earlier this week i wrote a bit about the upcoming american show comrade detective, set in communist romania in the 80s, and how upsetting it is to me as a romanian who was born and lived her early childhood during the regime’s most brutal decade. comrade detective is written by american screenwriters brian gatewood and alex tanaka. it cast two romanian actors, florin piersic jr. and corneliu ulici, as leads, but their voices are dubbed in english by channing tatum and joseph gordon-levitt. aside from the two lead actors (whose voices won’t even be heard by the audience) there is not a single romanian person involved in this show.
the premise of comrade detective is that back in the 80s the romanian communist party decided to create a comedy series featuring two cops in order to present communist ideals in a positive light while also entertaining the public. the show, later lost when the communist regime fell in 1989, was re-discovered recently, dubbed in english and finally broadcast to western audiences as a glimpse into the mysterious world of eastern european communism.
there’s another reason why comrade detective is a giant, gratuitous slap in the face for us, besides turning the suffering of people who are alive right now to witness it into a novelty show: it implies that the romanian communist party made use of humor (featuring law enforcement officers as protagonists, no less) to promote communist values, and that we watched it and laughed, because it was funny. it doesn’t matter that this never happened (it hasn’t) because the show comrade detective is wholly fictional. it matters that it would have never happened. if the romanian communist party had really decided to make a comedy about communism, and we were all forced to watch it and laugh, we would have. and then we would have made a thousand relentlessly clever and nasty jokes about it out of the party’s earshot.
humor was very important during communism in romania, as it was in every other communist regime. it was vitally important, because for the longest time it was the only power that we, the entirely powerless, had. humor belonged to us. it did not come from the communist party. nicolae ceaușescu, the head of state, never told jokes in his public addresses or mixed little fun ironies into his speeches the way barack obama does. he was a mumbling, uneducated, small-minded man, all the more dangerous for being acutely aware of his inadequacies. the party did not make jokes. we did, and in some cases risked our personal safety for it. here’s a few, so you can get an idea of the things we joked about:
a man walks into an alimentară (supermarket).
‘don’t you sell any beef here?’ he asks.
the vendor replies: ‘no, we don’t sell any fish here. they don’t sell any beef next door.’before embarking on his first soviet-led mission to space romanian astronaut dumitru prunariu leaves a note for his mother: ‘dear mother, i’ve gone to outer space. i’ll be back in 30 days.’ when he comes back home he finds a note from his mother: ‘dear son, i’ve gone out to buy eggs. i’m not sure when i’m coming back.’
comrades nicolae and elena ceaușescu arrive in moscow on a state visit. while stepping off the plane, elena trips and falls flat on her face. the news report says: comrade elena ceaușescu has embraced the soviet land as her own and to mark the occasion comrade nicolae spoke his first word in russian: ‘zăpăcito!’ (romanian: ‘hare-brain!’)
question: what is the securitate (secret police)?
answer: it’s the heart of the party and it’s beating, beating, beating…some of these jokes or their variations may be familiar to people who lived in other communist regimes. their spirit certainly is.
on ‘comrade detective’, communism and humor
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