother, and a communist-era mansion belonging to the wójt.

The quintessentially Polish dwór and the surrounding grounds, restored to their original glory

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Figure 12 The wójt’s gated mansion house in ‘Ranczo’

by Lucy, are emblematic not only of the qualities of a private, domestic idyll, but also of a wider tradition of openness and hospitality, consistent with the enlightenment depiction of the dwór as the seat of the progressive nobility with the well-being of its subjects in mind (Chłap-Nowakowa et al., 2007, p. 243). While the grounds of the house appear to be fenced off – indeed the classical, centrally-placed alleyway leading to the front porch passes through a gate, it appears at all times to be left open, with characters casually entering in and out. As the owner of the house, Lucy acts as a very welcoming host, providing a temporary home to several different individuals throughout the series. The wójt’s equally imposing house, in addition to providing a home for himself and his family, serves as the seat of his local authority. Set behind a highly prominent fence, and a meticulously well-kept garden, it is where he receives many visits from his constituents on matters both official and more personal or business-related. In both cases, the high social status of the owner – in the first that of Lucy, as the enlightened leader and champion of change in the village, in the latter, the wójt as the official government authority – dilutes the established bounds of the home as a totally private realm. Both houses consequently assume an implicit, but certainly central institutional status for community order. An analogous situation is faced by the local priest – himself an official institution, due to the nature of his profession – whose home at the vicarage is the venue for frequent meetings with parishioners often in matters outside the sphere of religion. To an extent this condition follows on from what Tönnies (1887) and Simmel (1908) would argue is the lack of anonymous, completely private spaces within village communities. In this particular case though, the high prominence of Lucy, the wójt and the priest in public life, massively exacerbates the situation causing the private and the public realms to blur within the walls of the home.

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Figure 13 Ludwik Gędłek Powrót z polowania [The Return from the Hunt], c. 1880.

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THE S U BU RBA N IDE AL

A S R EA L I S ED The cultural affection towards the countryside evident in the TV series described, especially from the point of view of an urban outsider, is nothing particularly new in the history of Polish culture. To an extent it is analogous to 18th century preoccupations with the picturesque and the sublime of British painters and poets, who, as Macnaghten and Urry argue, have found these natural qualities in the realm of the countryside and depicted it in opposition to the pathologies of industrialising towns (1998). But the myth of a rural Poland, “frozen” in time by numerous literary accounts of 19th century Romanticism was also driven by the nationalist struggles for independence, or, when those had failed, for cultural sovereignty and self-identity. As the literature scholar Maria Janion sums up, the Romantic’s legacy for the mythical conception of the countryside was ascribing to its residents the qualities of “authenticity, honesty, family values, attachment to land and to tradition and patriotism”, while the countryside was depicted as “the source of natural, pure truth, removed from the blemishes of civilization” (1975, p.

5). The formation of this mythical image was predicated upon two distinctive socio-cultural processes. First was the attempt on the part of primarily the intelligentsia to preserve a specific vision of a cultural realm, which was gradually being diluted in the face of not only the forces of modernity, but also those of the 18th century foreign aggressors (Galent and Kubicki, 2012). To this end, the Polish countryside - the culture, iconography, the architecture of the peasantry and of the gentry - were elevated in status to the role of a national symbol in which the nation’s continuity would be preserved. The second condition which helped cement the idealized image of the country was the absence of a well-established urban culture, which in contrast to other industrialising nations at the time, Poland had not only failed to develop, but actively discouraged (Galent and Kubicki, 2012). Consequently, the national extolment of the virtues of rural culture took on a directly oppositional nature with respect to the city and its way of life.

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Figure 14 Stills from a city-set scene in ‘To Nie Koniec Swiata’

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To an extent, the televisual depictions of urban-rural migrations, which present a clearly idealised vision of a transformative countryside, are a modern-day continuation of this national sentiment. The contemporary phenomenon can be partially explained in economic and ideological terms through the growing commercialisation of the countryside and its produce and its appropriation as a sort of “brand” connoting a healthy, ecological but also patriotic way of life, particularly from the point of view of a city-based “outsider” (Sulima, 2014). Most suburban settlements in Poland tend to be built on the backbones of existing rural communities (Kajdanek, 2012), which results in a clear spatial conflation of countryside and suburban values. As numerous studies of suburban residents and their motivations for the move out of the city suggest, this dream of a quieter, more peaceful life in natural surroundings has been a significant driving force behind the burgeoning processes of suburbanisation around Polish towns. Aside from the previously mentioned ethnographic accounts, which tend to identify this dream as one of the chief reasons for moving out to the periphery, Kajdanek’s analysis of the marketing material for seven different housing schemes outside the city of Wroclaw has identified similar, corresponding messages from the developer’s supply point of view (2011). In addition to the names of the estates, nearly all of which relate to nature or the countryside, either in local, geographical terms such as ‘Dobrzykowice Park’ and ‘The Krzeptowa Valley’ or in more abstract ones like ‘Under the Plane Trees’ and ‘The Sunny Orchard’, there is also a shared insistence on the proximity of the settlements to nature, especially in the form of forests.

It is important here to stress that the suburban dream of life amidst natural surroundings

is often complimented by a functional and in some cases emotional dependence on the city.

In contrast to the historical beginnings of the city-country opposition, its contemporary resurgence appears much less intense, with urbanity and city life assuming a more prominent role within Polish culture. This balancing-out is also evident in the fictional depictions of the city in the TV series discussed. Aside from the somewhat caricaturist portrayals of a cutthroat corporate reality often set within cold, minimalist interiors, the televisual image of the city seems objectively-accurate, or at least, value-neutral, with some of the main protagonists often considering relocating back from their new countryside homes. This coloration appears consistent with Kajdanek’s thesis that Polish suburbanisation is caused primarily by the attraction towards the periphery, rather than the repulsion away from the city (2011, p. 40).

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Figure 16 A selection of architectural projects from the ‘dwór’ category on the archon.com website.

Figure 15 ‘Za Stodołą’ [Behind the Barn] a suburban development in the traditional, rural style

An architectural embodiment of the suburban dream filled with the imagery of the

countryside is also to be found in the forms and stylistic treatments of the houses built at the periphery. A great proportion of these tend to broadly resemble the dwór in its most generous definition, as a single-storey house, rectangular in plan with a colonnaded porch, placed centrally on the main façade. The proliferation of the dwór as a desirable domestic model in popular media, not least TV series, but also life-style magazines and most significantly as a genre of its own in many architectural catalogues of ready-to-build projects, has led numerous historians to announce its renaissance as a housing form (Kajzer, 2010; Korduba, 2010). An analogous trend, harkening back to a more traditional architectural language is the emergence of suburban houses based on regional variations of the wooden cottage. While the stylistic integrity of these houses may well be realised within individual plots, the historical spatial ensemble, where a single dwór dominates over a village comprising numerous cottages, as described by Sochocka and Karczewska in their survey of various manor house complexes (2007), is inevitably subverted along with the set of meanings bestowed upon traditional civic institutions, such as the dwór.

In a similar manner, the traditional sense of openness associated with the dwór, as

depicted in the ‘Ranczo’ series also appears undermined, as is evident in Kajdanek’s sociological critique. The highly fragmented, individualistic suburban existence described in her work, which finds confirmation in the often extreme landscaping practices of fencing off one’s private domestic idyll from the rest (Solarek, 2014, p. 175), is more consistent with the ‘home as my castle’ model than the dwór’s implicit nature as a civic institution.

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Figure 17 The ‘Brzescie Estate’ by Mycielski Architecture and Urbanism

A different take on the appropriation of the dwór motif takes place in a number of

residential estates built by mass housing developers, which in their architecture, but also their spatial planning borrow from elements of the rural. An interesting example is provided by the Krzywa Iwiczna and the Ventana estates - both situated at the outskirts of Warsaw – where the singular dwór building performs the role of the central community hub. Described by the developers as the “town hall”, in the case of the former and the “club house” in the latter estate, the dwór appears to reaffirm, but also, through functional modifications, reinvent its institutional centrality. In both cases the building loses its original residential premise, and instead assumes to role of a shared, communal institution, similar to that of the country club in the ‘Ranczo’ series. Consequently the historically implicit institution of the manor house becomes officialised, along with the activities which it sustains. At the Ventana estate the process takes place in the literal sense, as the dwór pavilion is also home to the marketing suite and the management offices. While both developments boast a tight community atmosphere, enriched by numerous organized events (Chmielewska, n.d.; “Newsroom,” 2016), the top-down nature of such happenings is diametrically opposed to the bottom-up spontaneity depicted in TV series, such as ‘Ranczo’.

Developments such as these, along with more ambitious proposals like the Brzescie

Estate by Mycielski Architecture and Urbanism, which in addition to a communal dwór pavillion also integrates into the scheme a parish church, appear to show that contrary to the individual and spontanous manifestations of sprawl crtiticised by Kajdanek, there does exist a need for a community life based on a certain institutional order. By appropriating civic institutions intrinsic to the rural landscape and shifting their associated meanings, these estates propose new models for suburban life based largely on a very selective reading of the on-screen rurality depicted in the TV-series discussed.

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Figure 18 The ‘Krzya Iwiczna’ Estate with the dwór-style “town hall” in the centre

Figure 19 Promotional photo-montage of the ‘Ventana’ Estate

Figure 20 The “Club House“ at the ‘Ventana’ Estate

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C ONC L U S I ON In the brief period of merely a quarter of a century the processes of suburbanisation in Poland appear to have produced a distinctive ideology of its own. While by the very nature of the 1989 transformation post-socialist importations of Western, particularly American models clearly contribute to the forms and language of Polish suburbia, this investigation has also identified a number of practices unique to the phenomenon in Poland. Drawing upon deeply-ingrained cultural motifs in Polish art and literature these models are reinterpreted and reinvented in popular mass-media accounts. While the TV series analysed in this study do not deal explicitly with the realm of the suburbs in a way analogous to the long-established Western narratives on the subject, through their depictions of a romanticised life at the periphery, they inevitably shape the aspirations of prospective suburbanites and people tired of city life. In other words they produce the values and attitudes behind what Macnaghten and Urry refer to as “social practices”, which in turn transform the natural peripheral environments according to this idealized set of images.

It must also be said however, given the weight of criticism levelled at Polish suburbia

from across numerous disciplines that these practices are not only highly selective in appropriating the rural models presented on-screen, but, through their very nature, they actively transform the models’ associated meanings. Kajdanek’s depiction of the emerging suburban realm as highly segregated and exclusionary, with the new suburbanites “living alongside […] rather than living in” a particular rural village (2012, p. 42), appears to demonstrate that while the bucolic suburban ideology spun around the transformative nature of the rural has certainly shaped the spatial forms of suburbia (albeit often subverting their meanings), it is yet to influence its social configurations. It is also true, however, as Kajdanek herself asserts, that no single, universal suburban model exists. As particular social practices evolve, with or without the push of academic criticism, new paradigms of suburban existence will emerge, such as those exemplified by the housing estates discussed in this essay. Largely absent from academic discourse due to the developments’ novelty and the communities’ inherent aloofness, estates like these, with a thought-out and explicitly defined institutional structure certainly deserve further scholarly attention. While this essay maps out the spatial configurations of these and similar developments, along with the cultural determinants that define them, the all-important relationship between spatial and social forms still requires closer scrutiny on the ground.

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TV S ERI ES

Ranczo [The Ranch]. 2006-2016. TVP 1.

Dom nad Rozlewiskiem [The House on the Marsh]. 2009. TVP 1.

Blondynka [The Blonde]. 2010. TVP 1.

Szpilki na Giewoncie [In Heels on the Giewont Mountain]. 2010. Polsat.

To Nie Koniec Swiata [This is not the World’s End]. 2013. Polsat.

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IMAGES

Figure 1: Still from

Ranczo [The Ranch], 2015. TVP1, 22 March.

Figure 2: Still from

Weir, P., 1998. The Truman Show. Paramount.

Figure 3: Still from

Bareja, S., 1974. Nie Ma Rózy bez Ognia [A Jungle Book of Regulations].

Figure 4: Still from

Blondynka [The Blonde], 2010. TVP1, 14 March.

Figure 5: Still from

Dom nad Rozlewiskiem [The House on the Marsh], 2010. TVP1, 14 March.

Figure 6: Still from

Szpilki na Giewoncie [In Heels on the Giewont Mountain], 2011. Polsat, 21 April.

Figure 7: Stills from

Ranczo [The Ranch], 2006. TVP 1, 12 March.

Figure 8: Still from

Blondynka [The Blonde], 2010. TVP1, 14 March.

Figure 9: Still from

Dom nad Rozlewiskiem [The House on the Marsh], 2010. TVP1, 25 October.

Figure 10: Still from

Dom nad Rozlewiskiem [The House on the Marsh], 2010. TVP1, 25 October.

Figure 12:

Jędrysik, J., 2014. Dom wójta. Available at: http://ranczo.wikia.com/wiki/ Plik:Dom_w%C3%B3jta9.jpg [Accessed 5 April 2016].

Figure 13:

Gędłek, L., c. 1880. Powrót z polowania [The Return from the Hunt], oil on canvas, private collection.

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Figure 14: Stills from

To Nie Koniec Swiata [This is not the World’s End] (2013), 2010. Polsat, 8 September.

Figure 15:

Anon, 2013, Untitled [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.dworekpolski.pl/o-firmie/ zrealizowane-osiedla/za-stodola [Accessed 5 April 2016].

Figure 16:

Projekty Dwórków, 2016. Available at: http://archon.pl/projekty-dworkow-pc2556 [Accessed 5 April 2016].

Figure 17:

MAU Mycielski Architecture & Urbanism, 2012, Brześce [ONLINE]. Available at: http:// mau.com.pl/projekty/brzesce-pl/ [Accessed 5 April 2016].

Figure 18:

Anon, 2013, Untitled [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.dworekpolski.pl/oferta/krzywaiwiczna/opis-inwestycji [Accessed 5 April 2016].

Figure 19

Anon, 2014, Untitled [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.ventana.pl/ [Accessed 5 April 2016].

Figure 20

T3 Studio, 2014, Untitled [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.t3.pl/portfolio/osiedleventana/ [Accessed 5 April 2016].

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