Traktorzystka – o potędze wizerunku
Female Tractor Driver – on the Power of an Image

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the question of how the images from the iconosphere of socialist realism function in the contemporary female discourses. Most often evoked female tractor driver has become an object of ridicule, an incarnation of the reversed order and evil of the former era, and, on the other hand, it is also a symbol of emancipation. In both cases the power of the image seems overvalued. Quantitative analysis of the presence of that image in the media of socialist realism proves that it was by far less popular than we tend to believe nowadays. The analysis of the iconographic sources proves that the image in question corresponded to the contemporary aesthetic canon. Recent opinions about her androgynic ugliness is an effect of politically biased “aesthetic exclusion.” The article stresses the need for the research in “visual archeology,” reflection on the functioning of images in social, ideological and aesthetic reality of its own times.

• Details
• Contents