Mel C pulls out of Poland new year gig over 'issues that do not align with communities I support'

[pi_lady]

Mel C pulls out of Poland new year gig over 'issues that do not align with communities I support' https://t.co/KvtaB86Gmo
- Sky News (@SkyNews) December 26, 2022

Mel C was supposed to be a special guest at a New Year's Eve concert organized by polish state broadcaster TVP 2. However, yesterday she posted that she wouldn't be performing bc she was

Comments

[lurkurheartout]

I get it and good for her. I’m only Polish-American so I don’t have the full experience, but my family is so full of love and acceptance that watching the people back home go down a right wing blackhole is hard to watch. But if I looked at the statistics right, majority of the country is boomer, older generation so they have the majority of voting power in elections so that’s why everything is so fucked up.

The post-communist babies of the 90s and on aren’t as hateful. So like everyone waiting for the older generation to pass, there is still hope for Poland.

[pi_lady]

Unfortunately, it's not just the older generation, white supremacy has been on the rise for years in Europe.

Poland has an actual far-right party in parliament, the infamous Independence march is still happening. There are also alot of younger politicians in parties like PiS and PO who don't plan on changing the status quo.

[pciam]

It’s sad too because it’s so easy to see how seemingly rational people across all age groups can easily fall into a dark far right rabbit hole when right wing politicians prey upon their vulnerabilities and manipulate them into thinking a particular way.

I’m not saying that we don’t possess individual accountability (because we do) but it’s not hard to understand why people who are struggling financially, etc., are coerced into this dangerous way of thinking.

[walking_on_fire]

I’m a first-gen American, and it’s crazy seeing how my parents are still hardcore standing with Polish politics. But, I do see some softening around issues like abortion with their generation, unlike from my grandparents generation- so like you said, there is hope. I just wish people could open their eyes and let people be how they are. Be harsh on murderers not people that have the ability to love. Whenever I go visit my parents they are always watching Polish TV, and feel like they’re not getting every angle of issues (world issues). It’s weird that they know more about what’s going on in Poland than where they are actually living!!!

[inwazyja]

This might've been true in like 2010, but just isn't anymore unfortunately. Poland had a massive shift with younger people going further right when the migrant crisis hit in like, idk, 2015-2016. People who were just ageing into the workforce were suddenly blasted with racist propaganda about migrants from the middle east and it did exactly what you think it might've done in a country that was at that point (and still is in more rural parts) largely homogenous. I always hope that in the next elections the tide will turn and people will realise shit is not great, and every time in recent years I get slapped in the face with the realisation that I just live in a left-wing city bubble and the reality is really not great.

I'd argue that the younger boomers and gen x are probably the most open generation, because they fought for their freedom from the soviet union - the newer generations were fairly quick to forget history.

[deerlike]

fwiw, though I don't know how much of a barometer television is of the culture at large, recently I have seen a fair amount of LGBT themes in Polish Netflix content (Sexify, Queen, The Mire '97). Maybe shows like these cater to the minority in the left-wing urban bubble you mentioned, but at least it suggests that a more open-minded, younger demographic does exist in defiance of the prevalent conservatism? I don't know, just musing aloud.

[inwazyja]

So it does, I know a lot of people in the lgbt community in Poland, and there’s also a lot of entertainers who are openly out. However those people all live in like, idk 3-4 big cities which are generally safer for them (though it’s not all rosy there either). Poland is a much larger country than most people think it would be, and peope in a lot of the places in between the 3-4 big cities, particularly those with less access to good education and with a lot of cultural focus on religion, are inhaling state media and whatever hateful thing the church is preaching that day and they’re the people voting for the far right government - this is where the big disconnect happens. And then add to it that there just isn’t any strong opposition, the biggest opposition (that calls itself left wing) is centre right at best and just very… blah. So the left is super splintered while the right has a massive hold on shit.

[pi_lady]

People definitely don't realize how much power state TV and the church can have or how easy it is to shape people's minds if the onlymedia they consume is manipulated by the state.

During the Białystok march back in 2019 all the people attacking us were repeating what politicians, church leaders have been saying.

"And then add to it that there just isn’t any strong opposition, the biggest opposition (that calls itself left wing) is centre right at best and just very… blah. So the left is super splintered while the right has a massive hold on shit."

PO and PiS are bascially one and the same. The actual left is weak but I'm glad there are people out there I can vote for and don't feel like it's choosing the lesser evil.

[inwazyja]

I don’t think they’re necessarily the same - that comes from personally knowing some of the politicians there and privately they just aren’t right wing at all - but I do think as a party they’re absolutely terrified of having a strong anti right stance because they think it’ll alienate the centre people, and that meekness worked for them in the past… but it really fucking doesn’t anymore lol.

So yeah, I’d never vote for them either.

[pi_lady]

They also have a lot of very conservative politicians at the core, who neither support abortion nor marriage equality. They love to hide behind the argument that we need to defeat PiS first and when somebody asks them about human rights issues they give non-answers.

[inwazyja]

That’s totally true, tbh.

Clowns, all of them.

[deerlike]

I see what you mean, and so much of what you describe seems sadly familiar and not unlike e.g. the circumstances faced by LGBT folk in the American South and Midwest, where religious and social conservatism has great sway.

The difference I'd say is that at the very least in the US there isn't an official state media like in Poland, and the mainstream media is basically centrist, so they don't spew the kind of bile common to rightwing outlets. The public is so polarised though, and people are fixed within their sociopolitical affiliations, so if someone is raised on a diet of nothing but Fox News and their evangelical church, they're indoctrinated rather like the non-urban Polish demographic you have described.

the biggest opposition (that calls itself left wing) is centre right at best and just very… blah. So the left is super splintered while the right has a massive hold on shit. This too is all too familiar. Especially in the US regions I've mentioned, left opposition is weak if existent. The only hope is that the other regions (

[pi_lady]

Netflix is a foreign streamer though and they actually get a lot of backlash from polish right wingers online, Netflix just has the money to not care.

TVP is a state broadcater available everywhere, even private TV stations are not available eveyrwhere, the government definitely has a stronghold on shaping the narrative all around Poland.

It's definitely easy to stay in a liberal bubble if you live in a big city, work in arts, have contact with mostly liberal people. I'm always reminded of how conservative Poland still is when I visit family in PiS strongholds.

[deerlike]

Oh, for sure there is rightwing backlash towards these shows, didn't mean to imply that they were totally accepted by the general public over there. I guess my reasoning was that if these shows are getting made in the first place, it must be indicative that an (open-minded, progressive) audience exists for them in Poland? Unless Netflix is also banking on drawing international viewers like myself who consume foreign language and LGBT content.

But even the demographic that Netflix reaches would still be much smaller compared to the audience that a state broadcaster can influence, so I see what you mean. I can imagine the outsize influence it would have outside the urban Polish areas (not unlike Fox News in the US).